Dogs and the meaning of life

I miss my dog. I wonder where he is. Is he just burned up or is he actually somewhere? I can't have another dog. No dog was like him, because no dog was him. He was my little lion. I want to believe in the here after, in life after death. and I do..... for the most part. I just wish I knew he was ok and happy. Instead of just believing he is, but maybe believing is knowing. I don't know, but there is a strange comfort in knowing we all will meet his same end. I think we did right by him. I never wanted to decide for him. I never wanted to play God, but I feel God played a part anyway. Everything happened as if we were directed by some force. Plus facts being facts he was in worse shape than we thought. Then the question arises if continuing to live just to live is worth living or should we back out nobly with our heads held high? It's like the soprano whose let their career go on too long versus the star that left just at the right time. But your life continuing should not be anyones decision but God, karma, and your own. However what do you do if you know someone is going to suffer and inevitably end? Do you knowingly let it continue in pain, knowing the struggle will be hard and knowing that it will all most likely have an ugly ending for all parties involved? Then what do you do? In our case I loved Bingo too much to put him through pain. At that point I had faith in the hereafter. I trusted and believed God would take care. Turns out my fiance and both I were reciting the Shiva mantra in our heads as he past. We both unknowingly were reciting the mantra in our heads, and it wasn't like we decided to recite it, it just popped up in our heads at the right moment. Maybe subconsciously we thought it would help. I don't know. If there is a hereafter I hope all is more clear and that we at least reconnect with what has been lost. Amen.

The Definition of God

The concept of God is hard to fathom. What is God? How does one define God? The notion that God is indescribable is a common thread throughout world religions. Muslims believe God is indescribable. As Iman Ali stresses in the beginning of his book "Peak of Eloquence:" to give God definition is to limit God. It is beyond our comprehension what God is. This is why there are no images of God in mosques, only words. It is a pure and honest way of addressing God. However other cultures share the same belief, simply expressed differently. Hindus for example also believe that describing God is inconceivable. They believe that God is beyond an individual being. God has created all, lives in all, and can destroy everything, continuously. Like in Christianity, Hinduism has a trinity. In both religions this trinity consists of three divisions of God all belonging to one source. These three forces work as one to keep the world revolving. Christians follow Jesus, believing Jesus was God in the form of a human. Hindus call this an avatar and Jesus is their Ista devata (their most favored avatar). An avatar is a form God takes to communicate with us. In Hinduism God has came many times to earth in many forms. Some recorded in history, some not. These Avatars of God emphasize God's ambiguous nature. Within these various forms exists the same entity behind different masks. God's true form according to Hinduism is immense and hard to witness as mentioned in the Gita. The Bible also references God's true identity as difficult to observe with human eyes only.

The Muslim gives God little identity, the Hindu multiple and yet none, and the Christian is somewhere in between. Yet all these outlooks lead to and emphasize God's obscurity. These most popular world religions; Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism share the same principle, God is indescribable and God is One.

Other faiths share similar views as well. Wiccans and Pagans for instance strongly believe in nature's power and its main elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. However there is a 5th element, Akasha/Aether/Spirit. The essence of all things. They believe these elements are combined in every creature and come from this indescribable element. Native Americans also highly regard nature and many tribes people believe in a Great Spirit that has created all things. Like the previously mentioned faiths, these beliefs agree that these main elements created us because they came from the source of all things, God.

Even Atheists believe God is indescribable. If you cannot define something, does it exist? If a tree falls in a forest but no one hears it, does it make a sound? Many Atheists feel that if something is beyond comprehension then it is unreal.

So what is the Definition of God? There is none. Will there ever be? I don't know. However I will leave you with this:

"Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth. "

- Mohsen Makhmalbaf

In the Battlefield of the mind! & My strategic planning!

So I started this new job. Which is great! It's probably one of the most perfect jobs I could ever ask for and it all sort of happened by accident. The place is only a few minutes away. The people are ridiculously kind and they play Bob Marley in the lounge area. So what's the problem you ask????

The problem is me!

I've been burned before and those demons that crushed my confidence are lurking back. I'm currently playing pinata with myself trying to bat down those inner demons. Demons screaming: "Your going to fail, you can't do this, they aren't going to give you a chance, each time you slip up that's one point docked against you, everyone will think you are a loser if you get let go of, maybe your just not good enough...." yadayadaya You get the point? Then things sometimes get uglier like: "Why aren't you in the best grad school or on the stage, you have no money, what are you doing with your self, Why can't you win, you've failed, your old (haha I know that seems ridiculous), you are a slow processor, you can't pay attention to details, you are always going to be stuck in the same place, doing the same things, and never make anything of yourself...."

Obviously I know that these are not true, and that thinking this way is going to get me nowhere fast. So I'm in the battlefield of my mind and the opponent is strong however I do have ammunition. My Blog! hahaha and friends and family, plus my inner strength to fight them off. I figure writing about it will help.

We all have these demons inside our heads. It's Maya or the Matrix messing with your system, so we need to unplug out of the Matrix for a moment.... ::unplug::

Regardless of the outcome. Life is full of ups and downs like this. We must sail these rough waters of illusion by maintaining calm and patience through out these extreme moments of doubt. That's what Buddhism teaches! Right? Buddha himself said "The greatest prayer is patience." However it's not just the hard times but the good times that flee as well. The hard thing to come to terms with is that "Nothing gold can stay" either. Like the seasons, the best of times will fade too. So stay afloat, "Sink or swim," be neutral and realize that like all things "this too shall pass."

Is time the great healer? Should "In God we Trust" like the State of Florida flag says????

Yes I think the solution is that! To be calm, be patient, and to trust in God.

However I also don't think it would hurt to gain a little confidence and think positively. How can one be confident and positive if you don't feel it? Well I have some hunches:

1. "Fake it till you make it": In show choir (haha) they told us to smile till it hurt.

2. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you": The golden rule. Be humble, be grateful, be sincere, empathetic, give compliments, be honest, loyal and give thanks.

3. B+, "I think I can" said the train, "You can fly" says Peter Pan, just by thinking happy thoughts: after all the "Laws of Attraction" are at play.

4. "Know your stuff": Then there is confidence in knowing your stuff. A great teacher once told me she never gets nervous because she spends hours practicing and studying her stuff, so she knows she's going to do her best. I'm a strong believer in gaining knowledge. Skills take repetition and focus. According to my instructor things must repeated 20 x correctly to really stick.

So there! Experience helps, experience comes with practice, and practice takes time, time involves patience, and so, we're back to: Patience, which is the greatest prayer! Thank you Buddha!

Ok so I have a better idea now of what to do. My plan is set and now we must FIGHT and we will be victorious! I feel like I'm in Braveheart! See blogging helps! lol :)

::plug back in:: You are now plugged back into the Matrix my friends! Have a nice day!

Two Beautiful Excerpts:

While reading Hinduism by Jeneane Fowler I found these two excerpts and they have left such an impression on me. Each time I read them I am rejuvenated and content again and again......

from the Chandoya Upanisad...... "A boy named Satyakama, a boy from the lower caste who is excepted by a guru. As a test the boy must watch over 400 cattle. This simple and natural life leads him to a deep understanding of Brahman."

"This urge to know Brahman made everything alive so that the whole of nature became his teacher. Then the trees and flowers, the sun, moon, and the stars, the rivers and the streams, the light of the day, and the darkness of night. All these spoke to him of the nature of Brahman. He felt that all was brahman. He heard of Brahman in the songs of him. He realized that the eye that sees and the ear that hears does so because of brahman. He felt that the pulsating life around him as also the mind that raises innumerable questions, all these are but aspects of Brahman. Satyakama tended the cows and the bulls but in the midst of this seemingly mundane work he communed with nature and in this communion realized that which filled him with joy indescribable"

A poem by Rabindrarath Tagore depicting communion of the soul with the divine when self is surrendered:

I feel that all the stars shine in me

The world breaks in my life like a flood

The flowers blossom in my body

All the youthfulness of land and water smokes like incense in my heart;

and the breath of all things plays on my thoughts as on a flute

"Tell me all your thoughts on God"

Remember this hit from the 90s?

My father's Art books and CD collection were a sacred treasure to me as a kid and in many ways define who I am today. I would spend hours listening to albums like Alanis's "Jagged little Pill" CD (which I scratched very badly and was scolded for it), or the Police, Deep Forest, Joan Osbourne, The Gin Blossoms, and the Goo Goo Dolls. So I definitely have a soft spot for 90s alternative rock/whatever you want to call it. While listening to this I would have MTV on (when MTV played just music videos) and then pulled one of the large Art books from the towering book self to discover the beauty within. I particularly enjoyed a book of Western Art containing great European works. I would look at the picture of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling and imagine how immense and beautiful it is. A large reason why I yearn to go to Europe is because of that book, and maybe it is because of that book, I embraced so many things, like Opera. That book is sacred to me, the most influential book in my life. The most touching of all its images was the "Ecstacy of St. Teresa." A statue of the saint being pierced by an angel. I had no clue what it meant or who St. Teresa was. Though I found it sadistic, yet thrilling! Light hits its gold backing and the spear just so right proving a wonderful glow on the two figures. Teresa's twisted posture, and her expression of Ecstasy was fascinating to me. I thought, how could this woman be in "Ecstasy" while basically being stabbed by this perversely smiling cherub . It is everything. I would always relate this to Joan Osbourne's "St. Teresa" and look at the picture of my Grandmother Iris hanging on the wall above. A woman who passed long ago and who I have never meet. I always associated that song with her and also "Blackbird" by the Beetles. Why? Truth is I don't entirely know. I sensed a sadness in her eyes that I guess just seemed to fit the songs. Years later I looked up some stuff about the real St. Teresa and she is a mystery wrapped in it self. Anyway this was my childhood at least my elementary years. The rest of it was spent in the pool pretending to be a frog, princess, or mermaid, then climbing trees, and getting dirty, while imagining that I was on a jungle safari, or Xena the warrior princess. This was me and still is, just older..... sometimes I miss it, but I have wonderful memories too. I miss most the ability to dream big and vividly without logic or reason. Uninterrupted fantasizing. To look at a large grey electric generator and ride it through "the jungle" like it was a giant elephant for hours!

Anyway, what I gained was so much. I don't think parents realize the things that go on in their kids heads or how a simple CD and book collection can have such a huge impact on one person's existence. When I have a child, I hope to provide them with a world of Art and Music as well. I hope I have great collection Art and life for them to dig through, scratch up, and dream of. And Music! for them to explore and connect with, in whatever way they do.

Waiting to be Married

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed about the Hindu ceremony. Walking around the fire excites me! & to wear a lehenga with all the jewelry, bling, and henna! Basically it's an opportunity to be an Indian Queen for a day. Everything about it is breathtaking. However there's more to it than that. After further embracing my mother's faith I feel an even deeper and spiritual connection to the Hindu wedding ceremony which has multiplied in my heart. Still just like any ceremony it is an opportunity to tell people and God that you are in love and committed to this person. It is a celebration and also a promise to cherish, live, and learn with them. To become a unit. The frustrating thing though is how to bring this event into actuality. First, how do you have a Indian fusion wedding, with minimal budget, in a small midwestern town? Secondly, how does one convince their in-laws to participate and to accept non traditional elements that they may not be comfortable with? To see the beauty that I see in this wonderfully colorful and inspiring event? Being vegetarians, and wanting a vegetarian wedding, does not help either to ease things. However it is an important aspect of who we both are and what we believe in. Also finding resources is a difficult task in Wisconsin and I am not surrounded by my beloved Guyanese relatives so I am basically flying solo here.

Also bothersome is that there isn't a plethora of pandits in the area and the one that we have found does not communicate with us or seem to care. We desire more than just a wedding pandit. We want a spiritual person that can provide guidance and support even after the wedding. For me, this wedding is not just about getting married it's about my fiance's and my spiritual journey together. If anyone has some suggestions???? I would appreciate it, in the meantime I will be waiting to be married.

Old Bollywood Glamour

Bollywood actresses in older films have such an inspiring look. The winged eyeliner, sophistication, and alluring eyes. This kind of elegance is lost in todays films not just in Bollywood but in American Cinema as well. It is a shame.

Everything is energy!

Do you know what I've been thinking about lately?. The Laws of Attraction.

Why are we attracted to certain things? People, physical things and concepts/ideas. The very things that define us, separate us, and connect us. Most of the time you have no control over it. Even when you try to go against it, it's still there, innate, and seemingly unavoidable. These things do fade but sometimes comeback or reinvent themselves in other ways.

For example: you're life is going along just fine and then all of a sudden something/someone enters unexpectedly and throws you off. You cant help but notice this thing because you are instantly attracted to it or despise it and can't fight it off, like a giant magnet or gravitational pull. It completely changes everything you thought you knew about yourself. Just when you thought you knew everything about yourself. It can even turn you mad, or obsessive sometimes. Like a craving.

With karma it is because your past lives have defined who you are, and you are currently writing the story for your future. The things you are attracted to, or the things that are attracted to you maybe exist because of past influences and the energies we all send out. Positive or negative, causing more reactions, a tangled and complex web of reactions, constantly in motion. Attracting and repelling each other, over and over.

A teacher described it to me like this once: we are all energies in an ocean of energies like Atoms, and certain energies attract each other for a time bonding, creating life and then disperse back into the sea of energies and then combine again with different energies. And this supposedly happens constantly, cyclically until ......?

The First law of thermodynamics

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.

In any process in an isolated system, the total energy remains the same.

Some say "Go with the flow." Some believe it is deception/illusion, or the result of wrong/right doing, or the interventions of God(s), the results from our past decisions, the laws of motion, genetics, atomic theory, destiny, etc.

What do you think?

Could all these theories possibly be right on some level? Maybe it is all the above and more. Or not. There is but one truth, but maybe the one truth is far more complex than we can ever truly fathom or imagine. Or maybe it so simple, and right in our faces but we can't see it or refuse to accept that it could be so simple. Or both? What I do think we can all agree on is there is a lot that is currently left unanswered.

Commonsense = fear (and survival...i guess)

Ok so I had a revelation the other day. My boyfriend said that school isn't for him, that he has street smarts instead. I chuckled and said "You don't have street smarts! You try to go down dark allies and you almost got beat up by a bum for talking to him!" (long story) I stated that people would also call that common sense and then I also noted how my professor is from the east coast and always talks about how driven a New Yorker is when they walk down the street. They don't smile they don't wave they have their eyes on the prize and god help anything that gets in their way and tries to deter them. They also don't make eye contact. Then I halted and thought..... because fear is their life..... Instantly I flashed back to the time in my life when I was obessed with RENT the musical and knew every word line for line. In one of the scenes an AIDS support group is talking and the head of the group tells a member not to fear, to be brave. and the gentleman replies "I'm a New Yorker, FEAR IS MY LIFE". Then I had another flashback to the time in my Opera Seminar class when I had to watch the ENTIRE Ring cycle by Wagner and I remembered Siegfried and how he was constantly pointing out that he had no fear, he was brave, nothing could stop him. Until he found a woman/love then he learned fear, he feared how she made him feel and how he feared for her. I just thought he was stupid at the time and that's how he's portrayed many times kind of as a childish, illogical, musclehead. Then I remembered all those times people criticized me for being too sensitive or gullible, too childlike maybe.

Fear is a learned behavior from reactions. We learn not to touch the hot stove because we or someone has been burned. We learn not to talk to strangers, not to lookpeople in the eye, not to go down dark allies, to not trust others etc.... because we've been burned far too many times. But a child, a child doesn't fear because a child hasn't learned. A child is pure, unafraid.

Then I recalled in Paramahansa's book Autobiography of a Yogi how he would describe other Yogi's and Saints as childlike, pure, in God realization, joyful about the simplest things.

Unfortunately in our world, particularly the western world, you are ridiculed if you maintain this way of being. People call you immature, gullible, insane, a space case, a hippie, unmotivated, stupid, lacking common sense. Also our society has not been made for this kind of person, this kind of person cannot suceed in this society.

I think of animals also and how we build into their habitats or try to force them to be more like us, but they're just not. They are like the children, like saints and Yogis, like Native Americans were, and tribe people. They see themselves as belonging to the earth not the other way around.

It is unfortunate that we cannot be as we are sometimes, that we have to fit the mold, be aggressive, be some one, choose a path, sink or swim. There's a good and bad to both I guess, the Wagner Hero vs. The fearful yet driven New Yorker. Sometimes I worry though about where the world is going. Employers want machines not free thinkers. Tech degrees are on the rise while liberal arts degrees fall. We want instant gratification. We want power. We consume far more then we should. We are always connected yet so isolated. We ask someone "How's it going" but even if it's not going well we are expected to say fine. To not show weakness. And even if things were going fine most people don't really want to know how it is going. So why ask? To look like you care I guess. To be cordial. (Myself included) Humans are the number one parasites on the planet, the number one predators, so we should also be the conservers. We should be fair, intellegent, patient, empathetic. (again my self included). Ok so I've gone kind of off topic it's time to end this entry. Bye. :)

Intro

Hello world!!!! My name is Melanie and I am just bursting at the seams to share my thoughts and views with you! I have a lot of things ready to post so stay tuned. What do I plan to do with this blog you ask? Well that is a good question. I have many thoughts about life, I love life and what has driven me to do this is life, culture, the arts, and spirituality. Particularly spirituality because I am fascinated and frightened with the world. It's possibilities it's secret gems, and crazy people and I am trying to make sense of it all, I hope you can help. I want to share my thoughts with you and I encourage you to share your thoughts with me because I truly believe we are all connected and "two heads is better then one." Right?