Placelore

Shares the nature of infinity

                    William Wordsworth  1770 – 1850

            

“Action is transitory — a step, a blow,

 The motion of a muscle — this way or that —  

‘Tis done; and in the after-vacancy

We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,

And shares the nature of infinity.”

 

                   The Borderers

Labyrinths

 Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b043w5t5

Duration: 30 minutes

First broadcast: Sunday 18 May 2014

John McCarthy makes his way to the centre of the labyrinth.

Labyrinths have been created and used throughout the world in many countries, cultures and spiritual contexts. Carved onto rock, dug into the earth and built into cathedral floors these ancient patterns have been used for meditation, to tell stories and as a metaphor for life's journey.

John McCarthy walks a labyrinth with Jan Sellers, a Quaker and labyrinth facilitator, and discusses the search for peace and stillness as well as the fear that we might encounter a monster at the centre.
The programme includes readings from works by Ellen Meloy, Ted Hughes, Charles Rangley-Wilson and John Ashberry with music from Johnny Cash, The Unthanks, Gluck and Paul Giger.

Producer: Natalie Steed
A Whistledown Production for BBC Radio 4.

 

"The Beast In Me"

 The beast in me

Is caged by frail and fragile bars

Restless by day

And by night rants and rages at the stars

God help the beast in me 

 

The beast in me

Has had to learn to live with pain

And how to shelter from the rain

And in the twinkling of an eye

Might have to be restrained

God help the beast in me

 

Sometimes it tries to kid me

That it's just a teddy bear

And even somehow manage to vanish in the air

And that is when I must beware

Of the beast in me that everybody knows

They've seen him out dressed in my clothes

Patently unclear

If it's New York or New Year

God help the beast in me

 

The beast in me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8tGCVavS5s

The Beast in Me - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

 

We know in part

 

'We Know in part, and we prophesy in part' 

Corinthians 13:9

"For we barely understand even in part all of the things which we possess. The surface of the earth on which we toil, by which we are nourished, kept alive and supported, appears plainly before our eyes; yet even so we do not know what holds it up. 

We know and are mindful of the place of our own birth; but the day of our death, although it is certain that it will come, is unknown to us. We are only able to contemplate in part even those bodily things we see."

Patrologia Latina, On the Miracles of Holy Scripture

Nature Is Unknowable

'If someone were to ask me what nature is, I think, quite honestly, that I would be unable to give a satisfactory answer. And yet, everyone makes free use of the word nature without giving much thought to it. I too talk of the form and spirit of nature as if I knew it all, but deep down I feel that the mere mention of such a notion and the very attempt to express and describe nature are the root of error.

Perhaps a way of putting this that approaches more closely to nature would be to say that there is no form or spirit to nature. When one asks what nature is, this conjures up images of fields and mountains rich with vegetation, of the cosmos and heavenly bodies, of the vast reaches of the wild. Men of religion perhaps imagine the sort of universe mentioned in the book of Genesis as the essence of nature.

In general, people think of nature as the natural phenomena perceived by the natural sciences; they believe that the plants observed botanically are nature itself. In literature, we use the expression "to each according to his own," and treat the state of natural flux as nature itself.

But I believe that there is no way of expressing the true essence or state of nature. No matter what words we choose to use, we are only able to discuss botanical nature, to describe the form of nature from a cosmic view. Being unable to come into direct contact with the essence of nature, we end up circling round and round its periphery, conjuring up associations.   

Even the image of nature that people form in their minds, of a world left entirely to itself, unaltered and untouched, is itself anchored within the unnatural human intellect and human action. Rather, the tabula rasa state of nature that transcends nature as seen and considered by man and which arises by abandoning all notions of nature is closer to true nature.

However, because "tabula rasa" is merely the opposite of what is not tabula rasa, expressing things in this way does little good. No way exists to describe nature as it truly is. The best I could do would be to say that if one casts off everything, absolutely everything, from human thought, what emerges thereafter in one's soul—that indefinable something that one apprehends after having transcended even the light of which the haiku poet Basho wrote in his poem: "Oh, how splendid! The sunlight  on the young, green leaves" —that could be called nature. I believe that no better explanation is possible.'  

Masanobu Fukuoka The Road Back to Nature, Regaining the Paradise Lost 

Heavenly DNA

 

...thought and will could not exist unless there was a similar action and cooperation between life as it inflows and the spiritual organic structure underlying our brain. Life flows from the Lord into that organic structure. Because the organic structure cooperates, it perceives what it is thinking.
The spiritual organic structure consists of long strands in helixes.

—Emmanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity, 1771
.

 

Threshold

 

                   St Anthony 

Negativity is a very strong force; one needs to see this for oneself. Taking a step to transform it places one at the threshold of the Work.

 

Seeing our mechanical reactions is a long important first step towards inner freedom.

____________________________________________________________

"Perhaps everything terrible in us is, in its deepest being, something helpless needing our help." 

Rainer Maria Rilke

 

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious."

Carl Jung

 

"Take a demon to be a demon and it'll harm you. Know a demon's in your mind and you'll be free of it."

Milarepa

 

"Whoever fights against monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

 

Events happen, deeds are done

 

 

"Events happen, deeds are done,

but there is no individual doer thereof."

Buddha

 

“A man must become truly poor and as free from his own creaturely will as he was when he was born. And I tell you, by the eternal Truth, that so long as you desire to fulfil the Will of God, and have any hankering after eternity and God, for just so long you are not truly poor. He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.”

Meister Eckhart

 

"Do you think that I know what I am doing?

That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it is writing,

Or the ball can guess where it is going next."

Rumi

 

"Paradoxical though it may sound: There is a path to walk on, there is walking being done, but there is no traveller. There are deeds being done, but there is no doer."

Buddha

Inside, self and the Self

Like two golden birds perched on the selfsame tree,                                                                                                     Intimate friends, the ego and the Self                                                                                                   Dwell in the same body. The former eats                                                                                                   The sweet and the sour fruits of the tree of life                                                                                     While the latter looks on in detachment.

Mundaka Upanishad, III, 1

Know the Self as lord of the chariot;                                                    The body, as the chariot itself,                                                                The discrininating intellect as charioteer,                                             And the mind as reins.                                                                         The senses, they say, are the horses; the objects, the roads.  

Katha Upanishad III, 3                                                                                                                        

 

Pi and the mystery of numbers

When John McCarthy was held hostage in the Lebanon he found an entirely unexpected source of sanity - numbers.

Five years and four months, 1 943 days - numbers always defined his time in captivity. They also enabled John to create his own safe world and maintain stability. In this deeply personal edition of Something Understood, John recalls his own surprising faith in numbers and finds others for whom numbers both comfort and inspire.

He discusses his experience with Frank Close, Professor of Physics at Oxford University. What is it like turning to numbers to explain the mysteries of our universe? Scientists often work intensely for years towards new discoveries, and breakthroughs are rare. Frank describes what that process is like - revealing what keeps him going if the breakthrough doesn't come.

Are numbers our method of explaining everything, or is there always some mystery beyond? Fellow physicist and practicing Hindu, Jay Lakhani, offers us his own unique, scientific and spiritual perspective. Numbers are deeply rooted in the Hindu faith and have been since its inception. We discover the resonance of the number zero, rooted in the Nasadiya Sukta, The Hymn of Creation - describing our journey from nothingness to something, from zero to one and then beyond.

Finally, what about when faith in numbers and faith in God truly coincide? We hear from a 30 year old American Christian who used to be part of the Holy Rollers, a card-counting Christian Blackjack team who used mathematics to beat the casinos. Their success relied completely on trust, within their own community and in the numbers themselves.

Presenter: John McCarthy

Producer: Rose de Larrabeiti
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039p0tx

 

Pi  

The admirable number pi: 
three point one four one. 
All the following digits are also just a start, 
five nine two because it never ends. 
It can't be grasped, six five three five , at a glance, 
eight nine, by calculation, 
seven nine, through imagination, 
or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison 
four six to anything 
two six four three in the world. 
The longest snake on earth ends at thirty-odd feet.
Same goes for fairy tale snakes, though they make it a little longer.
The caravan of digits that is pi
does not stop at the edge of the page,
but runs off the table and into the air,
over the wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, the clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bloatedness and bottomlessness.
Oh how short, all but mouse-like is the comet's tail!
How frail is a ray of starlight, bending in any old space!
Meanwhile two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size
the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three sixth floor
number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade and a code,
in which we find how blithe the trostle sings!
and please remain calm,
and heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not pi, that won't happen,
it still has an okay five,
and quite a fine eight,
and all but final seven,
prodding and prodding a plodding eternity
to last.

Wislawa Szymborska 

 

Pi is the number (approximately 3.14159) that represents the ratio between the circumference (the distance around) and the diameter (the distance across) of a circle. The number is an "irrational number" and a "transcendental number" it is an infinite, non-repeating number. "No matter how much we gain the ability to understand the universe, there will always be some simple, basic truth that we can't quite catch hold of."

Forces

                                   

                      Morihei Ueshiba 1883—1969

 

Eight forces sustain creation:

Movement and stillness,

Solidification and fluidity,

Extension and contraction,

Unification and division.

_______________

 

Instructors can impart only a fraction

of the teaching. It is through your own

devoted practice that the mysteries of the

Art of Peace are brought to life.

 

Each and every master, regardless of the era or the place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and earth. There are many paths leading to the top of Mount Fuji, but there is only one summit — love.

 

Timeless Now

Now is not a fragment of time, time is contained in the now.