Amazing Property for Sale in the Ozarks!

This is the wonderful home of a very good friend of mine. I spent a week there and fell in love with the place and should have liked to live there. But, instead made the decision to attend University which has definitely fulfilled some desires. Looking back, time in the words practicing yoga and chi gong with the company of my friend would have perhaps provided for a higher education than University!

The main house is beautiful and is fully off the grid capable with solar panels and a wood burning furnace if needed. There are fruit and nut trees, wild berries, and lots of wild game for omnivores (myself included). In addition there is 1350 square feet of well constructed raised beds.

There is a guest house, a barn (that could be converted into a house), a tool shed, and a root cellar!

The most striking aspect of the property are the waterfalls. One of them spills over into a rather mystical box canyon. The other water fall is really a series of small water falls that gently cascade over sedimentary rock.

Last, but not least, is the space. 137 acres of forest bordered by state forests and some very nice neighbors who make some really good kombucha.

Anyhow, I will post some more pictures at the bottom. If you want some more information, check out this web listing http://www.greenhomesforsale.com/listing.php?id=17971.

The Perpetual Dancer

The Perpetual Dancer

by my friend Amy

Silence, the depth of Being.

The core of my soul, the core of life.

Pulsing without moving,

Expanding without changing.

The all and nothing of everything,

Lying just beneath the surface.

My life, my well, my Joy.

Eternal, Unchanging, the Abounding Void.

Ever present, my constant companion,

The Perpetual Dancer.

A Poem by Me

Bound to the mill by our own device
We mistake the actor for the part
In doing so lose the core of our heart
Forgetting the space beyond the stage
We are caught inside an invisible cage
A prison of time and space, decay and age
No warden but I, Me, Mine
For beyond this we are truly sparks Divine

-ishtar ishaya-

Lee's Book

This is a little bit off topic for the blog, but I wanted to show you anyhow. . . . it is a wonderful photography book just finished by my sister's boyfriend Lee Gumienny.

I am usually not so into photography books, but this one I found to be very engrossing. It is a tale in the language of photography of his time in South Korea as an expatriate English teacher. He published it through Blurb.com and if you are interested there are some viewable sample pictures. Here is the link that will take you there. . .http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/432915. . . . .

Xanadu

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry,
Beware! Beware!His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Xanadu by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Another Great Longfellow Poem

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,

We sailed for the Hesperides,

The land where golden apples grow;

But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far, since then the ocean streams

Have swept us from that land of dreams,

That land of fiction and of truth,

The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, ah, whither? Are not these

The tempest-haunted Orcades,

Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar,

And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!

Here in thy harbors for a while

We lower our sails; a while we rest

From the unending, endless quest.

All is Brahma-some writings from Vasishta's Yoga

Her is a selection from the Yoga Vasishta. It is a wonderful text which was originally put together by the great sage Valmiki. This particular version was done by Swami Venkatesananda. In this section Vasistha is teaching Rama about the nature of reality.

VASISTHA:

Rama, I shall now tell you how the jiva (living soul) came to dwell in this body.

The jiva thought "I am atomic in nature and stature" and so became atomic in nature. Yet, it only apparently became so, on account of its imagination which was false. Even as one may dream that he is dead and that he has another body, this jiva which in truth had an extremely subtle body of pure consciousness, now begins to identify itself with grossness and so becomes gross.

Even as a mountain is reflected in a mirror and is seen as if it were in the mirror, the jiva reflects the external objects and activities, and soon begins to think that they are all within itself and that he is the doer of the actions and the experiencer of the experiences.

When the jiva wishes to see, eyes are formed in the gross body. Even so the skin (tactile sense), ears, tongue, nose and the organs of action are formed as a result of the appropriate desire arrising in the jiva. Thus abides in the body, the jiva which has the extremely subtle body of consciousness, imagining various external physical experiences and various internal psychological experiences. Thus, resting in the unreal which however appears to be real, Brahman, now appearing to be jiva, becomes confused.

This same Brahman which has come to regard itself as a finite jiva and endowed with a physical body, apprehends the external world which on account of the veil of ignorance appears to be composed of matter. Someone thinks he is Brahma, someone else thinks he is something else- in this manner the jiva imagines it is this or that, and so binds itself to the illusion of world appearance.

But all this is mere imagination or thought. Even now nothing has ever been created; the pure infinite space alone exists. Brahma the creator could not create the world as it was before the cosmic dissolution, for Brahma attained final liberation then. Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever; in it are no worlds, no created beings. That consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation. Even as an unreal nightmare produces real results, this world seems to give rise to a sense of reality in a state of ignorance. When true wisdom arises, this unreality vanishes.