Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall

Hello my friends, thank you for your kind and encouraging words. I've been in a funk as of late. Why's that? Look at the news, the blogs, the whirling entropy happening everywhere. It breaks my chest open as if receiving open heart surgery everyday to see atrocities overseas, our complete submersion of the right of habeas corpus in Guantanamo bay ,our malnourished babies here in the inner cities or rural America, the unbearable pain of a young college gunman and the subsequent pain he invoked on some many innocents. In my own Buddhist training, the idea is to feel compassion for every sentient being, whether they're living lives in deep, horrific delusion or just peacefully struggling for food and shelter. Just when it feels you can't take in more, you breathe in more of the world's pain, and your heart expands. Eventually your heart becomes an infinite reservoir, ready to take in the pain of all sentient beings.

Bobby Dylan has been spinning chronically in my cd player and his words seem to convey my mood best :I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, and I've stepped in the middle of seven side forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard , and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain gonna fall....and what da you do now my blue eyed son, and would do ya do know my darling young one, I'm going back out for the rain starts a fallin, I head for depths of the deepest, dark forests, where the people are many andy their hands are all empty, where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, and I tell it and think it and breathe it, and reflect from the mount so all souls can see it, and I stand on the ocean till until I start sinking, and I know my song well before I start singing,and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain gonna fall.

Comments

[Eoghan]

Listen Andy,

We all get our "funks" rom time to time. We have to keep on keeping on, though. I personally recommend that you stop listening to Dylan, who always was pessimistic, and instead listen to some Phil Ochs, who, although he succumbed to his own demons, was an activist to the core. He summed up indignation as a means to action rather than angst. Besides, he was both a better lyricist and created more fetching melodies.

Eoghan

[Eoghan]

And here's a few lines from Phil Ochs for you to think about:

Sit by my side, come as close as the air,
Share in a memory of gray;
And wander in my words, dream about the pictures
That I play of changes.

Green leaves of summer turn red in the fall
To brown and to yellow they fade.
And then they have to die, trapped within
the circle time parade of changes.

Scenes of my young years were warm in my mind,
Visions of shadows that shine.
'Til one day I returned and found they were the
Victims of the vines of changes.

The world's spinning madly, it drifts in the dark
Swings through a hollow of haze,
A race around the stars, a journey through
The universe ablaze with changes.

Moments of magic will glow in the night
All fears of the forest are gone
But when the morning breaks they're swept away by
Golden drops of dawn, of changes.

Passions will part to a strange melody.
As fires will sometimes burn cold.
Like petals in the wind, we're puppets to the silver
strings of souls, of changes.

Your tears will be trembling, now we're somewhere else,
One last cup of wine we will pour
And I'll kiss you one more time, and leave you on
the rolling river shores of changes.

[Eoghan]

All we can ever do is flow with the change and try to make a personal difference in the world. There's no doubt in my mind that you have.

[Eric M]

I agree that we are in a sad state of affairs when our minds are so preoccupied with american idol or fantasy football that we cannot even see an insane individual right in front of our own eyes until he kills many many individual and destroys so much more. Feel free to percieve that notion with the madman of your choice. There are so many out there to choose from.

What saddens me even more is a conversation that I tried to have with an individual about my banisteriopsis plant percieving objects within its enviornment to climb on to. Now I'm somthing of a mockery for saying something that I observed in the real world. It was not a thing I saw on an episode of lost.I felt humbled by this being who is so much older and wiser that I. It was the power.
When I an with my plant allies we sometimes comunicate different things but I alway feel that I have learned something about them and myself.
You have to withdrawl to a certain degree from the dominator society to become enlightened but in that same light you must be integrated. No one will understand why one we believe that we are spending our time with angels of god. People see us as devients and in some cases criminals. While they sink further into there own pits of despair we thank god for three monthes of summer in the forsaken north so we can put our cacti outside.

I've decided that I will never have a good friend that I could ever have a conversation with about anything that I do. Not about cacti, not, about plants, not about mushrooms, nothing. Throw in a few words about money however and you have everyones attention if only for a moment.

So don't feel to bad basement shaman people. Loneliness, and isolation is an intrinsic part of what we do. We are wierdos, degenerates and druggies many of us are according to mainstream society.We must learn to live with it because our freedom, our religious beliefs and our scientific persuits will never be accepted. The powers that be will see to that.

[Eoghan]

On a different topic, I thought I'd share, with Andy's permission of course, some information I have become aware of recently.

I will broach the topic by stating that I have heard some conflicting views about this, but I feel that it is significant enough that it is worth sharing with everyone. Even if the alarm is a bit greater than warranted, I feel it is better to be safe than sorry.

I recently became aware of an initiative to change the wording of existing laws to convert all alternative health products and herbs, even vitamins as medicine. This has the effect of making it illegal for anyone not a medical doctor from even recommending such substances, and quite likely selling them without prescriptions. That of course might require licensing as a pharmacist to sell them. Here's a link to a letter to go on record as opposing such changes to the wording of government regulations.

It is not completely clear exactly what would be the upshot of such changes, but they certainly open the door to a vast increase in control and a related decrease in availability of almost all natural or alternative products.

I tend to avoid the chicken little warnings that come along on the web almost every week, but this does appear to be legitimate and raises some very great concerns.

http://tinyurl.com/2u7ghc

[Eric]

I hear you. We are at such a critical period, in which the internet will either remain a liberating force or become just another means of oppression. Fortunately, the structure of the net seems to favor the more optimistic outlook (see Paul Stamet's "internet as mycelium"). I think we are in the midst of the next great enlightenment. It's really my only option, as far as beliefs go...since life is too much of a gift to opt out. Anyhow, "The times, they are a changin'" :)

[sixnon]

"I dreamt I saw Phil Oaks last night,
alive as you and me.
Said I to Phil "Yer ten years dead!"
"I never died, said 'e"
"I never died, said 'e"

@ Eric M. Here in Australia the AMA are working very hard to achieve the same ends.

[Tangerine]

Please, please don't feel discouraged. I don't feel alone in my plant love because of sites like this. I know there are tools and mentors out there for every stage of my journey, because of sites like this. You are a source of interaction for an otherwise relatively underground community, and we need you. Thank you for being available to us, and thank you for telling us when you needed some feedback. I have often dreamed of doing what you do. Please stay strong, and know that your community cares very deeply about your wellbeing.