the feeling that this year.. is going to be interesting!

Words.

Words are a very powerful thing. They can make or break an event because we are so suseptable to their meanings. If they are not taken in the right way.. what is said can be misconstrewed intensely.

When it comes to the topic of religion. There are so many gods. So many ways. So many people shoving a usually outdated belief system down your throat.

I have the pleasure of knowing two very special people right now.

Both on an epic journey like the rest of us. Both of great minds and demeanor. Both amazing young adults. All three of us open and like minded.

In my own quest for understanding religious veiws I have whitnessed a very distinct difference between our little tripod. In contrast to myself. They accept the name of a religion. (and I will talk more about me in a moment. Rest assured!) :P 

In contrast to each other, despite the fact that they both take names, I do believe one takes the name for reasoning. The other for rhyme. 

I whitnessed this week. Two very interesting changes in religion for both of these people. One went from pagan to buddhist. The other from buddhist to christian. 

The earlier based her tranistion on what is most comfortable to her, what holds the same ideals and of course the man him self, The great teachings of The Buddah. 

Of course,I am not so interested in names of religions anymore, but it is socially acceptable to call yourself one.. otherwise people cannot grasp the concept of your character. When you leave yourself a mystery like that they will just as soon make up their own conclusions than seek out the reality of your humanity.

So in my reality.. when my neurons fire, they say "Namaste. " 

The later, based his transition on his own inner demons. He did not go to Jesus for his teachings. He went to Jesus, for Christianity's Dogma. He wants Jesus to be his teacher but refuses to see Jesus's lesson. He is more concerned with martyrdome and sainthood than seeing the truth in what The Christ and The Buddah said and did.

So in my reality... when my neutrons fire, they say, "Namaste'' 

It is this religion I will not accept. This name I will not take.

Technically. If I wanted to I could take the name of Christian, because I know more about what Christ taught. But because of the dogma.. and extra baggage being a "christian" comes with. I still refues a name and call myself a Human.

I read recently in the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, not to look to deeply into the souls of others. So on this note I wish both of my amazing friends luck love and light on their journey's.

I hope the earlier finds what she is looking for in herself as well as Buddah. I hope the later finds what he is looking for in himself as well as Christ.

As far as I go. I do believe last night when I argued with the later, I was letting my ego get in the way. I looked on this transition, not as where my friend needs to be, but an annoying step back on his path. But now I have to ask myself. What do I know of his path. Nothing.. and I should not try to figure it out. It's not mine.. I don't get to walk it... I don't need to bother looking turn comes next on it.

I do not accept Christ as my saviour. I accept me as my saviour. I do not put my faith of where my soul is going to go after I leave this world.. into a man that died a hundred lifetimes ago.

I do however accept Christ as a teacher amoung many. What I've leared from him is amazing.. no more amazing than what I've learned from any other human being that I have connected with in this life.

So I am having an affair with christianity. Courting buddhism and having a liason with paganism. But I am in love with my life. My religion is being me.

I may be a cheater now and then.. but life is not a game.

Even if I am a player. :P

on that note I would like to say.. fully.. the divine in my recongnizes the divine in you.
No more of this namaste business today.

I love.

um.. if I HAD to pick a religion. I would definently want to do Hindu. I don't really know alot about that religion but from what I do know.. its interesting.

My Family.

Yes... :)

I am completely dependant on people right now.

When it's late afternoon and the sun is just going down. It makes EVERYTHING golden. When I'm looking at it from inside my house or at school I feel my soul flutter.

When I'm laying in the grass becoming golden to I can fly.

Life is just one revelation after another. Everything we see, everything we are is in conjunction with ever gust of wind that touches our cheek, every sun ray that hits our naked shoulders, every moon beam and star shine that echos in our eyes. The smallest glimmer can change the way the world seems to us.

I am me as you are me as you are he and we are all togather. Only love exhists. 

Love is not a word. It's not an emotion. It's an energy. God is love. Love is god. Only love is real.

When you die. You meet god.

There are two types of death a human can experience. Both equally important. One is inevitable, the other optional. 

The optional one.. is the death of the soul. Followed shortly by the rebirth and the beginning of the real journey in this 3-d world. Some call this an awakening. Some call it an epiphany. An awakening of the spirit. A spiritual awakening.  

When I was pagan. I learned very quickly that pagans worship sex. The great marriage of god and goddess. Of positive and negative. The idea that we are in The idea is that the two humans in the throws of the act reach climax and experience the creative force (god, spirit, source) that lives with in. The french call an orgasm le' petite morte' the little death.

The first death is death of the illusion of duality.. separation.


This first death is optional.. but nessecary. It is nessacry because it allows you to become what you were sent here for. Deus ex machina.  the god machine.

The other death is the one we all know. The one that waits with a grim overtone every day we wake up. Will death visit us today? Will death sup with us at the table or ride with us in our cars. Will death hid in the shadows. This death is something we've been experiencing since the beginning of our exsistance.. still we cannot accept it. Still we pretend that tomarrow there will be time. That tomarrow will always come.

Some of us pretend that our death doesn't matter, some of us attepmt to make it come by our own means. Some of us refuse to live because we fear it. Death smiles at us all. All a person can do is smile back.

But does it really? Is our death of body a test. An idea we came up with so that.. inevitably we will return home? That if all else fails we can at least have that solace. That in there is an end to this.

We become so caught up in the physical aspects of this life. Feeding into them with money and materials skin and bone.  Have we become the unruley teenager who refuses to admit who our parents are.. We steal the money from the wallet when we know all we need to do is ask. this Earth was made to always recieve us, the sky to always support us.

What if death wasn't real. What if death isnt the ONLY way you can know our divinity. What if we learn to die with out decay. What if we never die.


We.. our bodies are composed of positive and negative forces. But within us is that same mingling energy that same oneness. Our bodies are an illusion of duality. Our genders given to us as a symbolic reference of two forces coming togather. It's infinity. Its the fibonacci sequence. It's the golden ratio. It goes on. within and within and within we are vast.

Are we god?  We are god? God is inside us. We search for god in a physical sense. We want to see God. We want to look on him with our eyes. We see nothing so we believe nothing because god is not woven in the tapestry that our souls have created. God is our soul. We questiong the exsistance of our creator because we do not see him while looking outward.

When we begin to look inward.

At self. Who am I. Deus ex machina. Am I nothing more than a shell. Does this world exsist because I do. I am a bit of myself cast into flesh and bone. I am here to learn. I am here to be. I am here to understand. Before I can understand oneness I must first understand duality. I am here to bring my knowledge to this dimension with me.

I mused about Jesus in my journal because after years of fighting the christian religion. I understand Jesus. I know where he was coming from. He was enlighted and made an attempt to help us become enlightened. He used his enlightenment to show us how divine we are. (and what do we do.. massacre it by making it a following)

Jesus sacrificed himself in hopes that his death would enlighten us. By redeeming all of our 'sins' and giving us a 'clean slate'  it would help us to see past the illusion of the physical world and be at ease that what we do is just a mistake with the physical body. It does not harm your soul. Everything before god does not matter because it does not exsist.


Who am I? I am me. I am you. I am everything. I am nothing. Cogito ergo Sum.

I once asked myself who am I. I came up incessantly with whats.. What am I. I'm a girl. I'm a person. I'm a human..

Who am I.

I am.

Every moment is a revelation. Every revelation a pardox. Every pardox a memory. Every memory a fossil burried under the surface of conciousness.

Get digging.

Much love,
Ashley

For art students to walk into any art museum is like children walking into a candy store. For art students to walk into an Uffizi exhibit, is like a kid walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

I didn't get to meet Sandro Botticelli straight away. I waited. I knew how I would see him. I knew what I would do.

I waited. I didn't look for him.

Standing in front of a 500 year old painting humbles you as both an artist and a human being.

Not only were these peices made before my mother's mother's mother's mother's ancestor was thought of, but the sheer perfection of the technique. The use of color. The form perspective.

I am humbled.

I walked around slowly. Admiring each brush stroke. Every sky scape. Every rendering of human life and Italian landscape.

As awe struck as I was, staring into the past, loosing myself in the thick air of ancient history, I still waited untill the moment I would cast eyes upon him.

We contuned to walk. Admiring italian countrysides, forums, market places, farm houses, skyscapes, sea scapes.

I saw him from across the room. Like I imagined. He stared back at me. He was the Adoration of the Magi. (not what I expected my first time with him to be like) But it was as magical as I wanted it to be. He caught my eyes.

It was like falling in love. The shear fluid-ness of the curves on each person. The purity of color perfectly placed to create such a loveliness. The rest of this room was pointless now. The other 43 paintings with great names to be revered ment nothing to me in this moment.

I was in the arms of Botticelli. Ensnared senses and totally wrapped up in the passion of Sandro himself. I caught myself breathless, unable to do what comes most naturally to humans.. breath. I stood in front of him like a lovesick teenager in a popstar's dressing room.

This was Botticelli.

This picture.. That I've posted.. does NO kind of justice. What you see here.. is NOT what I saw there. No where near it.

I am glad I was able to share it with fellow art students.. It really was.. amazing.. so breath taking.. no words could ever cover what I felt.. from the moment I stepped into that gallery... to the moment I danced with Botticelli's passion.. to the moment we walked away from it..

I hope one day you all will experience the exhileration I felt. It truely was an unforgettable experience.

The most difficult part of my spiritual path is trusting myself to understand that everything I feel and see and connect is ment to be that way.

The most difficult part of my spiritual path is trusting these eyes and these ears and these thoughts and these feelings.

Having suffered from Borederline personality disorder. (or so they told me) my grasp on reality was off. Or different. Which is not nessecarily a bad thing.. But when your 17 and all you want to do is think like every one else but you obviously stick out like  a sore thumb.. it's really hard to accept.

It's interesting to look back on me.. and oddball pretending to be normal pretending to be an oddball.

Im retrospect my spiritual journey had had alot of twists and turnes. from one god to the next. from one deity to the other. Which one is the right one?

Who is more correct. Who should I believe?

I guess the hardest part about my spiritual path is believing me.