Prem Rawat Coming to Europe
If you find yourself in Europe between the dates of May 27th and June 24th, you are in the right place at the right time. Prem Rawat will be speaking at events in the following cities:
May 27 -- Barcelona
May 31 -- Munich
June 10 - Madrid
June 13 - Porto
June 24 - Copenhagen
Other events in Europe are possible. Dates are pending. Admission is free and the events are open to everyone. If you would like to request an invitation, click here.
Here's what people in my town of Woodstock, NY, had to say about seeing Prem Rawat for the first time.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2012Taking the Fifth
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2012Puppet-Ji On Non-Attachment
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April 25, 2012
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2012This Thirst
There is an aching deep within my heart
that cannot be explained.
It wakes me in the middle of the night
and write these lines,
a kind of fishing in a great sea
I cannot find by day.
This escapade
is not the search for something new,
it is not the need to find.
More it is the being pulled
by an unseen moon,
how small birds, when days get cold,
make their way across dark skies,
how a feather falls to earth
and a child, finding it, looks up,
why dogs pace back and forth
before a door
as their master turns for home.
Ah, this restlessness,
this thirst,
this ache,
this silent undertow inside
that takes me back
to the hidden spring
where lions come to drink
and snakes,
why birds sing when they are all alone,
and the long ride home on an empty train
often feels like an arrival.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:50 PM | Comments (2)
April 19, 2012Reading Between the Lines
I just read my entire book of poetry
and was amazed to discover
that what I wanted to say
actually never made it to the page.
Odd.
I thought I had written it down.
I even have memories of it,
me late at night in my room,
with only the moon
and a few wolves howling inside me.
But I couldn't it find it anywhere.
Oh sure, there were lines,
but they were
more like the ones you find in a bank,
lines that barely moved,
filled with fidgeting people
waiting to get something.
I think someone must have stolen it
when I was out to lunch.
The good lines were missing.
They were definitely gone,
though I did find a few
interesting spaces between the lines,
really good spaces,
open spaces,
spaces that seemed as if
they were just about to be filled
with what I really wanted to say.
You know, the good stuff --
like the moment when your child,
thrilled you have just returned home,
runs headlong into your arms.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:40 PM | Comments (2)
April 17, 2012Are You Interested in Attending the Amaroo Event in September?
If you are interested in attending the September 10-14 Amaroo event (Ivory's Rock Conference Centre, Ipswich, Australia), and have learned the techniques of Knowledge, click this link to declare your interest by April 22nd.
The global team who is planning the event wants to know how many people to expect in order to make the right kind of preparations. All the info about registration and costs etc. will be forthcoming within the month, but for now it will really be helpful if you can simply note your interest -- even if you're not 100% sure you can attend.
Thanks! And please forward this posting to any people you know who have learned the techniques of Knowledge, so they also have a chance to respond.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:17 AM | Comments (2)
April 16, 2012Humbled
Does anyone really understand
the work of a Master?
I don't think so.
Even those who say
they love him deeply
are only looking through a pinhole,
a crack in time and space,
tourists peeking
through a very high fence.
Dazed by the light that finds its way through,
they spin endlessly
around the axis of an unexpected ecstasy,
their sudden expression of joy,
over which they have no control,
now witnessed by a few locals
out for a stroll and a smoke
and asking each other just a little too quickly,
why these people are dancing for no reason,
eyes on fire,
their words like painted rocks,
plummeting to the bottom of a very still pond
on a night no one wants to end.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:45 PM | Comments (3)
April 15, 2012The Gospel of This Very Moment
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
Can You Hear It Being Played?
I have something to say to you
and it is this:
This!
This gathering of souls,
this timelessness,
this space.
Nothing else ever happens.
There is nowhere else to go.
Only this!
This!
Every flower, child,
breeze and breath
is saying the same thing:
This! Wake up! Sing!
There is no other possibility
or hope, my friends.
What you call future is a dream,
your well-intentioned scheme
to more thoroughly enjoy
what can only ever happen now.
This!
There is nothing else to do,
nowhere else to go,
no one to come home to,
or if you are, shall we say,
spiritually inclined,
no one to chant OM to.
You see (and you do!) this... is... it!
Just this,
a chance like a leaf on a high branch,
to come undone, flutter down, land,
and there, at the root, find rest.
Let it fall to the place it can fall no further from!
Live there!
And when, as you might, finally decide to speak,
announce your discovery of pure and perfect presence,
you will be struck dumb,
stunned like a child just before tears,
mute, like someone upon whose shoulder a butterfly has come.
Moved, but unmoving.
Proof, but unable to offer any.
The perfect fool.
It is into this space that music enters.
It is into this space that hearts become drums
and we hear -- do not listen to -- but hear... music!
Can you hear the molecules and the atoms within,
the sound which ties us to God,
that like an identical twin
knows exactly what we want to say?
It is into this space that music is made.
Can you hear it being played?
Joe and Eddie
Eversound
Kim O'Leary
Geoff Bridgford
Daya Rawat
Tim Hain
Fuzzbee Morse
Stuart Hoffman
Cara Tower
John Adorney
Steve McPeters
Diane Arkenstone
Eliza Gilkyson
Marc Black
Playing for Change
Danny Ellis
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:12 AM | Comments (2)
April 13, 2012Where Gratitude Comes From
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2012Aspiration is Beautiful
More
Design: Birger Pohl
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April 11, 2012Great Eversound Concert on April 14th
Catch Daya Rawat, John Adorney, and a host of other awesome musicians at Eversound's 15th anniversary concert celebration at the Luke Theater in Santa Barbara, CA on April 14th.
Live concert on 4/14
More John Adorney
Eversound
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:07 PM | Comments (1)
A Cellular Feeling
Does this ever happen to you? You have some extra time... in a cab... at the airport... or in between appointments. You pull out your cell phone, click on your contact list, and scroll.
You are looking for someone to call.
You know all the names on the list quite well. Some are your friends. Some are your clients. Some are your family. But you don't see the name of anyone you want to call at that moment.
You really want to call someone, but their name is not on the list. You scroll up. You scroll down.
You wonder who it is you really want to call.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2012Dare to Be Different
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April 09, 2012The One For Whom It All Makes Sense
I have written a thousand poems for you
that have never left my room.
They fill the pages of notebooks
stacked high on a shelf
no one can reach.
Orphans they are, beggars
afraid they are not
noble enough for the King,
would never make it
past the guards.
I make a vain attempt
to dress them up,
disguise their ridiculous origins,
but still they smell bad.
Even so, there are times, late at night,
when the world has shut down and they think I'm asleep,
I can almost hear them talking to each other,
conjuring ways to make it to your court.
Oh, the arguments they have!
The brawls!
The lunatic moments of staking their ground.
Some of them actually believe
that all they need is a shower and a shave.
Others, unsure of who they are
or might have been,
insist on practicing, all night long,
their perfect way of greeting you.
Of course, there is much to be said
for these backroom bards,
these arm wrestling vagrants from another world.
Indeed, if I was dead,
my slightly deaf biographer, after paying his respects
to my dear, sweet wife,
would borrow them just long enough
to search for pearls,
find the perfect turn of phrase,
the sudden storm of brilliance
even my harshest critics would have to praise.
He'd think of clever little titles for the tome,
describing, in his mournfully halting way,
the "man who left his muse too soon"
or some such thing
that might make you wonder
why I never gave these poems to you --
the one for whom it all makes sense
even when it doesn't.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:29 PM | Comments (1)
Who Are You?
"Who are you? Are you the sum of all your thoughts? Are you the sum of all your actions? Are you the sum of what other people think about you? Who are you? Who, exactly, are you?"
- Prem Rawat, Las Palmas, Spain, 3/18/12
More
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2012I Used to Write Love Poems
I used to write love poems,
now I collect them --
like small shells on a beach
only the locals know about.
There is nothing inside them.
They are empty.
But when you put your ear
to their opening
and really listen,
you can hear the ocean.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
The Fling
Last night
I printed out
all of my poetry,
put it in a plastic bag,
and crawled out my bedroom window
to the roof.
There I stood beneath the full moon,
grabbed everything I could,
and flung 40 years of words to the sky.
Many white pages,
like plucked wings of a mythical bird,
flapped and fluttered to the ground,
the first complaint,
I imagine,
of the man who comes
tomorrow morning to mow the lawn.
More (click and scroll)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:51 AM | Comments (1)
April 07, 2012The Stillness After Maharaji Speaks
After great performers come to the end of a performance, it is not uncommon for grateful audiences to give them a standing ovation. They clap, they cheer, they focus all their attention on the one who has just opened the door to magnificence. Think Pavarotti. Think Martin Luther King. Think anyone you've ever stood your ground for and loved.
What I find amazing is this is how Maharaji's presentations begin.
Before he utters a single word, audiences are on their feet, applauding. And when he's done? Pin drop silence.
Somehow, through his own unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight, he finds a way to bring everyone to a place of perfect stillness, back to the very beginning, where there is nothing left to do, but be.
When Maharaji's done speaking, I find myself barely able to move. I am stunned, pinned to the back of my chair by the invisible arrow of love. All dramas in my life disappear and there is no "me" left to applaud the end of the show.
What remains is a feeling.
Sitting in the afterglow of this man's communication of truth is a complete and total joy. Oh yes, I know I must move from my seat eventually. Oh yes, I know I will soon be walking and talking and asking someone to pass me the grated parmesan in that great little Italian restaurant just down the road, but now -- here in this sacred moment after he speaks -- nothing else matters.
I close my eyes and breathe. Then I open my eyes again.
I see people sitting. I see people standing. I see people moving toward the stage, wanting to linger just a little bit longer in this extraordinary state of arrival.
Some walk in silence toward the exits, eyes down, not wanting anyone or anything to distract them from the deepest of feelings welling up within them far beyond time.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2012The Holiest of Prayers
Standing on the edge
of this moment's infinity,
aware of only the the naked fact
that I have yet to learn
a single thing about love,
I give up once again
and turn my self in to the invisible
police of men gone missing,
no one quite sure
if I have been kidnapped
or escaped.
Maybe this is why
I bring you tea tonight, in silence,
the holiest of prayers no one will ever hear.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:19 PM | Comments (2)
There Is a Poem I Will Write One Day
There is a poem
I will write one day
(but this isn't it)
that will describe,
without a wasted word,
what my heart
perfectly understood
the moment I first met you.
Like a still pond
on a clear day,
you will be able to see
your face in it
and, if you are thirsty,
drink.
What you will see there
will delight you, astound, amaze.
So much so, you may end up
removing all the mirrors from your house
or singing all night long.
Yes, I know I am writing about a poem that is not yet written
but so what?
Don't people speak of a God they've never seen?
Trust me.
The poem I speak of is coming soon,
Or, if not soon,
then later,
or if not later,
I guess this poem will have to do.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:20 PM | Comments (2)
April 05, 2012What Is This Strange Forgetting?
What is this strange forgetting
that has taken hold of me lately --
this being unable to remember
that everything is
sacred, holy, and alive?
The absence of you, my Friend,
surely has something to do with it.
Your being gone has opened
a small hole in me,
a pinprick,
the kind blood brothers make,
but you are nowhere in sight.
Where are you?
Something is leaving me slowly,
there's a leak I cannot see.
A day's worth amounts to nothing,
a week's would barely fill a thimble,
but it's been months now without you
and I am starting to notice,
lurking like a stranger in my own shadow
and sleeping just a little too long.
Hey! I've got an idea!
Why don't you cross the universe today,
take a left at Alpha Centuri
and show up unannounced at my door.
That would be very cool,
I can't wait to see
the looks on the faces of my friends
who have been so diligently reminding me,
these past few days,
that you are already here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:05 PM | Comments (7)
April 03, 2012This Longing, This Ache
This longing, this ache,
this pulsing
of the deepest
part of who you are
is the reason why you're here.
Do not confuse it with desire.
Desire is wanting
what you don't have.
Longing is wanting
what you do.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:19 AM | Comments (2)
April 01, 2012A Sign of The Times
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:04 AM | Comments (0)
