Roche Miette Newsletter Quarterly of Roche Miette Association, No. 9, March 2004 ISSN 1710-4025

Editorial - by Piotr Rajski.
Living with the Himalayan Masters - by Swami Rama.
My friend - by Beth Hedva
Water - by Randy Iwanciwski.
Truth - by Osho.
Finding Personal Truth - by Jeffrey Solomon
Always Tomorrow - by David Haggett
Mother Nature Can Teach You How to Be More - by Kelly Elkins.
Entertaining Enlightment - by Michael Robins
One God Notes - by Pritam
Roche Miette Pilgrimage 2004 - by Piotr Rajski.
What is Roche Miette Association
Announcements
Call for Papers

Welcome to the 9th issue of the Roche Miette Newsletter. I would like to draw your attention first of all to the fragments of "Living with the Himalayan Masters" by Swami Rama, which could probably serve as a credo for the Roche Miette Association. These are exactly the ideas we had in mind with Randy when inviting people for our first Roche Miette hike/pilgrimage. It always gives me a great joy when I find a beautiful, poetic expression of my own intuitions in the writings of other authors. With great humbleness then, I quote the words that I sensed, but did not find myself, when I had trekked in Himalayas in 1986. It is only around the majestic Roche Miette that I found a similar sense of sacredness of the Creation I had experienced in the Himalayas.

As you will soon find out we decided not to organize a pilgrimage to Roche Miette this year due to my not fully recovered injury and other obligations. However, I encourage all of you who are willing to see the beauty of this mountain to contact Randy and arrange for a less formal encounter with Her.

I would like to welcome the new contributors to our Newsletter: Alexandra, Toni Delgado, Kelly Elkins, Beth Hedva, Michael Robins and Jeffrey Solomon. Their contributions made me so hopeful about the future of the Newsletter that I decided to register it and obtain ISSN. I hope you will find their submissions to be in the spirit of this newsletter and that they will continue contributing in the future. I thank David Huggett, who, I am deeply convinced, will receive one day a Nobel Price in Literature, for permission to quote from his new volume of poetry - "Progress Notes." I used some excerpts from this work that seemed to correspond with Jeffrey Solomon's reflections on the nature and the power of human thought processes. I am also thankful to Randy for his as usual personal and touching note and to my friend Andrzej Witak for his photo impressions from the Alps.

So I wish you all interesting and inspirational reading. Please, contact me with your reactions and feedbacks.

In Truth, Simplicity and Love, Piotr.

The love I received from the sages is like the perennial snows which form the silvery glaciers of the Himalayas and then melt into thousands of streams. When love became the lord of my life, I became quite fearless and travelled from one cave to another, crossing streams and mountain passes surrounded by snow-blanketed peaks. In all conditions I was cheerful, searching for the hidden sages who preferred to be unknown. Every breath of my life was enriched with spiritual experiences which may be difficult for others to comprehend.

That gentle and amiable sage of the Himalayas had only one entrancing theme: love-for nature, love-for creatures, and love-for the Whole. The Himalayan sages taught me the gospel of nature. Then I started listening to the music coming from the blooming flowers, from the songs of the birds, and even the smallest blade of grass and thorn of the bush. In everything lives the evidence of the beautiful. If one does not learn to listen to the music of nature and appreciate her beauty, then that which impels man to seek love at its fountain may be lost in the remotest antiquity. (...) This gospel of nature speaks its parables from the glacial streams, the valleys laden with lilies, the forest covered with flowers, and the light of stars. This gospel reveals that emphatic knowledge through which one learns truth and beholds the good in all its majesty and glory.

When one learns to hear the music of nature and appreciate her beauty, then his soul moves in harmony with its entire environment. His every movement and every sound will surely then find its due place in human society. The mind of man should be trained to love nature before he looks through the corridor of his life. (...)

When one learns to appreciate fully the profundity of nature in its simplicity, then thoughts flow spontaneously in response to the appeals of his delicate senses when they come in contact with nature. This soul-vibrating experience, in its full harmony with the perfect orchestra of melodies and echoes, reflects from the sound of the ripples of the Ganges, the gushing of the winds, the rustling of leaves, and the roar of thundering clouds. The light of the self is revealed and all the obstacles are removed. He ascends the top of the mountain, where he perceives the vast horizon. In the depth of silence is hidden the source of love. (...) pp.4-6.

Living with the Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama. (1978, 1999). Honesdale, PE: Himalayan Institute Press.
Can be ordered among others through Inspiration University: (540) 885-0551, rebirth@rica.net

My friend, there is but One guide who takes us up the mountain
—the same One who told us both to pack our bags so long ago--
before we even knew each other,
or where we were going,

I don't pretend to know now what is next—
But my guide is good, knows the secrets of the path
Knows where to forage for wild growing things
That feed my body, and nourish my soul.

Perhaps we can linger a while at the heights,
Break some bread,
drink in 360 degrees of unencumbered view
And share our morsels of truth as we sup at the summit

Touch the reality
of being touched
by another human being
Who makes the climb—

Dr Beth Hedva, lecturer, counsellor and clinical parapsychologist, holds a license as both a psychologist and marriage and familiy therapist in Canada and the US.   She is one of the best known transpersonal psychologists in Canada. Living in Calgary, Dr Hedva is the author of Betrayal, Trust and Forgiveness: A Guide to Emotional Healing and Self-Renewal. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts. She can be contacted at: (403) 247-1441 or http://www.hedva.com

Our Lord has this ability, grace, focus or serenity to walk on water.  I know that water is such a great symbol of life, our Baptism, our cleansing from sin.  There is a small creek that flows down from my home and my daughter and I have the pleasure of walking in it in the summer and walking on it in the winter.

Today I walked it alone.  As I stepped on to the ice, instantly I began to weep.  I walked carefully and I felt like a child in awe and wonderment of God's creativity!!!  This happens all the time and I thought that I must share this with you, as you will understand.  Yes to walk on water gives you that divine warmth that we all crave and I did experience it today.  I do remember as a child that you must respect water in all it forms, for it is Holy as God has willed it in His creation, we must simply acknowledge its sacredness.

God Bless You,
Randy.

Truth is an experience, not a belief. Truth never comes by studying about it; truth has to be encountered, truth has to be faced. The person who studies about love is like the person who studies about the Himalayas by looking at the map of the mountains. The map is not the mountain! And if you start believing in the map, you will go on missing the mountain. If you become too much obsessed with the map, the mountain may be there dust in front of you, but still you will not be able to see it. And that's how it is. The mountain is in front of you, but your eyes are full of maps - maps of the mountain, maps about the same mountain, made by different explorers. Somebody has climbed the mountain from the north side, somebody from the east. They have made different maps: Koran, Bible, Gita different maps of the same truth. But you are too full of the maps, too burdened by their weight; you cannot move even an inch. You cannot see the mountain just standing in front of you, virgin snow peaks shining like gold in the morning sun. You don't have the eyes to see it. The prejudiced eye is blind, the heart full of conclusions is dead. Too many a priori assumptions and your intelligence starts losing its sharpness, its beauty, its intensity. It becomes dull. Dull intelligence is what is called intellect. Your so-called intelligentsia are not really intelligent, they are just intellectual. Intellect is a corpse. You can decorate it - you can decorate it with great pearls, diamonds, emeralds, but still a corpse is a corpse. To be alive is a totally different matter.

from "Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously" by Osho
Submitted by Aleksandra: almanaar@hotmail.com

Few people are consciously aware that at the core of their being lay negative personal beliefs which we call a "Personal Lie."  Being a lie, and being very, very personal, we nevertheless hold them to be true. That is, we hold them to be true until such time, through a process such as breathwork or other therapies we behold them and expose them for what they are. A Personal Lie is a limiting thought one holds deep in the subconscious mind. Being  sub-conscious, (that is below conscious awareness) we cannot be aware that they even exist unless we process our thoughts (mind) as explained above. They are extremely powerful personal beliefs and they affect every thought and action we have about life and about ourselves. They limit our potential to be our fullest and most radiant self. All our beliefs about ourselves stems from this root thought, this Personal Lie. Most people (I would dare say all people) have limiting thoughts in one form or another!

One severe consequence of a Personal Lie is called the Death Urge.

The Death Urge is the result of a thought, "I don't deserve to live" "everyone has to die sometime" "life is a struggle" or some variation of this theme. Ultimately deathist thought expresses itself in premature aging of the body, ill health and ultimately in a desire not to continue living. The opposite, when we overcome our Personal Lie and our death urge, is to live a healthy and radiant life for all our long and vibrant days.

In many cases our beliefs stems from religious values inculcated at a very early age, from our parents and teachers and our peer group - that we are born sinners and therefore we must suffer. Oftentimes we so accept this thought as a "core value" that we accept it without question or further thought.

Needless to say if we are raised from childhood with a fundamental philosophy and belief that we are born to suffer and die, what other result can we expect out of life if not suffering and death?

The death urge creates the belief that aging and bodily decrepitude go hand in hand and is therefore inevitable. We are inculcated in the belief that we cannot continue to live as if we were eighteen years old. We are taught that the age of man is three score and ten. When we embrace that belief as others all around us have done, then we, too, will surely expect to die sometime around three score and ten. In the Republic of Georgia people routinely expect to live over a hundred years of age, and guess what? They do. Indeed one Georgian man well into his hundreds lied about his age so that he could attract a young wife!

The death urge into which much of Western man is inculcated is the root for such thoughts that one may express in comments such as "I'm not as young as I used to be" or "I'm too old for that" or "When I was young I used to..." or "Act your age" or "I am dying to do this that or the other" etc. Glibly espousing thoughts that affirm infirmity are ultimately as debilitating to your consciousness as it would be to your body if you took poison. These are poisonous thoughts.

As you know, thought is creative. You are the sum total of your all thoughts. Your life is the physical manifestation of your thoughts. What do you imagine often-repeated thoughts such as these will do?

Reflection on Finding Personal Truth is excerpted from Mr. Solomon's book "Playing in the Mind of God," available online at
www.PlayingintheMindofGod.com and at www.amazon.com.  World-wide shipping is available. You can receive "Reflections" by e-mailing Mr. Solomon at jeffmsolomon@cs.com

Jeffrey Solomon
www.liferenewed.com
Rand &London, Tel USA (727) 363.0800, Tel UK (44) 0871 - 871.2971, Fax USA (727) 363.1500

Always tomorrow sufficient
for what it brings of gift
or wreck of joy, our expectation,

We pray for stamina to complete
the close work of our minds
toward our chosen end,
our heart's masonry (...)

pursuing the contours of his thoughts
which were not his thoughts,
not his thoughts at all,
but the landscape through which
he moved... the poems
his milestones, markers,
shrines and resting places (...)

credit me with skill enough
to stand at my own bench
with heart and mind,
and hand and eye
subscribed to the discipline
of my craft...

...bearing gifts subversive
to established order...(...)

in the dark warfare of our troubled minds
we become our own battleground
contending self to self
within ourselves

We, who are not saints,
admit no demons, nor solicit
mercenary angels to our creed

And yet, we say,
we tend to perfection
slowly, and by degrees
in spite of ourselves (...)

David Huggett describes himself as a West Coast writer transplanted to Edmonton via Nelson, British Columbia with periods of residence in Germany. He has worked as CBC broadcast journalist, university administrator and producer for the Alberta Book Fair Society. David served two years as Secretary for the Writers Guild of Alberta and participates in Edmonton's Stroll of Poets. His short stories have appeared in Minus Tides and Unpublished Fiction.

FREE
Animals constantly demonstrate how to shift the energy and outcome any situation. Nature also illustrates that there's always a ready source of free energy available anytime, anywhere you need it.
FLOWING
Modeling animals activates key body points to increase our energy, grounding, relaxation and joy. Natural Re-charging enhances vitality, clarity and balance and decreases sickness, confusion and accidents.
FRESH
The dynamics of Wildness force you to step outside the boundaries of traditional thinking to get where you want to go. Outside Adventuring naturally breaks you out of habitual mental ruts to generate fresh, imaginative approaches and make new, inspired life choices.
FLEXIBLE
Nature is the best teacher of how to steer change to one's advantage. Most human systems are fixed, static, inflexible and unresponsive; they take energy; and they react mechanically and inaccurately to past fictions. Nature is flexible and malleable; it gives you energy; and it responds accurately to current facts and reality.
FOCUSED
The energy fields of Natural Power Spots awaken you to your Destiny Soul Agreement, stimulating recognition of your deeper purpose in living.
FRUITFUL
Learn to use recurring Energy-Flow Patterns in Nature to predict future life events and create miraculous and lasting results in your everyday world. Learn how to track the Universal Movement of Energy as seen in Nature to manifest more meaning, magic and money in your daily life.
FORGIVING
There is no aspect of life more willing to forget the past and embrace the present than Mother Nature. Guided by the precise, practical mirror of the Outer World, you open to loving without fear, enjoying without judgment and allowing through real
understanding.
FEARLESS
Hanging in the Wild develops your ability to hear, trust and act on inner intuitive direction and outer natural guidance. You can reclaim the power to stand in your Personal Truth and awaken the Wise Shaman within.
FLUID
Enrich yourself by going to places of Primal Life Force to purify and cleanse with wind and water. Experience the Outdoors as an ever-changing river, bubbling past obstacles, washing away what is no longer needed, carving out new niches, flowing into
expanded territory and providing life-enhancing energy.
FACTUAL
Learn to employ the physical universe as an accurate and liberating reflection of your consciousness. Use the natural physical world to reveal the true workings going on behind the surface appearance of all earthly form.
FRUGAL
Wilderness demands you seek the shortest, easiest, most pragmatic, do-able way to address any endeavor, which develops a keen eye to see the most efficient and effective way to proceed under in any situation. You cultivate the art of improvisation, quick adjustment and rapid adaptation.
FUN
Open to the joy of life as a spontaneous, wondrous treasure hunt. Ignite Kundalini energy in sacred springs. Hike a rainbow! Embrace cosmic ecstasy and then ground that joy into your everyday experience.

Published previously in Prosperity Ezine. Dr Elkins and Mrs. Delgado can be contacted through:
A NEXT STEP…light center for emotional healing
P.O.Box 429, Dona Ana, New Mexico 88032, toni@anextstep.org, www.anextstep.org, 505-382-8771

The solution to the expanding dilemmas of our world, such as war, disease, starvation, crime, over-population, homelessness, the rising divorce rate, environmental pollution and the destruction of the eco-system, joblessness, economic instability, political malaise,and the prevalence of self-interest and unhappiness, just to name a few of the many, proliferating problems, cannot be found in the awareness that creates and sustains them; only a shift in our consciousness can, and will, make a real difference.. Until the consciousness of separation puts on its real, but hidden, Consciousness of Oneness, none of the ideas for improvement can be ultimately successful, because the perspective itself is the cause of the problems. Only what is being proposed here- that we consider and experiment with shifting our reliance from a personal to a higher or Universal Self, which can only be realistically done through a practice or labor, which, in this case, we have framed in the form of a Journey- only such a shift can be successful in helping us to find peace, love, and fulfillment, and in helping our planet return to its Original Plan and its great destiny.

The above fragment comes from Michael's book: Entertaining Enlightenment for Everyone: 13 Steps On The Ultimate Journey, which can be ordered from: Michael Robins, 101 Cedar Dunes Drive, New Smyrna Beach, Fl. 32169. You may also visit Michael's page: http://www.urgreat.info/

"One God Notes" consist of quotations from spiritual writings of many religious traditions. The purpose is to inspire, to open hearts, so people perceive God's Presence in and around them. In this way I hope to create a sense of human and religious unity. To see the previous "One God Notes" visit http://www.onegodsite.net/archives.html.

To learn more about the philosophy behind these notes, please, visit http://www.onegodsite.net/

If you would like to go further and add "One God Notes" to your web site, please, copy and paste the button below and use it to create a link to http://www.onegodsite.net/onegodnotes.html

In Truth, Simplicity and Love, Pritam.

I want to let you know that after a bit of soul searching I decided not to organize a pilgrimage this summer. My foot is simply not ready. However, Randy Iwanciwski will go to the mountain during the weekend of June 26-27. Feel free to contact him at riwanci1@telusplanet.net if you would like to go. Randy does not charge a guiding fee but accepts donations.
(pr)

Roche Miette Association is an informal group of people who try to achieve the ideals of human unity as expressed in  the Roche Miette Rule. One of the characteristics of this group of enthusiasts is love of Nature and willingness to love God through His Creation.  In particular, we are drawn by the beauty of Roche Miette Mountain, near Hinton, Alberta, and organize once a year a non-denominational hike/pilgrimage to this mountain. People of all religious backgrounds are invited to participate with us in this auspicious event.

If these ideals appeal to you, you may want to support them through a financial donation. Please, send checks for "Roche Miette Association" to:

Piotr Rajski
Roche Miette Association
576, Lessard Drive
Edmonton, AB, T6M 1B2
Canada

Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, Japan, president of Mayors for Peace in 108 countries, will visit Edmonton on Wednesday, April 21, to speak on nuclear disarmament and peace. 8 AM - Interfaith Breakfast at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel, Glenora Room, for faith leaders and interested people. Cost $18 at door, reserve your place by leaving your name at 413-6159. Sponsored by the Edmonton Interfaith Centre.
Public meeting with Mayor Akiba at City Hall, 7 PM April 21, welcomed by Mayor Bill Smith. The Edmonton Interfaith Centre invites everyone concerned for nuclear disarmament and peace to attend this event. Mayor Akiba studied at M.I.T. in Boston and taught in the United States before returning to political duties in Japan.

The second part of this event is the Interfaith Centre’s Jewish Christian Muslim Dialogue on Thursday, April 22 at Lister Centre, U of A, 8 AM to 5 PM, co-sponsored by the Faculty of Arts, U of A. Theme "The Contributions of Religious Traditions to Civil Society". Speakers, Very Rev. Bill Phipps, former Moderator of the United Church representing Christian churches, Rabbi David Kunin of Edmonton, representing Judaism, and Dr. Bilal Kuspinar of McGill University representing Islam. Question period and discussion groups on Global Citizens, Education, Human Rights, Art/Culture. Please register in advance. Fee, including lunch, is $30, $15 for students, sent to Edmonton Interfaith Centre, 11148-84 Avenue, Edmonton T6G 0V8. Phone 413-6159 for information.

Submitted by Don Mayne, EICEA.

Would you like to contribute to the Roche Miette Newsletter? Please, send your text in Microsoft Word or HTML format to rajski@shaw.ca. Of special interests are stories, reflections on the following subjects:

Human and religious unity.
Harmony between different religions, cooperation between religious groups.
Examples of interfaith dialogue, tolerance, forgiveness.
Love of Nature (especially mountains).
Spirituality.
Meditation, Contemplative Prayer.
Religious life, especially Practice of the Presence of God, pilgrimage.
Mysticism, especially in the context of the mountains.
Poetry, art, music, photographs related to the mountains.

Manuscripts to be considered should be original articles (not published elsewhere). Some previously published materials may also be considered if submitted with the info and consent of the publisher. Presently there is no remuneration for the submitted materials. The deadline for the next issue is: July 15, 2004. Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and acquintances. They may subscribe to the newsletter at: http://www.piotrrajski.com/newslettersubscriptionemail.html.(pr)