Mask by Kartika

It has been ages since I have blogged, but I just felt like saying "hi" to anyone who happens to stop by! Om shanti to everyone in the world!

Radha, Vaju, and Libbett from left to right!

A Satsang before Vaju Returned to India

We had fun! We were just a small group singing bhajans and we got a little crazy because we were a bit sad about Vaju moving back to India (she is happy and of course, we are happy for her!)after 12 years of being our anchor, and our connection to Amma, and teaching us music, and being our friend. So, Libbett, Radha, and Vaju started dancing and we got a little wild...it was just one of those spontaneous moments that make life wonderful in the moment.

Will Sarah Palin please go away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know I may seem all over the place. Sometimes I'm all about the peace and love and other times annoyed and even pissed as hell - oh well, that's me. I can go from 0 to 10,000 in an instant (it’s my reptilian brain). I just cannot figure out how Sarah Palin has managed to earn any credibility whatsoever in the political arena and why in “god’s name” so many people love her and think she is competent to run anything. other than perhaps, a moose hunting expedition? Her speaking is barely comprehensible, and her lack of knowledge frightening. Are so many Americans really that dumbed down or desperate to put in office a Christian who believes Adam and Eve were the first human beings? And the “pro- life” label touted by those who love war, guns, the death penalty, and want to cut funding to actually help real children who are poor and marginalized, is pretty incongruous. Sarah Palin represents the wave of anti-intellectual, fundamentalists that seems locked into the reptilian level of consciousness that feeds on fear, hate, and division but clothes itself in slogans of righteousness – the same reptilian brain that makes me pissed as hell at them…

Amma in her Early Years!

"Love is what fills life constantly with newness." —Amma
"With a child's innocence, enthusiasm and optimistic faith, we will be able to create heaven on earth." —Amma

Celebration Day!

Needless to say, I am thrilled about the results of the election. Let me hear your thoughts! We have come a long way since the Iowa caucus. I was so happy to meet Barack Obama went he came to Iowa, to shake his hand and ask him a question. He has the ability to make people feel listened to and respected - he made me feel that way. Since that time, I have seen how gracious, stable, intelligent, and righteous he is as he fought his way through the primary, and then, against the attacks by a vicious power structure that has held our country captive for eight long years. I feel freer and more hopeful than I have for a long time. I feel like hope is finally an option. I am also proud of Iowa! We finally went blue.

Election Day Thoughts

Today is finally the day of reckoning. Which way will we go, I wonder. We are at the crossroads. Will we go for hope and change, or the status quo? Are we as a nation, ready to grow and change? Will we keep this great momentum Barack Obama has begun going strong, and move forward toward creating a more compassionate and sane world - a world based on caring for each other and the environment, on lifting all people up to be able to fulfill their potential? Will the voting machines be fixed, and people disenfranchised as they were in the last two elections? Or will it be different this time? Will the people finally get to choose? Will people's voices be counted? I have hope, but am also afraid. I think about moving somewhere else if we are going to have more of the same, but there is really no where to go. America has a great opportunity here - will Americans grab that opportunity? Today is finally the day of reckoning. Which way will we go, I wonder.

New Dream Series

I've been having lot of fun making handmade tiles and combining them with made tiles and other materials to create my own alter-like pieces!

My Art Journal

Compassion

Do you ever feel caught between worlds? Like you are confined in a world that is made up with rules written by crazy people? And, then I watch Amma bringing love to the world, and it's the only thing that make sense.

A Place of Peace

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. - Buddha

Palin - I expected her to start baton twirling - more evidence of the dumbing down of America!

WOW - she winks, she's hot, she's just like Joe 6-pack ("Joe Six Pack" is a reference in the reality based universe to the guy who comes home from work and downs a six pack of beer - in other words an alcoholic!)- she's a maverick (like John McCain who has voted with Bush 95% of the time) - she's tolerant (tried to get books banned in her city library as Mayor and opposes Roe v. Wade, and she can shoot wolves from a helicopter! She wants to expand the powers of the VP position just like Dick Cheney (will that make government smaller?), and she thinks America is that city on a shining hill described by Ronald Regan (that god of the Republican party whose deregulation policies began the Wall Street gone wild era!) Her pastor is a witch- hunter and she thinks Alaska is the state destined to welcome the 2nd coming of the Lord. Oh, and she also has disdain for anyone who is really smart, brilliant, educated, thoughtful, well traveled, complex, and has a grasp of the facts, or is in any way actually qualified to hold the highest office in the land.

Dennis Kucinich is so right on as usual!

While Wall Street and the Bush Administration try to blackmail Congress into a $700 billion bailout for corporations that have shown zero concern about the plight of the American people through the last decade, I have been working on a comprehensive alternative. Today, I am releasing a plan for economic recovery that will provide not only economic stimulus, but also fairness for everyday people on every "Main Street" in America. The plan is detailed below, and it will also be available on the campaign website www.kucinich.us.

My take on this is that as usual, when it comes to the rich on wall street, Americans are expected to pay through the nose with checks and golden parachutes while the people struggle with lack of health insurance, out of site oil prices, growing unemployment, a war that has put us all in the hole, and myriads of other problems! We all need to take action and contact our congressmen and tell them ENOUGH!

The World According to Bush, McCain, and Palin

A picture worth a thousand words...
John Cusack wrote in the Huffington Post: "McCain and the neocon ideologues won't "reform" government, they will gut government and privatize everything in sight in the name of responding to the crises they helped engineer through Bush and Cheney. Their view of government is the reverse of the Hippocratic Oath: do harm and then when the patient is sick, give the wrong medicine, watch him die, and sell off the body parts."

Panda at 4 months old

This made me happy so I wanted to share it!

FYI - Today, the giant panda's future remains uncertain. This peaceful, bamboo-eating member of the bear family faces a number of threats. Its forest habitat, in the mountainous areas of southwest China, is fragmented and giant panda populations are small and isolated from each other. Meanwhile, poaching remains an ever-present threat.