A poster for a Thai restaurant in Amsterdam reminded me of a story by swami Rama:

“I once met a swami who could produce fire from his mouth. The flame would shoot out several feet. I tested him to see if the phenomenon was authentic. I asked him to wash out his mouth, to be sure he was not secreting something like phosphorus in it. I also had my friends examine him. He seemed genuine, so I concluded, “This man must be definitely more advanced than my master.”

This is a Flickr test. Hey that’s nice, now I can directly post Flickr photo’s from myself and other people to my blog here. Very cool indeed.

Stillife Originally uploaded by langenberg.

Every morning I close my eyes and visualize a color.
Do this every day and you’ll see that each day
has it’s own color.

In the fikr – in what rhythm you began, you should continue to breathe. By losing the rhythm much is lost. Music is the miniature of life’s harmony in sound in a concentrated sense. The person who has no rhythm physically cannot walk well; he often stumbles. The breath, the speech, the step, all have rhythm. The person who has no rhythm in his emotions falls easily into a spell, such as laughter, or crying, or anger, or fear. We should practice rhythm in our lives, so that we may not be so patient and yielding that everybody takes the best of us, nor so carried away by our enthusiasm and frankness that we say things that are undesirable in the world, nor so meek and mild that we fall into flattery, timidity and cowardice. Then, by and by, we may understand the rhythm of emotions, the rhythm of thoughts, then the rhythm of feeling. Then a person comes into relation with the inner rhythm which is the true meaning of the world.” Hazrat Iniyat Khan

Out today: “Push the Button” The Chemical Brothers

Before I started doing yoga I read Krishnamurti’s texts. Now I don’t know much about his spiritual practice or any tradition he belonged to. Neither do I know about the method he stood for. I like how he describes the scenery before moving on into the story he wants to tell:
“The Moon was just coming out of the sea into a valley of clouds. The waters were still blue, and Orion was faintly visible in the pale silver sky. The white waves were all along the shore, and the fishermen’s huts, square, neat and dark against the white sands, were close to the water. The walls of these huts were made of bamboo, and the roofs were thatched with palm leaves laid one on top of another, sloping downward so that the heavy rains couldn’t come inside. Completely round and full, the moon was making a path of light on the moving waters, and it was huge – you couldn’t have held it in your arms. Rising above the valley of clouds, it had the heavens to itself. The sound of the sea was unceasing, and yet there was great silence.

You never remain with any feeling, pure and simple, but always surround it with the paraphernalia of words. The word distorts it; thought, whirling around it, throws it into shadow, overpowers it with mountainous fears and longings. You never remain with a feeling, and with nothing else: with hate, or with that strange feeling of beauty….”

Aloneness Beyond Loneliness” from “Commentaries on Living”