Haiku Ellipses...Invitation...Response...

  WEB OF TRIANGLES web of triangles connected with thin threads encircled with green the green circle and threads are inspired by the greenry around me at First Landing State Park near the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia. The triangles represent trinitarian dynamics of objects in the world: people, plants, animals, insects, micro-organisms...the green web of life. as a practice, imagine yourself standing at the center of your web of life...move out from your center, seeing and feeling into the trinitarian dynamics surrounding you...including  body, elementals, all living things...all interconnected, all in some sense unified and ONE.  

 BLACK , GREEN , ORANGE from the deep dark black comes the green stem and the leaves flower then orange fruit The sequence of colors from the center black , to the middle green , to the outer orange represents the life of a seed in the black of the soil, sprouting and pushing up a stem which turns green with leaves in the sunshine and eventually flowers, fertilizes, and produces orange fruit. So too, we have ideas that begin in the black void of the quantum field, pushing out of the realm of possibilities into some specific line of intent (the stem), which, given the proper nourishment from the soil and sun, will sprout into green leaves (ideas and actions), and these give rise to orange flowers, attracting pollinators (supportive people), that when fertile produce fruit (the outcome, art, love, invention, story...) to make life more wonderful. What ideas do you have lurking below the surface of consciousness in the black void? How might you nurture one idea to give it str...

PLAYFUL CONVERGENCE Converging forces                    vpmbrthomh gptvrd blue and violet color               n;ir smf bop;ry vp;pt playing in the shapes               [;suomh om yjr djs[rd There are many forces in our lives--inside our bodies, minds, and spirits...around our bodies in our immediate environment...people in our household, home, neighborhood, village/city... nature as incarnate in plants, insects, and animals...all of the elements, sunshine, water, earth, and air surrounding and connecting us all!  All of these forces converge inside us moment by moment, changing us (according to the quantum physicists) at a subatomic levels many times in a single second (i can't even fathom that!). We cannot figure it all out. Who can even describe all the mysterious and marvelous biological/chemical processes that happen within us to keep us alive ...

  LIFE-BEING-PRESENCE The great gift of LIFE The great gift of 2 BEINGS Finally...PRESENCE We begin with the most basic question of all: why is there something rather than nothing? How is it that we find ourselves in this great mystery called LIFE ? Life is, and we are, that is, we consciously experience ourselves as a BEING . In considering our being, we also realize that we are utterly interconnected to all life, including all other beings. This connection is what i call a sense of PRESENCE .  In the haiku the allusion is to 2 beings that create a new presence, a new being, but it need not be that...any and all beings create multiple presences all the time!  So there is  LIFE all round, we realize life in our BEING , and we come to feel the connection between life and being as a kind of PRESENCE . The most practical application of this 3-fold dynamic of life, being, and presence is to bask in, enjoy, wonder, and feel the life-being-presence connection through cont...

  2BE 2DO 1st there is 2BE Then there is meditation Last there is 2DO I like to play with numbers and words as in 2b, 2know, 2do, 2u, etc...out of this play came the ideas of 2BE and 2DO , fitting into a sequence marked by contemplation and action. Richard Rhor founded the Center for Action and Contemplation, prioritizing action over contemplation, but in this haiku, i highlight the opposite, prioritizing contemplation before action, that is, the contemplation/meditation informs our action in the world. Thus, first there is the state of being, followed by meditation, ending in doing. The practical implication for me is that each day i begin with prayer and meditation, dropping into the center of BEING . Next, i review my priorities for the day, making sure that i balance my needs/goals with others, realizing that this is a plan, that things rarely go exactly according to plan, that flexibility and adjustments will need to be made in the lived moments that make up a day. With the pl...

KOI POND   Below the surface of the little backyard pond Fish playing with light A very quick sketch of our backyard koi pond was inspired by the sparkles of light i saw bouncing off the fish below the surface of the pond. What is this miracle of light? The sunshine bouncing off the fish as they meander through the wetness, or is it better thought of as fish "playing with light"? Of course, it's BOTH! As we look deeper into things using the contemplative gaze, the long, loving, leisurely, look at the real that William Mac Namara writes about in his book, The Human Adventure: The Art of Contemplative Living, we perceive below and allow our gaze to penetrate into things "below the surface of the koi pond ." Whatever we see is REAL, and all perspectives are welcome, we embracing everything in our both/and contemplative gaze. 

  EJACULATION growing waves coming slowly at 1st then building ejaculation Biologically, we tend to think of ejaculation as the physiological release of sperm (and other fluids) by a male into a female during sexual intercourse as part of the reproductive process to continue the species, but i like to think of ejaculation in a much broader sense. In this haiku, ejaculation refers to ideas that grow, often slowing, on the back burner, over time, building, gaining momentum, and eventually spilling out into some creative art such as music, poetry, painting, and journaling. This kind of ejaculation knows no gender but does have sexual overtones. The process calls for skills in caressing, enticing, and loving into being. Both men and women can experience this kind of ejaculation . I find that journaling, and other kinds of writing like poetry, stories, blogging, words on  "post it" notes, helps me catch ideas percolating in my mind, opening up a space for them to eventually b...

  EXPANSION & CONTRACTION From the 2 come 8 Expansion & Contraction Joining Together The "2" is 2 overlapping squares with the 2nd square placed at a 45 degree angle atop the first square--see upper left figure in image below. The place where the edges of the squares meet (the red tips) are pointing outward, thus the idea of EXPANSION .  Let the tips fade into the background, and sharpen the focus on the areas within the two squares, finding an 8 sided octagon (the blue shape near the center of the image below). If the 4 red points from the original two squares are made into smaller squares, there emerges red arrows that point inward toward the center (see 2nd figure on top row with the red arrows in the image below). Both the octagon within the square and the inward pointed red arrows show the idea of CONTRACTION .  When the squares and octagon, the 2 & 8, merge, as in the colored figure at the bottom right below, we see JOINING. The squares are still ther...

  Star Being & 4 Masked Men Centered Star Being Surrounded by 4 Masked Men Integrationing Inspired by the hexad in chapter 6 of Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider (see blog of 3 x 5's for 1/1/2022), the diamond shape at the center took shape first and reminds me of a person. Since this shape resembles a star, i called it the " Star Being " in the haiku. The 4 parts that intersect in the center of the Star Being and move outward, splitting the 4 cardinal directions, are created next, reminding me of African masks that i saw that in the safari section of the Zoo cafeteria in Norfolk, Virginia in the early post 2000 years...distinctly male energy. These male energies appear to penetrate and intermingle with the Star Being , hence the final line of the haiku that ends with a new word that i coin here (i could not find the word in a google search on 1/1/2022): INTEGRATIONING , signaling the active process of combining energies to birth...

 DIAMOND STARE diamonds on her back coiling into a spiral starring into me The coiling of the purple diamond shapes on the back of this female snake end at her head with red sparkling diamonds that seem to stare into me when i gaze with soft eyes. She is surrounded by brown earth yet at the center where her head rests is a lively green patch of grass, symbolizing earth and plant, hard and soft, yang and ying. ANYTHING can become the focus of a " diamond stare "...a contemplative gaze that begins on the rim of the object of focus (the ground in Gestalt terms) and moves toward the center (the figure in Gestalt) where one may experience the feeling of being starred at (see Rupert Sheldrake's book The Sense of Being Stared At ), and/or the feeling of mutual gaze (a resonant connection). As we are gazed upon, perhaps we are in some sense "known," and the wisdom of the "other" comes into us.