Music, Poetry, Cosmology

Original works of poetry, music, and thoughtful writing inspired by the wonder of this living, breathing, absolutely stunning universe we inhabit.

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Infinite Finiteness

or
For the Sake of Argument I’ll say God

I know something about God.
So do you.  And now
we know something neither of us knew
until, and because, we met.
One time, or many times, when we might have

        listened to each other

tell the stories that wanted to be told
in that particular moment.
A transmission happened,
though we would not have called it that.
We might have been doing the dishes,
our hands in the water,
reading pages out loud to each other from our
Books of What God Is.

And what that old, old Redwood knows of God – the music
that has been recorded of her long, slow dance2862713835_b8d2ed014b
in her Book of What God Is…
If I lean into her body, sink in until we can

        listen to each other,

surrender
my story in exchange for
what small portion of hers
she may be able to impart
to one so new –
I may receive one page, perhaps, from her Book

that I can then add to all that I know
about God
so far.
And maybe one day, I open my book to that page –
just out of the blue, or so it would seem,
and that page begets a new page
called a poem –
conceived in a conjugal union of
Past and Present –
about a redwood tree
and cycles of life,
one of many that fill the Book of What God Is.

Yes, if we could lean in and

        listen to each other

like we can with a Tree,
or the Wind, or the Ocean
receive each page with love,
knowing that we’re learning still more of what God is.

We’re all reporters for the Book of What God is
writing and reading
ad infinitum
“All the news without fear or favor.”

So, let’s say that poem I write gets read,
to a haphazard gathering of strangers and friends,

and one, whom I may not even know,
finds a thread in the poem
which leads to some overgrown, tangled place
in her heart. Somewhat dazed, she stares
out a window
she looks through every day,
but only now
sees
that old Valley Oak, so stalwart and reaching292149025-angel-oak-14_54_990x660_201404181815

out like the shelter of mothering arms. She goes outside, for she hears the tree
calling her, knows
that in this moment they can

         listen to each other.

As she opens her Book to put in this page
a hundred pages spill out,
and flow past her eyes
like a river. She weeps,
tasting the tears in her Book of What God is –
the pages she’d tucked away and forgotten.
She weeps,
and all of them sing themselves back to her.

She weeps
for things she didn’t know needed weeping.
She writes a new page with
her grief, in moans, and her praise
in crazed laughter –
the kind that only comes after the prisoner
is set unexpectedly free.

Those sounds heaving up from her heart
write a crystalline code
into each teardrop falling
from her face to the earth.
And the billions of organisms
who live in the soil
made moist by her tears
receive this transmission – each of them
has a new page for their Book of What God Is.
And they tell their stories to countless others;
the tree receives her story and theirs,
multiple versions of this one multifaceted moment of God.

The pages swell.

Sparrows, ravens, hearing her cries
write their pages.
The evening sun, glancing over one shoulder,
casts a moment
that the Earth herself writes into the Book –
a moment filled with infinite moments
of beauty anForest_Floor_(Multnomah_County,_Oregon_scenic_images)_(mulD0020)d surrender,
pages within pages,
stories within stories
making One glorious infinite Story.

God
is reading and writing,
reading and writing,
reading and writing:
I am that.
I am that.
I am that.
I am.

 

by Purple Hazel Green
for Marleen, and everyone else
September 6, 2015

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Posted by  |  April 10, 2016 | Categories: Cosmology, Poems | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

MELLIFLUOUS

Music flows like honey
Through the universe

Sweet sound –ackermann1HR
nectar to the One
who longs to hear it

A star burns
through all its elements
to the densest – iron
before exploding

We can hear that ringing –
the death of Grandmother Supernova
giving birth to a sun

Sacred bells ring out
all over the Earth
in Her memory

Our memory
is nothing but
Her

Bees drone and make honey
Humans make bells and drums
flutes and words

We taste honey,
say, “Mmmm”
Stardust rings in our ears

The Queen of Heaven
hears Herself at last
She is harmony
She is Om

Click here to hear/see this as a YouTube video
Click here to download the audio for free.
Words and Music by Purple Hazel Green.  Share freely and with love .Free-Honey-Bee-Wallpaper-Laptop-Background

Posted by  |  September 6, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Celtic Body Blessing

This audio piece and video was inspired by the following words.  Find the video on my YouTube Channel  It’s three and a half minutes of pure pleasure…. Hope you will enjoy it repeatedly.

Click here to listen:  Celtic Body Blessing  (It’s also available for download on my music page if you want it for keeps.)

Aine (pronounced Ana) is the Celtic Goddess of Love, Fertility and Sovereignty. . .

May your body be blessed
May you realize that your body is a   faithful and beautiful friend of your soul
May you recognize that your senses
are sacred thresholds
May you realize that holiness
is mindful gazing, mindful feeling, mindful listening, and mindful touching

May your senses always enable you
to celebrate the universe and the mystery and possibilities in your presence here
May Aine bless you
May your senses gather you
and bring you home

– Celtic Blessing

Posted by  |  February 18, 2012 | Categories: Music, Poems, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Three Music Lessons

Click to hear “Three Music Lessons”

I went chasing after a cloud one day
I asked her for a dance
And what she gave me was no gentle sway
She was ready for a swirl
Across the vast expanse
Across the vast expanse

She picked me up and I was everywhere
Here – not here – now, over here
And when I realized I had no fear
Then suddenly she disappeared
You know how clouds can be
You know how clouds can be

She said, “We’re both dancing in the Sun,
and in the dance we are but one.
We are but One.”

One night the moon came in to my bedside
I drank her in like sweet warm milk.
And in the breeze I heard a lullaby
We stepped into a waltz of dreams
I asked her what it means,
if she knows what it means

She said, “One question takes a life to answer.
Search the world to find yourself
to know yourself.”

I met a tree upon a riverside
She asked me to sit a while
I leaned in closely to her heart
She hummed a tune that brought me home
She knew the song that was my home

She said, “We both sing the River’s song.
While life is short, the River’s long
The River’s Long.”

–Purple Hazel Green

 

More new recordings, now available for download …

Posted by  |  May 22, 2011 | Categories: Music, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

The Energy of the Sublime and other Quantum Mysteries

The following poem, written when I lived in San Francisco, was inspired by an article I read out of Berkeley Lab in August 2007:  “New Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis.”

Because sunlight cannot be mechanically or chemically transferred to plants, the actual mechanics of photosynthesis has alluded the deconstructionists of science for ages.   So, bless them, they developed a tool to measure wavelengths as short as a femtosecond, which is one quadrillionth of a second.  This led them to the discovery that photosynthesis happens in the realm of quantum mechanics.

The instrument was able to measure a sudden and lingering moment of “quantum excitation” where the photons of light from the sun literally “strike a chord” in the molecules that go into making photosynthesis happen:
The quantum effects in photosynthesis were originally revealed through “quantum beating” signals: coherent electronic oscillations generated in both donor and acceptor molecules by light-induced energy excitations. Like the famous final piano chord in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” these quantum beating signals seem to go on and on — though in this case, “on and on” means a few hundred femtoseconds. (A femtosecond, a
quadrillionth of a second, is to a second what a second is to about 30 million years.)
August 6, 2007 science@berkeley lab, New Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis

We can learn a something from this in terms our our relationships with all energies in our environments – people and otherwise – and how we, too, can serve life by being coherent sources of light.

By entraining,  or synchronizing, one’s “vibe” with another being,  which is a matter of “listening” with one’s whole being — what can happen is not just the sum of its parts, it’s not even “more than the sum of its parts”, it is a QUANTUM LEAP into the mind of infinite possibility where something completely new can happen.

We are also beginning to understand that is how we learn – not from mental memorization of information from another source, but by a quantum transmission of information that happens when there is an excitation of energy – say, in the course of a passionate discussion.  We literally “learn” from another’s genius by being in the presence of that energy.  What is actually happening is that we are tapping into that same source from which genius arises.

This may very well be what Jesus meant when he said, Wherever two or more are gathered in my name there I am in the midst of them. … I am being infinite possibility.

FALLING INTO FEMTOSECONDS
by Purple Hazel Green  2007

On my bike ride to work today,
stopping for a traffic light,
I noticed the gingko tree growing out of a square
in the sidewalk at Fifth Street and Mission.
I pass it nearly every day.  It’s not new.  I just
noticed it.

For the non-duality yogi, the next question would be:
Who is doing the noticing?

Some hue of color changed slightly, maybe, or
some way the light is angled this time of the season
that caught my attention.   A thought arose: Beautiful Gingko.
Then another, triggered by memories of golden Gingko trees in Autumns past:
It’s September already, nearly Equinox.
Something grabbed me, only for an instant, but I fell
into that femtosecond,

when the light of the Gingko resonated with something in me –
recognition?
and out of the quantum field arose
thoughts, memories, feelings of
warmth and beauty and belonging –
all those things that happen all at once when Nature
strums a chord.  I wonder

what happened to the Gingko tree in those femtoseconds?
in that moment of quantum excitation?
Did the xylem and phloem start to flow more quickly?
Did the photosynthetic process speed up?
Did its roots grow a nanometer? Did it feel
the love I felt?
My best educated guess would be, YES.

These moments of bliss and destiny happen
any time, any place.
What does it mean to be “realized”?
It means we notice more of them, that’s all.
But that’s not nothing,
to notice something that happens in a femtosecond,
which is to one second what one second is to
thirty million years.

A few millionths of a billionth of a second
is all it takes for something new and profound to emerge.
Light, water, energy.
Feelings, thoughts, memories.
Conscious awareness opens up time,
tiny mustard seed moments.
Notice when the vibration changes,
a subtle sensory shift, music plays you,
sing it, dance in it, do surrender to it.
It will last as long as you can dwell there
without thinking,
until some latent possibility is released.
This femtosecond feels like forever,
because it is.

Energy is transformed and nothing is the same as it was
only a moment before.
NOTHING.
A relationship formed, bonded, and was consummated
in one lingering moment,
in less time than it takes to blink.
A quadrillion big bangs emerging from the quantum field
every second –

matter and form is drawn out of formless consciousness,
like romance out of lovers when the violinist lingers at their table.

But I’m a mad scientist with no credentials
save my curious, seeking mind,
merging into the music of a single gingko tree
at the busy, noisy corner of Fifth Street and Mission,
falling into femtoseconds as vast as intergalactic space,
and wondering,
Who is doing the singing?

Shortly after writing this poem I read an article by biochemist and genetic scientist, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, whose theory of organism is breaking ground through the hallowed no-persons’-land between the physical and life sciences.  In the article, entitled “In Search of the Sublime”, Dr. Ho explores this same energy of living exchange between organisms.  Dr. Ho says: The creation of significant form is the basis of knowledge, possibly for all living species; it holds the key to aesthetic experience in science and art, and depends on the inextricable entanglement of all beings in nature.

So, I sent my Femtoseconds poem in an email to Mae Wan Ho and she kindly responded as well as published it in the letters of the next issue of the I-SIS online journal….

Because I wanted to bring Mae Wan’s ideas to my friends in a digestible form and have a little fun with it,  I created one of my “wisdom jams” – sampling her talk “Quantum Jazz” which was delivered at the Bioneers Conference in 2008.  The Bioneers is an annual meeting of the world’s greatest (in my opinion) progressive thinkers, scientists, elders and social leaders, and it happens every October right here in northern California.

Organism – Mae Wan remix
This is my jam called  “Organism,” and it has received Dr. Ho’s blessing as a “labor of love” which indeed it is.   You can listen to other wisdom jams and all my music by clicking here.

Dr. Mae Wan Ho’s book: THE RAINBOW AND THE WORM: The Physics of Organism (1993) is now in it’s third edition.  Her current work and that of the Institute for Science in Society can be explored at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/index.php

We can go a long way in serving life simply by paying attention to, and taking responsibility for, the energy that we bring to our environments with our thoughts and feelings.

Each of us are coherent sources of light; the human heart is a coherent light source.

Posted by  |  April 13, 2011 | Categories: Cosmology, Music, Poems | Leave a comment

WHAT SPIDER KNOWS ABOUT THE ACCELERATION OF TIME

We feel it, we sense it, some people say it happens as we get older…. but is time acceleration a real phenomenon?  Can time truly accelerate?  If time is accelerating, does it mean that the earth is moving around the sun faster?  Will there be fewer than 24 hours in a day?

Nature is full of eloquent lessons for us,, and one of my favorites is one that Spider taught me about time and space, in terms of qualities, not quantities.  The music of time-space, which indeed defines its measurement.

Spider creates the foundations of her web by spinning lines that are attached to things in her surroundings – a rose bush branch, a fence post – all converging on a center she has already perceived.  These foundational ‘spokes’ define the space and character of the web as a whole.  Each of the spokes has its own character in terms of length and what it is influencing its movement.  As Spider is weaving these spokes, she leaves a sticky substance along the filament.  When she gets to the end of the line, she plucks it, causing it to vibrate.  It has its own tone, just like a guitar string.

Pythagoras was one mathematician/musician in a lineage of ancients who understood that when a string is plucked, there are intervals along the string that do not vibrate.  That is what gives the string’s sound its tonal character.  These harmonic intervals are so called because they are created by the overtones or natural harmonies that the string is producing.   These natural harmonic overtone intervals have a mathematical relationship to the string, so no matter what the tone, the intervals are proportional the length string.

When Spider plucks the string, that sticky substance vibrates and collects in the intervals  where the string is not vibrating.  She knows that each string has its own ‘scale’ and she is going to make use of it to build her web.  In terms of the metaphor for our galaxy, which I believe is a fractal of our universe, Spider has now set the music in motion, she has set time in motion, and now she will create space.

Spider goes back to the center of the spokes now and begins to weave a spiral out from the center by connecting  the beads that are along the spokes of the web.  She uses these beads as intersections.  Around and around in a spiral until she reaches the outer parameters of her spokes – the final beads or ‘notes’ if you will.  There is no more perfect metaphor for the nature of the fabric of timespace than that, and it is no wonder that Spider Woman, the Great Weaver, is the Creatrix in our mythopoeic imaginations.

So what can this teach us about acceleration?  Let’s take an imaginary trip on Spider’s Web from that outside point she left off from.  Let’s say we are a little microorganism that was born on that sticky bead and we go for a walk, a quest, to discover our place in this big web that looks like it started from a singularity….

We start walking along that spiral until we get to the next bead, or intersection.  It definitely feels different from the last intersection – and that’s because the nature of the spoke is different – a whole different tone or quality of experience.  Then we move on to the next bead, and we notice the same thing – it’s a completely different experience than the last two….We move along then, and it seems like we are experiencing time in a line… there is something in front of us that looks like our future and something behind us that feels like our past.  It takes a certain amount of time to reach the next bead and we are starting to get used to that timing now that we are almost all the way around.

Then eventually we get to a bead that is back on that first spoke we started from.  It’s not the same exact place, because it’s closer to the center, but since we think we are walking in a straight line, and are not aware that this line is a spiral, we don’t know we are standing on that same spoke, However, something about it feels familiar…. there is a quality about it that our body senses, because our body is receiving the vibration of that string directly….

We move on to the next spoke, and the next, and each time now we are getting a kind of “deja vu’, but it’s still a long time between beads, so we can’t really put our fingers on it.  We go around and around the spiral in this way for several cycles, until we begin to notice a couple of things:  One is that it is taking less and less time to get to the next bead than it used to, even though we are walking at the same speed.  We are also starting to notice that there is a patterns to these “old familiar feelings” we get when we reach one spoke and then another.- to the point where we can almost anticipate what the next one will be.  This is what happens when we get closer to the center, when the spiral starts to tighten up.  We start to sync up.

By now we may even discover that we are walking in a spiral and not a line.  We start to remember what this song is about, this energy – what opportunities it makes available, or what things to watch out for… So although things may appear one way, it is always important to feel what song the moment is singing to have a full understanding of where we are, to feel the resonance.

The Ancient Time Keepers –  the Maya, who left us a calendar etched in stone, and the pre-Han Chinese system of the I Ching, as just two examples – were tracking time based not on sun and  moon alone, but on the waves of Galactic Time – waves of energy that pulses from the center of the Milky Way which are the heart-beat, the time-keeper for every star in the galaxy.  These pulses are the spokes of the spider’s web, the time signature of the unfolding music of life in this galaxy.  The Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral.  All life forms on earth unfurl in spirals in the dance of this time.

Time for us is a spiral.  By deduction, then, I imagine that each galaxy has its own timing, it’s own symphony, and that this is a fractal pattern that reveals the universe itself.  The Uni-Verse – the One Song….

This is the unfolding of time in our universe.  We are getting very close to the center of the spiral now.  We are feeling the resonances with what has gone before, and we are beginning to understand, to master, Time…. And once we do, we will no longer need linear time.  Training wheels off.  The joy ride of Multidimensional Time is awaiting us….

Or so I believe.

Posted by  |  March 23, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What Time Are We Tracking?

Aurignacian Lunar Calendar c.32,000 BCE

What calendar and time-keeping do you live by?  What cycles and rhythms does it mark and celebrate?    For millenia of human history, customs, rituals, and celebrations have marked important cosmic events tracked by various forms of calendars and time keeping methods.  The primary referent of the system – the sun, the moon, or astronomical events – tells us much about the values, needs, and cosmology of the culture who sets up and follows that system.
Many societies in the temperate latitudes on Earth are guided by the timing of the solstices and equinoxes that mark the high point of the four seasons, measuring the movements of the sun for agriculture and physical survival.
Others still mark and celebrate the Quarter Days, which are the half-way points between the solstices and the equinoxes  Quarter days mark the thresholds between seasons.  For example, Feb 2, known in the Celtic tradition as Imbolc, comes half way between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, marking the time when the winter ground begins to thaw, seeds begin to swell and buds start to form. Quarter Days are not very well-recognized in the time-keeping system of industrialized culture, and this has caused a disconnect to the seasons.  Our calendars tell us that the Winter Solstice, for example, is the first day of Winter, but the longest night marks the mid-point of Winter.
So what calendars have humans lived by?  What kind of time are they keeping? Why is January 1st the beginning of the year? What “begins”?  I cannot seem to associate any natural phenomenon or organic process that begins on January 1. So how did that happen?  And then, there is this thing called the Fiscal Year  based on the seasonal slump of business activity…. very telling of a culture, indeed…

LUNAR CALENDARS: Artifacts from the Paleolithic period suggest that the moon was used to calculate time as early as 30,000 years ago.  Tidal relationships, relationships to plant and animal fertility, to the woman’s body – her life cycles and her blood cycles – were recognized as being in sync with the cycles of the Moon.

Without adding days or months to some years in a calendar based solely on twelve lunar months, however, seasons quickly drift.  LUNISOLAR CALENDARS have a thirteenth month added to some years to make up for the difference between a full year (now known to be about 365.24 days) and a year of just twelve lunar months.
The ROMAN CALENDAR went through many iterations and adjustments,  It started off as Lunar and then shifted into Luni-solar as days were added to match the equinoxes.  The reformed JULIAN CALENDAR began in 45 BCE by Julius Ceasar after consulting with an astronomer, and it approximated the ‘tropical year’ or solar year.  The Julian calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months with a leap day added to February every four years. The Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long, and is purely a solar referent.
The modern GREGORIAN CALENDAR replaced the Julian calendar in the 16th Century because the time trackers of the day figured out that a solar year is actually about 11 minutes shorter than 365.25 days. These extra 11 minutes per year in the Julian calendar caused it to gain about three days every four centuries.  In order to realign the calendar with the equinox times, several calendar days were dropped in one fell swoop. To maintain the adjustment, the Gregorian calendar drops three leap year days across every four centuries.

The Julian calendar is still used in some obscure places and in some religious calendar systems, but the Gregorian is today the standard calendar of the “industrialized world”.
Still other civilizations have other methods and traditions of time-keeping that transcend sun, moon, and planting seasons, such as the Mayan, the Egyptians, the Sumerians, and the Dogon of West Africa, who look to the rising and setting of certain stars and constellations – Orion, Sirius, the Pleiades – to mark the high points of the year.  What were/are they tracking?  What are their referents?
The familiar seasons that we mark in a solar year are created by the Earth’s axis being tilted.  Was there a pre-tilt civilization?  I will be exploring that possibility in future blogs…

Posted by  |  March 10, 2011 | Categories: Cosmology | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Three Spirals

 

I am the motion of the universe
– curling through the dark
and starry spirals of the night.
While the Milky Way seems far above me,
I am swimming in her fiery waves of light

 

 

 

 

I am the vitality of the sun
–curling streams of light
breathing, tasting, touching, seeing
multi-colored grains.
I say, “The sun is in my eyes.”

 

I am love emitting love –
unable to contain myself
I am the pinpoint of creation
on a journey into dreams.
Curling up with my beloved,
I say, “The moon is rising.”

Posted by  |  February 25, 2011 | Categories: Poems, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What is Cosmology?

One of my favorite mental undertakings is discovering the origins of words.  So it would only make sense for me to start the voyage of this ‘Cosmology blog’ unpacking the meaning and implications of this word, cosmology.

Cosmo-logy is derived from the Greek kosmos, “universe” and logia, “study” – so, literally, cosmology is the study of the universe – All-That-Is, as we know it.

So is cosmology a science?  A philosophy? A mythology?  It is all of those things.    The cosmology of a people – a culture or civilization – is its story of origin.  It is the origin and nature of reality as that culture understands it, experiences it and is shaped by it.  One of my teachers, Dr. Larry Edwards, defined cosmology as “The principles of living derived from our story of origin.”  African teacher Malidoma Some says that a cosmology is “The foundational model for life itself.” (Malidoma Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa) The Big Bang theory is an example of a modern-day cosmology.  The Old Testament Book of Genesis is a cosmology.

The cosmology of a culture or civilization is embedded in its stories, myths, art.  The story of origin is implied in a culture’s scientific pursuits, in their social structures, and in their religions and philosophies.  The standards of business practice, economic practices, educational curricula, and religious beliefs pivot around the fulcrum of our story of origin.  Our cosmology effects our everyday existence in every way imaginable.

Some cosmologies are literally set in stone, written in books, or survive in an unbroken legacy of oral tradition.  But cosmologies change, because new information is always presenting itself as the human story unfolds from generation to generation.  Discoveries open up new channels of thought, new evidence for us to ponder.  The story changes, and as it does, culture changes.  Old structures break down, new ones arise that reflect the new experience.  Sometimes the information serves to validate and reaffirm what has been known and passed down through the ages; and sometimes it serves to remind us of what has been forgotten….

So, welcome to my cosmology blog.  Here is where I want to explore the story that is emerging as the people of Earth attempt to integrate the barrage of new information that is making its way into our lives at an ever-more accelerated pace from all directions – from the ocean, the stars, the shifting landscapes of ecosystems and from energies and sources beyond our ken.  After hundreds of years of conditioning, it is no mean feat to turn the volume down on this obsessive anthropocentric rationalism to be able to hear what is coming in on the wind, and to trust the deep knowing of our feelings – the hackles on our necks and the butterflies in our stomachs.  This is the grand shift – from mentally analyzing the universe and our relationship to it, to simply, and profoundly, falling in love with it.

Posted by  |  January 22, 2011 | Categories: Cosmology | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Check out music from Purple Hazel

Purple%20HazelQuantcast …and videos too!

Posted by  |  January 21, 2011 | Categories: Music | Leave a comment

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