I knew I was on the right path the instant I stopped believing there was a wrong one, having finally listened to what my heart had been trying to tell me since forever: All paths are one path, you couldn't not be on it, there's nowhere else to be. And please don't get confused if where you are doesn't resemble anything about any path you ever imagined. In a way, it's a bit of a pathless path, an illusion of sorts.

"Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection." J. Krishnamurti

Even though I spent much of my early life in depression, I would have this underlying sense that things would come round. It was music more than anything that gave me that. I'd be in a deep funk and listening to Joplin or Bach and I wouldn't get all happy but I'd get a little mellow and suddenly there'd be this faint rainbow tipping my mood.

 
As far as I know I was named after the main character in the Biblical story of Ruth. That's my first name. My middle name came from the grandmother I never knew, who died of Spanish flu less than a month after my mother was born.

I hated my name when I was growing up. Maybe because I felt unlike a Ruth, or maybe I thought it's not a name you can live up to. Just guessing, I really have no idea. Perhaps I would have hated any name I'd been given. :)




rudyan combines the first two letters of each of my birth names. I love this moniker. I'm not sure why exactly, but in a way I feel it reflects a more integrated aspect of me than what is contained in my name (although I believe I've grown into it now). Like a melding of pieces into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Sort of the story of my life, not really accepting anything as given but taking a little of this and a little of that and blending it into something that is uniquely mine. Hmm...


[Note: Images, found in Wikimedia Commons, are public domain due to copyright expiry.]

I'm not sure. It's been such a struggle, you know. I was so looking forward to getting here. I thought I'd feel more peaceful, more myself, whatever that's supposed to mean. But now that I'm here---er, in the future, that is---I just feel kinda lost, like I'm missing out on something big. I wonder what it could be. Now, maybe?

Numbers are good.
They let you count sheep when you can't sleep or, if your insomnia laughs at such amateurish tricks, make you count backwards from 1,000,000 by some number yet to be assigned by the fiend that stands in for your brain in your most insomniacal moments. (Mine gave me this one the other day night: Count backwards from 1,000,000 by pi. But it failed to specify which approximation of pi it would find acceptable, and so me being me I opted for the literal meaning...)

They let you hide in calculations about the GDP of your country when you're plagued
by questions about your ability to meet the sum total of your bills at the end of the month (would it be better to simply turn tail and run?). Not to mention the infinite variations on said theme that fear of same rouses, like:
If I pay the mortgage, what other bills will go unpaid? Or:
To find the mortgage payment, what will I have to give up for Lent? And maybe:
How many Lents will I have to invoke in order to provide the roof, feed the mouths, power the computers, keep the communications going, the economy moving, etc, etc, for the rest of this decade? And I'm talking just those mouths, etc., for whom I'm feel more or less directly responsible.

Ah, maybe I'll just shrug.
Boy, did that feel good! So now I know, the best thing about numbers is: you can shrug 'em off.

But wait, I like numbers. I made my living from them for years, and happily. It's just that numbers have a way of tripping you up when you're not looking, or if you take them too seriously. Personally, I'd rather play than work with them. I like them chaotic, dancing like "visions of sugar plums" in my head.

Oh, and today is pi day. Pi, I like, and here are a few reasons (not to tax my counting abilities too much; eek, did someone mention taxes???):

Pi doesn't prove there's a god, but it comes as close as anything to pointing to infinity, in all its variety.

Pi gives us permission to reason irrationality irrationally till the cows come home (and that's for those of us who don't have any and never will---cows, I mean).

And, my personal favourite:

You can eat a gazillion pieces of pi without gaining a single ounce.




Pi. You gotta love it.

When the Japanese flowering cherry trees pop out in their gorgeous rosy pink blossoms I know spring has finally arrived, no matter what the outside temperature. For me, these blossoms and this colour, more than anything, symbolize the hope that is spring, every year this massive push toward new life, the miracle of renewal.

Hope springs eternal in the human heart.

—Hop to it! What are you waiting for???

The words came clear as a bell. In fact, clearer. And darker. They sounded more like the strident voice of a gong. Like doom.

My head shot up, startled out of my reading of fellow-gaian's posts. I don't really know why I looked up, because I knew I was alone in my apartment. I am mostly alone when I'm in my apartment. I like it that way. It's my space, and I'm a pretty private person. PPP.

—So what's up? I answered the voice, perhaps a trifle rudely. —And who are you anyway?

It didn't occur to me it might be my higher self, it sounded too much like the old blustering, fear-filled ego self I thought I'd buried way back in my morning-pages days. Hadn't heard that voice for a while.

—Why, your higher self, of course, doughhead. I knew you hadn't been listening. You haven't heard a word I've said in ages, the voice accused.

I turned back to my computer, closed my internet connection and patted the keyboard. —Time for a little nap, I murmured. This would need my full attention.

—Ok, I said to the voice. —Explain yourself. Why are you masquerading as my HS?

—I was bored, the voice pouted. —Who do you think you are, sticking me inside those stupid morning pages of yours? And in effect gluing my lips together so it takes me forever to unpry them, never mind get any words out?

—Now you know how I felt all those years, listening to you grouching and complaining and can't-you-do-anything-right-ing at me from morning till night. I just got powered up one day and said: Enough. That's all. And started journaling as if my life depended on it. I smiled. —And so it did.

—Not real-ly. The voice spoke in a cheeky singsong now. —Not real-ly. 'Cause I'm here, don't-cha know. I'm speakin' atcha. I'm a-dancin' with words right now, right here beside your right ear.

I thought I heard the swoosh of a half pirouette, followed by a muffled thump! and a mumbled Ouch! that sounded a lot like a swearword I know.

I smiled again as I turned to the filing cabinet beside my desk, slid open a drawer and pulled out my current journal.

—See this? I lifted the book and waved it at nothing in the air.

Poof!


Oh, the higher self? It sounds a lot like love. It sounds like the breeze whispering through weeping willow branches, like a partially ripe pear plopping into the garden, like children's laughter or the crunch of footsteps through last year's leaves in the park, like raindrops tapping against my window or plip-bouncing off my umbrella, like gentle waves kissing fine sand or wild surf whooshing onto the shore, like my fingers at this keyboard…

And when it has something to say, it speaks straight to my heart in a language my heart understands. And my heart obeys, as love answers love.

In silence.

In birdsong, while small creatures rustle through underbrush, branches sigh and tree tops whisper secrets, gentle waves lap onto silky golden sand or surf pounds away at my feet walking on the beach.




In music that speaks to my soul.




It's not the physical place that matters really, it's where I am inside. In a manner of speaking, the silence is always there where I am, as are the bird songs, the waves, the music.

I don't really. I'm not saying I couldn't enumerate various attributes or characteristics, identify myself by things I occupy myself with, friends I keep (birds of a feather...), and so on. I could, on a given day, say I am thus and so, or so and thus, and that would be a more or less true picture of how I see myself on that day. But by the time you read what I write, my *true picture* of myself may have changed. And in any case, your perception of me (what you read in my writing, or what you would see if you were to meet me, or understand if you were to ask my neighbour or friends or boss about me) will almost certainly not coincide seamlessly with mine.

How I see myself is not static, it changes from day to day. I (or at least the illusion of who I is) change(s) from day to day, and if I'm aware, so does my perception of self. And when all is said and done, even if it is my perception it is still only a perception, just as your perception of me is. It is not reality, although it may have some semblance of reality.

What is really real about me does not change, but how can I or anyone describe it? Any way we can describe anything is surely only a perceptual interpretation, even if an extremely well-informed one, of that thing. Anything deeper (and by this I mean, the absolute reality behind the illusion, i.e., that part of something that is not subject to change) is, I feel, beyond description.

So in a sense, to describe is to label. Well, I try to stay away from labeling as much as possible. And when I can't (or for some reason choose not to), I remain well aware of the transitoriness, the essential inaccuracy, of the label. To label is to perpetuate a myth. Why do it?

Forever changing,       

Life's an open mystery.       

Thrilled, I turn the page.        

 

RAD 3/22/09
Photo source

In the streets, where sudden splashes of bold colour chase away winter blahs.

In the sight of robins plucking juicy meals from dew- or rain-drenched lawns, and in the sweet hymns of praise offered at first dawn by nesting songbirds.

In noticeably longer days and warmer sun, more sunshine-days and brighter interiors.

In the leisurely way in which pedestrians walk to their shopping, schools or jobs, and in the easy way a smile reaches their eyes when they stop to say hello.

In my own stride and heart and lighter step, humming about spring bustin' out all over, or it must be spring, as I go about my business.

And well, there's just such a feeling of love floating around, don't you think?

Most of the time, I think, we look within because we've explored every other option and still feel a lack in ourselves, a hunger for something, we don't even know what. We've gone the way of the most basic senses, done the guru/teacher thing, so many paths we've followed for a time, only to find that when the initial honeymoon phase passes off we're still hungry, still not satisfied. We haven't found *it*. That's when we turn within, as the only avenue left to explore. And that's when/where the treasure begins to reveal itself. As the proverb says, "You always find something in the last place you look."

Joy, filled to the brim and overflowing.

I've woken up the past few mornings feeling like I'm coming back from a far distant place. That has happened to me before, but what's different this time is that I'm coming back into joy, with no feeling of regret at leaving what- or where-ever it is I'm supposedly returning from. Awakening into joy, rather than up from or out of it.

Joy at finding myself in human form. Joy at being here, now, at this awesome time. Joy in the midst of all the surrounding turmoil. But really, just an inside-out, no-excuses-necessary sort of joy, like something precious inside me is just bubbling up and over and into my physical world.

I've had moments of unaccountable joy before, periods of feeling everything is exactly as it should be and being totally at peace with that. But this is something else. This is beyond words, although I'm doing my best to translate the feeling. It feels like more than a feeling, it feels like a beingness and a belongness at the same time, a being at one with all that is, all that ever was, all that ever could be.

The Source of Joy

No one knows what makes the soul
wake up so happy!

Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil
from the face of God.

A thousand new moons appear.
Roses open laughing.

Hearts become perfect rubies
like those from Badakshan.

The body turns entirely spirit.
Leaves become branches in the wind!

Why is it now so easy to surrender,
even for those already surrendered?

There’s no answer to any of this.
No one knows the source of joy.

A poet breathes into a reed flute,
and the tip of every hair makes music.

Shams sails down clods of dirt from the roof,
and we take jobs as doorkeepers for him.

Ah, thank you, Rumi. I knew you'd find the right words.

What I trust most is my heart, which is connected to the heart of all humanity, all life, all worlds, all universes, in fact, all that is.

It was to learn trust that the turtle abandoned her shell, and having abandoned it, she found that trust still eluded her. In desperation, she turned within, where eventually she found revealed all secrets, all answers to all questions as well as all questions to all answers, including questions and answers she hadn't even considered yet. Within was everything she needed to live in the world. Sweet paradox!

 


Photo source
Text from The Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks
RAD 3/28/09

 



 
RAD 3/29/09

To not-speak truth. I learned that
while my truth was condemned as lies,
the lies of others were revered as truth.
Confused, I learned to hide my truth altogether,
the truth of what I saw,
the truth of who I was.

I have since learned that what we call truth is mostly relative. One person's lie can easily be another person's truth. That, too, I learned from my mother. My mother has never read Orwell, but she is an adept at reinventing history. (People do what they have to, to survive.)

The way I see it now, truth is just another theory
to explore, perhaps
to explode.

I have found that truth-exploration not infrequently leads to truth-explosion, or should I say, -implosion.

I have found that the implosion of what we call truth
does not result in chaos so much as it results in
resolution, things coming together.

At least, it is things coming together that I remember, now.