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It’s an important question we don’t ask ourselves enough. Should we be full of mind or should we be focused?
The external world is unreliable, it will not avail us, especially when we are using an untrained monkey mind to interact with it. Training is the only answer, the only pathway to liberation which begins within, inside our own minds, the scariest and most dogmatic place of all!
I hope you enjoy today’s sermon. In honor of its theme, we’re listening to Manuel Göttsching’s E2E4—an hour-long song that gives new meaning to slowing down.
Three supplementary items here: a photo of where I was sitting when I wrote today’s sermon, a photo of the Bohemian cemetery mentioned, and a video by Sadhguru explaining the way the mind is a reality-creation-factory we must train so we can consciously and consistently manifest peace, joy, and love.
Vyšehrad Cemetery
Nice place to sit and write!
A halo of light encircling a radiant object.
How can we rescue ourselves from indoctrinated ideas that limit our ability to be in direct communion with the divine?
We’re often blown off course when we see the success and wealth of others and start to feel bad about ourselves. But for those seeking wisdom, the slow maturation process of a tree is a better image to emulate.
We have to be careful what we covet. For every action, there is a reaction.
The 2021 Fates & Graces Mythologium was held this weekend and I presented a new paper about the archetypal significance of the pair being twins, among other things.
Ever since Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy, people have been laying their grievances about the patriarchy and its over-emphasis on rational thought at Apollo’s feet. But to me, Apollo cannot be separated from the imaginal attributes surrounding his myth. In my view, it is really Aristotle we should be complaining about.
Anyway, I turned my conference presentation into a Youtube video which is now moonlighting as this week’s sermon. The work is certainly preachy at times so I think it qualifies as a religious sermon.
This week’s music mix is also recycled because I have been listening to it nonstop since last week. I realized that I’ve had Artemis and Apollo on the brain for a while now and last week’s mix is really about the two of them. See if you can identify which songs invoke Artemis and which Apollo. There’s an epic one that’s really about both of them.
This week’s verbal sermon is short but packs a serious punch. I had to listen to it myself several times, and each time I was transported. The music, too, is powerful and there are many gods and goddesses in there, inviting us to leave silliness behind and enter into true profundity. There is nothing like mythopoetic language and powerful music to transport us directly into connection with the divine.
I have discovered recently that people other than those I have reached out to personally have discovered my sermons and have been listening to them every week, so, for those who are interested or have the need, I wanted to announce that I now offer mentoring services: https://luminositymentoring.com/
Enjoy the week and do your best to stay conscious. xo
Beware the existential thumb!
Wishing for peace and liberation to come to all the beings of the many realms. Even though this is a tall order, the aspiration is sincere, the aspiration is the engine that can make this real.
We’re getting close to the most mystical time in the year. Get tons of sleep and spend a lot of time basking in starlight if you can.
Happy Sunday and en-joy the week.
Dancing and making personal choices about which energies to cultivate in ourselves are activities that go hand in hand. See what you make of it.
Plumbing the depths of our wounds can teach us a great deal about who we are and until we better understand who we are we can keep making blunders that hurt ourselves and others. Hence the logic of looking into this matter.
As we shift gears and enter the autumn and wintertime of the year, I find I’m shifting gears with the music, too. Feels good to listen to slow music and just groove to it while cooking and folding the laundry. Walks in the woods or a quiet park in the morning with our music sounds nice, too. It’s time to cultivate yin energies so we can all cool it all down a bit already, slow down and listen more, to our friends, and even to our ideological “enemies.” Peace comes from within, not from events outside of us.
I’m convinced that if we reduce our consumption we can turn the ship around. It takes disicipline and awareness, though, and you can’t really have either of those when you’re operating from the sphere of unexamined ego desires. This is why evolving is a kind of work—it takes consistent effort.
Let’s see what we can do this week, eh?
Big love.
Offered with love, a heavy-duty, life versus death sermon. Which are you inadvertently choosing? Listen and find out.
The music for today is the first digital mixtape I ever made. My friend, Chris Lam, was showing me how to create a playlist on iTunes and burn it to a CD. These were the songs I picked for it. It has stood the test of time for it was made in 2005. I listened to it the other day in the car and had a lot of fun.