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Satori 10/31/2007

I rose from the bed & slumped against the door jam. Dizzy & panting, I glared from under my brow at the sun dappled lawn & up at the low ashen clouds. The golden hour was upon us, magnifying to surreal levels the magnificence of the giant cedars & Douglas Firs outside. I waited for the dizziness to pass. My awareness migrated inwards, tuning to the subtle inner voice of revelation I'd followed all my life. I saw backwards through time, the dots of lessons learned rearranging so a new pattern of understanding emerged.

Remember when I taught you to waken in your sleeping dreams. I taught you to be present, to be intensely centered in the one moment you were experiencing, whenever anything hurt or frightened you. I am telling you now that you are in but a dream and that, whenever anything hurts or frightens you, you should become lucid, present, focused in the instant. You can, from that instant, in nonjudgment, escape the illusion that there is anything to be feared. I taught you to lucid dream to bring you to this moment, Cailín. Your childhood nightmares were but training for now.

"How do I escape the illusion through lucidity alone?"

You escape by knowing that you are not the temporal self you but appear to be in this dream you call your "life". Remember lucid dreaming: You would simply remember you had another existence that was unthreatened by anything that appeared in the dream. You re-membered your Self: put your Self back together so your awareness straddled the context of dream life & waking life. Remember your near death experience. You saw your true context is Eternity & that life was but a dream you had been dreaming without lucidity: You believed you could suffer loss & die. Lucidity in this dream you call "life" is just like lucidity in your sleeping dreams: You remember that you are actually safe in another greater context (Eternity) & only dreaming. You straddle contexts. Then, do not judge what seems to present. There is another reason the cross is the symbol for the Christ consciousness.

"Show me."

I saw the cross as at once a balance beam & a metaphor for life & consciousness. The horizontal beam was the specter of Time passing, yet, simultaneously, the balance beam of judgment. The vertical post is the instant at hand, the NOW, & nonjudgment: the holding of all things "harmless & didactic" before the lucid awareness of my True Eternal Nature. The only way one could ascend & escape the illusions of time & suffering was to "Go not out on the limbs of judgment & polarity: of 'good & evil'": to remain in the instant, in the awareness of their Eternal Reality: that they were invulnerable because life is but a dream. Abiding in this instant would remove the fear that caused judgment of whatever appeared to present. One would then see Life as the streaming revelatory & didactic experience it was meant to be -- in order to bring the dreamers to the very blessed moment I was living at that very instant: the moment of liberation of escape of Lucidity.

I heard my own laughter echoing as from a distance as I was swept up in ecstatic shivers, awakening, truly Lucid -- for the first time in my "life". I wondered why I did not float away as I might have in a sleeping dream. A deep peace & uncaused joy settled over my awareness as "I" went out of my mind: the mind that had regarded me insanely, as temporal and vulnerable -- and traded that mind for the Christ's mind, abiding in awareness of my own invulnerability. In that moment of reckoning I had become Liberated from the dreams of time & matter, I had become The Fiddler's Bride: no longer His accountant for there were no accounts to be settled or reckoned at all. Everything was blessed, harmless, didactic. It all happened FOR me. Nothing had ever happend TO me.

Dreams seem real while they last. We can say no more than this about "Life". Hare, hare... heart wings
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The secret to happiness...

...is to love without attachment to outcomes.

Love is its own reward. Just because someone is far away, you don't have to stop enjoying the feeling of thinking of them lovingly. Just because they stop loving you does not mean you have to stop enjoying the feeling of thinking of them lovingly. Just because they don't "get" your affection for them does not mean you have to stop enjoying thinking of them lovingly.

Love is best when it is given without any strings at all. Then it always comforts the giver because it makes them stronger, more loving, forgiving and compassionate. I am free to choose to love anyone I care to choose to love. It's not like they can stop me from feeling that way and wishing them well. It's not like I demand anything at all in return for the affection I feel. In fact, I have loved "pure and chaste from afar" many times in my life and it has been the most enobling experience of my life.

Love: They can't tax it. They can't steal it. It doth not rot nor oxidize. The more you give it, the more you have it. Love is the Treasure of The Wise.
heart wings

I choose to love because it pleases ME to do so. If it pleases you that I do so, so much the better. teddybear
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Saturday Serenade...

I am drinking fresh roasted/ground and brewed coffee with unadulturated cream. I am such a pureist! Consider me your Maîtresse de la musique aujourd'hui... We begin with the well beloved "Blues a Bebe"! Feel free to share your own party vibes.



PaaaaarTAY! (Next it'll be the rum!)dancing (Alas, I have no Fin de Monde.)
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The One

It started with an inability to remember the latin names of the species I was looking at. I checked my gauge console and found I had fallen past the intended bottom for the dive. I was at -110 feet. I was supposed to stop at -90. I looked up and saw the other divers above me, on top of the reef. I'd fallen off the wall and onto a narrow ledge, and it had happened so quickly I wondered how it had occurred at all. Had I been "gone" a moment. I had experienced brief "absences" in my life. Perhaps it has happened again, I considered. I took a deep breath to make myself neutrally buoyant, looking back at my fins as I lifted off the sandy ledge top to make certain I did not destroy anything when I finned upwards.

As I lifted to the top of the reef and up out of the shadow of the wall, the sunlighted reef surface dazzeled before me. I looked down and my eyes found a condylactus anemone. It had a beautiful Peterson's cleaning shrimp in its arms. The shrimp was lashing its white antennae, inviting me to stop and allow her to clean me. I exhaled and took care that I crushed nothing as I descended to the reef top and extended my hand for the cleaner shrimp. She swam out of her anemone and onto my palm, long arms and pincers searching me for loose skin.

A jeweled damselfish came to inspect. It's bright yellow tail merged with the irridescent star-studded velvet cobalt blue of its body. It looked like a cosmos had come to visit. A smile strained around my regulator mouth piece and I felt a deep sense of love -- actually, it was more like adoration, upwelling from within my being. Everything is so beautiful and alive and precious... The dive master tapped his tank with his knife to get my attention and I pushed the cleaner shimp off my palm with a finger tip and inhaled. Lifting again and soaring on the liquid winds, I finned away to join the group, awestruck and filled with deep appreciation... Gratitude.

We came to a sand-chute cave in the reef spoke network and I saw a giant silver mackeral in the cave. He weighed more than I did and floated absolutely still, not moving a fin, in the water column in the shade of the cave walls. A giant richordia anemone flouresced in bright pink and green and I moved in to look at it, inverting, my fins in the water above me. It was the first I'd ever seen of one of them in the wild. I reached down and caressed it's bubble-like tentacles, feeling the mild sting of its stinging cells releasing into the spaces between my fingers where the skin was thin enough that they could penetrate. I smiled again in appreciation. Of course, you'd do that. You don't know that I love you...

Abiding affection welled into my eyes and I glaced around, watching the fishes darting out and eating one another and chasing each other out of terretory, and then the reef showed its Self to me: It was but one life with myriad inTarnations, each believing themselves to be separate and yet each was wedded inextricably to all of the others. It was but one Life, one system, looking back at me with the same appreciation that I felt for it. The others in my group were far away and, my heart full of lightness and joy, I finned off to join them lest I be a problem. I did a little tumble in the water column, turning a flip or two in joy and then realized I didn't want the dive master to realize I was "narced", so I reverted to being more staid. But my eyes welled with love as I looked at the other divers waiting for me in patience as they prepared to ascend, their hands folded, their legs relaxed and limp.

I caught up to my husband, Bob and his mahogany eyes shown with affection as we caught each others' gazes. He popped the regulator out of his mouth and puckered up so I popped my regulator out and we smooched around our facemasks before ascending hand in hand. "Why'd you do that?" I asked when we had degeared on the boat. "Your eyes were so full of love," he sighed. "How could I not?"
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The True Will

You only think you know what you want. To know what you truly want you'd have to go backwards in time and remember how you felt about everyone and everything when you were yet a young child. Remember how you loved everything and everyone and wanted everyone to feel loved and happy and safe. Remember how there were no "inanimate objects" and everything was endowed with life and energy and presence. Maybe you can't remember this state of innocence any longer, but I do.

This world is but a dream based on the concepts of limitation, competition and dearth. Resources, we are taught, are scant. There is not enough to go around and, to get what we think we want, we must compete, and someone else must do without in order for us to "have". But the actual fact is that, the only way to "have", and to demonstrate that having, is to be be the source of all you "desire". The True Will, as it turns out, is antithetical to the concepts of competition and dearth. The True Will is echoed in the blessedness we feel when giving because that alone demonstrates that we are the source of all we desire. This Truth, being lived and real-ized, how can be ever be without? And the True Will is that no one "go without" and that everyone re-cognize who they truly are: Source.

How can we be happy when our brothers and sisters are suffering in dearth? Oh, we can and do take our passing pleasures and assuage our pain, but we are not truly happy because what we Will is to celebrate with all the utter surcease of abundance and cooperation. We Will to live lives that are meaningful and have purpose. Caught up in the illusions of dearth, competition and of "taking", we fall into a dream of meaninglessness and the pursuit of passing pleasures as we try to escape the messages that the metaphor of revelation has etched upon the world. We do this because we do not know that we are the source of the Miracle that heals every illusion. But, to find that power, we must ask the meaning of what appears to present.

EVERYone who comes into my life comes for one of two purposes and, sometimes, for both: They come to heal or to be healed. Sometimes we heal each other mutually, both of spiritual/emotional pain and physical dis-ease. All physical dis-ease is an echo of emotional/spiritual discomfort: an issue unreconciled. You can treat symptoms or you can address the cause. There is nothing in this world that is not a physical manifestation of a deeper spiritual reality. Life is a streaming revelatory experience in metaphor.

If I could heal the world myself of one error it would be the belief in dearth and the need for competition. The next great healing would be the idea that things happen TO us, rather than FOR us. No dis-ease presents that is not there to point our awareness at the deeper spiritual issue that is in need of being reconciled. Reconciliation is forgiveness and forgiveness is the real-ization of the concept that "Nothing happens TO us. It ALL happens FOR us." Your Shepherd never leaves you. Everything He sends He sends out of love that we not leave this world of physicality with anything left unreconciled/unforgiven.

I am the Miracle that you have been looking for - and so are you. The only difference is I know what I am, while you are yet identified with your dream. You are my reason to be. I am what you believe you lack, here to remind you of what you already are.
I love you all. teddybear

The cost of Nothing is Everything and the price of Everything is Nothing: Nothing but your unhappy dreams of separation wherein someone must be damned that you can be saved. No one can be saved without their brother at their side. We will laugh together in mutual salvation or weep in apparent isolation in illusions of damnation, trapped in a dream world of our own projected fear. We rest in our Father's arms and only dream of our exile from Heaven's abundance.
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SPEAK EASY

So I am taking the day off from any serious pursuits. liar Nothing serious for the next 24 hours. wink No one gets more than whimsy and light hearted banter from me until further notice and there is no telling what a well studied (maybe even perfected) drinking psychopath like m'self might say. AND YOU TOO ARE AT LIBERTY. Say whatever you LIKE! party hat Please feel free to be as incoherent and non sequitur as possible.
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Let's Get Controversial

Shall we?

My contention is this: We all have the right to defend ourselves. The average man can kill the average woman with his bare hands. Taking away a woman's means of defending herself is depriving her of the right to defend herself. (Pretty clear and logical, I think.)

People in other countries get the idea that firearms cause a lot of unnecessary death and suffering. Actually, crazy people cause a lot of unnecessary suffering and death. Governments do too. Why just now my own government is trying to talk its self into starting yet another transparently self serving war over resources in Syria under the guise of a call to stand up for liberty and justice in moral indignation. It makes me want to barf.

Let me be candid, as that is just the way I like to handle things. I have deterred at least half a dozen assaults and car jackings in my life by prodcing my 9mm. Bad guys run away in general when you produce a firearm. No one reports that they almost got raped, assaulted, their car jacked, or kidnapped when they produced a firearm and deterred the crime. Accordingly, the impression those in other countries get is that firearms are a blight and yet I, as a woman, have, because of my firearm, the ability to go where I choose, when I choose to do so. I am no hostage to fear.

I am interested in all CIVIL and RESPECTFUL and well thought out feedback and questions and I thank you ahead of time for the same. Rude, offensive remarks will not be answered and will be deleted.

Have a beautiful day.teddybear
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On Contrast/Change

The only thing about everything that is always the same is an enduring state of constant change. Change is wonderful because it is one aspect of Truth, its transcendent synthesis being Constancy. Without it we would quickly lose "consciousness". Our entire nervous system is designed to register change/contrast so, without it, input stops: Sleep begins and dreams overtake as the mind begins to create something new and stimulating within. So much for "Big Bangs". This world is but a dream of dreamers dreaming dreams (almost) together. Yet so many people are upset by contrast/change that they limit their capacity to manifest the changes they want. Embrace change and you become the calm and centered eye of the storm -- and a wielder of The Will -- and herein lies your Bliss for nothing is so in keeping with what you ARE than the experience of wielding The Will. Actualize your dreams and you are REALized: Tzaddikim. Molto mojo.

This is my identity. This is what I claim: I am a splendid fluid dynamic we call Love and yet mostly do not see although It is All That Is. I appear as the shape of whatever environment/form appears to enclose me and yet I slip right through the seams or through the fingers and never lose my identity. Like a noble gas I can mix and mingle and appear to disappear and yet I remain unpolluted: stainless. Mercurial, I scintillate and see my Self everywhere -- in you and you and you and you and you.

Mine, mine, mine... I love you ALL, even as I push you from the roof or pitch you from the plane that you might experience the changes you are afraid to undertake on your own initiative. Nothing happens To you: It all happens FOR you. Fly my little birdies. Embrace the winds of change. Be change. Summon change. Wield your Will.

You will get what you ask for with an undivided heart/mind. The double-minded get Nothing.

Failure to choose is choosing to fail. Contrast is what
makes life blessed and rich. Contrast/change animates. You must welcome it with your whole heart if you are ever to find what you say you are here looking for. Be courageous. Only Nothing can hurt/limit your bliss. teddybear

The cost of Nothing is everything and the price of Everything is nothing -- nothing but your unsatisfying dreams of stagnation in solitude.

Examine your thoughts. Are they in complete harmony with your desires? If not, there's your challenge. Reconcile that you want change, that you are not afraid of it. Invite it without caveat. Focus. Will. Be the change and happiness will come and find you.

I do not wish you luck for that is an illusion. I wish for you single-minded determination and the courage of your convictions. Where there is a Will a way materializes -- Always.

My love is upon you. Now go get that BLISS! heart wings
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Happy Monday...

This blue jewel in the barren sky is mine, MINE, MINE. We cannot lose what we love. These are the sights and sounds of a heart that embraces all and yet demands nothing. Hare! Hare!

All this magesty is in our heart. We are the Water. Om shanti...

The skin rises in gooseflesh and the the body scintillates with ardor.

These forgiving eyes see only innocense.



(Well, except for the bankers.) laugh But today, my Beloveds, I shall sing you into my heartspace. I love you ALL. Feel free to sing back! This thread is yours to hijack! I surrender (again and again, until I get it RIGHT!!) No holds barred. Just hold me in your heart! grin
teddybear
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Lamed Vau...

"I know Where Your Camel Went"

As a "child" people asked me what I wanted to be when I "grew up". It was an inquiry as to what "role" I wanted to assume, what profession, what trap of identification. From the time I was ten I said, "I want to be like an amoeba. I want to roll through life engulfing everything I encounter, taking it all into myself & assimilating whatever is useful, leaving behind the dross." Over the years it has become apparent that I am not here for the same reasons as are most other people. I care little for "passing pleasure" & less & less about "the world". My attention is focused inward while I take in & sift what only appears to be "outside".

In the course of my life I have perfected precious few skills. One is the ability to hide. This ability has much to do with the fact that human beings, in general, are very rarely focused where they appear to be. They are in the future or the past. They are not "present" in their current physical surrounds & so their "situational awareness" is greatly attenuated. This makes "hiding right out in the open" easy. All I have to do is not make eye contact & to turn my attention to some mundane task & I will disappear. On the other hand, humans are so unaccustomed to presence that, if I focus upon them & look them in the eyes & greet them warmly, they are instantly attracted. Actual caring contact with a stranger is so rare & most of us are so afraid. When someone presents who is obviously benevolent, penetrating the shroud of your internal banter completely, it is highly comforting. Everyone is going through something these days & casting about to be seen & comforted wherever they might. This is true of even those who think themselves "happy" because the dream they have created seems full of comfort -- but bereft of "meaning".

One of the other skills I have been cultivating is the ability to escape the cognitive & emotional traps we lay in order to ensnare imagined "others". But THERE ARE NO "OTHERS" & so the traps we lay only ensnare those who set them. We are all the same Life in many combinations of "traits" & "inclinations". That underlying Life unity it is a source of great insight, if one knows how to listen inward with vast compassion & forgiveness. Listening inward one eventually stumbles across details of what "others" think & do that results in disappointment. One must learn to look past the illusion that people are the thoughts they think lest one become bitter & coldly dispassionate: a cognitive "trap" that presents again & again until one's forgiveness is perfected.

Yet to what end is all of this perfecting undertaken? The end is the escape of the ultimate trap: the dream we call this world. The theme of the dream defines its "laws of physics" because reality is fluid & warps to reflect our observations which are the direct consequence of our expectations. The apparent laws of physics are mere suggestions imposed by the probability field accumulated from our joint assertions that certain things are "facts". The theme of this particular dream is "The Son of God Captive of the World He Made -- as a Play Thing". It is the Will of God that We waken from the limitations we have manifested here. Finding the mission fascinating, I have determined to stay. I stand next to the doors, pointing at them, a gatekeeper for the few who come out of their inundating thoughts & dare to look up to meet my loving & whimsical gaze. The world is a delicious jest. I could show you to the door & we might escape the trap together -- if you are not too invested in your dream. Great truths hide in fine distinctions and the gates are small as the eye of a needle. We could take a walk about together in real freedom. I would welcome your lucid company. Messages rarely find their way to where they can have no effect. There are at least 35 more like me in the world, I have been so assured. The journey is tiresome undertaken alone. Shall we dance? Vous êtes ma raison d'être.
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Swan Song

It's an old story:
Seems to happen
when someone confuses
being "in love"
for wanting "to be loved".

You wanted me to love you.
I obliged.
So you set about
constructing for me
a lovely cage,
investing time
and effort
to create
the perfect fit:
an enclosure for me
and adornment
of your magesty.
You never saw me
as I am,
nor loved me
as I was
but spent all your time
and energy
manifesting an image.
While I waited
for your eyes
to search the shadows
of this tender trap
longing
to finally
see me.

I've slept a very long while,
but my dreams will not lay down.
And I've awakened
strangely wearied.
I long to be known
and loved
as I am
And I want you
to be well
and happy,
because I still love you
just the way you are
even
as
I leave you.

Callaghan Grant
1995
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Lessons Learned and Generalized

When approaching a fish you think you might want to "harvest" do not think "Just hold still a weeeee while longer". They can hear you. Instead think "I am an interesting floating rock. I am very peculiar. You have never seen anything quite like me. You should stay and watch and figure out what I am."

Never chase a fish. They can outswim you. You will run out of air, find yourself far from the boat, swimming with sharks. This is more generalizable to life than you might think.

Instead of chasing a fish know that, the older and bigger the fish, the smarter and more curious they are. Settle to the bottom and take out your cold chisel from your Bouyancy Compensation Device (BCD) pocket and begin tapping at rocks or, better yet, bust up some urchins and feed the reef fish. The grouper you are after will soon swim right up to you and say "Heya, whatcha doin' there, toots?" Answer: "Waiting for you, of course". Then politely ask him to "Hold onto your spear". If you don't carry a chisel in your BCD, why not? OK, never mind the chisel. Carry a knife.

It is much more important to get to the surface safely to eat the fish you already have than it is to shoot more fish (that you don't need). Greed will get you killed.

NEVER feed a shark. Never give a shark your catch to mollify them. It only whets their appetite. Appetites cannot be satisfied more than temporarily. This is a metaphor directly applicable to the quest for passing pleasure in life. It gets you nowhere.

When in a situation where there are lots of BIG fat grouper to choose from swimming all around, PICK ONE and focus on it. Do not allow your attention to be distracted.

Do not skip breathe/hold your breath. It will get you killed. And it makes you stupid from hypoxia. Also a metaphor directly applicable to life. He/she who sits by the phone and waits, sits by the phone and waits.

Never attempt to wrestle a fish when you are neutrally buoyant. The fish will beat you up.

String a trigger fish through the gills and out the mouth or they will bite your thigh when they are hanging at your side. This hurts, a lot, and it attracts sharks.

Never taunt a barracuda. You are their guest. They can have you any time they like. Respect your environment.

Happy hunting, y'all... I am off to Tampa and will check in later tonight.

cheers
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