"Blood Suckers From Hell"

"Blood Suckers From Hell"
by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

Rumi speaking to a crowd muses:

Watch out for those blood suckers from hell -
cause they're everywhere.

And the crowd wisely retorts:
"That sounds serious - what do they look like, any hints;
are they usually disguised?"

Rumi again: Yes, usually, they are awful tricky!

"How then to detect them?"

Well,
I have noticed
their eyes will narrow and their faces begin to squint
like prunes

if they hear good
poetry.

—Love Poems from God
Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
Daniel Ladinsky - Translator

Walhydra's friend Wendiferous found this in a book they both use.

*teehee*

WNYEEP, Part 3: Jim

A note from Bright Crow: This continues the revision of a serialized adventure Walhydra first published on The Crone Thread in 1996. The story is posted on Walhydra's Back Porch.

Part 3: Jim

Blessèd Be.

LOL!

From my favorite weirdo comic, xkcd:

"Everything perfect, just as it is" (Bah, humbug!)

CO-GrumpyGranny is writing about the challenges—and occasional successes—of living by the Buddhist precept: "Everything perfect, just as it is."

This was in response to Walhydra's sharing her own favorite Zen precept: "After enlightenment, the laundry."

Walhydra hates spiritual truths which involve being responsible for your own life (even though she knows they are true).

Here's what Grumpy Granny writes:

I decided that I would open up to it, and make a conscious effort to understand that even when things are stressful, even when they are HORRIBLE out in the world...it is all PERFECT.

There IS a reason for all this. We choose it.

We say it's because we're following "God's word" or whatever reason, but the bottom line is that we choose. We CHOOSE to hate and create chaos instead of peace. We CHOOSE to destroy rather than build.

Every single time, WE choose.

So, I am choosing. I am choosing to see the beauty and perfection in every single thing that surrounds me, from the mumbling doctor who drives me to distraction, to the beautiful quilt-block coloring that my grandson did for me for Christmas that hangs across from me as I type every day....

Grrr!

Walhydra says, "I don't wanna choose! I wanna blame someone else!"

Or blame the computer, or the customer service phone menu, or the gravity which makes the papers drop from her hands....

Grrr!

Basically, Walhydra is feeling very unhappy with her grouchy, achy old self lately. It seems as if she's having a serotonin deficiency relapse or something. All the "higher wisdom" she knows is worthless at present, because she just doesn't feel like following it!

"Boy! I can't wait till Imbolc gets here and everything that's been locked up in the dark gets released again...I hope...."

And so it is.

Blessèd Be.

Ourobouros

In a bored moment at the reference desk, 20 minutes before quitting time, Walhydra decided to play the "Google yourself" game.

One of the more interesting things she found was a link to a post by her old cyber-friend Sara Sutterfield Winn on the now-defunct Pagan Godspell. The post is called "On Perfection, Enlightenment…And Being Grumpy."

Here's a key passage:

If loving-kindness does not posit being some kind of ethereal Perfect being, but rather meeting yourself truly at the authentic point of yourself, then that’s what I want to pursue. If mysticism is a journey wherein the exquisite Beauty of the unconquerable mess of Life is made manifest in a scintillating point of Awareness, then that’s where I want to go.

Hey man, maybe I just don’t want to let go of being grumpy ever again. Or it’s possible that I’m just a lazy non-mystic making excuses for myself. When in doubt I think it’s best to consider what it might look like if all possibilities are true at the same moment. Then I get dizzy and have to sit down and giggle for a while. And then I don’t worry about it and have an orange instead….flushed with green fuse-light, oranges are so remarkably beautiful.

Wow!

This post showed up in the "walhydra" Google search because of the comment Walhydra posted:

July 28, 2007, Walhydra said,

Dearie,

Walhydra’s ambition…well, one of them…is to become the Bodhisattva of Crankiness. She hopes she doesn’t have to give up being imperfect in order to be perfect. Her favorite Zen aphorism is:

“After enlightenment, the laundry.”

In other words, we don’t change at all when/if we become enlightened. We just notice very clearly, precisely, sometimes painfully, how imperfect every thought, feeling, action, movement, etc., is…but also how it doesn’t matter so long as we let go and try again.

Or, at least, that’s her hope.

As she quoted in Walhydra’s Sadness recently:

Renunciation
is not about giving up
the things of the world,
but accepting
that they go away.

I love your raging delight in everything.

What a neat occasion of the snake taking hold of its own tail and rolling.

Walhydra figures she probably should listen to her own advice. DUH!

And she really, really misses Sara's blog.

And so it is.

Bléssed Be