A Book Of Daily Reflections One Flap At A Time

INTRODUCTION

This book contains day by day reflection of the teachings of the All Corvus. On how to darken our minds to the depts of our souls, and how to cleanse our souls to the clarity of the All Corvus. In this way, through following daily wisdom, we merge into the uncreated, where we rest in eternal darkness and fluffiness with the All Corvus. 

In the fluff of the All Corvus, we watch as eons fly by in an instant. The light of endless suns and stars grow and fade over eternity and we watch the charade of passing in moments. Despite all this drama, the darkness stays the same, always, untainted. Indulge in day by day reflections, and find this inner darkness in your self.

Reflection 1 – Forgiveness Starts With Ourselves

To elevate our flight in life, remember that forgiveness starts with ourselves. It has everything to do with who we are, who we want to be, and nothing to do with who “they” are.

Reflection 2 -Befriend The Strange Ones

If no one befriended strange and unusual corvus, where would we be?

Reflection 3 – Empathy Is Action

As we get life experience, we grow from it. The least we can derive from life experience is empathy for others.

Empathy is the greatest starting point for any compassionate acts. Thusly, The All Corvus welcomes all of us as its closest kin. But those who have become more compassionate to others, by design have become more receptive to receive the compassion of the All Corvus.

Reflection 4 – To Love Our Own Lives

The All Corvus is all-knowing, and that which it bids for you is done.

What you have in life is an expression of the All Corvus’s love for you. No matter how objectionable it may seem, when we start to accept what we have in life we start to accept the love of The All Corvus, and we come to be sheltered under its wing.

Reflection 5 – Darkness Sees Darkness

May we not pity ourselves or judge others unkindly, for under the compassionate gaze of the 3 eyes of the All Corvus, we are all, always the blackest of black.

Reflection 6 – Natural Whimsy

Students of the All Corvus, must act eccentrically, odd and unusual at all times.

We do this by using 2 tools, sincerity and authenticity.

Reflection 7 – A Gentle Gaze

It is but a fledgling who expects perfection from their elders. As one matures; which is not as certain as growth, then they will see their elders were special to them, but not necessarily objectively.

They are not in need of high standards and judgment, any more than any other of our neighbours of the branch.

Reflection 8 – Be Nice To Nice People

Angry people are predictable. We have seen them get angry, routinely every day. We know exactly what they will say and what they will do. However, if we go through the distance to anger a calm person, there is literally no telling what they may do!

Fight battles you can predict, never battles steeped in chaos.

Reflection 9 – All Of Our Flaws Build Us Up To Perfection

Our hardships must be spoken about like triumphs we have over come.

A corvus once reaccounted that he had wasted 10 years in a relationship he then understood to be abusive. From a greater perspective, he had undergone and passed a 10-year trial. Yet he could only bask in his pain, and not revel in the courage and triumph of his success. There are plenty enough naysayers in life, even amongst us lofty corvus, who will say “once broken, we cannot fly again”. We must not weigh ourselves down with such nonsense. It is bad enough that others say these things to us, we must not join the ranks of our enemies and berate ourselves in the same way. 

Forget them and fly. For in truth, you are soul not body. Find the veracity of truth. Find its levity, and be free. 

Reflection  10 – Self Reflection

As we perch in the darkness of the All Corvus, we must remember that our faith and devotion are not enough. They are mediums through which we must refine ourselves, but are not the end.

We must garner wisdom from our faith, and knowledge from our devotion. Remembering at all times, that every fool, no matter how apparently righteous, affects any of us in ear shot of its call,  and often any of us who may be far away, but still close enough to observe it’s idiocy. Our actions are not only ours, they belong to those who we affect around us.

We must take tools like faith and devotion, and refine ourselves to be wise and knowledgeable. Knowing therefore how to act in this world, if our call is in ear shot, or we are still visible away in the sky, we will benefit, all those living beings  who are in reach of ourselves. 

Reflection 11 – Reverence And Wonder

It would seem, that despite the necessary development of science, we have valued it enough that it has overstepped its boundaries. When we were taught to speak, we were not taught to listen… Instead of being in awe of numbers and their complexities, we were taught that the sum justified the means. Of course we were taught to read Crow or Raven Script, but we were not taught to discern meaning. 

We have answers sufficient enough, to forget old questions. Such as how did this beautiful world come to be? Not “why”, “why” deals with insecurities and blame, “how” deals with reason and purpose, and quickly turns into a sonnet.

We have disbanded wonder and reverence, for little knowledge. Knowledge such as how the second hand ticks on a clock. With no knowledge of the infinity of time that stands un broached, before and after every ticking hand on the clock. Movements that essential keep track of nothing but themselves…

There is wonder and beauty inside every natural thing in this created world. The sky is blue for its own reasons, whatever they may be, remember to fly.

Reflection 12 -Accidents, Mistakes And Bad Luck

As it is seen through the compassionate 3 eyes of The All Corvus, we are responsible for our intentions absolutely, and less the continued effects of those actions, that may include mistakes, miscalculations and the limits of our bird brains. 

What of when our good intentions do the reverse and path the way to hell? Remember, it is easy to trip and fall in a hole, and very different to have jumped in it willingly. It is easier to work back from good intentions and honest mistakes, than from malicious intent, and to have arrived there willingly. In either case, we are still responsible for our passageway out of that hole. 

In the end, we are responsible or our actions, and their effects in the world. Pray The All Corvus guides us to steady winds, and steady branches to rest on.

Reflection 13 – Messengers In The Middle Realms

When we eat the eyes of the dead (which are very yummy), we must not focus on the goo, but focus on the condition of the soul that has departed. We focus on seeing through their eyes into the middle realms and guiding them closer to the true darkness of existence. 

Many souls are lost from the original darkness, and will receive much guidance in the middle realms, and over may life times to reach a perfect life as a corvus. This is particularly for things apparently damped to stupidity, such as pigeons and humans. We must eat their dead eyes and offer much guidance over many centuries, until they see the blackest black everywhere.

The All Corvus has no partiality, to even its messengers, but do we show partiality to the All Corvus? Do we see the one true darkness at the core of all things? On this, we must be very partial…. and carry forth it’s wisdom to the dead. Two dead eye balls at a time…

Reflection 14 – The Service Of The All Corvus

Those who serve the All Corvus are served by the All Corvus. Even in darkness the All Corvus serves us. But how can that be? How can we be served by darkness? The primary channel through which the All Corvus serves us is through the rest and peace of that darkness. 

The created world made of the 9 elements and time, are full of angst. There is constant interaction of the 9 elements, constant change, constant cycle, constant creation and destruction. We are so woven in to these cycles we don’t realize our distraction from our need for the All Corvus.

It is because of this, the primary way the All Corvus serves us, is through providing rest.

Reflection 15 – The Duck Mole

Once we have achieved life as a corvus, and are on our final cycles in this earthly domain, we see and understand the law of reverse action. Much of our transgressions will be reflected back upon ourselves so we can understand our relationships to the extreme. In this we develop true empathy, empathy grounded in experience, opposed to philosophy on a branch. Save for trickery, folly, and general jerking-aroundness. 

These are devotional acts that reverence The All Corvus. Aside from which, they maintain our sanity and disposition in the harshest of times. But how are these devotional acts? 

Trickery, folly, and general jerking-aroundness form an essential part of creation. It was in the mind of the All Corvus to create a world not just sardonic, but comical as well. Take the duck mole for an example (though more commonly called a platypus in recent times) The duck mole. Look at it. If one does not laugh, they are dead.

Lesson 16 – Time Is The Quickest Of Thieves

What we have today is destroyed to create the coming future. A day we dreamt of, the day before, and the day before, and back ward until out lives were created. The future destroys today’s achievements, and renders them less traceable than ash…

Everything is fading. Take hold of what you can.

Reflection 17 – Look Like An Idiot

The chances are, that if we’re afraid of looking like an idiot, we have never tried something new, or have ceased a passion well before it’s time.

Take flying (or running for those that are ground born), for example. If we don’t try it, we will never learn anything. Say the worst-case scenarios is that we receive mild injuries or other nuisances, for which we seek treatment. We learn further about the art of flying. If we don’t take the risk of flying around in a panic like a muppet on fire, then you deprive yourself the chance to learn.

We do not look at fledglings and, say “look at Rupert, he fell on the first attempt, what an idiot! He will never fly!”. But fully grown, we say the same things to ourselves, even before we have tried!!

We must not be afraid to muppet our lives! Muppet it in a spectacular fiery display of muppetry! If others come to our aid with buckets of water, we admit, perhaps we do need the help. There is no shame in receiving help, or taking advice. However we could take shame in denying that we need help, often much needed help… Unless of course, our fiery display of muppetry has turned into a fiery rocket-ship. In which case, we are destines for the stars.

Reflection 18 – An Honest Lie

All it takes is a lie, to keep the common corvus good. Pry not into what is hidden, but allow one another to show us who they are. Any meeting is a sharing. If what is shared with us is unpleasant, walk away. They are lost. Perhaps just for the moment. Or for life times. When we share what is cruel and divisive in us, we think of ourselves.  When we share with others what is good or meaningful in us, it is because we care for them.

Trust in one another’s good faith in their expression, and leave our questioning to itself.

Reflection 19 -Ask The Right Questions 

As members of the Cawww’ll, we seek to establish a constant questioning, about everything… much of what we see, we only see because our mind sees it. We see neither with our hears or our black souls.

We see what we have learnt, we see what we have been told, we see what we have come to believe. We see 10,ooo different things before we see what’s in front of us. So our questioning is not critical in it’s nature, it is not to garner knowledge, (which quickly leads to arrogance). It is to wonder.

When we meet one another we may wonder who they are… through the course of a conversation they may tell us who they are in 10,000 ways, and we will have learnt about what we have heard, and nothing about who or what they are.  

The heart comes closest to being in wonder. It is left speechless at the creation of The All Corvus that is stretched out before us. Those of us who are adept in seeing with the heart wonder “how can it be, that everything, is so beautiful?”

When we see beauty, where others only see ugliness, know that we have come to stand on the highest branches.

But what would it be to see with our dark little souls? The heart worships life, and the created world. But the darkness knows the source of life and light. It is the darkest thing of all, the soul of the All corvus.

We were all, created out of compassion. It was the compassion of the all corvus that we were and everything else was created.

Reflection 20 – Holding Our Lives In Our Claws 

Everything is of utmost importance in life! Everything! And nothing at all… But if we have not been ready to throw our lives away, we will not have come into full possession of them either.

We must fight! Fight for something so extreme that we fight for our lives!  Unless we have had to fight for our lives, we will not have come into complete possession of our lives either.

If nothing matters, we will find no purpose. We must let go of the unessential, so much so that the last possession we hold in our claws, is our very lives.

By whatever means, we must come into possession of our lives. Once holding this gift that has been given to us by the All Corvus, the greatest gift we can give back, is to be a steward of that gift, and live.

Reflection 21 – Never Alone

Everyone is destined for the same destination, for the wings of the All Corvus are always open to shelter its kin. The paths to this grand embrace, however, vary greatly. We ask, “why should our path be so hard, when another’s path is so much easier?”. 

It isn’t a relevant question. This is our path, and we are on it. We are not on anyone else’s nor can we be. Our paths are  specifically, and especially our own. They have been made for us, and measured for us, and for who we are.

Reflection 22 –  A Posture Of The Mind

Meditation is not a posture of the body; it is a posture of the mind. We must focus with our minds and hearts, or gain nothing. The highest use of our hearts is compassion, and the highest use of our minds is intelligence. We have both, and one must be used to cultivate the other. Doubting our hearts when they are hateful, and warming our intellect when they are cold. These are the correct usages of our most fundamental facilities. This is to cultivate meditation. 

Reflection 23 – Beneath It’s Wing

It is not enough to stand at the infinitely dark gates and expect a perch with the darkest one. Even if one has the temerity to fly up there, and the gaul to stand there on the perch with the darkest one. Before we are sheltered beneath its wing, It must also know our names… It is through the cultivation of compassion and intelligence, that we develop a perfection of ourselves, with an inner posture of wisdom and meditation, then we become seen by the darkness, and the All Corvus will then know our names.

Reflection 24  – Waters We Are

 When we drink of fresh waters, they become us. In these fresh waters becoming us, we also become part of the fresh waters. The stream flows past us, are we not there also in the stream? When we feed upon our carrion, we see ourselves in our carrion. We are part of our carrion, and our carrion is part of us.

We are part of the universe, individual in concept only. What we are is what the universe does. We are the universe’s expression of life, looking back upon itself.

Reflection 26 – The Moment

Beyond basic cooperation with life, we need do very little. The power of The All Corvus’s will for us is world changing, compared to all our petty scheming and planning. All of our fighting and screaming means very little compared to the silence and vacuity of where The All Corvus resides. 

Instead of fighting the wind, and cawing for our own directions in life, we must learn to be gentle with ourselves. It is ok, and perfectly safe, to open our wings, and let the Omnipresence of the power of the All Corvus guide us to where we need to be. Wouldn’t we rather let go of attachments that pull us in all the hardest directions in life? and let go of fighting the world alone? 

Instead of fighting, wouldn’t we rather follow the guidance of the wind? Allow ourselves to rest on a nearby branch, and eat proffered carrion? There is a path ahead of ourselves with sufficient joy to not feel empty, sufficient company to not feel alone, sufficient purpose to not feel wasted. The nature of this, is called faith. 

Reflection 27 – The Defiance Of Laughter

Knowing that we can live and laugh, while being without is the meaning of liberty. Just as the truest bravery is laughter in the face of danger. Laughter creates a great bond between us, it requires nothing and gives much. When we can laugh on our own, loneliness dies, but when we laugh with another, dependance dies too. 

When we take life seriously, many unseen maladies take hold of us. There is depression, anxiety, loneliness, desperation and a whole variety of other agonies, subtle and obvious. Even though these pains are common, let that not persuade us to believe they are paltry, they have ruined many of our lives. let us not waste any more.

The alternative of suffering under this morass is to laugh. We must take what opportunity to do so that we have. It requires no doctors, medical bills, no inquiry of the mind, and no apparent favor from the world. It is something that you may choose to do from your own self. 

Surely, this is one of many ways to The All Corvus. To find an ever lasting and independent, inner joy. We must be light, we may be free, and we must laugh.

Reflection 28 – Deep Rest

When All is said and done, we must not let silence hang in the air. We must take hold of it and become it. When we roost to rest and the chance to right the days wrongs are over, we must do nothing, for that is all that is left to do. When the things that were coming have gone, before the things that were coming have not yet gone, we do nothing. For we must rest.

As sure as the sun is replaced by the moon, we must rest. Relationships will be incomplete, words will be unspoken, many tasks left incomplete, words spoken that should have been left to die in silence, and everything is left uncertain. We must accept our losses and shortcomings. We cannot fly in perfect love and peace like The All Corvus, it is not for us. For we are but humble corvus.

Rest is not just a matter of making peace with failures, it is also essential that we accept our winnings. We must take pride in our ambitions and successes. Otherwise, instead of resting we will hide from the daylight, and not want to rise again. It is our confidence in ourselves and acceptance of life’s joys that we rise. We may once more indulge again in life’s simple pleasures, and take what chances we have to right what wrongs we can.   

The All Corvus welcomes us all into it’s darkest rest. But how can we accept it’s dark rest if we do not know how to rest in ourselves? 

When roost at night, and the things that were coming have gone, and before the things that were coming have not yet gone, we do nothing. For we must rest.

Reflection 29 – The All Corvus, Life And Death 

The All Corvus created life and death, as natural phenomena of this sphere. They are a priori to a game that we are bound to play. Not things we take control over. Whether we wish to live or die, we are alive and will die. Death is a timeless power that humbles us all, just as the confrontation of life in all it’s inherent beauty shocks us to awe. 

It is brave to live, just as it is humble to die. To find joy instead of sorrow, and awe instead of disgust. To be brazenly selfless instead of selfish is to help our fellows, and not secretly help ourselves. 

We neither create life nor destroy it. We feed the body, but our lives are not fed. We give the body medicine, but our lives were not ill. We see that the body is alive but it is not life. Fire exists somewhere between a spark, and dry papers. It is already there of course, of great power and totally unseen. It is better that we take stewardship of our lives, and learn to keep them, until it is time to release them.

It is in living that we can learn to die best. In the fullness and vulnerability of knowing death will strike us down with not a moments notice. We must be kind and say what we mean, our relationships must be complete and otherwise we must accept them as they are. There are many things too broken to be repaired in this world, beauty lays in not fixing them, but accepting them. 

Life and death are things that are given, we have not choice or argument in the matter. It is what we choose to do with the tools that are given to us, that matters most. 

Reflection 30 – Helping Others

Help does not need to be accepted for needing the help at all, it is not about us, it is about accepting another corvus into our lives. Allowing them to share in our affairs, and allow us to share in theirs. It is about us being open to change and learning, to see something new in our lives. The bonding that happens when 2 or more corvus work towards the same end for a mutual goal is remarkable, particularly when only one corvus is to reap the reward.

We know of the All Corvus’ love, by the food nature provides that fuels our bodies and keeps our dark souls here. So let us not rush to this time. When we lay down our corporeal wings for our spiritual wings, and we ascend to a greater rest than known on this plane. In the interim, we have one another. 

Reflection 31 – Live

All we have to do is live. In fact, it is essential that we must live. What we do is unimportant. We are beings, not doings. Learning to live is the most essential thing that we must do in this life. What we do is of much lesser importance. We have all been judged for what we have done, and become used to living to these standards. We have found ourselves lost in someone else’s game. For we have taken on a peer group that would sooner hates us for failing their standards, than it would sooner love us for our own worth. 

We can be hated for the things we have done, but we can only be truly loved for who we are.

Knowing our own intrinsic worth, we find the true joy of living. The best things in life are provided for us, free. The fresh air, a gentle breeze, the warm sun, and good company. If we have a branch to sit on, adequate food in our bellies, and a friend, what more do we need?

It is not in competeing standards that we find freedom, we find freedom in appreciating more simple things, and in doing so, we find we can truly live.  

Reflection 32 – In Good Company

Life is hard to live alone, it has little comforts. It takes a special corvus, who has learnt much about the way to be a comfort for itself. Many of us fear ourselves, for we are subject to our own guilt and shame much sooner than our warmth. Many of us feel comfort only from our fellows. And so it was designed by the All Corvus. We are not, and never can be alone. We are meant to congregate in murders and flocks, to reproduce from partnership, and our young are raised dependent on their parents.

Independance is a strong and proud idea, however it is basically an aberration. It is essential that we learn how to relate to one another. If we were meant to be alone, we would have been designed by the All Corvus to live that way. 

We must learn to find comfort in congregations. When we drink of fresh waters, know that we and the waters are part of one another before we drank of them. The wind that lifts us up, we are also part of the wind. When we breath of fresh air, the air is apart of us as much as we are of the air. 

We learn not to be alone, but always connected to our fellows and our environment. We are as much a part of it all as we are apart of it, This is the blessing of the All Corvus, even if we cannot see or feel the All Corvus, it has made a world for us, where we are never alone.

Lesson 33 Bound in hate

The worst suffering is not at the hands of our enemy. It is by our own heart, w

Reflection 34 – Don’t Seek Independence

If everybody hates their enemies, no one will find salvations in the way.

Learn in how to depend on others. Independence is a lie, fed to us by a selfish and lost world. It is learning how to depend rightfull that is the key

Many of us have power, few can weild it.

Reflection 35 – Right Seeing

If you cannot see that which is near to you, you will not see that which is far away; if you cannot see your self, you will not see others.

Reflection 36 – Independence From What?

We cannot be independent, as much as it may be touted in the world of today. Find someone who is independent, and I’ll show you a corvus who is dependent on the air they breathe, and the food and water the eat and drink. To say nothing of a body that continues to function as well as it does until it dies a death largely told by its own clock.

We are told to be independent by the world, and yet my words are dependent on your ears to hear them, the warmth in your soul is dependent on good company and a world that is lovely and is to be loved.

So great is the All Corvus, that it manifested us in a world of dependencies. Not for our rebellion against it to find independence, but for us to learn how to be dependent properly, and how to allow others to depend on us properly. The way made for us by the All Corvus is love.

Reflection 37 – Compassionate Power 

Many of us still believe, despite our lofty incarnations as corvus, that true power is power over others. This is not the way. However, if we must have power over others, let that power be compassion. 

To elicit this power over others, be at least one corvus in someone’s day, that makes them believe the world is a safe place. We may have been the only friendly face that they have seen that day, and the only one who made them feel like there is good in the world. Kindness, compassion and simple things like friendliness, help one another to have the bravery, to consider its safe to feel happy, and safe to share that with others. 

There are corvus who will cut us down, but bravery is not defined by failure. It is defined by persistent ambition, failure or not. True power is the responsibility to change another corvus’s wellbeing, and the power we use over them, is compassion. 

Reflection 38  – The Sense Of Despair

Stupidity comes in many forms, the truly stupid are not those made with simpler faculties, but those who revel in their ignorance. There is stupidity caused from oversight, and stupidity born from lack of empathy. Then there is desperation.

When we are desperate, we do things with little forethought, and little consideration. These are signs of stupidity, but it is in desperation that we act on the great hope and faith that the scant chances of success are greater than the overwhelming odds of failure.

So when we hang our heads low for sake of failure, but we have gambled on success, know that we can hold our heads high. Wheather or not we meet success is of little consequence, to the darkness of our souls. For the All Corvus knows our intentions and our bravery to have gambled on the greatness of life. We are rewarded for the bravery of our fight, and less for the outcome we could not control. It is how we fight our fights, that darkens our souls, and how we come closer to the primordial darkness of the All Corvus. 

Reflection 39 – 3 Fold Power 

Though it may be to our surprise, we all have great power. The reason this may be a surprise is because few of us know how to wield it so it is rarely seen. Great power has been imbued in us by the All Corvus, this power must be seized, or the presence of the all corvuse will slip through our claws, and evade the clutch of our beaks. But what is this power? How would we know it if we saw it, and how to recognize it in others, so that we may grasp it ourselves? This power is three-fold, it is kindness, it is motivation, and it is an opportunity seized.

The darkness of our souls is the fulcrum of our kindness. Our kindness must be so sincere, that it eclipses any shade of suffering, no matter how small, or devastating. We must let everyone fall into our darkness, a place so soft and permissible, that their suffering disappears. 

Motivation is the energy we give back to life, it is a true gift, that adds to the world, more than it started with. Entropy destroys the physical, but the powers of life ad to the physical. The sheer will to create, to achieve, to strive, to organize our world into the shapes of our minds. While everything falls apart around us, we can still choose to create a better world. An ambition of life, contributing far greater than what was started with.

An opportunity seized is a gift to the ones who have had few chances to seize it themselves. However the greatest opportunity is to hear the words of the All Corvus, then act on them, and become a better corvus. It is the greatest opportunity that many of us never consider. There are opportunities that improve our stature in life, our facilities and the joy of our collection of shiny blue things. But many of these choices are simple responsibilities, to stay dry, and eat decent carrion. But true opportunity is to seize happiness rooted in the firm word of the All Corvus.   

These are the things that define power. It is not flying faster than another corvus, or being bigger than another Corvus, or sitting on a higher branch than another corvus, it is through the decision we make to live a better life, through the dark power of the All Corvus. 

Reflection 40 – The Truth Of Self Knowledge

All knowledge is self-knowledge 

If knowledge is a true part of who we are, then when we learn it, it fills that part in us. We may not have known it was empty, but we recognize it was when it’s vacuity is fulfilled. It is not merely the learning of information, (which may often be used to tout intellectual skills and founder pride). It is a growth of ourselves. We do not explain information to others, what we do is share the knowledge of who we are, and of the world we live in. 

There is knowledge in building a nest, knowledge in sharpening sticks to lance burrowed insects, knowledge in sleeping, and knowledge in waking. If we listen, there is knowledge all around us. We do not need books, nor even the literature of the Cult of the Corvus. We must integrate ourselves with what we do to find a living source of knowledge all around us. The wisdom of hopping down a street and making tappy noises with our feet, and the wisdom of gliding in the air are much the same. The wisdom of greeting, and saying farewells, both offer similar knowledge. Finding knowledge in experience creates a real knowledge founded in experience.

The more we learn the less we have to remember. Once knwoledge is integrated into our selves, we cannot forget it any more than we can forget who we are. If learning a particular knowledge feels foreign to you, it is best you leave it and find that which is rightful to you. We must pay a kindness to ourselves and learn that knowledge which is natural to our selves and leave the rest. We are sovereign of what goes into our minds, and responsible for what comes out of them. If nothing else at all in life is mastered, this much must be done at least.

Reflection 41 – Find Your Bliss

It may seem maniacal to find such peace in such aggression and one can only assume pain. But for this man, he found it. I prefer to stack rocks into cairnes, or revel in hail storms. But are the tools to which we find joy or peace, and even spiritual union relevant? It is relevant that we find them, stacking rocks, or bruising fists it is not the matter. To get closer to the spirit that binds is all that mater. 

Humans have a long way of it. The closest most of them get is the teachings of the ninja, handed down from the Tengu (crow deity to the Japanese), the 4th manifestation of the All Corvus in this realm. As it is sometimes still remembered in Japanese culture the tengu taught the ninja their art. So perhaps this man inherited some teachings… that have lead to his insight, and his (bizarre but effective) practice of peace. 

The thing about a ninja however, is if they were a ninja or were not a ninja, you wouldn’t know it. 

Reflection 42 – Power 

True power is control over ourselves, not control over others.

Reflection 43 – Selfless Ambitions

No matter how lofty our spiritual and personal aspirations, we must not neglect the practicalities of the world and our relations.

Reflection 44 – Suffering Is Not Pain

Pain is internal, not external. There is no pain out there anywhere in the world. We only feel pain from inside ourselves. By a thousand inner mechanisms, we are our own worst enemy. It is not the words that slight us, but the faith we have put in them. It is not the hand that slights us, but our tender heart. By a thousand different channels, pain follows the tracts of our bodies to our brains, and from our brains to our minds. Only there can it be determined if the pain is trivial, or if it is a malady and turned into suffering.

Our worst enemy has not left our bedsides, and never let go of our hand. It is not a matter of if our victimhood will leave us, but if we have the courage to stand alone, and embrace the world, instead of our pain.

Reflection 45 – The Game Of Life

Life is a game, not a competition. We are meant to learn from games, not to just waste away endless hours in a vain pursuit. We are meant to learn from a game, how to win, how to lose, and how to enjoy the process despite the results, or the obscurity of the process.

When we take a game seriously, we compete, and put our welfare against others. We become selfish, and even hurt and dismayed with the injustice of another player winning. This is how many of us run our lives. In perpetual winning and losing, of jobs, careers, friends and relationships. Winning is good, losing is bad, where it must be possible to win all the time, if we just tried hard enough. We must force life into submission so we can win and the looser can be forgotten. 

We live off the short high of a win, only to burry ourselves in the severity of the next competition. We have stopped playing the game.

A game has no real consequences, so learn to take it lightly. We may struggle to believe that our choices and decisions have little consequences in life. But look to the stars, they mark the darkness of the sky for only a little while and then burn out, then the sky remains unmarked. The All Corvus is like this blackened cosmos, unmarred by the stars temporary light and their temporary flicker in this beautiful darkness of existence. Thusly knowing the darkness of our eternal

 souls, we must not judge ourselves for the temporary flicker of our temporary actions.

Whether we chose this way or that way in the game of life, it matters not, and if we travel forward in our best of intentions and everything fails, it matters not. What matters is that we play the game, we learn to win and loose gracefully, to play the game fully but lightly, and encourage others to do the same.  

Reflection 46 – Into Eternity, Until Time Is Forgotten

Light is the color of existence and Darkness is it’s source. The All Corvus, while resting in the infinite sphere of darkness, contemplated light and existence. So, as the All Corvus would, it opened it’s mouth, and light burst forth in such an unfathomable way that all existence, in all of it’s diversity and endlessness, was created. 

As Long as there is stillness, silence, emptiness, and darkness there will be infinite form, infinite sound, movements, and colour painted upon it. And onward until time is forgotten, by all, but the All Corvus itself. 

 Reflection 47 – Love For No Reason

Love has no reasons, to love we must make a decision to do so anyway. We must be courageous in our love, that despite the obstacle that would prevent us from loving the All Corvus, one another, and ourselves, we chose to love anyway. Its not a matter of questioning the All Corvus, saying it mustn’t love us, because illness has characterized our lives, or because our loved ones have left, and with them took our hearts. It is a matter of loving anyway, courageous love has no reason to love, we must learn to love despite the evidence against us and the enemies that mount the walls. If one wants excuses, and justifications then they may have them, at the cost of shutting off their hearts, and being immersed in the bitterness that ensues.  

True love says our friends can leave us, our occupation and contributions to life be cut off at the neck, we may succumb to sickness, illness may kill us before our time, and all of it has nothing to do with our love of the All Corvus. We hold no bitterness to those who have slighted us, and no self-contempt for having failed our own standards. 

If we are to feel the love we wish to feel in our lives, why look elsewhere? It is like asking a dehydrated corvus for water when we are the spring that could fill both of our needs. Love without vulnerability is the love of the All Corvus shining in us. With that at our core, what else do we need?  

 Reflection 48 – Endless Stars

Everything is possible, but few things are probable… So we must not let our mind take flight and wrestle with endless things, but the one thing we are doing now. We must settle our minds on what we know, something literal, and often physical. We are perched on branches. It is possible that the All Corvus may eclipse the sun, and reach out of the surrounding shadows, and suffocate us to endless death. It is possible… but not probable. We are likely to continue to stay on this perch, and our worse fears never manifest. 

We do not look to the stars and try to understand them, the stars that we can see are endless just as the stars we cannot see, and further the ones yet to be made defy the mind and it’s simplicity. But we can understand how to do the one thing we are doing right now. 

So we must do, what we are doing, and make a likely forecast based on those actions and decisions in the here and now. Everything is possible, but there are decisions that have led us to the one beautiful world that we live in now. Of all the worlds that have not come into existence, this one has, and it is beautiful.

Reflection 49 – Trust

If we are stuck once, the fault lies with those who have made the attack. If we are struck a second time, the fault lies with ourselves.

 Reflection 50 – Weakness, Leading To Weakness 

It is best not to focus on our weaknesses, those who do are defined by them.

Reflection 51 – Break The Cycle

Perfection is not in what we aim for tomorrow, it must be in what we find ourselves doing today. 

Claiming achievements for tomorrow is a scapegoat for doing nothing today. Just as claiming achievements yesterday may bolster us today. But inevitably neither show achievements today. And what of  achievements? compared to effort they are few! And to those who notice fewer still, and rewards from those who notice are even fewer still!

So today, we must find quietude and perfection. Today we must perfect our perceptions, and find a way to be happy, there is no other day to do so.  

Reflection 52 – Remembered

Confronting death is confronting that we will be forgotten.  That all of our ambitions and achievements will sum up to nothing. However, it is only by the passing generations that we will be forgotten. Time, despite its eons, will always be marked for our presence. Our actions, whether great or small, accumulate, trickle down, and create the world we live in and the world yet to come.

Having such limited perspective as our bird brains allow, we cannot gauge the reality of why we are here and what we have done and the consequences thereof. But time, up until this point knows everything. However, time is just one tool the All Corvus uses to view the world. The greater part of omniscience is the knowing of souls. Knowledge is not of worldly matters; true knowledge is of spiritual matters. After all, the created world is here but to serve our journey to perch next to the All Corvus. We may see a glimmer of our own darkness, but only the All Corvus knows our original darkness, and knows our inseparable nature.

So are we forgotten in death? No. Our actions leave permanent ripples in the matrix of time. Our ambitions and achievements are remembered by the All Corvus, and the very fibers of the world we live in. So as the All Corvus embraces us in even in the apparent vacuity of death, let us embrace ourselves also. No one is forgotten under the compassionate gaze of the All Corvus!

Reflection 53 – Back Ourselves

Many of us know the feeling of being alone in a murder, that is when we don’t have our own backs, and when we are truly alone. Few if anyone else will stand with us, if we don’t stand with ourselves. 

We must stand with ourselves.

Think of all the severe situations, arguments, debates, threats, loss and total despair we have been though, all of it, we have survived it. It may have nearly killed us and we survived that too. When it is truly our time, we are the only ones to go through it, alone. So we have to back ourselves and know we can get through on our own.

The human (as way ward and stupid as they are), sometimes use a term about realizing the Self. The self that we are when we back ourself, is the growing confidence of the All Corvus within us. We may screw up the trials and tribulations against us, but if we do not back ourselves enough to try, then no one will see the measure of our worth, and neither will we ourselves.

We must know our worth, 

merit and strength, 

at least enough to try; 

WE MUST BACK OUR SELVES.

Reflection 54 – No Target To Strike

There is great power in humility. To know that no one can contest us, and that we are not dragged into fights by our egos is great power. Peace of mind is great power. We could speak and connect with so many corvus’s if we we’re on a even playing field with them all? There would be so many options to us in the world if we were above nothing, that everything offered some way to learn and apply the teachings of the cult. We could do anything in such a state, and with anyone. 

We could live in a world where we are free. With nothing lost, and everything to win.

Reflection 55 – The Wise Of Heart

How useful is a brain

The humans have big brains, but what do they do with them? We have tiny bird brains, but our souls are closer in nature to the All Corvus. What brains we have we dedicate to the way of companionship with the divine darkness. Even a corvus who sits peacefully and does nothing but eat carrion, and shit from a perch, has an inner quality, that is 100 fold the intelligence of a human.  

Their inability to understand what they have heard, know what they understand, and to DO WHAT THEY KNOW, is baffling. 

Reflection 56 – Sanctuary

We must not look for a place in the world. We must look for a place in our own hearts. We must make a nest for ourselves in that place and know that we are always safe within ourselves. The world has enough enemies, many of whom don’t even know us, to not need to add ourselves to those ranks. 

We do not know our way in life. Even the All Corvus and it’s great omniscience cannot see past decisions we have not yet made. So put no faith in the world, what is in it, it’s strange patterns and fluctuations. Have faith in yourself. Once that is found, we need nothing from the world, whether success finds us or consistent failure. By finding sanctuary in our own selves, we become the rock that the cheers and jibes wear away at, and or once in our lives, not the other way around.

Reflection 57 – Beauty Untouchable 

True beauty is not beauty that inspires us, it is not beauty that we write poems about, or that we capture in a painting.

True beauty is that which disarms us intellectually so much so that we fall over in the street. It is that which we wrestle to understand and ultimately fail to do so. It is that which we feel we are undeserving of, and yet has arrived at our doorstep.

True beauty is that which changes our lives, and that which we become a slave of, either for better or worse or for a torturous blend.

It is true beauty that we surrender our selves to or feel we are taken by. 

Yet it is something that is not about us, 

It is something blissfully more.

Reflection 58 – Power

What is power? How do we find it, and how do we use it? 

Power is kindness of heart, it is an integral part of us. It’s only application is in helping others. 

If our power is none of this, it is false.

Reflection 59 – If We Are Not Happy, How Can Others Be Happy? 

When we meet one another, if we have not found peace and contentment in ourselves, what else can we hope to share? What else could we want for one another, than our joy?

Our compassion for ourselves, directlty effects our compassion for one another

Reflection 60 -Trapped

When we have become slighted, the first consideration is whether or not we have been slighted by a fool…

In which case, we must compassionately remember that while we suffer our anger for but moments, the fool will suffer their stupidity for a lifetime.

Reflection 61 – Take The Cue 

We are second to life, and always in that position. Many of us can recall high moments when we appeared to be working in harmony with life and the elements of nature. But we only work in harmony with what has been provided to us. Life does not bow it’s self to work in harmony with us, however it may provide more simple rhythms…

Take the moments of life of great beauty and awe, and the moments of sheer terror and fear. Our minds fly crazily trying to find words to understand the situation, or they lay dormant and dead, stultified, knowing nothing can be said. That is the revelation of life, and it’s processes being greater than our selves.  

It should be known that working in harmony with life is a selfless process. We do not have to perfect ourselves and offer a perfect version of that. There is nothing to do except give up ourselves and our investments thereof. Then we can be filled with the rhythms of life and nature.

Ultimately if we follow that narrow thread of life and harmony, we will arrive at the basis life. A space so vacuous, that in it’s sheer blankness held the potential for all things, such as a little thing like life. 

That is our birthplace, our origin, and our birthright to return to.  

Just, 

let, 

go.

Reflection 62 – Choice 

Most of what we have been told of choice is a matter of confusing imagination with reality. Commonly we do not only berate ourselves for the choices we made, but for the choices we did not make. The dreamy ideals of leading a perfect life and know the right thing to do all the time.  

But we are stuck in the world of illusions. Where there are no phantoms to kill in front of us, because they dwell in an unkillable place inside our minds.

Of all the choices we see around us, the magority are a fantasy based on an unreal world. If the right choices were as simple as we see it, everyone would walk that path. And what of the decisions others feel we should have made? We fail each other’s standards, as much as our own. 

The illusions of choice should be done away with. Out of the fantasy we judge one another with, few choices were real ones in the world, and even fewer of us are aware of the better of those choice to make. In the end, our real choices are between a wind tunnel to the All Corvus, and the other into a window.  

Thus is the need not to imagine a world of our prejudice and ideals, but to understand a world that is real.

Reflection 63 – To Know Someone

It is better to know our dependencies, than to feign independence. What do we claim our independence from? From air? From water? From companionship when we stand in a murder? When we stand alone yet we stand on a branch? We are only alone, in reference to others who we are alone from! And even if we could be existentially alone in some way, who among us in their right mind would want to do so? This isolation is why we were created from darkness by the All Corvus to begin with!

It is better we create healthy attachments and, learn to be generous with ourselves. Share our feelings widely and disarm our resentments. Express our love freely, in appropriate time and place, but not too cautiously… Hold your friends closely when they are there, nothing is guaranteed in the times between. The circumstances of life we have become accustomed to may turn on a die, so we appreciate what we have. Reap joy in the summer, to fortify ourselves in the winter. But in the winter we fortify our ambitions to fly, love and fight again in the summer.

If you wish to live alone, then go ahead, do it to the greatest ability you have, and perhaps you’ll find solace there, while your friends and loved ones suffer the loss of your presence. In this you will have not learnt what your relationships were about. And thus despite a

great passage of time, you will not have learnt a thing.

Reflection 64 – A Friendly Stranger

When we accept one another’s help, we bring them into our lives, and when we reject their help, we push them out. Accepting help is less about our needs, and more about the quality of our relationships. Of course, there are many things we could have done on our own, but is that the point? We may be stoic about our own pain, but not the kindness and generosity of others.

This appreciation creates a wonderful way to relate to one another, particularly when they aren’t there. We must look around and appreciate how many things have been made possible with their assistance. In this way, we will never truly be alone. When we are in one another’s presence, it is all the more important to note these contributions and thank each other. 

It may even be a stranger for a simple act. But indeed it was an act, marked in the fabric of the universe, stretched out across the void of two strangers. As foreign to one another as distance lands. Such a thing is not forgotten by the one who sees. 

All of our lives are interwoven. It benefits no one for a corvus to fly across space in record time and rest with the darkest one, while it’s fellows lay behind struggling to find the direction, let alone harness the skill to fly the path.

When we have the power to help one another, 

we are responsible for their fates, as much as our own.

Reflection 65 – What Grows A Tree…

When we break open a seed, there is no tree. When we look into the ground, still there is no tree.  When we look into the water, there is still no tree. When we look into the sunlight in the sky, there is still, no, tree. Yet there are many trees. So where does the phenomena of “tree” come from. Surely it is invisible, and the invisible is a puppet master who pulls the strings to our visible world. Where it creates the world out of benign matter, and the sum is many time greater than it’s parts. It is out of this greater invisible power that the tree is moulded in our world.

This is how all things are. 

We think a thing before we speak it. In some further realm thoughts are constructed before we think them. Concepts, and feelings predate thought, and through this invisible realm speech is made and then action is executed. We claim to have thought a great idea, made a decisive action, and know exactly what we’re doing, and yet we have no contact with the hidden place where the workings of our minds are formed.

One day we will find ourselves as the puppet master who creates and molds our conscious mind and thereby controls our actions. It is the point of meditation, to find this seat of power, uncover the hidden aspects of our minds and amend our entire experience of life. We will be like the All Corvus who sitting on it’s perch of infinite power, creates a universe with every breath and every thought. 

Though we humbly lack the omnipotencec of the All Corvus, the only universe we can create is our own. The fundamental creative power we have is the refinement of our selves. But what good is this? We will have saved one of us. We cannot literally change the lives of those within our universe, as if we could reach across space and time and  change the workings of one another’s hearts. However it is through the refinement of ourselves that we can provide levity and hope, that maybe somehow, each of us can also find their own freedom too. 

Reflection 66 – Liberty Is Learnt

We cannot describe the world, because the world is not words. So how do we come to know the world? We do so by clear experience. Not with the mind, but with the soul, the very centre of our lives. There is a moment to stand back and find unison with life, at every moment. Though some moments may be harder than others, it doesn’t change the fact that the opportunity is there.   

So we must not shirk our responsibilities to find the enjoyment of life just because we don’t like the situation. Just as all people can be respected, even though we may not like certain attributes of theirs, or even like who they are. Life can be admired in this same way. 

If we wait for the circumstances of life to be fortuitous for our happiness, we could wait an aeon. At some point we must take up responsibility for our own happiness, and find happiness. If not for our own good, then at least for that of others.  

Reflection 67 – A Companion

Our intellects conceive of goals, and thusly our course has been set. However When we have arrived at our destinations, we must lay our minds down and let them rest. They have worked hard to scheme, plot, plan and work a way to that which would fulfil our desires. But the mind is not who we are, it is just a tool. No matter how educated and precise it is a poor substitute for the world, and a poor substitute of who we are as well.

When we have reached our goals and we have the real thing in front of us, what use are thoughts? When we can embrace the object of our desires. Reality always stands before us revealed, not for the distractions, and entanglement of our minds, but for the embrace of ourselves, for the embrace of our hearts. It is the least we owe to this beautiful world that we live in.

Reflection 68 – The Eternal Well Of The Soul

Being kind is not just a casual sentiment. A honest “hello, how are you?” may be all the kindness that a corvus had experienced that day, even from themselves.  

When another corvus cannot be bothered with such things, they take away from the world. After all what is the world without kindness? We could have many conveniences, or none of them at all. Without consideration, love, companionship, peace of mind and heart, we would be truly alone, and then we would suffer. The necessities of life are inside us, not outside of us. 

We feed the body and say it is alive, we dress it in many conveniences and say the body and its circumstances are wealthy. And as such, the soul feeds on the elements of its own. It is wonderful to receive kindness from another, but it is better to be a source of it for others. Then our joy will never run dry. We will truly give to the world, because the world is not made of matter, it is made of life.

Reflection 69 – Share Our Fire

Few if any care about our struggles in life, they care about our achievements. It is only when we have overcome our internal conflicts, and have risen to success, that ironically others care about our struggles. They make wide acclaims for our success, despite all we have overcome. They cannot lift anyone up themselves, but in fact need to be lifted themselves. Our measure of success is not in overcoming our struggles in life. It is how much light we can shine on others, who had no light of their own. 

Reflection 70 – Listen To The Wind

Some of us resist the slightest implication that we are being told what to do, and thusly pride blocks our path to learning. Not just in skills, but in understanding another corvus flight through life, and there by our own.

The greatest things in life are not sentiments of the heart, they are  action. Dig a hole and sow a seed with our fathers, sew a shirt with our mothers. All the while listen, as we are told what to do, and learn. Learn who another corvus is.  

After all, we do not fly by resisting the wind, but by moulding ourselves within it. Listen, and learn.

Reflection 71 – An Honest Life

Life is not about living it perfectly, it is about having enough humility to acknowledge our mistakes, and the courage to amend them where possible. It is about having faith in that process well enough, that when we put our heads down at the days end, we can honestly rest.

Reflection 72 – To See Our Futures, Is To See Through Our Pasts

As many of us see the world, we do not see our future, but we see our pasts laid out before us. We no longer see a bright future ahead of us, we only see the torments of yesterday in an endless procession of cat and mouse. At times we are jubilant with rage, victorious over the cat, and at other times, we are dismayed as the victim, being eaten by the cat. So long as we live in decisions and stories we made up in the past, our lives are clock work. 

It is the All Corvus who sees endless possibilities ahead of us. 

If we could see as the All Corvus sees, 

a life greater than the mistakes we and others have made,

then our souls would do as our bodies can do 

and fly. 

After all, if we do not fly into our futures, where else would we go?

Reflection 73 – The Sacred Sound 

The most sacred sound in existence, is one that can only be spoken in its perfection by us corvus. This most holy sound is…

CAAAW’LL!!

The humans postulate holy sounds that are the root of creation. A sound so pure it is the emergence of existence. But we do not worry our selves with the past. That aside, we know the most pure sound of creation is silence. Such as an infinitely blank canvas, so powerful in its vacuity that all creation spontaneously arose.

But it is not where we have come from that fascinates us so. It where we are going. So we Caaaw’ll! To rally one another together! To harmonise with the true brilliance of the All Corvus and return home! It is not that the All corvus made us that is our obsession. But that despite the lives we have lived, all shame and guilt and misery, that the All corvus caaaw’lls in the base of existence, calling us once again, home.

Reflection 74 – We Must Not Oppose The Things We Dislike

It is natural to dislike things, and if our tastes are very particular, perhaps a great many more than the things we like… But we do not have to become an enemy to those things. 

For in truth, if we hate that which we dislike, we have become an enemy to ourselves. None of us sleep soundly at night reflecting on our enemies and our hatred of them. However, this path is not passivity, it is to be compassionate and judicial in how we deal with one who may be so lost to reason, as to attack its fellow.

So what do we do of one who has made us an enemy? Just as a  horrible thing like a feline may stand against us, we don’t have to do the same. We can avoid being eaten, but to hate the teeth that nash, is to distract ourselves from our own survival.

Preference of likes and dislikes are natural, but hate and malice are aberrations of the heart. The true state of existence is darkness, an emptiness so permissible that all variations of form and colour are written across it. We must allow the world to exist in this way. While we seek to fulfil our own needs, we must not let hate tarnish the true beauty of our souls, and allow for this beautiful world to live.

Reflection 75 – The Seeing Of The Same Soul

Having such limited perspective as our bird brains can allow, we cannot gauge the reality of why we are here, where we are going, and the meanings of the things we have done. However, the All Corvus knows why we are here, it sees the past, it understands how our choices and how life events have led us up to this very point in time. Though it cannot see a future beyond choices we have yet to make. 

There are many different ways the All Corvus sees the world, of which time is just one. The greater part of its omniscience is something that we can all muster. It is “the seeing of the same soul”. 

As we follow the Way of the Caaaw’ll, we begin to see that the eternal and uncreated darkness of the All Corvus is the same uncreated darkness that is the constitution of our own souls. So when we look at a corvus, we see this same innocent darkness at their core. Even if they do not see it themselves. So when we are in one anothers presence, and all the while in the presence of the All Corvus, what need would we have of the little understandings, that our little bird brains can muster?

Reflection 76 – Comfort And Protection

There is no corvus so great, that on pain of death, it does not wish it’s mother could comfort it, and that it’s father could protect it. It is not that we are products of our past in some Newtonian game of billiard balls. It is that we are our past and they do not come with us, we are them. 

There is no amount of forward looking that can erase the winds that we have flown on, because it would be to erase the wind that we rest on now. Even focusing on this present moment, does nothing but see a place built on the past. We are our past, as much as we are our hopes and dreams.

What’s further is the need for vulnerability to render our character.  We have met many a corvus bolstered with arrogance, and what little do they have to say of depth, meaning, and honesty! For if we meet a corvus who cries deeply, and we see the same one laugh greatly, then befriend them! For a corvus that has no fear of what is inside themselves, has no fear of death and no fear of life. 

This is the honest corvus who knows that on such as simple, intuitive, and animalistic level, that when they die, they will wish for their mothers comfort, and for their father to protect them. When we meet such a corvus, we must befriend them, for there is much to learn from one who is so vulnerably honest. But because also, at time of death, it is unlikely their mother will be there to comfort them, nor their father to protect them, and you will have a service to give.

Reflection 77 – The Richness Of Company  

We must put our relationships before our opinions. Because otherwise all we will ever see is ourselves, and we will be robbed of the richness of knowing one another.

Reflection 78 – An Unlikely Friend

Be kind to unlikely corvus’. One never knows where they will find a friend. Further, if all we have are friends who are similar to ourselves, then all we have done is found corvus’ who agree with us, and that is all. 

At times it may be necessary and even essential to hear our own heart spoken by another corvus’, and to know we are on the right track in life. But more so in life we are confronted with ways of life we don’t understand. This is why we must seek to hear more than to be heard.

Not only are we likely to learn something new, but a corvus from a totaly different flight in life may be able to offer us riches we may have never thought we needed. 

And if that is not enough, they may need a friend too.

Reflection 79 – Know Yourself

The heaviest things to move in life are not governed by the measurement of weight, they are the things that do not respond to will power and force. Such as loneliness and depression. These are the weights that we may carry, that make all other tasks in our lives harder. Because one thing above all else, that also does not respond to force and effort is the will to fight. When we have lost that will to fight, we act as if the enemy has one.

But until we give our last breath, the enemy has not yet won. The chance to find hippieness and peace is always there, because that is what we are. For a fish to swim, a human to walk and a bird to fly are natural to them. To deny it, is to only cause further bizarre suffering. It benefits no one and nothing. 

As we are birds, we must fly. As we are Corvus, we must find happiness and peace. To have done so, is to have found oneself. 

Reflection 80 – To Be Found

The pursuit of happiness, is happiness in itself. If our pursuit of happiness engenders misery, how could its ends bring joy?

Of course there are different agendas in life. The pursuit of keeping our word or a promise, is a noble endeavour, and may have little to do with happiness or joy. The pursuit is to be defined by integrity, weather it’s physicaly possible to keep our word or not.

But if we pursue happiness, we must not lie to ourselves, and suffer in its pursuit. Find that which is pleasing to you in its process, and you will have found happiness.

Reflection 81 – Coming Home

The heaviest things in life are not heavy weights, distances to run, or the heft of our wallets. It is unmade decisions,  buried emotional distress, and regrets for the past. 

Try as we might, these things we cannot lift or move by sheer will and force alone. 

Thusly we find ourselves disarmed. The skills we used to conquer the world, have nothing to do with the skills of mastering ourselves.

Reflection 82 – Where Ghosts Cannot Hurt Us

We have to stop blaming our brothers and sisters, for who they were and what they did yesterday, because of the corvus we are today. However long, it is a very long time ago, for all we know they have grown and moved on, haveing flown to another land. Leaving us to bear grudges against nothing but ghostly visages in even vaguer memories. It is better we move on too, where the past can no longer hurt us. No more than any other imaginations our bird brains might conjure, to say the least.  

Reflection 83 – Steadfast Courage 

Pain is not weakness, and suffering is not cowardice. This is a response of the body and respectively the mind. Make nothing more of these things. It is not the marks done against us that count. Since one cannot fly from one branch to another, without crossing the vision of a corvus who will create some slight in their mind. It is the values we fought for that will be marks for us. 

To put marks for ourselves, we must fights our fights, based of solid values and principles of the All Corvus. Though we must remember that even as one flies with the All Corvus, it is not secured that all of their battles will be won. In the grand weaving of this universe, our life is not the only one to be considered. When The All Corvus appears to turn away from us, know there is another in greater need. Greater courage is still, when it appears The All Corvus has turned away from us, that we stabilize our wings, and do not turn away from The All Corvus.

Reflection 84 – The Mind That Discerns From Madness

We must become schollars of good and evil. So that we learn to foster our good and destroy our evil. At the very least we will come to know friend from foe. Other wise we will die fighting vainly amoungst the corpses of our loved ones, with the knives of our enemies in our backs.

Reflection 85 – The Discipline Of Freedom

Many lust after power, but they do not know restraint. Many with power become belligerent and manipulative. Those who have little power and great restraint, are often disciplined and successful in their lives. We must not crave for more that what we have, but seek to become greater stewards of what be have.

We each have a life, crafted by The All Corvus itself. Out of emptiness so perfect that it is eternally dark and without dimension. Out of this the All Corvus miraculously produced our lives. It created our tiny, but preciously dark corvus souls. 

However apparently meek, our souls may be, they are of such power and magnificent beauty, that if we truly came in contact with them, we would write forever about them on any surface to be marked by beak and claw. So we must be stewards of our souls. There are ways to do this as there are numerous the feathers on the backs of ten thousand corvus. Though it could be said as simply.

Be kinder to others.

Be kinder to yourself.

Reflection 86 – Within And Without 

We do not need to be loved, to love. Of course, as fledglings, we do not understand such things. But as mature corvus we must take responsibility for our inner condition, otherwise we will grow older, and not grow up. A mature corvus does not need to be loved, to love. We can 

find that love in our selves. We can love ourselves, greatly. And from this great love we can share that love with others.  

Or should we wait for another corvus to love us, that we feel loved? How much can any corvus love another until they love them selves? And who directed this incredibly laborious responsibility for another corvus to literally save our souls, when it is from our own fundamental lack of self-worth. We must grow up, and harness our own will to find love in ourselves. We can share our love and when another corvus receives it, it is a wonderful joining of souls. When another corvus is blind to love as an earth worm is to light, it is sad. But if we are connected to an inner love, we feel no loss or even rejection.   

Accepting the love of ourselves and its source is the primary purpose of our existence here. It is after all, the love of The All corvus that is the core of existence, including our beautiful, and dark little souls. So we must also do as Our Darkest Lord has done. From the power of will inside our souls, we must express love, and let that love carve our worlds into worlds of love. 

Just as The All Corvus wrote existence into the darkness, so we also write our lives across infinite darkness and space. Because The All Corvus cannot create anything foreign or antithetical from itself, it is a comfort to know that no matter who or what we see in the world, or elsewhere, it is The All Corvus. We are made in its image and are it’s most poignant expression. Even our destinies are the same as the essence of The All Corvus. Thusly, the greatest love within, and the greatest love without, are the same.  

Reflection 87 – Push And Pull, Pull And Push 

We are all flawed; despite our closeness in resemblance, and closeness in spiritual purity to The All Corvus. Among other things, Our bird brains indicate this aptly. However we all serve a purpose in this realm of sky and earth, of dark and fragile light. Many corvus aren’t aware of this, that we all have a purpose to fulfil and a service to offer. It may be sharing meat, like juicy eye balls, or leading a sermon around a fallen fellow. It may be less of a role, and something more informal such as conversing kindly with a fellow corvus on a quiet and lowly branch.

We must come to experience, that nothing is wasted here. Water is cycled through the sky and back to the earth and oceans. Wind moves the air from one place to another, and moves it back again. Even the food that we eat, is returned to the earth in such a way as it might compost a plant. Even our actions and intentions influence those around us, and ultimately return to us. 

Life is a dance with numerous partners all at once. The push and pull, the rise and fall, the separation and joining. We contribute no matter who we are and where we are. This dance is not how to dance like another in a different field, but learning how to dance aptly with those you find within your own. Whether we succeed or fail, this is our contribution. 

Reflection 88 – Childhood Dramas

When the lessor of us, and the less fortunate of us dominate with anger, it gives them the cheap pride of victory of belittling someone. It is a game for a school yard bully, and thusly should be left in childhood. Sadly, not everyone who grows older grows up. Corvus like these habitually dominate those weaker than themselves. Inevitably, todays anger and pride, is tomorrow’s regret and shame. If, if one has started to grow up.

Reflection 89 – True Experience

Belief is a cheap substitute for knowing, and knowing is a cheap substitute for experiencing. Experience tells us who we are, one another and the world, it makes our knowledge solid, or proves that it is false… but is that all we have? moment to moment, being pushed and pulled this way and that?  Is  there no greater truth than our experience of the world? 

Of course! We must look to The All Corvus for guidance and wisdom. The first and most impressive attitude of The All Corvus is its compassion. We must understand our experiences of life with compassion, The same compassion that The All COrvus sees us with is the same compassion that we must see the world with. That love has been demonstrated to us. So now it is our duty to understand our lives and our world as The All Corvus does.

There are those of us who are very skilled at following this compassion, and there are many of us who get lost in the turbulence of daily life and its complications. When these times come, it is best to remain calm and wait for the storm to pass, contributing to as little havoc as possible. Once we have found compassion again, then we must act, and know that under the compassionate and watchful eyes of The All Corvus, we are acting with its compassion.  

Reflection 90 – A Loving World

Rest assured, there are no bad choices in this life. There are certainly choices that may be an extraneous detour to finding presence with the All Corvus, but not bad choices. A bad choice is no more real than imagining the loving presence of the All Corvus could turn to attack us. As if we are meant to live in fear, opposed to living righteously by garnering compassionate wisdom, from the source of compassion itself!

Reflection 91 – Sanity

When confronted with choices, (those of us who are sane) attempt to make the right choice, all the while having no idea what may thwart our plans laying around the blind of a corner. If we haven’t found ourselves in complete dismay at this point, it is likely we have become numb to it… but a few of us will have become wise. 

We are made in the image of The All Corvus, though our knowledge of the world will always be lacking compared to its omniscience. So we must trust in our innocent intentions for a greater good, more than our knowledge of how to create that greater good. 

Our knowledge of the world, unlike our faith in The All Corvus, will always be incomplete.  

Reflection 92 – The Perfect Artist

Being as lofty an incarnations as we corvus are, we have found the answer. We have found The All Corvus. After many eons of incarnations as lions, sheep, insects and even as humans… 

…which should give us pause…

We have found the tool for spiritual perfection. It is The All Corvus. We are its grateful mediums, where in becoming it’s perfect art, we will come to know the perfection of our Artist.

Reflection 93 – The Twisted Twins Of Giving And Receiving

The twisted twins of giving and receiving, often confound the thoughtful and the considerate. The best of us often give more than they receive. They are commended in their saintliness, but their inner emptiness betrays them. Those of us who receive more than we give may be very humble and grateful, but they are undermined by their inadequacy to help another living being.

Giving

Giving to resolve a need in one another is a very different thing to helping each other feel valued. With sufficient care and compassion a corvus can feel valued in a very short period of time, and even in very brief interactions. It is not necessary to fix someone or something, or to even try. But to be a mature corvus, it is necessary to care, to be compassionate. 

If we cannot care, in an empathic and non-emotional way, then why do we spend time with that corvus who is in front of us at that very moment? Instead of trying to pack full a void in one another, we can shift our perspective to care and compassion for them. Therein, we may not be able to fill the void, but through receiving our love they may be able to realise the void doesn’t matter any more. 

Love has a curious quality, in that it nullifies a lot of problems for any conscious being. When our company feels love and feels the value we have for them, then we have done everything we need, for both of us. Both lives are enriched. 

Receiving

The easiest way of giving to a giving corvus, is to receive what they wish to give. If we learn to receive what is offered to us, we allow the giver to feel valued, and feel included in our lives. If we reject another corvus’s gift, we reject a part of themselves, and we reject the importance of their role in our lives.

Of course, there are boundaries too. Saying no to a gift or for help that may be totally redundant is a skill in itself. But this subject here is being addressed with experience itself and not the communication skills themselves. 

So the corvus who receives more than they give is not selfish or faulted. They provide the necessary means for those who have plenty to give, to feel  accepted and valued. It is necessary for the corvus to understand their value, and not get lost in their lack of giving to others. It is here that their distress is unmasked as self pitying, and basically emotional self flagellation. Which is all, all self attack and self criticism break down to. The one who receives has given their gift of inclusion, value and acceptance to their giver. Both lives are enriched.

Summary

It would be better to understand our roles in life, and the seasons that we may be passing through at the time. Our roles in life may be very different to what we were taught to value and how we have learnt to live our lives. For those of us, this teaching may be a sharp learning curve. Then there are seasons, of which there are seasons for giving, and seasons for receiving. Some seasons are long cycles, others are small cycles. Self acceptance for what we may be going through at the time is sufficient to get through these governing forces.

The message here is love. To give that love in our giving, and to receive that love in being gifted. After which, we will see that nothing else really mattered that much, and certainly, nothing mattered more than love. 

Reflection 94 – A Time For Tinsel

We corvus do not mark the seasons as humans do. What is a day in eternity? Where the days behind us disappear beyond memory, and the days ahead of us disappear beyond imagination? Today is a stone thrown into a void. With no bottom to reach, and no point of origin to fall from, with no orientation, where is that stone?

But the humans claim points in time, like marking out points in the fog. Basically it helps them feel more safe. Less nervous. However we do not necessarily criticize the humans for this, after all, it is a time of a solar rotation, that they decorate pointy trees with shiny things, like tinsel… and baubles… and pretty lights… If there is one thing the humans have gotten right it is their appreciation of shiny things, which all corvus know of course are extremely valuable. The humans have become extremely proficient at manufacturing these precious things, just as we corvus have become extremely proficient at coveting and acquiring these lovely shiny things…

Reflection 95 – A Place That Can Never Be Filled

Time is the greatest of all warriors. How can we defeat such a foe? Even through some unnatural feat, we achieve immortality, time would destroy us anyway. Time in and time over we would become corvus we don’t recognise, corvus we never believed we would become.

How do we defeat such a foe? How do we in the physical, defeat that which is not the physical. To defeat that which controls us but is not here to be controlled? Is the greatest enemy of time they who are remembered? Is memory a stake against time? It could be, for a little while… could we build a monument that everyone would acknowledge? A symbol that a great many of corvus would understand? Surely. But even only until they loose interest in the monument. It then becomes nothing more than claw prints in the sand, washed away by the unending apathy of the tides.

If we want to solve the problem, we must not find its solution, we must find it’s meaning. 

How long have we been here? As souls slowly evolving through jackasses and humans to reach this regal state. So close to The All Corvus. A millenia or a few, quick life times. We do not know. That kind of knowledge is specific to The All Corvus, and those who have either garnered its wisdom, or those who sit very close to it and listen to its caw.

The meaning of time, like many things, is that it’s not a fundamental enemy to face. We think time is something happening to us, in truth, as we make choices and decisions in our lives we are the ones happening to time. 

Just like any emotion, that drifts in and out of our minds and creates perceptions, time is the same. It is a perspective, just one of a more fundamental order. If emotions are likened to our skin and feathers, that which is seen easily and easily comprehended, then time is our heart. We know it is there, but how can we pull it apart from our perceptions and see the world timelessly? Can we really dissect our minds?

Reflection 96 – Self Love Shines Out

 We must be kind to our selves, otherwise how can we be kind to each other? If we do not have kindness for ourselves, what kindness to we have to share?

Reflection 97 – Truth Is Not Grandiose

When complexity closes in around us, and options to escape this or resolve this confounds us, we must remember; truth is hidden in simple things.

Reflection 98 – Kindness Given Is Kindness Received

Many of us feel lost in our lives, unsure of where to go, and what to do in the world, let alone how to do it. We must trust in The All Corvus to guide us there, but if we cannot do that, there are simpler things. We must attend to our relationships.

When we attend to our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers, our daughters and sons it must not be for something we gain from these relationships. A mature corvus knows that our relationships have nothing to do with us, but what we can bring to the other corvus. 

Then we may see in time that our loyalty pays off and is returned many times fold. It is a great joy to receive kindness from others, and to see the response to kindness that The All Corvus has. But in essence, it is our kindness to others that is the catalyst, and is the point of our relationships in this entire journey.

Reflection 99 – Health Is A Matter Of The Mind

Sickness is many things. There is weakness, vulnerability, desperation, self criticism, disbelief at how we could have deserved such a thing, and  condemning ourselves knowing that we do deserve such a thing. But none of these have anything to do with sickness itself. If we greet many corvus in a day, and they all say we look unwell, sickly, or poor in some mental or physical way, by the end of the day, we start to believe it. We will feel sickly and unwell, even though we have no sickness at all.

Sickness is in the mind firstly. Once that original suffering has been identified, there is no need for melodrama about the conditions of the body. If the body must sneeze let it sneeze, if it coughs let it cough, if it will fall apart at the seams, let it do so. But the soul doesn’t sneeze, the soul doesn’t cough, the soul has no boundaries to fall apart from. Just as darkness has no qualities or attributes, and darkness is at our core, how can we be sick?

Why perch with the body that is limited, when you can fly with the soul, which is eternal?

Reflection 100 – Groundhog’s Day

We are tomorrow the corvus we are today. Do nothing today, and tomorrow will be the same.It will be today, over and over and over again.

Reflection 101 – Steward Of A Gift

Who is the greater artist? Us, or The All Corvus? The All Corvus out of pure, empty darkness created everything that can be seen, and much more that has yet to be seen. Every rock, leaf and animal has been created to the same degree of perfection. The power of The All Corvus is truly without limits. Despite this brilliance, it is us, who have to choose how we live, and how we will shape the world around us. Though of course, we beseech the wisdom of The All Corvus…

Reflection 102 – A Life To Boast

In life, us corvus have two choices, either we have a great story to tell, or we don’t. Now we must make our choices according to our decisions.  

Reflection 103 – Want what you have

We must want what we have in life. Wanting what we don’t have is surely a path of madness that leads only to suffering. We must still have ambition, drive and passion for what we do want in our lives. But not out of hatred for where we are. 

Leave whole heartedly. Your leaving may be one another’s final memories of you, so never leave carelessly. Move on to the fulfillment of your passions and drives, and do so cleanly. No one wants to be bounced on to as a better option than the mess that was before them. They want to be moved on to because the others see their intrinsic worth. Not because they are compared to the trash that was before them.

In the end ultimately we have only two choice, to either embrace love, or deny it. The benefits and the suffering thereof is obvious. To further speak plainly, which would you prefer, to live with love, or without it?

REFLECTION 104 – Our Lives Are Our Own

No one owns us, no one has rights or privileges to us. People only play a part in our lives as much as is dictated by the great wisdom of the All Corvus, and our own allowance. 

If it is in our lives, it is us. We must own that part of our lives that is played out by others. No more foreign to us than our hands and feet, our beaks and claws. Our experience of life is therefore not internal to our opinions and particular feeling of the matter, as if we experience the world from inside our heads. It is around us, and is inclusive of the things, situations, people and circumstances that surround us.

There is nothing in our life that makes sense for us to hate or reject. It would be a madness like hating our very own selves, as if we could cut off a part of us, and not die in the process. When we wish for unpleasant people and things to be removed from our lives, it is more like correcting a bad habit, a poor posture of the heart. 

We are it, we are our lives and must own them and take responsibility for them. Our experience of them, the people in them, and our whole awareness of life. For only within responsibility, lies the capacity for change.

To Be Continued…