2010.05.13 19:00 - Call Me By True Names

The Guardian for this meeting was Paradise Tennant. The comments are by Stevenaia, Bleu, Calvino, Lucinda

Paradise Tennant: hiya steve
Paradise Tennant: gtsy
stevenaia Michinaga: smiles, rezzing
stevenaia Michinaga: awww, the pillows finally arrive
Bleu Oleander: hi Paradise, Steve
Paradise Tennant: hiya bleu
stevenaia Michinaga: I was just reading a 1:00 session that lasted long enough for me to catch the tail end of when I woke up at 5 am, I had ttally forgot I was there
Paradise Tennant: gtsy
stevenaia Michinaga: hello Bleu
stevenaia Michinaga: reading it was like remembering something lost
stevenaia Michinaga: like a dream
Paradise Tennant: hmm
Paradise Tennant: which one was that
stevenaia Michinaga: http://playasbeing.wik.is/Chat_Logs/...s_In_The_Rough
stevenaia Michinaga: it as the one posted today
stevenaia Michinaga: from may 1
stevenaia Michinaga: a very long session
Paradise Tennant: yes indeed
stevenaia Michinaga: I just came in at the end and extended it
Paradise Tennant: smiles
stevenaia Michinaga: love the fluid nature of these conversations
Paradise Tennant: yes they are like ambling walks
Paradise Tennant: smiles
stevenaia Michinaga: yet they alway find something personal that speaks to you
stevenaia Michinaga: or... me
stevenaia Michinaga: :)
Bleu Oleander: or me
Paradise Tennant: well always goes back to the we are one thing ..think :)
Paradise Tennant: *thing
Paradise Tennant: smiles
stevenaia Michinaga: we are the one?
Paradise Tennant: reminds me of a poem .. call me by my true names
stevenaia Michinaga: my cat seem to like this time of the day, he has his head on my left arm resting between me and the keyboard
stevenaia Michinaga: hmmm, paradise crash?
Bleu Oleander: i think so
--BELL--
stevenaia Michinaga: how are you Bleu?
Bleu Oleander: pretty good thanks
Bleu Oleander: you?
Bleu Oleander: been out of touch while we were travelling
stevenaia Michinaga: thing are quiet lately
stevenaia Michinaga: traveling any place inspiring?
Bleu Oleander: we took our group to NYC and Princeton
Bleu Oleander: we go to NYC every year
stevenaia Michinaga: group?
Bleu Oleander: yes, our arts and cultural salon group
stevenaia Michinaga: nice
stevenaia Michinaga: I live close to nYC, go there often
Bleu Oleander: do you? where?
stevenaia Michinaga: actually going there Monday
Bleu Oleander: how nice
stevenaia Michinaga: there is a contemorary funiture show there
stevenaia Michinaga: I have friends who show
Bleu Oleander: sounds fun
Bleu Oleander: hey Paradise wb
stevenaia Michinaga: a day of endless and refreshingly now furniture
stevenaia Michinaga: hello, wb paradise
Paradise Tennant: smiles we are having an electrical storm ..and my computer just shut itself down
Paradise Tennant:

Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh

stevenaia Michinaga: it suggets t me that great pain and sufffering can being one to a greater sence of compassion... yet I hope that is not the only path to greater compassion
Calvino Rabeni: It's good to have simple, ordinary "ways"
Paradise Tennant: smiles there has to be a short cut that involves .. ice cream .. or chocolate :)
Calvino Rabeni: that people can do in little ways in daily life
stevenaia Michinaga: laughs
Calvino Rabeni: You could invent one Paradise, of that I am sure :)
Paradise Tennant: lol
Paradise Tennant: smiles I think you are on to something .. I knew my life had a purpose :)
Calvino Rabeni: :)
Calvino Rabeni: "The way of the ordinary person"
--BELL--
Paradise Tennant: yes
Calvino Rabeni: A friend of mine just finished a book on this topic - communicating across social divides, with compassion and understanding - http://www.amazon.com/Communicating-...3804028&sr=8-1
Calvino Rabeni: It's kind of for American liberals, but I think, has good ideas
Calvino Rabeni: I like the idea to be more specific about how to put that stuff in practice
Calvino Rabeni: because it'
Calvino Rabeni: is so easy to get sidetracked !
Calvino Rabeni: I have found
Paradise Tennant: smiles yes
Paradise Tennant: almost a function of our conditon .. being sidetracked
stevenaia Michinaga: quite the title.. and topic
Calvino Rabeni: Not be ing sidetracked - takes some kind of - well, what does it take?
Bleu Oleander: sounds interesting!
stevenaia Michinaga: focus?
Calvino Rabeni: Self knowledge, will, I was thinking - but those are pretty abstract
Calvino Rabeni: I think, maybe a lot of people have all these hot-button issues
Calvino Rabeni: and some emotional experience is needed
Calvino Rabeni: to get through them without being triggered
Calvino Rabeni: but it doesn't seem something one can just decide to do or be told how to do
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Calvino Rabeni: It might require dropping big emotional attachements
Calvino Rabeni: And finding new positives to replace them
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Paradise Tennant: yes
Calvino Rabeni: Can't just say - hey, have a better attitude :)
stevenaia Michinaga: it can be a choice
stevenaia Michinaga: if your eyes are open
Calvino Rabeni: If a choice, it could have emotional consequences to walk that path
Calvino Rabeni: Even some kind of conscious suffering for a time
stevenaia Michinaga: the choise to let go of something
stevenaia Michinaga: and like you said , repalce it with something positive
Calvino Rabeni: THe first thing to let go - are often the defenses, and if that happens, then comes the pain
Calvino Rabeni: maybe a healing crisis
Calvino Rabeni: some kind of drama?
stevenaia Michinaga: yes, your own drama, but once you recognize that, you can drop it
Calvino Rabeni: What of the suffering of others, opening to that?
Calvino Rabeni: How to drop the fear of it without discounting its reality ?
stevenaia Michinaga: is fear real
Calvino Rabeni: And I think, one discovers something like "all in it together"
stevenaia Michinaga: or drama
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, there are things in the world happening, to which fear is one kind of appropriate response, or grief
Calvino Rabeni: or anger
Paradise Tennant: blinks
Paradise Tennant: or blinking
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Calvino Rabeni: Can't count on any "bypass" for that, I'm afraid
Paradise Tennant: letting go ..usually means letting go of the ego .. and with the drama
Paradise Tennant: no ?
Paradise Tennant: well in one version anyways
Paradise Tennant: lots of thing to let go of
Paradise Tennant: *things
Calvino Rabeni: The earlier quote:
Calvino Rabeni: My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Paradise Tennant: lovely
Calvino Rabeni: It seems an embracing of it, not a "hey forget it, it is not real"
Calvino Rabeni: So maybe it isn't really real in some ultimate sense
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: but it's real enough to get involved with it - I think the real stuff seems appropriate to people -
Calvino Rabeni: Maybe there are some "phony" drama - we create just to keep our emotional capacities alive?
stevenaia Michinaga: embracing fear is one way of overcoming fear
Calvino Rabeni: So we don't go numb or become the robots
Paradise Tennant: hmm
Paradise Tennant: mostly drama reinforces the me ... so it is usually the phony part I suspect :)
stevenaia Michinaga: yes, but drama is usually a show for someone else
Calvino Rabeni: Maybe the universe really is a dramatic place :)
stevenaia Michinaga: if we make it so
Calvino Rabeni: Have you felt a difference between phony emotions and some other more "real" experiences?
Paradise Tennant: sometimes wonder if our rl is not a video game for some grander awareness that gets bored easily
Calvino Rabeni: The difference is, the second ones are not fantasies, they are a relationship with the world that celebrates our connection with it
Calvino Rabeni: I'd choose not to think, God is some bored teen-ager :)
Calvino Rabeni: But - maybe it is true !
Paradise Tennant: god does not play dice ?
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Paradise Tennant: could be ..with a slight overbite .. droopy pants and a messy bedroom filled with crinkled candy bar wrappers :)
Paradise Tennant: god the teenager :)
Calvino Rabeni: Well if reality has infiinte possibilities, or at least a vastness of them, what we choose to picture it as about, is a reflection of self
Paradise Tennant: lol
Paradise Tennant: smiles very broadly
Calvino Rabeni: Like - hey of all the things possible about reality, these are the ones I fear / hope for / choose to think about
Paradise Tennant: looks around ..not a candy wrapper in sight though :) smiles
stevenaia Michinaga: are you looking in the bedroom?
Paradise Tennant: lol
Paradise Tennant: hmm best not look under the bed !
Calvino Rabeni: Humans are a young, teenager species, I think I could agree with that assessment
Calvino Rabeni: There's no other explanation :)
Calvino Rabeni: Hello Lucinda !
Paradise Tennant: hiya lucinda gtsy :)
Bleu Oleander: hi Lucinda
stevenaia Michinaga: hello Lucinda
Lucinda Lavender: Hallo
Calvino Rabeni: No one has invented in SL, the main sources of trash, like wrappers - well unless you look in the inventory
Bleu Oleander: :)
Paradise Tennant: well we could pretend we are sitting at a cosmic cafe and just make up stories to fit what we happen to see .. to a certain extent .. it is what we do best :)
Calvino Rabeni: sure true
Calvino Rabeni: We are *so* excellent at that]
Paradise Tennant: nope not true was on mars .here and it was llittered with coke cans and general human brick a brac :)
stevenaia Michinaga: wb
Paradise Tennant: very life like
--BELL--
Lucinda Lavender: I see by your outfits that you all have been playing...
Calvino Rabeni: No objections to some shape shifting around here :)
stevenaia Michinaga: nope
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Lucinda Lavender: :)
stevenaia Michinaga: I must depart, enjoy the rest of the evening
Paradise Tennant: thanks steve namaste :)
Bleu Oleander: nite Steve
stevenaia Michinaga: night
Lucinda Lavender: Lucinda waves...
Calvino Rabeni: Bye
Calvino Rabeni: I like the trademark exit, it's sharp
Paradise Tennant: I should scoot too .. early morning .. leaves with only the slight crinkling .. of the odd candy wrapper :) and a big wave
Paradise Tennant: namaste all and thank you :)
Calvino Rabeni: _/!\_
Bleu Oleander: bye P
Bleu Oleander: bye everyone
Lucinda Lavender: bye...
Calvino Rabeni: Actually, I'm going to go get my groove on in RL :)
Bleu Oleander: cu
Calvino Rabeni: How've you been Lucinda?
Lucinda Lavender: pretty good...made two pizzas
Calvino Rabeni: GTSY Lucinda, take care
Lucinda Lavender: what does that mean?
Lucinda Lavender: OH I get it now...
Calvino Rabeni: Net blab - Good To See You :)
Lucinda Lavender: :)
Calvino Rabeni: BFN as they say
Lucinda Lavender: bfn...