Focus Stacking

Interest in ‘focus stacking’ is increasing rapidly. In this short article, I would like to suggest some reasons why this might be. For those of you unfamiliar with focus stacking, let’s make clear what it is.

Just as exposure bracketing and HDR (High Dynamic Range) techniques, where a number of photos are taken at different exposures and then seamlessly combined into a final photograph are popular, so focus stacking takes a series of single photos of an object each taken at a slightly different focus points and combines these photos seamlessly into a final photo that represents the object with everything in focus, as if it naturally had greater depth of field (DOF). This requires special software to align the series of photo­graphs and merge them into a single resulting image.

Focus Stacking is essentially ‘focus bracketing’ and the result is a photo where everything (or more than you might expect) appears to be in focus as opposed to the traditional photograph where there is only a single plane of focus and anything not on the plane is to some degree out of focus, however slightly. The resulting stacked photo (from combining the images at different focal distances) can be remarkable, and ad­vances in focus-stacking software like Zerene Stacker, Helicon Focus, Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 are perfecting this technique.

What motivates me in nature photography is probably a little unusual and I will sketch it out so that you know where I am coming from. I was a naturalist from the time I was six-years old until I discovered how beauti­ful women are at the age of say sixteen. So I kind of segued out of nature study when I was around seven­teen. We can perhaps all agree that nature is serene and beautiful but I am not as sure that all of us are aware that nature is also fierce, a very harsh mistress.

I find it hard to look nature in the eye. And I usually blink first, because she never blinks. There is some tough love there. And while I loved nature, as I grew older, I also gradually shied away from looking directly at the harder parts. I find the same problem with Billie Holliday recordings, my favorite woman singer. Even though I love her singing, I am not always willing to put myself through the emotions she brings out in her voice. I can’t go there without paying the price of my full attention and all that entails.

A series of blogs published on Facebook during part of 2014.

I have been publishing a yearly lunar calendar since 1969, along with my brother Stephen, some 45 years. It was first published by Circle Books, then for many years by the Circle Books and the AFA (American Federation of Astrologers) together, and recently by Matrix Software, a company I founded, in e-book format.

The Chinese, Indian, Tibetan, and other Asian countries also have lunar calendars, but they are more complex than their western versions. For one, where here in the west we may chronicle the four quarters (sometimes eight phases) of the moon, the Asians record 30 lunar phase times each month.

Tibetan practice calendars are based on precise lunar events – the changing relationship of the Moon relative to the Sun each month. If you are using this calendar for your personal practice, there should be no problem. However, there are certain problems with designing a practice calendar for groups. Let me explain:

A lunar event (such as the Full Moon) happened at 2:30 AM in Rumtek, Sikkim on January 1st, 1991. The same event (same moment in time) simultaneously occurred at 4:00 PM of December 31, 1990 for those living at KTD Monastery in New York. Rumtek is 10.5 hours ahead of KTD. Those in Rumtek would be celebrating the event at a different time zone, a different day and, in this case, a different year! Still the moment for all would be the same. This is due to the fact that we have different time zones around to world. The point of this is that, while we can list the exact time for any person to start a lunar day, it is hard to make a general calendar that will serve all groups and time zones.

Over the forty years or so that I have been studying astrology, I have been particularly interested in whatever relates to the space directly surrounding me, my local area. I developed an astrological technique in the early 1970s that is now used by astrologers all over the world, called “Local Space.” Local Space is primarily used today as a relocation technique, but I always used it for much more than that in counselling.

So it should come as no surprise that I am fascinated by the concept in Tibetan astrology of the Sa-Dak, the spirits that surround and protect a particular place and land, the lords of the land - Earth Lords. Particularly, in these times in which so much wide-scale destruction to nature and the land has taken place, one cannot but wonder about the consequences. In general, modern society has adopted as a world view the very materialistic concept that land and sea are just dirt and water, so many atoms, and have in themselves no innate essence or “soul.” But the Tibetans and the Chinese don't feel this way at all.

Tibet, often called the spiritual and physical "roof of the world," has been the source of great inspiration to Westerners for over two centuries. Part of this attraction may be due to the fact that Tibetan astrology is inextricably bound to Tibetan Buddhism. With few exceptions, the primary practicing astrologers in Tibet have for centuries always been and are today Buddhist monks. The word for astrology in Tibetan is “Tsi,” and astrologers are called Tsi-Pa, those who practice “Tsi.” In Tibet to learn something about astrology is to learn something about the dharma and Buddhism, and usually vice versa. Tibetan Buddhist monks all use astrology.

The sky above us has not changed much in millions of years, but how we see that sky and how much of it we see has changed forever in our lifetimes. A revolution in astronomy has taken place, as astronomers and physicists ventured beyond the visual spectrum and began to see the actual shape and form of the universe. The pinpoint stars that we have been staring at for centuries are literally just the tip of the iceberg, like the eyes in the human body. The shape of the body of the universe itself has now been partially revealed and it is beautiful indeed.

“Here is no 'subtle plane,' but a personal landscape painted in bold and clear strokes and tailor made to fit the psyche of each individual. Here is a world where the modern man is learning to move across the face of this earth in an endless dance of adjustment and tuning of his radix – of his self. Individuals driven in particular directions on a checkerboard world, unable to resist travelling toward a goal that is no particular place on earth so much as it is a direction imprinted within them, the direction of a force or planet, 'There! Where Power hovers,' to use Don Juan's expression.

Feng-shui is as old as ancient history to the Chinese and as new to most of us here in the West as the last decade or so. Amazon.com lists almost 6,000 books on the topic, so there is a growing interest. In China there are dozens of styles and at least a handful of main schools or types of feng-shui. What is feng-shui all about?

StarTypes is life-path astrology, interpreting large-scale planetary patterns in the sky above and charting the dharma or life path of an individual and their primary relationship role down here on earth. And you don‟t have to be an astrologer to understand this. The astrology used here is graphic, an open window into who we are, why we are here, and what on earth we might be good for – our life purpose.

That first trip to Tibet over ten years ago was a life-changing event for me and my family. Being asked by my dharma teacher of many years to stop what I was doing, take a leave from my business, and go to Tibet, all within about a month, was mind boggling to say the least. It turned my life upside down.

Of course we would go. I had asked my teacher for years in every interview if there was anything special he wanted me to do and he always responded that I should just keep on practicing meditation and so on. It had become routine that there was nothing in particular he wanted me to do, and then this: go to Tibet and soon.

This is a book about the meaning of the Moon in the tradition of astrology. Of all the celestial bodies, the Moon is perhaps the one most shrouded in mystery; The Moon is said to somehow be both our mother and our child. This book is about the lunar mysteries. However, the Moon is an integral part of the Earth system and the Earth an integral part of the Sun or solar system. These three bodies are interdependent, so this book is also about the Earth and the Sun, and the Moon-Earth-Sun relationship.

Astrology is all about nodes. Nodes are sensitive points in the natal chart that can be interpreted. Obvious examples of nodes are the Nodes of the Moon. The Ascendant, Midheaven, Vertex and other sensitive horoscope points are nodes. The traditional twelve House Cusps are also nodes. Since most astrologers do not consider latitude when calculating aspects, even aspects are nodes. We may be familiar with the above nodes, but what about planetary nodes? What are they?

My name is Michael Erlewine and I will be your guide through this course on astrology. As for my qualifications, I have been studying astrology for over forty years and, during this time, I have worked as a teacher, a programmer, an author and a counselor. You can read about my background elsewhere in this course, but for now, let's get down to it.

Here is a new way to look at aspects, using the same astrological tools you have always been using. There is nothing new added from outside, just some rearranging of what you already know. When I came across it, I was amazed. All of these years I had been playing with the various aspects, like most astrologers, and then one day they began to fit together in a new way, like pieces in a crossword puzzle. Before I knew it, all of these parts I knew so well came together, and before me was a picture of my own chart I had never seen so clearly. I want to share that technique with you, and it is all about how to use the aspects. This book makes it easy for you to learn to look at aspects in a new light and see for yourself.

I studied my natal astrology chart for years, trying to figure out the puzzle that is "me". I did not then know that there was another way of looking at my astrology, in fact, another complete chart that is a map of my particular dharma path. My discovery of the Dharma Chart was actually a double discovery, because at the very same moment I could read my dharma from a chart, I realized that the traditional chart I had been using all this time was a chart of my karma and not my dharma. All this time I had been trying to read my dharma from my Karma Chart, from the traditional astrological chart.

Perhaps no astrological factor has more different opinions and less agreement among astrologers than the phenomenon of retrograde motion, the fact that from the earth's view all planets appear to move backward in reverse motion through the zodiac, one or more times a year. Expert's opinions range from there being no perceived effect whatsoever when a planet is retrograde, to their being a very dramatic effect. But then, even if an effect is indicated, there is a wide range of declarations as to what that effect might be.

I have been working with the structure of deep-space astrophysics for nearly 44 years.

Astrologer Charles A. Jayne (my close friend) and I were about the only people I am

aware of who were interested in the subject back in the early 1970s. Of course, there

was German Supreme Court Justice (and astrologer) Theodor Landscheidt, whose

every word on the subject is worth reading. Theodore and I became friends later in the

1970s. I sent him one of the first home computers back then, all the way to Germany,

on which he did some of his ground-breaking research .

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men, Couldn't put Humpty together again.

I sometimes like to think of my Self (or Ego) as Mr. Humpty Dumpty, sitting up there high on a wall. And every once in a great while that self of mine has a great fall and is shattered into a million pieces. Only here is where the poem ends for me. Every time my sense of self is shattered I move heaven and earth to put those pieces back together into a coherent self image. I don’t like it when the image of myself is shattered and whatever is beneath it (what if there is nothing at all?) is exposed. Not at all.

Your mileage may vary, but like the turtle who sticks its head back out of his shell, it looks like this recent eclipse of my self is coming to an end. And while there are probably other large solar flares still coming down the road, at least for now, I am starting to recover from the effects of those four giant X-Class flares. I am slowly feeling more like my old self again and some of my interests are even starting to perk up, and they were flat-lined only yesterday. Anyway, I am back (or on the way back) and my self seems to have recovered from its current hiccup and desertion of….well, who would that be? I guess it is me, myself, and I… which were lost track of for a while.

The Sun erupted recently spewing forth a huge burst of plasma into space from the very center of the Sun facing us and it was heading right toward Earth. It is a coronal mass ejection of particles which will funnel in through the north and south magnetic fields of the polar regions on Thursday February 17th through Saturday February 18th. Some have written me asking what this means. Here are some thoughts. This is the beginning (and a strong one) of the coming solar maximum, the peak of an 11-year cycle coming in 2013, the point where the Sun is communicating most with us. And what does it communicate?

The Sun erupted last Sunday spewing forth a huge burst of plasma into space, which is heading right toward Earth. It is a coronal mass ejection of particles which will funnel in through the north and south magnetic fields of the polar regions on Wednesday August 4th, 2010. Some have written me asking what this means. Here are some thoughts. This is the beginning (and a strong one) of the coming solar maximum, the peak of an 11-year cycle, the point where the Sun is communicating most with us. And what does it communicate?

I am going to share with you a powerful teaching. You have heard the first part before, but the second part is something new that I have not shared here before. The idea of not being overly "selfish" is nothing new. We all have been brought up with the self and what to do with it. We are told to be our self and be self-confident, but at the same time we are told not to be selfish or think too much of our self. Either way, we are caught up in the self. Like sticky molasses or a tar baby, the more we struggle with the self, the deeper into it we get stuck, the more attached we become. Remember that attachment does not just mean positive attachment, what we like, but also negative attachment, like when we hate or don't like something. That equally is attachment. The self likes either to get close, back off, or to just ignore.

[ABSTRACT: Are you liberal and future oriented or conservative and rooted in the status quo? Or are you actually in the present, in the here and the now… and by how much? Retrogrades tell this story and can be measured planet by planet. The technique is easy. Find out how to use it.] A quick and accurate way to get a fix on a chart, whether of a person or an event, is to check out the retrogrades, whether the planets are moving backward or forward in the zodiac, in which direction, and how far from the conjunction with the Sun or opposition point for that planet. While retrograde phenomenon may appear complex, it is really quite easy to understand. Here is how to look at them:

What happens to us at these times of solar inundation, whether it be experiencing the full power of a CME (coronal mass ejection), the time around an eclipse, or just the monthly New and Full Moon? While I am sure these events are to some degree personal, my guess is that because the Sun is shared by all of us, how we take these experience is more similar than not. By talking about it a bit here, perhaps more of us can recognize and become aware of what is happening to us at these important times.

Many of you have mentioned that you would like to know how to better experience the

visions that happen around eclipse times. There is a technique, but it is difficult to put

into words. I will give it a try. You let me know if this makes any sense to you. It involves

disappointment.

Disappointment is not something many of us look forward to. Yet it has its place,

particularly in spiritual training, and very much so when it comes to eclipses of the Sun

and the Moon as they relate to their visions.

I would like to talk about what we call "spirituality." The whole concept of spirituality is so confusing in these modern times. Here in America we consider our spirituality as "private," perhaps based on First Amendment rights and, sadly, meditation is lumped into the concept of spirituality. It is considered politically incorrect to ask about someone's spirituality. We don't go there. That is considered personal and private. It would be funny if it did not also have consequences.

Every idea since time immemorial, every invention and book idea, not to mention every last thought came from the mind. By itself that should be enough to point out to us that the mind is a treasure trove, if only we know how to mine it. The Buddhists call the mind the “wish-fulfilling gem,” which is totally telling, if we think about it. And every once in a while, each of us manages to find a good idea or two in the mind. Yet, it seldom occurs to us that the mind is evergreen, and always fertile. And it would seem that few deliberately set about to mine it.

These last couple of months have been busy ones… selling my company, donating my

astrology library, moving all the thousands of tapes of dharma teachings elsewhere, and

clearing out basements and rooms from twenty years of accumulation. Then there is the

retrofitting, first completely reworking the audio studio, and then upgrading the video

studio.

Anyway, I am pretty much done with all of that, so now what? I am asking myself the

same question, about every day. With all of this activity, why do I still feel like someone

turned off the engine?

PDF-1422

Some of you have asked me how I got into my hobby of photography and here it is. It happened in 1957 when I was fifteen-years old. My parents sent me on a trip with a bunch of other kids riding an old school bus across the country. Of course I had never done anything like this before so it was very exciting to even think about much less do it. For one, I was very shy at the time and seldom had left home for anything and suddenly I was riding with a bunch of kids (mostly a little older than me) on a couple of old yellow school buses heading for the west coast, and with a dip into Mexico and then all the way back across Canada. For sure I couldn’t imagine it.

What motivates me in nature photography is probably a little unusual and I will sketch it out so that you know where I am coming from. I was a naturalist from the time I was six-years old until I discovered how beautiful women are at the age of say sixteen. I kind of segued out of nature study when I was around seventeen. We can perhaps all agree that nature is serene and beautiful but I am not as sure that all of us are aware that nature is also fierce and a very harsh mistress.

Through all my early years, despite all the other interests and activities I had going on,

deep within me, there was this search to find my life partner, the woman that I would

love and who possibly could also love me. I am not always that easy to be around.

And I can't forget all those late-night walks around Ann Arbor when I was unable to

sleep, just walking the streets hoping against hope to run into "her." Well, as it turned

out, it wasn't quite that easy. It took time for me to settle down and even be ready for

marriage. Here is my story.

It was in the late 1950s that I really began to pick up on Buddhism, and it was Zen

Buddhism at that. And it all seemed so foreign. Well, not as foreign as the garish colors

and style of the various Hindu religions and deities, which are almost other-worldly, but

foreign enough for me. It is hard to believe that what I felt as foreign was only half-aworld

away. Americans were so cloistered in the 1950s.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s I would hitchhike to New York City often. Back then unless you had some old junker of a car to borrow, you hitchhiked. Heading out of Ann Arbor, the bad places to get stuck hitchhiking were down by the prison in Dundee, Michigan or trying to get around Toledo, Ohio, that sharp left turn. Once you got past those areas, it went pretty smoothly, usually. And we would hang in the Village in New York City.

I can’t seem to control the endless advance of harsh events like the shootings in Connecticut, or is it that we have stopped reporting anything but sensational news? And what can I do about it? Of course I vote, and perhaps that helps some, but I can’t seem to instantly solve all of the problems this old Earth has, much less make much of a dent in the politicians, who are just too deeply embedded in themselves. At the same time I am not happy just coasting on the surface of things while Rome burns, and making no effort. So what can I do to be of use?

Here is a quick look-see at the (mostly) finished studio layout. There is both an audio and video component here, complete with four "live" rooms, a break room, and various storage areas. Still not as neat as I would like, it is now ready for both video and audio recording on a reasonable scale. I will walk you through the rooms.

Some of you have written asking about the Heart Center KKSG, our meditation center here in Big Rapids, Michigan. There are two parts, the actual shrine room, which I will provide some photos of here and the Heart Center Guest House, which I will do another day. What you have here are photos of the main mediation area shrine room. There are two other shrines, but this is the main one.

The 13th Zodiac Sign! And You are Not the Sun Sign You Thought You Were Every ten or fifteen years there is a news alert to the effect that astrology as we know it has changed and we no longer are what we once were or thought we were. Our Sun Sign has changed to the one immediately prior to it or even worse suddenly there is a new Zodiac intruder in the form of a 13th Zodiac sign with the weird name “Ophiuchus” and who wants to be born in a Sun Sign with a name like that?

The most common mantra in the world is the six-syllable "Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ," which is generally pronounced and written "Om Mani Padme Hum." The Tibetans tend to pronounce it "Om Mani Pay-Me Hung," and it exists in many other pronunciations in languages like Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and so on. The first and last syllables, "Om" and "Hum" are interjections with no special meaning in themselves, other than that "Om" is a syllable of affirmation and typically begins many mantras and "Hum" often closes or ends mantras. "Hum" or "Hung" (as the Tibetans pronounce it) is semi-wrathful or at least emphatic, and is often used to destroy negativity or to protect.

It is clear from private messages and emails that more than a few of you are having difficulty with this particular time period, blame it on the Full Moon, the eclipse, the Mars-Pluto conjunction, or whatever. Let’s put the reason why this is happening aside for the moment, because whatever we can agree is (or is not) the indicator (the significator), we still have to cope with the present moment, and for some of you I understand it has been a little rough.

There is no doubt I love flowers and green plants, just look at what I photograph. Did I ever tell you about when I went into the green plant business and ended up managing greenhouses in Florida with 19,000 Square feet of glass? Well, that happened. I will try to make this brief. I met my wife-to-be Margaret in March of 1971. We were married about three months later on July 3rd. Being impulsive romantically, I ended up proposing to Margaret in the alley behind the Fifth Forum Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We were coming out the back door after watching a movie. I wonder what that movie was? I am sure Margaret will remember.

[Note: Most of you know I have worked with Tibetan teachers for some 36 years or so, but I have had other teachers before that, and one incredible teacher that I will tell you about here, Andrew Gunn McIver, who literally changed my life. I warn you bored-easily ones to skip this post as I am going to wax somewhat poetic when I feel like it and I don’t want to disturb your equilibrium. You have been warned.] One morning, sometimes in 1967 I believe, I met an old man on the Diagonal of the U. of M. campus who looked a lot like the writer Bernard Shaw. This meeting was to change my life forever. Here is a poetic account of that meeting written many years ago that, while perhaps over the top, will give you at least a flavor of what that meeting was like. You were warned of this above, so don’t complain:

I am not very religious (and not a theist), but I very much like the Christian idea of going to meet my maker rather than just waiting to see what happens to me in my life. I am very pro-active in that regard and in a similar way I am also into preventive medicine as much as my lazy exercise and eating habits will allow me. These old habits are hard to change!

It is my experience that intense spiritual or psychological experiences tend to isolate one from the consensus, at least for a time. That is pretty much the definition of a shaman, someone who mentally is pushed outside of society's norms by an inner experience, suffers alternative states of consciousness, and either goes mad or stabilizes and returns to society as a shaman – one who knows alternative states and can instruct others.

Well dear friends, I fear you are going to be guinea pigs for this new TV series I am working on, actually more like a podcast with graphics. I am just getting started, and here is the script for my first segment, a show about one of the great blues harmonica players, Junior Wells. Humor me, because I am on a learning curve here. And you won’t be able to hear music yet, but I will post it to YouTube when it is finished. Thanks for your attention. Here is the first part: “That was the great Chicago blue artist and amplified harmonica player Junior Wells doing a tune called “Chitlins’ Con Carne’ by the great jazz guitarist from Detroit, Kenny Burrell.

Something that I find incredible, as in "hard to believe," is how change can sweep into

my life, turn my apple cart upside down, and shatter my self-image into a million pieces.

And often it takes me a long time to even realize this is happening!

And when I finally do, like one of those old re-animator movies where the monster heals

himself, my tired-old self madly moves heaven and earth trying to pull itself back

together again so that it does not feel so naked. I call this my "Humpty-Dumpty Self,"

but in this case, Humpty-Dumpty does manage to put himself back together again... and

usually as fast as possible.

Readers, I was ready to move on to other topics, but at 9:25 PM EDT last evening (May 14, 2013) we had the fourth X-Class solar flare in two days, this one a X1.2 flare, all from the same solar region, sunspot 1748. And this sunspot region has now turned the corner from the other side of the Sun (as it rotates) and is now facing Earth. Scientists predict a moderate chance of having more such flares on May 15, 16, and 17, so this may not be over yet. I should mention that scientists have long speculated that at some point the Sun will emit a solar flare so large that it fries all of the electronics on Earth, sending us instantly back into the 15th Century. They say it 'will' happen, but it may be 10,000 years from now or it may be tomorrow. No one knows.

It is really hot here. Although thunderstorms are threatening outside, it is still almost ninety degrees here in my little office at 1 AM. I can’t sleep from the heat, from the thunder, and so on. And I am still very sad about the passing of the Ven. Traleg Rinpoche, whose death brings home to me once again the thought of impermanence, something I would do well to contemplate more often. I guess I was looking for Buddhism early on, way back in the 1950s. We would stay up late, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and talk about Buddhism and topics like existentialism. It was all just intellectual talk, and I was so serious back then.

This will be the end of this series on the folk-scene in the later 1950s and the early 1960s and how it gradually turned into "The Sixties" and the whole hippie scene. As pointed out, in the early 1960s the folk music revival was one of the main things happening on all the major campuses across America: Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Madison, Berkeley, etc. What happened to it?

We know that the Sun controls life here on earth, through its light, warmth, solar wind, and who knows what else. What I have been trying to get across for a while is that any system, from a single cell, to the solar system, to the Milky Way galaxy, has to somehow circulate enough information so that it knows how to remain whole, to be coherent. The study of how systems control themselves is called cybernetics.

The recent X-Class flare on July 12th ejected what is called a CME event (Coronal Mass Ejection), a mass of plasma and magnetism headed directly at Earth and traveling at 850 miles per second. It is scheduled to reach Earth around 1 AM EDT on Saturday July 14th, 2012. On the outside, look for auroras. As for inside, these solar events are coming so rapidly now that I hesitate to repeat myself in these blogs, but some of you are new to this. Astrology is simply cultural astronomy, the interpretation of astronomical events happening out there in the cosmos down here on Earth. Astronomers calculate when these events occur and astrologers try and tell us what they might mean. Astrology usually focuses on the relationship of the Sun, Moon, and planets with one another as they form kaleidoscopic patterns with one another in the heavens, but there is an exception.

I'm on my way out of town for a couple of days, so I may not be able to respond to any

comments on this post. And I realize that what I am about to discuss will be a little scary

to those of you who are considering learning meditation practice, and I only mention it

because, sooner or later, you are going to come across these other practices and you

might as well understand what they are all about. I am not by nature a fear monger, but

there is this.

A quote from an old Willie Nelson song that my good friend Drew Howard drilled into

me; this article is about what happens when we do get a little glimpse of what is beyond

our own self.

Dharma practice is just that, practice, a learning curve. Successful dharma practice is

like the proverbial tar baby, the more we struggle with it, the more we are stuck just

where we are. In all truth, dharma practice is learning to relax enough until our mental

straightjacket gives us up of its own accord. We can't force ourselves to rest, but we can

learn to just let our mind rest. The result is that we are eventually freed up. Yet there is

one major side issue I want to discuss and that is stabilizing our progress.

As mentioned yesterday, it was not until 1974 that I got the real-deal, and a doublewhammy

at that. It was February 12th, 1974 that I first met the great Tibetan siddha

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I had read his books, particularly "Cutting through

Spiritual Materialism" and heard he was coming to the U-M Campus to speak. I called

the number that was listed for more information and ended up designing the poster for

the event and being Trungpa's chauffer for the weekend. What a life-changing event

that was!

I am going to describe it in words, but this is something you deserve to experience for

yourselves. I write something about this memorable happening every year (3rd

weekend in September) because it is a landmark event for my family and me each fall.

This year is the 14th annual Harvest Gathering if I remember right. For those of you just

tuning in, let me give you the general idea once over lightly. I will include a link to the

particulars below.

Still a recovering election-holic here. While I do watch movies, I never watch commercial TV (you know, with advertisements), EXCEPT at the very end of major elections like this one. My finger is sore from muting the ads over the last couple of weeks, and I now have to wean myself from constantly checking to see what is happening in politics. It is over, and I just have to return to my quiet office, the one with no flickering TV to keep me warm and distracted. I am working on it.

Of course there are many, so I will just pick what I feel in my opinion is the key or main theme for this Full Moon, and that is what I will call here “ennui.” The dictionary defines ennui as “listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.” We might call it boredom or perhaps more correctly, a lack of interest and even languor. For me the best word might be “surfeit” or simple “enough.” We are for the moment at least full up.

When I was coming up, this whole idea of "emptiness" was so mysterious. To my

knowledge none of the people I knew had any idea what it was. Back then emptiness

was called by its Sanskrit word "Śūnyatā," which is pronounced in English Shunyata. I

would read and read about Shunyata, which was translated as emptiness, vacuity,

voidness, hollowness, and sometimes simply as openness, but I was no closer to

understanding the term, much less having experienced it consciously.

Time is elastic. It expands and contracts in response to effort on our part. We stretch time and live a life in between the seconds quite different from that we live on standard clock time. Are you aware of this? I certainly didn't always know this, and I did not know how to expand time at will and I did not learn it all at once. Like raindrops before a storm, I learned about the elasticity of time slowly at first, drop by drop, and only later in any quantity. There were many hints, but here is one story of how I discovered expanded time.

Interpreting these particular astrological patterns: I mentioned in the earlier post that although the New Moon is typically (and traditionally) the seminal point, and the Full Moon is the release point, that this recent Full Moon (Saturday) was so strongly configured (astrologically speaking) that while it may not serve as a seed or imprinting point, it very likely could have served as a catalyst, something to jar us loose from the groove we might be in and cause us to wake up, look around, and take notice as to the general direction of our life, call it a wake-up call for some of us.

Some of you have written me about this recent Full Moon eclipse. Every time there is a major eclipse, in particular a double eclipse, people want to know more about what this all means. By ‘major eclipse’ I don’t mean of long duration or whatever, but rather astrologically strongly configured as this current one is. And by double I mean that we are going to have two eclipses in a row, each two weeks apart. There will be a solar eclipse two weeks from now on July 11th. First, let’s understand something about eclipses in general and I am not going to go into the astronomy of eclipses, which is well illustrated all over the web. Google for that.

We are in an intra-eclipse time, three eclipses all in a row for that matter. Theoretically we should be (or can be) more sensitive to our inner changes during this time, at least that is what the Tibetans point out. As they say, eclipses are times to observe our mindstream with more care. Why? Because things are happening now, if we will just look or learn to look. And what is happening is change, and change is what fuels creativity. By definition, change of any kind marks instability of the status quo. Life is once again in flux, and that fact impacts the way things are. This means that things will not be going on the way they have been going. Things are changing. I am reminded of the line in Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

It should not surprise us that the Tibetan Buddhists have a special practice designed just to handle our reactions. This practice is distinct from any sitting meditation we might do and is called Tonglen, which in English translates to something like "Taking and Sending," and it has to do with gradually becoming aware of our reactions, our likes and dislikes, and disarming them. Tonglen is about becoming aware of our own reactions, our prejudices, likes, dislikes, etc., and owning and clearly seeing them. We take in or become aware of our reactions, and we send out or respond with openness and kindness. Literally we breathe in what we react to (like or don't like, including the suffering of others) and send back out whatever is good and in us in return, the best thoughts and energy we have within us. The concept takes some getting used to by westerners. It took me a while.

The Four or Five Elements I have long been fascinated by Asian philosophy and psychology and how it differs from that used here in the West. It can be difficult to explain the difference between these two systems, but I have one clear astrological example that you might appreciate. I have been studying astrology for some fifty years, so long I forget when I actually started and what constitutes studying anyway? I have also been studying Chinese astrology for a long time. I find Chinese astrology very profound and not something one can learn in a month, day, year, or even years. I have never written much about the subject because I am still just a student, but I do want to share a little bit of Chinese astrology with you so that you have a taste and see if you like it too. To do this, I will compare just one facet of astrology as we view it through Western methods, and as the Chinese see it. You will get the idea, I am sure. I am going to use the Four Elements.

I was helping a friend move recently and had a chance to visit their new home. It was located not in a city, but on the edge of about as much wilderness as you can imagine. The view from their home inset high upon a hillside was fabulous, forest as far as you could see below and a large lake in the distance. I was told that even the occasional wolf, bear, and cougar was to be seen, and that you don’t venture into the dense forest below without a companion and a compass.

I should know better than to talk about drugs and the dharma (and I usually don't) in the same sentence. Encouraging drug use is not my intention. And it would seem that there really is no obvious link between drugs and the dharma in this country. However, there is one indirect link that to me it is very interesting, and worth risking a discussion. In my experience drugs are not per-se dharmic, with one exception, LSD. And, although they may not be popular, here are my thoughts:

The solution that I recommend is not to attempt to go back to where we started, but to finish the job and become a butterfly. The concept of the self in almost all forms of mind practice is something to get to know, handle, and move beyond. All the Buddhists agree. It is not that there is no self; of course there is, but rather that our attachment to it is misplaced at best and limiting at worst. This is why most meditation methods help us to become clear about what the self is and is not. As some of the ancient wisdom teachings say: “Attachment to the ‘self’ is the only cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky.” What do they mean by this?

In my experience as a counselor the trick with these “autistic” LSD types is to get right in there with them and show them that they are not alone, that you know exactly where they are, and that what they cling to as making them unique is in fact common knowledge to all of those who know the mind. There isn’t anything unique or special about their LSD trip and they might as well accept this and move on. Others have been there before them. There is nothing they (at first) hate more than company, because their private drug vision is what has made them unique to themselves all these years. It is all they have at the moment and they have held on to it (frozen in time) and have not progressed from that point since then.

The problem for many drug users is not that LSD snatched away the curtain from the Wizard of the Self (troubling enough), but rather that behind the curtain there was no one there. This is what gave us pause. The philosopher Hegel wrote in his main work “The Phenomenology of the Mind,” the following: “We go behind the curtain of the self to see what is there, but mainly for there to be something to be seen.” Think about that. Hegel is one of the very few western philosophers that grasped the nature of the self, which is the stock and trade of Zen and Tibetan Buddhists: the fact that the Self has no permanent existence. If the self is held together only by our attachment to its components and LSD fractures our attachment, then many of us who took those conscious-altering drugs have experienced non-attachment. We have seen what only yogis see.

LSD was virtually unknown in the early 1960s, although rumors were all around. The word on the street was that acid (as we came to call it), unlike any drug we knew up to them, actually could alter the mind itself. Of course, most of this was pure speculation because few of us had yet taken or had real experience. We trembled at what that might mean, but of course were still intrigued. Not everyone rushed out to try it. It was that down side that gave us pause, that acid could permanently alter and damage the mind. What could that mean, “permanently alter?” That phrase alone kept many drug enthusiasts at bay.

We Become What We Want Why do we have the drive and ambition to accomplish some days and don’t feel like doing much of anything on other days?. I don’t usually explain technique in these blogs because it can be too much to take in, but this technique is so easy that I will give it a try. It all has to do with balance.

Eclipses are perhaps the most important Earthly astrological event we experience. Yes, New and Full Moons are important, but if they are accompanied by an eclipse they are even more important. And when two eclipses happen in a two-week period, one after the other, then the whole time surrounding those eclipses is special.

No, I am not trying to self-destruct this blog and drive readers away, but when it comes

to dharma, my advice is to read less and do more. Do more what? Do more practice, of

course, learning how to use these techniques. And by "practice," I don't just mean

whatever practice you may be doing on the cushion. That may be working for you or it

may be part of the problem by this time. Ultimately practice must spread throughout our

entire day (not just on the cushion) for us to really accumulate enough merit and

awareness. But learning to do that is not all that easy in my opinion.

The great 19th Century Tibetan master Patrul Rinpoche wrote: Don’t prolong the past, Don’t speculate about the future, Just dwell in present awareness. The question is how best to do this? How do we not dwell on the past or the future, but somehow be mindful of the present, the one place where a future (and therefore a new past) can be built. The traditional way to do this which has been taught for over 2500 years is Shamata meditation. And there are many, many forms of meditation.

This admonition seems strange, since the future is often so inviting; in bad times the

future is almost certainly better than the past (if that's been rough), and hopefully even

better than the present. Another translation might be "Don't speculate," but that also is

hard to do because we can't help but wonder what's going to happen next. Another

Buddhist slogan that puzzles me is "Hope and Fear are not Our Friends." OK. I get that

fear is something we can do without, but hope? Hope just keeps us going sometimes,

so what's up with that?

Self-liberation is a term I encounter often in dharma texts. For me this always has a

double-meaning, first that (hopefully) I will eventually be liberated from being bound or

obscured by my own bad habits and begin to see through the endless distractions of my

busy-body-self and it's grasping at attachments. That is my hope.

And second, and more discouraging, I have this growing realization I must liberate

myself by my own efforts. No one else is going to do it for me, no matter how long I wait.

After all, that is why it is called self-liberation.

Most of my friends read books. I mean they ‘really’ read books a lot, all kinds of things, especially fiction. I am almost jealous. I am often asked what books I am reading. For some reason this always takes me by surprise because I never read books anymore. It is not that I have not read books. I have read far too many, for sure. It is just that it never occurs to me to read a book. Just so you know I am normal, I watch movies or parts of them instead.

I am surrounded by friends and family who are deeply attached to books and reading. Of all people, I should know the beauty of books and reading, because I not only have read way too much for my own health, but I have amassed several large libraries over the years, and am the curator of what is perhaps the largest astrological library in the world. So I am not throwing stones here, but I am looking at books and what we do with them, at least briefly.

This was our side yard at 1041 N. Main Street in Ann Arbor. No, my wife did not wash my kid’s diapers and put them out on the line to dry. You can do better than that. Let me give you a hint. This was in the late 1960s to early1970s area of time. Does that help? Would it help if I told you that I designed the logo for Eden Organic Foods and also picked the date and time for them to first open (using astrology)? That was November 4th, 1969. You should have it now. What you are looking at is a whole LOT of seaweed being hung out to dry before going into storage in our basement. I can't see it too well but it looks like Wakame to me. Too stringy for Kombu (Kelp). Back then organic and whole foods were just trying to take hold. You couldn’t buy seaweed. You couldn’t buy tofu either. We had to make tofu in our kitchen which took many hours and was hard work. There was no tofu. Anyone else ever do that?

I recently did four interviews during the UAC (United Astrology Conference) in New Orleans, and one of them included the question “When did you start to believe in astrology?” or something like that. My answer was that I don’t “believe” in much of anything. That is too much like what the great lama Chögyam Trungpa said years ago, “Your guess is as good as mine.” A guess is a guess; a belief is just that, a belief, not knowledge. I don’t think I ever have believed in astrology or anything else for that matter. Perhaps I believe in life after death, and I am working to make that experiential, probably all too soon for my liking. Anyway, somewhere way back then, I found astrology to be useful. I use it because it is useful.

This series of short blogs is a little more direct than some of my writings. You can always just pass over it. For one thing, it has more than a few "Do this" and "Don't do this" suggestions. It is designed for those of you who have found that the mind can at times be quite obscured and is not just naturally clear all the time. If you know this already, then you may be more willing to just get down to learning to work with the mind. What follows are some suggestions and a method of practice to deal with our emotional reactions.

I have been disappointed. Like many of us, I have had some disappointments in my life, and they are, obviously, well, disappointing. A couple of the big ones I have experienced threw me into a loop that was not that easy to get out of, so I want to talk here about the little letdowns of life. But before I do that let's look at one big disappointment that happened to me so that we are all on the same page as to what can happen.

Tonglen is a Tibetan method everyone would do well to learn whether they practice dharma or not. It is that useful! And it is easy to learn. Tonglen is also known by the name “sending and receiving” as well as “exchanging yourself for others.” It is similar to the Christian motto “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but the Buddhists take it to another whole level. Tonglen helps to develop compassion in an organic and very natural way. And the technique is very simple:

In those thirty years of practicing, as regards the results of sitting meditation, apparently the only thing I accumulated was more dharma toys. In the beginning I had no toys. I had no shrine, no statues, no mala (beads), no nothing. I had a little piece of paper with my dharma name and a line drawing of the Buddha on it. That was my shrine and I placed it on a little shelf at eye level while I practiced meditation.. But while I sat there for thirty years, although I didn’t accumulate any real meditation results, I did manage to accumulate an incredible amount of dharma “stuff”.

When I first got into astrology, the idea of a “dharma” chart did not exist. Back then there were no home computers, and not even simple 4-function calculators. Every astrology chart was done laboriously by hand, using pencil, paper, books, and log tables, and few people could do it, but that is another story. Studying my astrology chart in the early 1960s gave me an alternate way of looking at myself, call it a second opinion (and some relief) from the toxic psychological descriptions of that time, labels that were then all the rage, words like paranoid, manic/depressive, schizophrenic, etc. That was how we grew up thinking about ourselves, not at all helpful for a young person. Anyway… I soon identified with my astrology chart and inhaled its alternate description of who I was compared to the labels society had pinned on my generation.

As an American, I never thought about this much, but it is something the Tibetan

Buddhists make a very big deal over, and that is "intent"; they call it "Aspiration."

Before starting any dharma practice, Buddhists recite a short aspiration prayer and after

their practice is over they dedicate any merit that accrues from that practice with

another prayer. In other words they are sensitive to why we are doing dharma practice

in the first place as well as what becomes of any merit that accumulates from that

practice. It took me many years to realize how important this instruction is.

Why do we practice? The obvious answer, which makes sense of course, is that we are

doing it to improve ourselves, to become clearer minded and more realized. Such an

aspiration (use your own words here) might sound like:

v

As they say, "disappointment is the salt of life," and the big disappointments in life can be, indeed, earth-shaking, but they sometimes can serve as a wake-up call. However, the steady rain of quiet disappointments has less to recommend itself and potentially is even more dangerous to our mental health. With the big disappointments, and I have had a few, the best advice I have given myself is not to add insult to injury. It is bad enough that I have been disappointed, that I took a turn life gave me in a hard way, but it is much worse if then I add to that perceived injury the insult of following it with endless regret and, worst of all, bitterness. Bitterness is a real life killer.

I have written here many times about my first spiritual teacher, Andrew Gunn McIver, who was a traveling initiator for a Rosicrucian order. I first knew him in the mid-1960s as a retired person living in Ann Arbor that I connected with. He appeared as an old man who looked a lot like Bernard Shaw. There he was sitting around on benches on the U-M Diag open to contact. I have written extensively about him elsewhere. What I write here is a part of esoteric astrology, so it is not for everyone. It is not that any of this is a secret, but rather that it refers to something that is so obvious (like the air we breathe) than it is hard to catch and gather with the mind. So going in, I write this for the very few who will resonate to it. My apologies if it is too obscure or esoteric (abstract and boring) for some of you. Please feel free to just skip this blog. You have been warned.

The Odyssey Bar was where I first met Margaret, my wife, on what was called “Wine Night” at the Odyssey, which featured some cheap (and inexpensive) wine. It was in March of 1971. We were both sitting at the same long table right in front of the band, where all the locals sat. Margaret was across the table. It was noisy, but not too loud for Margaret to pointedly make fun of me for sitting there drinking orange juice. She said something (for everyone to hear) like “What are you, some kind of pansy, drinking orange juice?”

The Phases in Cycles and What They Mean Your response to the notes on the dark days of the solunar cycle pointed out to me that at least some of you are interested in cycles and their phases, so at the risk of boring the rest of you, I want to share some information about the phases in cycles. It is pretty much axiomatic that astrology is about cycles and circles, things that go round and return. If you think about, it those things that do not return or cycle are singletons and we never hear from or see them again. They are just here once and then gone. The things we know are those things that return again and again making themselves known to us by restating or positing themselves endlessly. They endure and exist.

THE FULL MOON, PART 1

February 7, 2012

Observing the lunar cycle goes back thousands of years and concepts like “Full Moon Madness” and the like have been around for as long. Yet this is a topic that is not taught in schools and is only even obliquely referenced by the media. For me it was always a no-brainer to grasp that our lives are all wrapped up in these huge bodies like the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. When science is speculating about the wing flap of a butterfly in Brazil having an effect (chaos theory) in Greenland, what about these great rhythms of life like the solunar cycle? They must do something with us.

In my experience, one of the chief obstacles in learning to meditate was proper understanding of the word “relax.” Misunderstanding this word probably set my meditation progress back by a good 10-15 years. Yes, I said “years.” Imagine that! It is not that I did not read the words “Relax the mind,” “Rest the mind,” and so on. I did read the words, but I made the sincere mistake of interpreting this relaxing or resting as something that “I” had to do, something to be done. I had to “relax” the mind when I meditated… “had to do.” This I believe is not what is meant in the teachings.

One thing I have noticed in my years of being around the Tibetans (monks and rinpoches) and Tibetan Buddhism in general is how they approach criticism, and here I mean personal criticism. I used to think their attitude toward personal comments might be just that old cliché, you know, oriental inscrutability and reservation when it comes to being personal, but I finally had to give that thought up. It does not seem to be the case. Their attitude seems to reflect Buddhist philosophy about the self, at least among the high rinpoches that I have met.

In most towns restaurants come and go. When I was growing up in Ann Arbor there was a restaurant on South State Street up near the University of Michigan campus called The Virginian. It was not related to the TV show but was a typical American restaurant. I don’t recall ever going inside. However in 1971 an organic farmer (and friend), Ken King along with Rick Peshkin founded the “Indian Summer Natural Foods Restaurant” in the space where The Virginian used to be. This was significant because as one of the first examples of the old guard being replaced by the new alternative-culture (I refuse to call them “Hippies.”) Suddenly on one of our main streets was an organic foods restaurant where I was welcome, the owners of which I knew, and they actually had food that I would eat!

ENTREPRENEURS MAKE MISTAKES Being an entrepreneur sounds pretty glamorous until you try it. Many entrepreneurs like me have no choice. No one will have us or we can’t fit under somebody else’s roof. We find ourselves on our own and outriders beyond society’s protective fringe. Only if we get lucky do we get lucky. Otherwise we live by our wits and on a shoestring. A lot of astrologers are like this. Here is a good example of one harebrained scheme I dreamed up that was all kinds of fun to create but that went absolutely nowhere. The time was 1969 and I was surviving by cleaning the toilets in an office building and helping out my brother Stephen and his partner John Crofoot Sullivan at their metaphysical bookstore, Circle Books. It was the first such bookstore in Ann Arbor and opened on the spring equinox of 1968.

Being an entrepreneur sounds pretty glamorous until you try it. Many entrepreneurs like me have no choice. No one will have us or we can’t fit under somebody else’s roof. We find ourselves on our own and outriders beyond society’s protective fringe. Only if we get lucky do we get lucky. Otherwise we live by our wits and on a shoestring. A lot of astrologers are like this. Here is a good example of one hair-brained scheme I dreamed up that was all kinds of fun to create but that went absolutely nowhere. The time was 1969 and I was surviving by cleaning the toilets in an office building and helping out my brother Stephen and his partner John Crofoot Sullivan at their metaphysical bookstore, Circle Books. It was the first such bookstore in Ann Arbor and opened on the spring equinox of 1968.

I am off early to the Bernard farm near Lake City, Michigan. Michigan has over 11,000

lakes, so the odds of their being a Lake City were always high, and there it is.

September 19-21, 2014

https://www.earthworkharvestgathering.com/

The venue this coming weekend is the annual Harvest Gathering, a convocation of

musicians, this year some 110 bands, which means hundreds and hundreds of

musicians, four performing stages, and three days of music and community. This is an

experience not to be missed I can assure you. If you live within driving distance (or have

other ways to travel), grab a tent and get here however you can. Years from now folks

will still be remembering and writing about the seminal collective-mandala called the

Harvest Gathering.