There are benefits to using and understanding online social networking systems such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. I can enter a communication stream that is open- ended allowing me to find connections that I never would have found in any other way. Even though the medium is thin and narrow, it has the power to attract people to my soul message.
Learning how to use online social networking systems feels like going fishing in the deep ocean. Most people are fishing for the same reason I am; to attract people to their work and business. If the Internet is used as an indicator that directs attention to connections that have physical substance, then it works.
There are also negatives to using networking systems. Time put into cultivating the virtual world of the Internet takes time away my current reality, my relationship with my body and and my local community.
I believe our world needs our physical attention and love. The medium of the Internet, by its very frequency takes me away from my capacity to feel my own heart love. Sometimes I feel the Internet is a thief that steals the time I need to spend in more analogue carbon based communications with the earth; Plants, animals, other people and my own body.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
What is my initial reaction to Twitter?
My initial reaction to Twitter is one of defense. I want to defend against using my focus and time in a way that feels shallow and superficial. I seek connections with people who have enough meat on the bone to offer me emotional and spiritual nourishment.
We greet people with simple phrases such as“ Hello, how are you?” These responses are a way to simply acknowledge one another. Too often the communication on Twitter will not go beneath this formal level to an honest discovery of the present moment. We do not expect people to bare their heart to others in superficial formal communication.
I am interested in heartfelt, honest communication where a person’s intentions to tell me something truthful and real about themselves touches and moves me to find an authentic response within my own being. There is plenty of noise and garbage in the universe. I try to be quiet except when I have something sincere to communicate.
Twitter is a derivative form of communication that narrows the field into such a small space that there is little room for depth. I am afraid twitter will steal my precious life force by using up my limited time and energy.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Invitation to Ruth's Book Release Party 6/26/09
You are invited!
The Sacred Book of U: Unveiling the Lost Teachings of the
Deep Feminine
WHERE: Exhale
WHEN: Friday June 26th 2009 7:30P.M.- 9:30P.M
RSVP: 310-450-7676 or info@exhalespa.com
$20 includes signed book, music and refreshments.
See attached flyer for more information
Ruth Gould-Goodman
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The Virus of Fear and War.
I think my human race is infected with a virus that disconnects them from the wisdom of their own heart. The name of this virus is "FEAR". There can be no other reason that we behave toward each other with such mindless, cruelty and violence. A human body is so fragile and breakable, the skin is so thin and the organs and muscles so soft. A sharp steel knife can so easily slice right through us and cut us to the bone. We build weapons of such horror that you would think we were fighting extraterrestrial aliens made of steel who like the "Terminator" never die. It pains me to watch the mayhem of destroyed broken, bloodied bodies our projected nightmares create. We are bombing woman and children and men who are farmers, fathers and husbands.
We are made of the stuff of dreams, fluid and light but we seem to have forgotten we are all the dream of God. We are fragile because life is fragile, a delicate dance of the balance of opposites.
Humans, infected with the virus of fear, can not feel their connection to their own source within their own bodies. Once a person looses contact with their source with in their body they easily forget that they are a part of the creation that everyone is a part of. That is when the virus of fear can really take hold. Fear makes people leave their body for fear of experiencing pain. Fear makes people forget to feel the present moment reality of their body that connects them to the living systems of life and only listen to their thinking. Their thinking becomes inflamed and overheated and projects itself into a world that they see as black or white, good or evil and "US" against "Them". In forgetting their own source they project the pain of their own self abandonment onto anyone who is the slightest bit different from them. The possibility of the dream that they are turns into a nightmare as they project their fear outward. The world becomes a threatening place and War begins to be the only action that makes sense. The only event worth funding and giving our resources to.
It seems my country wants everyone to be just like we are. We want them to see God just like we do. WE want them to buy the same things that we do and grow the same crops and worship money just like we do. If they do not they seen as a threat to our assumed authority and they must be oppressed and colonized. This is exactly what the virus of fear does. We uproot from the center we are threatened by anyone that is the slightest bit different from us. Different skin, or hair, or language, or beliefs, or religion, or customs are cause for absolute judgment that is then used to justify the use of absolute violence and war. To solve the worlds problems we first must understand the virus of Fear with in ourselves.
What do YOU think??????
We are made of the stuff of dreams, fluid and light but we seem to have forgotten we are all the dream of God. We are fragile because life is fragile, a delicate dance of the balance of opposites.
Humans, infected with the virus of fear, can not feel their connection to their own source within their own bodies. Once a person looses contact with their source with in their body they easily forget that they are a part of the creation that everyone is a part of. That is when the virus of fear can really take hold. Fear makes people leave their body for fear of experiencing pain. Fear makes people forget to feel the present moment reality of their body that connects them to the living systems of life and only listen to their thinking. Their thinking becomes inflamed and overheated and projects itself into a world that they see as black or white, good or evil and "US" against "Them". In forgetting their own source they project the pain of their own self abandonment onto anyone who is the slightest bit different from them. The possibility of the dream that they are turns into a nightmare as they project their fear outward. The world becomes a threatening place and War begins to be the only action that makes sense. The only event worth funding and giving our resources to.
It seems my country wants everyone to be just like we are. We want them to see God just like we do. WE want them to buy the same things that we do and grow the same crops and worship money just like we do. If they do not they seen as a threat to our assumed authority and they must be oppressed and colonized. This is exactly what the virus of fear does. We uproot from the center we are threatened by anyone that is the slightest bit different from us. Different skin, or hair, or language, or beliefs, or religion, or customs are cause for absolute judgment that is then used to justify the use of absolute violence and war. To solve the worlds problems we first must understand the virus of Fear with in ourselves.
What do YOU think??????
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Those who fear life can only love the unborn
Last night I could not sleep. Many Americans are being seduced by the appearance of Palin as a strong women. These thoughts came through.
Yours, Ruth Gould Goodman,
For Palin only the Unborn Idea of Life is pure enough not to be Sacrificed on the Altar of War and Profit
Oh My America please do not be seduced by the brittle appearance of strength from Mrs. Palin even though she is in a woman’s body, has breasts and a vagina and has given birth. Sarah Palin is the same old tired solutions to our world’s problems as the old tired men who you are finally realizing do not have any solutions to your real everyday problems. Just because these ideas are being expressed by a female is no reason to suddenly become excited by them.
Sarah’s ideas are tired and old and incapable of solving the problems we face in the world. They are divisive, not integrating and non-cooperative and deadly. They thrive by stifling the personal freedoms of many while giving complete impunity to the elite. They speak of a top down authoritarian spirituality that places the divine and the sacred far away in the sky somewhere. These ideologies are incapable of recognizing the god force inside of anything but an unborn baby and other people who belong to the same church they belong to.
Animals, forests, oceans; in fact all living things are fair game to be sacrificed on the altar of their perceived entitled dominion to use this earth in any way they see fit to make a profit. Who cares if all the animals go extinct and leave this planet; to hell with the polar bear, the wolf and the elk? Animals are not worth of saving. They are not Christians. They do not matter. The deaths of women and children of a different color or religion all over the world and in this country as well are dismissed as collateral damage. It is o.k. to sacrifice any life but fetuses and other “Saved Christians” on the alter of maintaining the “
I am tired of people talking from both sides of their mouth about the sanctity and the preciousness of the life of the unborn while the other side of their mouth rationalizes dropping bombs on people, separating young children from their mothers in immigrant raids, polluting the earth with the waste of oil and coal extraction. They are so disconnected from life that they cannot feel the loss to this planet if the great animal species go extinct.
They do seem to be able to feel the god force of the bottom line, for the real god they worship is the profit margins necessary to satisfy the stock holders.
The same people who cry for the unborn fetus shout for more police, more bombs, and more war. They refuse to raise taxes for schools, health care for children and working families. It is a cynical joke that the people who would self-righteously jail or even shoot another person to protect the life of the unborn fetus have no qualms with starting a war without provocation. I think they use the euphemism “pre-emptive” to justify their forays into other lands and cultures. Their self righteous ideology demands the sacrifice of blood. The ultimate cynical blasphemy.
To the right-wing pro-life position, the sacrifice of life to prove your religious ideology makes perfect sense. There is a coherence of belief. Those for whom war is the one and only answer for what ails our country would kill to protect the “life of the unborn.”
I am terrified to watch so many of my fellow human beings, my fellow Americans swept away in this angry ideology. I ask myself is this the real face of my American or is this the face that is being generated by the media to sell this face to
I ask myself why and these thoughts come. Perhaps people including Sarah Palin and John McCain unconsciously are really terrified of the awesome power, mystery and beauty of life. Instead of facing their fear of the power of that force as it moves through their own flesh and blood, they project their denied fear onto everything outside of them that is different from them that they cannot control.
Only to "The Idea" of life turns them on. That is why they focus all their saccharine sentimental care and love on the unborn. Their unconscious fear of the sacred in the real flesh and blood of life as it lives and dies makes them unable to identify and relate to life. What they cannot control they hate. Any direct contact with the awesome unfathomable beauty and mystery of "Real Life" terrifies them. Direct connection immediately hardens their heart so they do not have to feel the vulnerable truth of their own interconnectedness with life.
The hardening to protect from feeling the pain of their self generated disconnection activates a self-protective desire to control and dominate life even more.
If you place yourself outside and above life, then you must attempt to control life. Then the only function of women is to be the fertile womb to supply life for men who are so terrified of the mystery of life that they are compelled to sacrifice their own sons and daughters on the alter of their ideologies to a god high in heaven some where other than right here, right now. Those plagued with the pain of their self-righteous disconnection believe this sacrifice will somehow save their souls from the darkness of the unknown.
Women of
Sarah Palin is a Trojan horse with breasts who worships at the altar of a male war god. She is ready to fight a holy war to deny the right of a mother to choose whether she should be able to take the responsibility to bring a child into this world. She is ready to pillage the earth, kill wildness, and take us to war. War talk sounds sassy coming from a young sexy woman.
Women of
Beware! Sassy from a pretty woman is cute until you look beneath the surface and see the ugly face of contempt for life as a living inter-related system, until you see the denial of your own personal freedom in the rhetoric and the call to continue sacrificing your sons and daughters for some idea of a god that allows a rationalization for certain people to grow very rich and others to loose their right to a descent place to live and enough food to sustain their body and their children’s bodies.
Right to Life????
First protect Life as it is being lived before you demand that women bring babies they are unable to care for into this difficult warring world.
Monday, July 14, 2008
BREATH: Exploration of a Sacred Lesson
You may ask, “What could the breath possibly have to teach me?” I will tell you that the breath is the path and the way to hold your effort and intention in right relationship with the rhythm and pulses of the vast universe of which we are but one cell.
When we are asked to accomplish a task, we hold assumptions about the learning process and what we must do to accomplish what we set out to do. Most of us are educated to put learning on as a piece of clothing that we acquire. We are not taught to access learning from within ourselves. In fact, the thought that there is inherent wisdom and knowledge written into the living system of our body/being is, in fact, rather alien concept. Though the breath is something that is so close to us that if we stopped we would no longer be living in our body, we rarely acknowledge its primacy. There is an implicit assumption that we must impose a technique to breathe correctly. We seem to have lost the capacity to have a direct relationship with the miracle of our own breath. In beginning such a relationship, our very own breath becomes our greatest teacher.
We think that our stories matter and we keep paying attention to our stories. Our stories embody our belief systems. Our belief systems create the containers of the fluid energy of life. The atmosphere of these shapes in turn reinforces our stories, which in turn creates our lives. We forget that we are choosing the stories we want to make real. If a particular story is dysfunctional and does not see us expressing a healthy and vital life, we must understand the technology which will allow us to go underneath the story to the basic fact of our life and consciously choose to rewrite the story we want to create.
We bring our attention to the breath by activating our senses to the body as it is being breathed. We begin to know our body as present moment breathing aliveness that is constantly pulsing like the waves of the ocean. Once we give our attention back to the present moment experience of the breathing body we gain access to choose to step out of the old stories of the reactive mind and create new stories that place us in a universe that allows us to grow and learn and be in positive relationship with everything.
With the breath as the focus of identity, we become a fluid system. We bring our conscious awareness on the breath. The breath is breathing through the whole body. The quieter we become, the deeper is our capacity to listen to deeper and deeper levels of the breath. Not only are the lungs breathing, but also every cell in the body is breathing. The skin is breathing. We are totally interconnected to everything in every breath to the space we are living in and that space in turn touches everything
In aligning our consciousness with the pulse of the breath as what identifies us, we finally rest ourselves in the living pulse of the rhythm of our unique life force. Your breath is your portal to come back to a state of innocence. Though your breath, you can access the technology of how you are creating yourself in the present moment.
When we are asked to accomplish a task, we hold assumptions about the learning process and what we must do to accomplish what we set out to do. Most of us are educated to put learning on as a piece of clothing that we acquire. We are not taught to access learning from within ourselves. In fact, the thought that there is inherent wisdom and knowledge written into the living system of our body/being is, in fact, rather alien concept. Though the breath is something that is so close to us that if we stopped we would no longer be living in our body, we rarely acknowledge its primacy. There is an implicit assumption that we must impose a technique to breathe correctly. We seem to have lost the capacity to have a direct relationship with the miracle of our own breath. In beginning such a relationship, our very own breath becomes our greatest teacher.
We think that our stories matter and we keep paying attention to our stories. Our stories embody our belief systems. Our belief systems create the containers of the fluid energy of life. The atmosphere of these shapes in turn reinforces our stories, which in turn creates our lives. We forget that we are choosing the stories we want to make real. If a particular story is dysfunctional and does not see us expressing a healthy and vital life, we must understand the technology which will allow us to go underneath the story to the basic fact of our life and consciously choose to rewrite the story we want to create.
We bring our attention to the breath by activating our senses to the body as it is being breathed. We begin to know our body as present moment breathing aliveness that is constantly pulsing like the waves of the ocean. Once we give our attention back to the present moment experience of the breathing body we gain access to choose to step out of the old stories of the reactive mind and create new stories that place us in a universe that allows us to grow and learn and be in positive relationship with everything.
With the breath as the focus of identity, we become a fluid system. We bring our conscious awareness on the breath. The breath is breathing through the whole body. The quieter we become, the deeper is our capacity to listen to deeper and deeper levels of the breath. Not only are the lungs breathing, but also every cell in the body is breathing. The skin is breathing. We are totally interconnected to everything in every breath to the space we are living in and that space in turn touches everything
In aligning our consciousness with the pulse of the breath as what identifies us, we finally rest ourselves in the living pulse of the rhythm of our unique life force. Your breath is your portal to come back to a state of innocence. Though your breath, you can access the technology of how you are creating yourself in the present moment.
Innocence and beginner’s mind: The Portal to Beauty
Innocence and beginner’s mind: The Portal to Beauty
The experience of the breath will allow you to enter the garden of your own being. It is very easy to miss beauty. We look everywhere for beauty but right in front of our noses.
To witness the miraculous means to dissolve the blinders to the very fact of your own existence. I wonder how it is that people take their own bodies for granted. There is not a human being on this planet that can express the intelligence and beauty and power of the very body they are using to examine the world. There is an implicit assumption that we must do something to improve upon what has already been given.
The very fact that your body is animated by breath is miraculous. Instead of using mind efforts to control the breath to do it right (the assumption being that it could not possibly be perfect without your conscious mind directing it), take the attitude to learn from the breath. The only effort that is necessary is to direct the consciousness to behold and be in a state of wonder that the breath of life is breathing through you.
When our mind finally stops trying to control our breath and simply witnesses the exquisite refinement and infinite variation and depth of the breath, we have finally woven our minds back into a relationship of innocence with the present moment.
Innocence is certainly the domain of the child, but it is not the child about which we are speaking. While children have the quality of innocence, so does every expression of the natural world. We are apart of the natural world except that we hold ourselves apart in the way we structure our reality in our conscious mind.
It is the adult human mind that must reawaken to the sacred in all things. The most primary place we can reawaken is the breath. It is a simple shift of attention to come back to the breathing pulse that is with us from birth to death. It is alien to surrender ourselves to something that is so close to us.
When I shift and hold the primacy of my breath in my consciousness, I am immediately taken out of the noise of my mind into the unfolding present. Conversely, when I unconsciously give my attention to the virtual thinking reality of my mind, my intellect, I place myself in a two dimensional universe in which I am no longer in the present. From the thinking mind, I am either in the past or the future where I have no control to creatively interface with the present moment. We become victims of our future/past story, we have removed ourselves from the possibility of our true creative potential which only lives in the present moment. Our relationship with our breath is our primary access to the present moment.
In the present moment I am breathing, connected to all things, created by the divine will, which has created all things. We are all divinity breathing itself into existence. Everything and everyone is miraculous and wonderful. Everything comes from the activation of the breath of divine principle.
Only in so far as we are lost in the dark stories of our two-dimensional thinking, outside the reality of innocence and wonder, will we see the Other as enemy. We can only see the Other as enemy if we cut ourselves from wonder, if we have made our own innocence—the sacredness of our own body—an enemy. We do this when we hold our mind outside of our aliveness and then fiercely and desperately attempt to control life. It is a natural response to tighten our efforts to control life if we have lost trust, because we are out of contact with the higher organizing principle of the oneness of all being.
As soon as we correct our relationship with life and allow life to breathe us into the present moment, we can experience the wonder this creation. Immediately, the need to manipulate and control others falls away and there opens a space for the heart to soften. The heart is the direct connection to direct knowing of the interconnectedness of all being.
The experience of the breath will allow you to enter the garden of your own being. It is very easy to miss beauty. We look everywhere for beauty but right in front of our noses.
To witness the miraculous means to dissolve the blinders to the very fact of your own existence. I wonder how it is that people take their own bodies for granted. There is not a human being on this planet that can express the intelligence and beauty and power of the very body they are using to examine the world. There is an implicit assumption that we must do something to improve upon what has already been given.
The very fact that your body is animated by breath is miraculous. Instead of using mind efforts to control the breath to do it right (the assumption being that it could not possibly be perfect without your conscious mind directing it), take the attitude to learn from the breath. The only effort that is necessary is to direct the consciousness to behold and be in a state of wonder that the breath of life is breathing through you.
When our mind finally stops trying to control our breath and simply witnesses the exquisite refinement and infinite variation and depth of the breath, we have finally woven our minds back into a relationship of innocence with the present moment.
Innocence is certainly the domain of the child, but it is not the child about which we are speaking. While children have the quality of innocence, so does every expression of the natural world. We are apart of the natural world except that we hold ourselves apart in the way we structure our reality in our conscious mind.
It is the adult human mind that must reawaken to the sacred in all things. The most primary place we can reawaken is the breath. It is a simple shift of attention to come back to the breathing pulse that is with us from birth to death. It is alien to surrender ourselves to something that is so close to us.
When I shift and hold the primacy of my breath in my consciousness, I am immediately taken out of the noise of my mind into the unfolding present. Conversely, when I unconsciously give my attention to the virtual thinking reality of my mind, my intellect, I place myself in a two dimensional universe in which I am no longer in the present. From the thinking mind, I am either in the past or the future where I have no control to creatively interface with the present moment. We become victims of our future/past story, we have removed ourselves from the possibility of our true creative potential which only lives in the present moment. Our relationship with our breath is our primary access to the present moment.
In the present moment I am breathing, connected to all things, created by the divine will, which has created all things. We are all divinity breathing itself into existence. Everything and everyone is miraculous and wonderful. Everything comes from the activation of the breath of divine principle.
Only in so far as we are lost in the dark stories of our two-dimensional thinking, outside the reality of innocence and wonder, will we see the Other as enemy. We can only see the Other as enemy if we cut ourselves from wonder, if we have made our own innocence—the sacredness of our own body—an enemy. We do this when we hold our mind outside of our aliveness and then fiercely and desperately attempt to control life. It is a natural response to tighten our efforts to control life if we have lost trust, because we are out of contact with the higher organizing principle of the oneness of all being.
As soon as we correct our relationship with life and allow life to breathe us into the present moment, we can experience the wonder this creation. Immediately, the need to manipulate and control others falls away and there opens a space for the heart to soften. The heart is the direct connection to direct knowing of the interconnectedness of all being.
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