May 20, 2017 was another great day. Lots of people fillled Hanuman Park for Hanuman Jayanthi. The chanting and bhajans were wonderful. The feeling of family, community and devotion filled the air. Beautiful!
View more pictures on the Hanuman Jayanthi Photo Gallery.
The Super Bowl was so much fun! Like football or not, last night at Mount Soma the Super Bowl party (pic below) was great fun for everyone. We even had our own Mt. Soma representatives at the game! See pic from their seats below. Our Mt. Soma annual tradition of silly emails back and forth, starting with the playoffs every year, make the game even that much more enjoyable. Lots of laughs! Big smiles! Everyone enjoys!<
Mars, Venus and Moon are together this evening in the western sky. You may want to take a look. Beautiful. Mars is just above Venus and Moon. Here is a pic of it at Mount Soma this evening.
We had a wonderful early Thanksgiving today, Tuesday, Nov. 22 at Mount Soma because Thursday will be busy with guests. It was a potluck with tofu and lentil loaf turkey, and all the trimmings. After the feast, a bunch of us took a walk out past the Wishing Tree through the mountain trails. It was lovely. We found a quiet spot with a very fine feeling and stood there together for quite a while… chatting a bit, listening to the stillness of the woods, looking at the views and fidgeting with twigs, fall leaves, and other little treasures of nature. It was an exquisite day as we all enjoyed the food, the walk, the environment, and most of all, one another.
A wonderful group of fifth graders visited Mount Soma yesterday. Everyone had a lot of fun. Here is the brief talk I gave…
Fabulous clouds and fall weather, all day every day lately here at Mount Soma!
Looking forward to our Mother Divine Meditation Retreat, October 1-10th. It’s always such a special time of inward and outward transformation as the seasons change.
Click here to view a great picture on Instagram.
If you’re not already, you may be interested in following my Instagram account where great images, quotes, and updates are regularly posted.
I will be traveling to San Francisco with my family during the middle of August. I would like to organize an event for students and their guests one day. If anyone would like to assist in that process, please let me know. I will keep everyone informed as plans unfold.
We get a fair number of stray cats around our house. Some of them are incredibly peaceful and affectionate. So it’s very easy to be kind with them and try to find out if they have a home nearby. In some cases, when they end up living under our porch for a number of months and it is clear they don’t have a place to live, Judi often finds them a good home.
There’s a whole spectrum of behavior among these cats, ranging from very tame and affectionate to completely wild and unapproachable. If you do happen to accidentally corner one of the wilder ones, they are all claws and fangs.
It saddens me to see how these cats seal their own fate based upon their behavior. You wish you could just let the wild ones know to calm down—everything’s fine. They are creating their own problems. Of course, you can’t do that.
Humans are strikingly the same way. We create our own heaven or hell, determined by our relationship with the world.
Classes for me are a wonderful opportunity to take a step back from all the busyness of my life. It is my great joy to have a few days to sit and explore the Knowledge with everyone. To be with, and commune with, so many people I care about feeds my soul. It is something I long for. It’s something we all long for. Yet, in our busy lives, we often don’t take time to accommodate that. For me, classes are that great gift of time to commune.
The first of the three days was more just a time of being together and settling in. It was sort of a regrouping and brushing away the cobwebs of our overly demanding daily schedules. Admittedly, at the end of the day I had some concern. Realizing how much I had been pushing, I felt like I had to strive to overcome the fatigue I felt in my body and wondered if I therefore had done everyone there a disservice. As it turned out, the feedback was wonderful. Everyone cherished the settled, reflective communion of visiting together. A little surprising to me was the feedback regarding all the deep content that I included in that day. To me, everything in life is profound. As it turned out, that profundity and beauty I feel for all of life shined through.
Rejuvenated, the next two days were packed with Knowledge. As with every class that I give, I feel some sadness about the people who were unable to attend. I never repeat the same class twice. Audio tapes or written summaries only convey a small fraction of the content.
Life is all too often reduced to a handful of facts or concepts. It is the texture of life—inaccessible through mere accounts, thoughts, and concepts—that gives it meaning, that gives it depth. Most of what is accomplished in the classes is through our shared presence. After all, healing is a feeling, a state of Being, a state of physiology. As we open to that, we become full, whole, within our own selves.
A number of times yesterday and today, I have been asked to write something about the Super Bowl. I thought to tell you about all the silly and fun pregame antics we have enjoyed among ourselves here at Mount Soma throughout the playoffs through today, but it seemed to not be enough to say or very easy to convey either. It all just naturally built upon itself as a bunch of hilarious back and forth emails and frivolities.
There was just an interview with the Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning that was personally quite moving for me. It is likely his last game before retirement. He said what was most important to him was to earn the respect of his teammates and coaches. That is certainly one of the most important things in life. You can’t expect to gain respect from all the people who do not really know you, but to earn the respect of those that are close to you, those who see and work with you on a regular basis is a most laudable life goal. I can honestly say that I have deep respect for all of the people with whom I have the honor to be around here at Mount Soma and work with closely and I know they feel the same. For that I am most grateful.
Enjoy the Super Bowl! If you do not like football, there are always the commercials and halftime show!!
