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Post by Eevee on Oct 3, 2009 3:25:58 GMT -5
Holy wow Bob! Part 1 was amazing, I loved reading it so much. There is a lot to take in, I have read it twice and will read it again. Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to share your experiences with us, it is very much appreciated. I really hope that you do continue Bob, I'm really looking forward to Part 2. I did have some questions, but they don't seem that important now, I'm happy to just read.
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Post by muse on Oct 3, 2009 9:49:11 GMT -5
Hey Bob,
It's a cliffhanger. Keep going.
Eevee and I are roasting marshmellows and her stick is on fire.
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 3, 2009 14:58:04 GMT -5
Stepping back from where I left off chronologically for a moment, I’ll mention that, at the Catholic school where I was enrolled in the 1950's, the curriculum routine was occasionally set aside for "Audio-Visual" presentations. Students were gathered into the auditorium, lights were dimmed, and the whir of a film projector usually signaled the beginning of yet another movie about various precautions to be observed in the midst of the nuclear attack we were expecting any day now, such as how to hide under the desk and away from windows, and don’t look up when the lightbang explodes, or you’ll be blinded in a flash. In any case, this particular film was different, but just as scary.
I was 9 years old, and as I watched the flickering images of miserable babies and small children, all in tatters and covered with swarming flies, dying cruelly of starvation in some country “over there”, my own young heart was burned. At the end of the film, the guest missionary responsible for the gruesome footage stood up in the front of us children and promised that, if any student was able to fork over a mere $5.00, they would be able to adopt one of these "pagan babies". Not only would the child be "saved" but, as a side benefit, each child would get to share the Christian name of the contributor who had donated the ransom.
Given my status as a wage earner at the time, five dollars felt like a lot of money to collect, but it just seemed like the right thing to do, so I immediately threw myself into a fervor of coin collecting. I started with my allowance and milk money, but found that wasn't nearly enough. Every minute another child was dying! I began scrounging for coins in my father's pockets at night, after my parents went to sleep. Each time I would take just a few dimes or nickels to contribute, reasoning that they didn't need the money as much as the pagan babies. I approached all of my visiting relatives, as well as my parents' friends, soliciting spare change for the mission. I would search the street on my way to and from school, looking for any fallen coins that might go to the cause. The nuns were amazed at my fund raising. Somewhere in the Third World there were eventually at least half a dozen people sharing my name ‘Bob’ and feeling better about life as a result, or so I was led to believe.
In any case, what that little childhood tale is leading up to is this:
Years later, when I returned to San Francisco after my hermitage in the Sierras, and having forsaken my theological deferment upon leaving the seminary, I became the recipient of the dreaded draft notice, requiring me to report for a physical in preparation for induction into the army. I did not want to shoot people, I only wanted to feed them. Consequently, I applied for Conscientious Objector status, necessitating an appearance before the Draft Board to argue my case.
When I stood before the esteemed assembly of citizens who would have me become a weapon for democracy, I explained as logically as possible how a number of people "over there" probably had the same name as mine by now, and so why would I choose to go shooting at them after spending so much time and effort trying to feed them? After all, they’re my family too!
Apparently, my rationale was convincing enough to Board (along with several letters from my former professors, indicating how poor a choice I would make as a soldier, given my general disposition and lack of any nationalistic affiliation), and so instead I began 2 years of Alternate Service as a Child Care Counselor at a residential treatment center in rural Northern California for troubled inner-city pre-adolescents dumped there by the system as the last stop before a life of lock-up that loomed in the probable future for most of them.
At the facility, I was assigned to a group of 10 very unhappy and bewildered boys that I grew to love, and also made sure that they ate properly. I had the kitchen substitute fresh fruits and vegetables for the standard white sugar and flour products, and rather than letting them sit around eating candy and watching violent cartoons on the weekends, I would load them into the van and take them to the parks and beaches of Northern California, and let these inner-city kids get a taste for the freedom and beauty of nature. After a few months there, I was out strolling with my boys' group one afternoon when I noticed a girls' group heading my way. The facility was co-ed, but the genders were usually kept separated. Leading the girls was a darkly beautiful woman new to the facility who immediately walked up to me, put both hands on my shoulders and, staring right into my eyes, remarked:
"I've been watching the way you are with your kids, and I recognize something about you. I think you’ll be interested in what I have to show you. I’ve been brought here for you!"
For the next year, this woman became my teacher. She was a wild lesbian yogini gifted with certain extraordinary powers and veil-piercing capacity, and did indeed show me enough about the magical nature of existence first hand to fill a book. I was shown stuff that was utterly mind-blowing by any standard. In fact, sometime later I came across Castaneda’s work, and it felt just like déjà vu. She was also responsible for introducing me to natural foods and remedies, as well as to a number of Eastern Sages and their testimonies, great and inspiring beings who have since proved to be reliable guides over the years.
Meanwhile, some notable and encouraging changes began to appear within the boy’s unit I was responsible for. Within several months, my group began to stand out from the others, since there were hardly any episodes of violence or acting out that characterized the other units' daily behavior. In fact, we all had a lot of fun, and were eventually touted by the administration as an example of successful rehab work to visiting authorities. After about a year, the staff psychologists decided to study my group to find out why it seemed so more healthy and adjusted than the others, and of course that's when they found out I had weaned the boys off their meds (heavy thorazine, stelazine, ritalin, etc. -- the preferred kiddie chemical straight jackets). I had replaced drugs with hugs, back rubs, happiness, listening, and even meditation for 15 minutes each night before bed.
Naturally, the bureaucratic shrinks were flabbergasted, and promptly fired me. The dear children all gathered a petition on their own to keep me there, but I had violated a prime directive -- do not mess with the pharmaceutical protocols, regardless if they're poisoning the children!
Although I still had a number of months left to serve as a C.O., I shortly thereafter received a letter from the Draft Board absolving me of the requirement for further service, and so I immediately went through my routine of selling everything off that I owned and thumbed a ride down to Southern California, where I entered a Zen monastery at Mt. Baldy under the guidance of Joshu Sasaki, considered the top master of his lineage in the West. In fact, the old fellow’s still teaching and kicking ass today, at 104, from what I’ve heard!
The mountain monastery maintained a strict and rigorous regime, extreme to the max by any western standard, designed over the centuries to shatter all comfort zones and illusions – a boot camp for the soul, so to speak -- and amazing changes transpired over the course of the next several years there, powerful inner openings as well as a big amplification of trends set in motion earlier with my yogini mate back at the child care facility.
After about a year there, the Master (called Roshi) shared a pertinent observation with me. He told me that I clearly wanted to give myself to everyone and everything, but that I still did not know “What I Was”. He said I had a good sense for the Absolute, but that was only half the picture, and really of no use to anyone, even myself. As long as this was so, I was in no position to give anything at all. It was all just dream giving, and of no real value in the scheme of things. Moreover, I had never fully learned to receive. My false garment of humility cloaked an armor of impervious resistance to simple acceptance – acceptance of life, of love, acceptance of all that is. After a few years, he told me there was nothing left for me to do but to get back out into the world and manifest what I had learned in my training by putting it into practice in everyday life.
I returned to San Francisco for a while, and went to work for a relief agency, but my continuing interest in feeding people eventually led me across the country to Boston, Ma. When I journeyed east in 1975, ostensibly for a few months to study more about Natural Foods, I met a man who had just purchased a small health food store. Since I needed some work to cover my expenses, I took him up on his offer of a job. Together, and with the help of many others, we went on to create a Natural Foods retail company over the next decade that eventually became the largest natural and organic products supermarket chain in the country, called Whole Foods. Millions of people have been introduced to a healthier style of life through this company, and I later moved on to establish hundreds of Natural Food outlets across the continent when I got involved with the Distribution and Supply end of the industry. A lot of money came my way, and I was able to travel widely throughout the world, to Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and so forth, and in this way came to see just how provincial the usual western view of life and history was, besides having some wild adventures along the way.
Somewhere in the midst of all this a simple recognition dawned. There were no fireworks, no lightning bolts or anything dramatic -- just an obvious realization that my whole life-long quest was based on a false premise. From that primal experience in the hallway at 2, I had assumed myself to be a separate individual, trying to bridge an assumed chasm in my own being. I had superimposed on this simple being all sorts of beliefs and solipsistic judgments about myself as the one who is "doing" all of this, and then projected that dreamy stuff out into "the world" -- as if "the world" was somehow separate from myself. All along I had been repeatedly graced with clues, but I have always been a stubborn sort. In my earnest fixation on a fantasy of what I needed to become, I overlooked a plain and simple truth:
There is no need for something to find a way to become what it already is. It only has to stop assuming itself to be what it is not and never has been.
As layers of self-inflicted dilemma melted away, I finally realized how arrogant my stubborn presumption had been -- the presumption that I could ever be in a position of "saving" anybody. With that, even the sense of the "other" – separate from myself – began to evaporate. As that house of cards came crumbling down, the whole fictional fist of contraction loosened its grip -- how could I have ever imagined myself to be in any kind of position to impose my will on life! I was being lived by something much bigger than I had imagined, and it was only my lingering resistance that created the sense of struggle.
When I realized that I was the ‘Pagan Baby’, I finally began to enjoy my meals without feeling guilty. Everything returned to the ordinary happiness, fatefully interrupted by that schoolhouse movie so many years ago. I was somehow gracefully relieved of the concern that anything be other than what it is. That I be anything other than what I am. Overall, things seemed to have smoothed out nicely, and of course there’s a line from an old Grateful Dead tune that would apply at just about this time:
“When life looks like easy street, there’s danger at your door.”
(to be continued)
Blessings!
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Post by Eevee on Oct 4, 2009 2:08:37 GMT -5
Hello Bob, I'm finding your life story fascinating, what an extraordinary life you've led. I'd like to go back to part 1 for a moment, after your experience at the lake you said: I would love to know more about your "night school" experiences if possible, but this is your story so tell it in your own time, and however you want. Thanks for this Bob. I think we need more marshmellows though, Muse ate them all.
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 4, 2009 4:20:22 GMT -5
Hiya Eevee!
Glad you’re enjoying the tale! I had some chronological notes in a file from a memoir I had fiddled with at the urging of friends about 8 years ago, so it’s been easy to synopsize here.
To your question about “Night School”, it seems that birds of a feather that travel together occasionally gather for certain shared teaching downloads and trainings not typically accessible otherwise in 3-D. More often though the download is initiated relevant to our particular case. In any event, we’re tested to see what our reactions will be regardless, for the purpose of auto-correction calibration one might say.
For most of us in this realm, schooling day or night is still fairly rudimentary, relating largely to basic functionality, otherwise known as “learning how to behave”. Most of us are here repeating courses on this primitive level because we’re very slow learners, apparently, and still enamored of life in the sandbox.
I don’t buy the ‘punishment’ angle, btw, although I can see how the impersonal and dependently arising play of karma can be misconstrued and some form of negative association superimposed onto it when shit happens. If we want shit to stop happening, then it is within our power to make it so by first removing the causes for shit production, such as craving, hatred, and the ignorance of likes and dislikes.
Blessings!
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 4, 2009 4:24:55 GMT -5
Part 3
It was about 10 PM, and I was commuting from Boston to New York in late September of 1984. It had been a bumpy year, so to speak, and I was on the brink of a rather complex career turning point.
Earlier that afternoon, I had just retrieved my car from a Boston body shop after an unenviable encounter with a runaway bus in Cuban Harlem. This had been my second visit to that particular sheet metal doctor, who was kind enough to remind me, as I drove away, that "the third time is the charm". In retrospect, I must admit that these little clichés, floating around in the vast collective consciousness, sometimes have an odd way of validating themselves.
I was overly familiar with the stretch of highway that I was currently navigating, and mind had slipped into semi-automatic, entertaining the random road musings about life and work and love and mortgage payments, pasts and futures vying for attention, even as the present was rushing to itself with arms wildly waving.
Glancing up, I noticed that I was approaching my designated exit along the Saw Mill Parkway. It had come up sooner than expected, punctuating my reveries. Funny how the mind can go on and on.
I checked the rear view mirror to see if I could move into the right lane to exit, and saw a pair of headlights in what seemed a good bit of distance behind me in the right lane. I felt comfortable about the lane switch, but as I began to cross over, I was rear-ended by the on-coming car, which had been moving at much faster speed than I had calculated. I was pushed into the guard rail to the right, then lost control and swerved through the rail on the left, plunging over the side of the mountain.
As I plummeted down the hillside, my visibility was thwarted by the darkness and the strobe-like streaks from my headlight beams as they bounced wildly off the onrushing landscape. I knew with complete certainty that "this was it."
Not only was I about to die, but it was actually going to be quite gruesome, with mangled body parts and all the attendant undesirable horrors now swarming back from the 60's cautionary "Drivers Education" films. An enormous fear raced through me on the wings of adrenaline – the primal survival response crushing up against sure knowledge of sheer ruin.
Suddenly I hit the bottom of the hill, but unlike the movie finale, I did not explode in a blazing fireball. Rather, my car catapulted up through the air, flipping over and over as it crossed the oncoming 2-lane highway. It continued air-borne across the service road, finally slamming into the side of the hill on the other side, where it proceeded to roll down a bit until it hung, teetering, on the edge of an embankment.
It must have been while I was in mid-air (although my recollected sense was that time itself had literally stopped) that the fear was swallowed up by a great silence. This silence was deeper than I had ever known and certainly beyond my feeble adjectives, and yet curiously "familiar", as if it had always been here, just behind the chitchat of everyday mind and imagined identity.
Spontaneously, there was a "knowing" that I could never be implicated by death, but more to the point – it was obvious that there had never been, nor could there ever be, such a thing as "I" – that smoky bundle of thoughts and memories that had just dissolved in mid-air like a magician’s trick.
There was no car, no accident, no trace of ‘the world’. There was no narrative or story line of "my life", any life, any personal or collective history, any past or future. Alone, yet with no sense of lack or incompleteness. Awareness, boundless and inexpressible, vastness with no center, brilliant and motionless . . . I’d like to say more, but words don’t apply here. The closest I could approximate the experience was the time back when I had stepped off the bus after summer camp at the age of 8, but even that paled in comparison to this. It would take many years and a bucket full of tears for the full impact of this moment to sink in.
Suddenly “I” was back in the crushed driver's seat, my left foot had pierced through the floor board of the car, and was dangling shoeless in the air over the embankment, shattered. People were milling about, sharing their disbelief that someone could have survived such a disaster!
I was engulfed in tears, but these tears had nothing to do with the accident, or survival, or relief to be essentially in one piece. These tears were tears of gratitude for such Grace, that I had been given a gift beyond measure.
When the paramedics placed me in the ambulance and closed the doors, they immediately fell silent and stopped their busy work – overcome themselves by a palpable current of Bliss filling up the space with a radiant Presence. They stared at me, and then at each other, and one said: "What is happening here?"
An interesting postscript to that event was brought to my attention later. Several of my friends reported intense experiences of Presence timed to that very night. Another, who was sitting hospital vigil with her husband in the final stages of his terminal illness, reported that -- at around 10 PM that night -- she was overwhelmed by a brilliant streak of light which shone through her heart and into and around her husband for several minutes. By the next day he had recovered completely from his illness, much to the bewilderment of the medical staff.
After that, my appreciation of things was to change dramatically in ways that I could not have foreseen. Everything I had once believed to be true about myself and the world was just wiped off the map, and it literally felt like starting over, a true stranger in paradise. All the puzzle pieces, painstakingly assembled over the years, had been tossed sky-high, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would never seem quite like they did before then.
(to be continued)
Blessings!
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Post by Starlight on Oct 4, 2009 9:28:49 GMT -5
Hiya Stella! Am replying to your question here, so as not to step on anyone's toes, and apologies for any interruption in the other thread -- my bad! This whole deal is an ‘ET’ experience! What we typically consider as “the world” is not a place per se, but a psycho-physical realm, aka ‘bardo’, filled with every possibility. Sure, all sorts, and some cool rides – seeing planets close-up outside the window was awesome! My Kodak’s crummy at long distance, but some relatively recent daylight Friday sightings caught on film locally (Friday’s my day off): www.pbase.com/1heart/unidentified_flyings_friday…long story, started at the age of two this time around. Blessings! Hiya back, (just found this note) yes I feel a little foolish about my stance but I could sense azrael unease with your remarks. And I feel I must of not understood your meaning or motives as well. Things have since sorted, Lou has helped him out some too. Maybe the little waves it caused have helped him too in some regard. And WOW! with the bits I have read of your experiences. I will have to save them up for now. I am making a quick unexpected trip back to Australia next week, am having health problems and I am afraid my health insurance won't cover the full possible cost. Even packing feels like an insurmountable ordeal at the moment and I am afraid my usual calm and difficult to anger nature is......struggling. I can tell everyone here is entranced by what you have written. I guess it has been suggested to you before you should write a book, a picture book I guess. I have always thought that if I could have been a religious sort, Buddha would be a good way to go. I have studied a little of eastern philosophies and spent some time in meditation....but I dunno. Anyways I won't go on anymore for now. love and blessings, Stella.
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Post by Starlight on Oct 4, 2009 10:26:02 GMT -5
::)Oh yeah......just thought I add my experiences. Although they pale in comparison to yours and many others but it is more than enough for me. I have had UFO sightings and flying dreams which felt so real and that feeling I may have been "abducted" and had the memory erased.
My first sighting at 13, was just like Lou described in "Day with an ET" only bigger and we could see shadowy figures in the porthole. My second sighting was 3 lights, at a distance, dancing around crazy like, and crazy fast. My third, only just happened since joining this board. I had wished for something, but not too scary. My husband and I were sitting on the front porch when a row of amber lights in the sky about 6 stories up, lit up the front yard and for some crazy reason there was a cloud of pot smoke in the air around us everywhere. No we weren't smokn' the stuff.
Bye again.
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 5, 2009 0:15:14 GMT -5
Hiya Starlight by Stella! ;D May the best outcome in your current health crisis prevail, and I sincerely appreciate you sharing your thoughts and experiences here regarding these various matters of interest and inquiry! In terms of experiences, no concern – my mate’s make mine seem trivial in comparison, so there ya go! it does appears that Consciousness wants infinite experience of itself, which accounts for the multiplicity of eyes like yours and mine it uses for the views, while all the time just looking at itself, forgetfully. That’s where a lot of the confusion seems to arise. Consciousness takes form to have this experience of itself, but then becomes identified with the form, believing itself to be solely that form. A lot of complications ensue, a lot of experiences which come and go. We each have different sets of eyes, but the same one’s looking out. Call Him what you want, call him Buddha or God or ET or the Light or “I Am” or whatever, because any name or way you call Him will be perfectly fine, just remember who’s calling who, and safe flight back Down Under, Dear! Blessings!
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 5, 2009 0:34:37 GMT -5
In 1999, I was working in New Jersey, directing the natural and organic products division of a prominent nationwide wholesale distributor. After several decades in this business, I had achieved a level of success within my field that had yielded more material and social blessings than I could have imagined, bundled with all the complications of the corporate life. Still, for the most part, it was just doing what had to be done in the midst of arising dream scenes and conditions, and this included projecting a functional self to navigate the flowing waters, while in the meantime not getting trapped in any of it to the point of taking it all that seriously, so to speak. After the “Void” experience during an auto accident 15 years earlier, the empty nature of all arising phenomena sooner or later bled through and informed my default view, but I was still fairly imbalanced and detached from the Heart. This was a huge area that I had attempted to bypass, but nothing slips by – everything needs to be illumined. That year, our office had just been wired for the internet, and I was naturally curious about this new medium and its capacity. One late morning, between spreadsheets and store designs, I happened upon a site that featured a picture of Mother Meera, a reputed emanation of the ‘Divine Mother’ currently appearing here in this global part of dream. "The whole purpose of my work is in the calling down of the Paramatman Light and in helping people. For this I came - to open your hearts to the Light. The Light was always there; I prayed to Paramatman, the Supreme Being, to be able to use it. The Light has never been USED before. Like electricity, it is everywhere, but one must know how to activate it. I have come for that.”i33.tinypic.com/14spoaf.jpgI had recently read an intriguing article in a magazine about her, but I was unprepared for what followed. As her photo slowly downloaded on my screen, I fell into a stunned silence, and over an hour passed by before it seemed I was even able to inhale. I then rose, wobbly, from my desk, informed my secretary that I was going out for lunch, and drove to a near-by pond to walk along the banks and let what had just "happened" sort itself out. Within moments, I found my gaze lifted towards the sky, and as I glimpsed the brilliant sun above my head, “I” projected Meera reaching in and touching an unfathomable place within my being. A water-falling cascade of deep sobbing tears erupted, and I literally fell down on my knees, utterly overwhelmed and engulfed in . . . Mercy. The Heart is Gracious, Brothers and Sisters, I’ll testify to that! This was like nothing I could have ever imagined! I was broken open, and I could not cease from weeping over and over in the following months. There was a totally vulnerable receptivity to the slightest appearance of anything, coupled with a tender rawness that found me ruined and drowned in a love I had no name for. My life was once again changing dramatically, and what a ride lay in store! The fact that I could carry on in a fairly complex professional environment at work during this time was a testament to some much-appreciated training back at the Zen monastery. There’s a lot to be said for disciplining the mind, if done for the sake of clear awareness. After several months of this "communion", I received an interior guidance from Meera, directing me to an odd character I had never heard of -- Nisargadatta Maharaj. A woman friend who was undergoing cancer surgery told me during a hospital visit with her that she had no idea why, but she felt compelled to offer me a book that had come into her possession. It was a book of dialogues with “Sri Niz”, as I’ve come to affectionately call him. Every day at lunch hour I read several paragraphs, and then spent the rest of the time allowing the implications to penetrate. I found that by doing so, I was returned again and again to awareness itself, and in fact his words had the effect of training wheels, until I could take up the practice of awareness without reliance on words, to the point of true spontaneity. In the dreamtime, the ride was morphing rapidly. Out of the blue, I was offered a job in the San Francisco Bay Area (after 25 years living on the East Coast). It was at twice my current salary, with all sorts of attractive perks for props. I geared up to start the next century in timelessness back in the San Francisco Bay Area, and thus arrived just in time to be with my parents as each died within the year of my homecoming. Conditions set in motion in a moment prior to reckoning had ripened now, enabling reunion with Mazie once more in the synchronicity of this form world. Indivisible since pre-existence, there’d been a number of intervening lifetimes since our last adventure in 3-D together, and this time we were both equally submitted to making the best use of the rare and miraculous opportunity afforded us in the play of consciousness and not waste it indulging in anything that’s not true. This was the work we were brought here to do as two-not-two. Everything in our lives leading up to this glad re-union had, in retrospect, been preparation. We took form here to see something through together -- something amazing -- for the sake of the Heart’s deepest longing. We recognized each other again upon first contact, and immediately dived in – ecstatic -- to the mutual immolation of all that would resist that deepest truth. (Stopping here for now.) Blessings!
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Post by Izarith on Oct 5, 2009 1:10:16 GMT -5
Hello Bob, I was getting worried there for a little bit until I read this. Thanks for telling us about yourself, although most of the turning points are had to understand due to the deep wordless experience of them all I'm still glad to get an understanding from them. OK so now it's your wife's turn. ;D Come out, come out Mrs. Bob's wife, no need to be shy. Izzy.
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 5, 2009 2:28:13 GMT -5
Hiya Izzy! Mom was a bit groggy and disoriented when she began coming around some time after she dropped the body. In her case, she literally dropped it, passing out in the kitchen pantry and entering a coma while making tuna noodle casserole for Dad and myself. They had just returned that afternoon from Dad’s doctor who had confirmed his cancer was terminal, so it seems like she decided to get a jump start on him. Mom always used to get up first at the family house to make the coffee, and after she died, she began appearing to Mazie a number of times in our kitchen when Mazie got up to make the coffee, mostly to let us know that things were cool. Dad on the other hand was primed and ready, and when he took off, he literally took off, and proceeded to span a vast arc of light between two planets. Who would have figured? Still, he was an avid golfer, so there ya go! As far as Mazie writing anything goes, when we first found each other she was a marvelously original poetess and prolific writer, but now doesn’t write publicly at all, choosing instead to express herself as the feeling of being itself. I on the other hand still have a bit of Irish in me, apparently, hence the blarney. Blessings!
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Post by Starlight on Oct 5, 2009 11:45:49 GMT -5
Gee thanks Bob, and Vortices too, as we say Down Under "she'll be right mate"
I am not too concerned for myself, more concerned for the fuss & expense I am causing my loved ones.
Stella.
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bob
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Post by bob on Oct 5, 2009 23:05:38 GMT -5
Gee thanks Bob, and Vortices too, as we say Down Under "she'll be right mate" I am not too concerned for myself, more concerned for the fuss & expense I am causing my loved ones. Stella. Hiya Stella! If it wasn’t an experience they needed to have, each in their own way, then they wouldn’t be having it. How they experience it is where the test is for them, as it is for each of us, so deep peace to all, and the best of all possible outcomes for you and beloved family as this current scene plays out. Remember, the "fuss and expense" parts are just props. Blessings!
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Post by christy on Oct 7, 2010 13:31:10 GMT -5
Bob,
New poster here..just two days ago crossed into that committed realm of non-lurking-ness.
Have read some of your earlier posts and just discovered this "Bob, the Architect" spot..great story telling around your life's journeying. And also find you, too, grew up in San Francisco in the 50's and, perhaps, in the Catholic parochial school system -as I was.
Attended St. Vincents de Paul's grade school in 1955, in the Marina/Pacific heights area; and Star of the Sea high school off Geary blvd., and Lone Mountain College for Women -off Geary and Turk, later having become part of the University of San Francisco.
Of course from there, our lives took very different directions....:-)
I like looking at dreams as a kind of" Night School" business as well.
Have left my first few posts on Lou's question board around dreams actually.
So glad to be on board~~:-)
Until next time,
Christy
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