“The overpowering physical and spiritual beauty of the scene blessing their eyes continued to hold everyone’s attention. What were words in the face of this? The keyhole arch beckoned to them. Brightly glowing in soft golden light, it might have been the passageway leading to a brighter world. They all felt like knights or priestesses […]
Continue reading“Great suffering such as this functions like an acid bath, rinsing one’s soul of impurities, stripping off layers of one’s emotional defenses. One’s soul is soon reduced to its essence and quivers unprotected before the world. Suffering is purificatory. How could I ever again take for granted anything good that was given me? The fires […]
Continue readingThe tree across the street is old. Its bark is gray and peeling. But now that spring has come, she dons the most delicately green pelisse. She wraps herself in frivolous, youthful leaves. She has come alive again after winter as the ingenue she once was. Such is a woman whom I know, whose body […]
Continue reading“As I stood there on the shore of the lake, I knew that I was living one of those rare moments in life that are so powerfully poignant one will never forget them. There was the sheer beauty of the pale-peach clouds, above us in the sky and before us on the water. There was […]
Continue reading“It was pre-dawn when we exited the dorm. The two Labradors, one perfectly black and the other perfectly white, ran ahead of us excitedly. The heavy slumber of night was lifting off the campus, but the neo-Gothic buildings remained dark piles, whose contours looked like a very nervous ink graph. Silence, pristine and palpable, pervaded […]
Continue reading“At Yak’s guidance, Hebie had put the Dead’s “American Beauty” album on the turntable. “Ripple,” the song Artus had earlier talked about as relating to Pure Consciousness, began to play. First, there was the downhomeyness of the acoustic guitar. Then Jerry Garcia began to sing to us, as though he were just casually sitting on […]
Continue reading“When I turned my attention from the floor back to the room, I experienced a surge of love for all my friends. It was the tenderest, most caressing love I had ever felt for anything. There was Yak. How generous he was to host us and provide for our comfort and pleasure! There sat Hebie […]
Continue reading“If I were asked to sum up my status in the world at that time, I would say that I felt intimately connected with something that wasn’t there and only remotely connected to a lot of things that were. What I mean is that the invisible spirit behind nature drew me powerfully into its embrace, […]
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