Reflections from Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Lessons from Jonathan Livingston Seagull

1.       The same inner child but body changes in heavenly places

2.       Yet there seems to be limits in heaven contrary to our beliefs

3.       Our beliefs of memories need to fall away

4.       Welcome and Home are experiences of heavenly places

5.       There is as much to learn as before but with a difference

6.       No distractions in learning, no fighting for first place

7.       We forget where we come from and where we are going

8.       This is why more are not on the path

9.       From one experience to another we must learn more than eating, fighting and power in the flock.

10.   We choose the world to come by our choices here in this one world

11.   Learn nothing and nothing is what you will experience

12.   Practicing entails copying until it becomes your own.

13.   Instead of being enfeebled by age become empowered by it

14.   Heaven is not a place and it is not a time, it is the experience of perfect wholeness w/o lack

15.   Heaven is being perfect

16.   You will touch heaven when you touch perfect performance on the level of thought activity

17.   That is not having a perfect concept in mind or having a certain number of scriptures memorized.

18.   Perfection in Spirit is not the perfect performance of a spiritual discipline or method

19.   Any number or system has a limit and perfection is freedom from all limits

20.   Perfect performance at the level of thought is Being there where ever you are fully alive there

21.   Those who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere slowly

22.   To go everywhere and any when I can think of is our destiny…so consider it well

23.   Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere instantly

24.   Place and time is so very meaningless on the level of the Divine

25.   To fly as fast as thought to any where one must know that you have already arrived

26.   The trick is to stop seeing yourself as trapped in a limited self and body and to know that your true self is as an unwritten number no limits across space and time.

27.   To know that we are a perfect unlimited Son and Daughter of God

28.   It always works when you know what you are doing

29.   Being new does not mean that you are more ignorant than others your elder

30.   To be unafraid of learning is the trick of success

31.   Our teachers always change form but are always the same source.

32.   Keep working on love

33.   Life as more than a means to get out of here and to somewhere or when

34.   Thought speed flight is the thing to be mastered

35.   The bird sees farthest that flies the highest

36.   If our friendship is reliant upon space and time then when space and time become meaningless what will have destroyed our friendship

37.   Overcome space all we have left is here

38.   Overcome time all we have left is now

39.   We are not bone and flesh but the perfect idea of unlimited potential

40.   There is more to life than struggling to survive.

41.   Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive others and share

42.   Begin with balance or level flight

43.   To learn control is why we are here

44.   To be firm but smooth, peaceful

45.   Flight for the joy of flying

46.   It is easier to do something than to understand the reasoning behind it

47.   Practice is exciting but the flight of Spirit is as real as flight of the body

48.   The body is nothing more than thought made visible

49.   Break the chains that you have on your body and you break the limits of your mind

50.   We are in truth each an idea of the Great One Life the unlimited idea of freedom

51.   Precision living is the step necessary  toward the expression of our true nature

52.   Every limiting idea must be put aside

53.   Frustration at our learning curve is inevitable for it is our fury that motivates change

54.   Our whole body is nothing but a thought itself but in a form we can see

55.   Sounds like pleasant fiction to most though it is the most solid fact

56.   You do not have to obey the law if you are not a part of the flock (the societal norm)

57.   We must learn to practice living flying in the face of opposition

58.   We have the freedom to be ourself our true self it is the Law of the Great God

59.   It is right to fly and freedom is the very nature of us

60.   All that restricts must be put aside

61.   We are often are made to be more or less than what we are

62.   The price of being misunderstood we are called either devil or savior

63.   We are ahead of the fashion but it is on its wayl

64.   Obstacles are like a hard door they open the way to someplace else

65.   We can change our level of consciousness rather slowly  or more swiftly

66.   Find out what you already know and know it again

67.   Why is it the hardest thing is to prove to a person that they are free

68.   We get everywhere by practice

69.   We must practice and see the real person in everyone and help them to see it

70.   Find yourself a little more each day, understand self and learn to love self

71.   Do not believe what our eyes tell us they see only limitation

72.   We are an image of the Great God

73.   Let us begin with level flight/living

Following Steps

Step One

 I feel this sudden urge to talk

I use to pretend I was a friend

But I only use to stalk

You at a distance with such persistence

That when you said you knew me best

I knew you were true you knew me best

And life was not a contest

This I painfully must confess

Lately I would take a walk

Do you recall how my heart

Was sealed with caulk

Then upon a raging wave

You road with sounds unheard designed to save

You convinced me to cast all my cares

We’d share our sorrows and deepest fears

Some time with a book about the journey

Bringing back my heart to cheer

Often at the pier with eyes full of tears

How many things you’ve said to me

About the Spring that renews naturally

About how I am one with creation

And you will be the creator

I with you would co-create

This is how you always seem to relate

You with me, and me with you

Arguing that we are one and not the two

You took me away from all

Some how you forsaw the fall

Every step you knew

Every wind you blew

My rag-tag skiff toward you

Though the water was coming in

Massive holes such grievious sins

But your signal kept coming through

Some how I always knew it was you

Step two

I am here alone

But you know I am never alone

So why do I fear you

Why do I resist to be near you

What is this skeletal cage

That I should feel its rage

That bites like an unseen bug

Formerly I soothed it with those drugs

So here I spit and sputter it out

All this recalling of my journey of doubt

I doubt that this world is for real

I doubt the feelings that I feel

In a system wired for insanity

My own I am the last one to know

Some tried to tell me of my madness

I only saw it as a hint of their unsadness

I doubted that it all means what it seems

I bought into the lie of my fear that I would die

If I just believe to doubt in those who only shout

In whispers in my ears stoking the fire of my fears

Step two continues on

Like someone who cannot end this song

Long after the focus is gone

Life like a train wreck lumbers on

So pain became my awakening

This is why this song I must sing

For ever to you

Even though I know you sing too

More precisely you sing through me

Better yet I sing through you

Step Three

You ran on the river walk

I followed you ‘cos I needed to talk

Images came running too

I was not alone when I followed you

I relived all that I had been through

In places that I find hard to chew

I want to spit but you say swallow

I say I am full but you say I am hollow

Arguing is not my language

Silence is the seal for my anguish

But there is no silence when

It is I who is running after you again

Never are you far from me

You tell me it is with my eyes you see

I tell you that for you to abide

I would no longer be able to hide

So this doubt of my invisibility widens

The cloudy day has begun to brighten

How often have I kept you awake

How many prayers did it take

On my behalf for me to break

The covenant I make with pain

That It would dress up as my greatest friend

But now it lies there naked and exposed

You know me best we both know

If I took the time to talk

Got off the telly and celly

And let us just walk

Where ever the conversation took us

Would we be okay if nothing ever shook us

Would I go through withdrawals with new found peace

Go back into the scenes were I ended up on my knees

Given space to wander

Given place to ponder

The horrible madness that used me

Knowing that I was not the cause or the effect

Knowing that I was wounded, flawed no less

Breathing now a sigh of release

Giving no excuse only attentive awareness

I am thrilled to be killed by love’s shyness

Not to intrude but always stalking me

When I thought stalking made me guilty

But this is a crime that I will commit

To know that upon a throne I do sit

And though I do not always make sense of it

I will not despise the logic

Of my being called to front and center on this project

Universal acceptance without a fear

Knowing that it is patience to enjoy being here

And every sensation is tantamount to your caress

You always did know that you know me best

Raphael Smith, April 10, 2008

Limiting Speech

With no words to offer for all my lisping tongue's protest

I come here before you silently surrendered no less

Knowing that within me there is a case being tried

Over the words I have offered words full of lies

With a smile and quick wit I have been prone to say

Any barrage of language meant only to convey

Anything but what is true and just and good

Choice moments for choice words I have misunderstood

I have built a castle made out of silky smooth vernacular

I have lit it up at night all applaud for it is spectacular

Yet in the daylight it lacks the pull of mass appeal

For as of yet none of my words create anything real

Silence me please with a stone gate over my mouth

I look up to the heavens and I want to scream and shout

Put the law of Kindness upon my unruly tongue

I am silent until you are concretely done

For my actions speak more like a megaphone

While my words are like a child at home alone

Loved ones can only hear so much only so much

Love grows cold when there is no beating heart to touch

Take my language all its anguish and its burden

I pray, today, let the Law of Kindness in me help the hurting

Especially that one so close to my deepest heart and soul

Bring healing from my lips making what was apart entire and whole

September 8th, 2012....3:56am DRS

Leakage

Just give me a blank page I could write about anything put on stage

Is not all the world a stage and we merely players upon it?

If I an actor then what my role, what is the scar upon my soul

Seems all blurry and so-called chaos, am I the gold or the dross

It matters to me just wanting to be set free from the emo slavery

Took a hit on the chin it was the role I was in and not too shabby

That role took a turn and for me the lesson was learned

Nothing, not a drop was spurned, my hopes have wormed

Themselves into the deepest part of me none can deny

You Love are the deepest heart in me I wanna really cry

I know I have been on a journey deeper in to your art

I want you to know that I really am after your heart.....