“If you were to take negative emotions away from people, they would simply collapse and go up in smoke. What would happen to what we call art, theater, drama, to most novels? In the emotional center there is no natural negative part, the greater part of negative emotions are artificial, they are based on instinctive emotions which are transformed by petty imagination and identification (losing self in an object). Positive emotions are emotions which cannot become negative. But all our pleasant emotions such as joy, affection, can, at any moment, turn to boredom, irritation, envy at the slightest provocation, or even without provocation. So we can say that we can have no positive emotions. At the same time we can say that we have no negative emotions without identification and imagination.”
–Peter Ouspensky
thought
Morning Trip (302)
“Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the ‘monkey mind’–the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but–whoop!–how quickly i swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it’s the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”
–Elizabeth Gilbert
Morning Trip (195)
“Oh, for a tongue to express the Wonders which the Thought reveals!
Oh, for some Word to comprehend the boundless idea!
Would that some Voice were sweet enough to sound the harmony of Life.
But Within, in that vast realm of thought where the Soul meets God, the Spirit knows.
I will listen for that Voice and It will tell me of Life, of Love and Unity.
Speak to me, Spirit.”
–Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind
Morning Trip (123)
“….the right words for a difficult lesson. To be precise
does not necessitate complication, except that it is so
difficult to pluck the right thoughts from the always moving
branch, and find the words to flesh out what it is they mean.”
–Luisa A. Igloria, The Buddha remembers Miss Sifora Fang,
Here too, is a link to the Official Website of the Poetess.
Notations from The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham
What I thought, when I’d only reached page four of the text, might leave me for a shitty distasteful feeling that I would wish to scrub from my mind and body as one would a rape–should I continue to read. I took a great amount of time, even in my sleep, considering the context of this book, that had a copy date of 1926. I decided to be amazed to wonder over how the writer thought and how much I will never know if he wrote with the view and influence of humans present in his social grouping at the time. I wonder, even, if he might have been considered a rogue, bluntly writing as he willed his hand to do.
“…They learn little on their wanderings beyond how to cadge, how to steal, how to avoid dogs and the police. They are not pilgrims but outlaws, and many would be highway robbers had they the vitality and the pluck necessary to hold up wayfarers. Most of them are but poor walkers, so that the word tramp is often misapplied to them….”
Later, on page 29, he writes, “…Class is the most disgusting institution of civilization, because it puts barriers between man and man….”
The remaining notes, from my best recollection, are simply things that struck me.
“So when we look on a river we are affected by its hidden relationship to our own life. The river interprets our mood. The road suggests God as a taskmaster who would have us work; the river suggests Him as a poet who would have us live in poetry. The Creator must be a poet–not a General or a Judge or a Master Builder; there is so much of pure poetry in His creation….”
“What is a tramping day if it does not liberate a voice, so that you can sing out your soul to the free sky.”
“The heart can be lifted up by poetry even more than by song. And the inner meaning and the sense of a poem becomes one’s own on the march when it lends it rhythms and verbal emotions to express the hidden yearnings of one’s own being.”
“The life opens us with its very breadth. Is your friend too thin; do not diet him under a white ceiling, but give him air. Air will fill him. It is not the air alone that cures and fills, but what you breathe in with the air. You breathe in the spirit of the open. You breathe in the wideness of the sky; you reach out to the free horizon. It makes a man big, it builds a man within.”
“In the long halt, therefore, one has not stopped living, because one has ceased going onward. You get poised on your center. You feel the origins of joy and pain–deep down at the heart’s core, the place from which something in you is welling up all the while, welling up and overflowing, flowing away in waves and tides, to break on a mystical shore.”
“Self-expression is life. What gives more satisfaction to one’s being than to have expressed oneself.”
“Each day Nature puts her magic mirror in our hands. ‘Oh child, do you see yourself today?'”
How to Start a Cult
Well, here we are again! Giggles at the thought of Deb smiling now.
Lil Miss Mood has been handed the Fear tag.
I Can See Your Tracks
“Oh I can see your tracks
But I won’t follow them
I’ll just hope for rain
Or some kind of crazy wind
To erase them
And chase them into oblivion
Oh I can smell the smoke
From your fire, babe
But I’ll leave you alone
And sleep in this lonely cave
And pray for
A storm to scrub this dirt away
Oh I can hear the snakes
Creeping cross the scene
I’m quaking in my boots
But you won’t hear me scream
You’re half way
Down to New Orleans
You’re half way
Down to New Orleans”
–source
Morning Trip (65)
“All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.”
– Hafiz
The Subject Tonight is Love
translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Elisa's Spot 