Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Via Daily Dharma: The Liberation of Defeat
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Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Via FB \\ The Other 98%
A Minnesota school board says its new ban on rainbow stickers is about staying neutral. Asked why Christian symbols weren't banned too, board chair John Steffl said, "I'm a Christian so that doesn't bother me," and now students are suing.
As reported by John Russell for LGBTQ Nation, a majority faction of the Minnesota school board rushed through a controversial policy to strip classrooms of rainbow stickers. Teachers had displayed the stickers for years to create a supportive environment for their students.
The immediate result of the board's policy was chaos, the ban used as justification in tearing down stickers and bullying students.
Now the students are taking it to court.
Two students and their parents partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit against the district and four board members.
The board members claimed the ban was necessary to maintain neutrality. The lawsuit dismantles that argument.
The complaint points out that the policy was introduced without public notice, completely bypassing standard open-meeting rules. It also cites internal text messages where board members exchanged anti-LGBTQ links, arguing the ban was driven by personal animus rather than neutral governance.
The school board thought they could use bureaucratic loopholes to quietly erase symbols of support. Instead, they sparked a massive civil rights lawsuit led by the very students they were elected to serve.
Via The Courage To Awaken (Eckhart, Maharshi, Rumi, Adya, Thay, Robert Adams..)
The Courage To Awaken (Eckhart, Maharshi, Rumi, Adya, Thay, Robert Adams..)
“A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
The photo below is of Eckhart and Armando, a man who was homeless, addicted to drugs, in and out of rehab for many years - until he read the Power of Now:
The story below comes via Constance Kellough (publisher) and Lorna Davis from Namaste Publishing in Vancouver…
The Story of Armando originated in New York’s Central Park when Lorna Davis met a homeless man named Armando. His life story greatly impacted her and she subsequently approached Constance with the idea of bringing his story forward. Rarely is one given the opportunity to witness such a sacred encounter as that of Armando and Eckhart Tolle meeting for the first time on a wet and chilly early April day in Central Park.
Lorna: “I first met Armando on a summer day in 2013. I walked past a guy on a bench in Central Park who looked like your average homeless guy with a beard and a cart and then I saw the words on the cart.
“Good grief, that doesn’t seem like your average homeless guy’s cart”! I thought. So I stopped and talked to him.
I heard a little of his background, but there were so many people stopping to talk to him that there wasn’t much time to hear his story, a story that emerged over the many weeks and months I sat on that bench with Armando since then.
Armando was born in Brooklyn on April 24, 1960, to Colombian and Puerto Rican parents.
When he was 13, he discovered alcohol and weed on the same day and was hooked. From that day on, Armando was what he describes as an olympic addict. Any event would do. He took crack, marijuana, heroin, alcohol, cigarettes – pretty much anything he could find. His life was a series of cycles through the excitement of scoring drugs and the money for drugs followed by periods in rehab. The way he describes rehab is a story in itself:
“You get really skinny when you are on crack because you walk and walk and walk and you don’t eat. Eventually, you get tired and someone tells you to go to rehab, so you go. You get a nice bed, food and it’s warm and comfortable. You do nothing except eat and sleep and talk about getting high while sitting in a big circle and they pay you $200 a month! After three months, you have $600. You are fat and bored and all everyone talks about is drugs and alcohol so you leave and spend your new money on drugs and off you go again.”
One winter night in Boston, in 2001, Armando had done what he often did – caused enough of a commotion for the police to take him in and put him in the cell overnight. It was a good strategy because it was nice and warm and he had worked out which police stations had a holding cell and he would go there, stand outside and give a policeman some lip. He was in the cell and was continuing to give the policeman a hard time, when the two big, Irish cops had had enough. They picked him up and threw him out into the snow. Armando was furious, trudging through the snow, furious with them and the world when he saw a manhole cover. He lifted it and found himself in a culvert pipe so he sat down to take shelter, to be furious and, as he says, “to suffer some more.”
At some point that night, for the first time in his life, he had “a period of no suffering.” We might call it “a moment of grace.” He thinks it lasted about 20 minutes and it was the most amazing feeling of calm and peace he had ever felt. He waited for the night to end and in the morning he emerged from the pipe and dropped everything in the snow – the cigarettes, the crack pipe, the needle – and staggered to a bench. He found a homeless shelter that night and in the morning they noticed he was withdrawing and sent him to rehab. They said he had walked out of rehab twice from there already. He couldn’t remember, but there is a “3 strikes” rule so they let him stay and complete the physical detox.
Clean and sober, he set out to discover what had happened to him. Many people tried to recruit him to their cause and he spent some time standing on a street corner talking about the Bible. But none of it felt right.
About a year later, he was in the 96th Street library and he found a copy of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, in Spanish. The way he describes it was that it was like coming home. Every word in that book resonated and he felt safe, comfortable and understood.
He has watched every video, read every word of every book of Eckhart’s many times over and whenever anyone suggests other teachers, he says, “I don’t need another teacher; Eckhart says what I need to know.”
Today, Armando sits on the same bench in Central Park every day. He feeds the birds, squirrels and dogs. Many a time I have come to visit him and found a privileged New Yorker crying about how sad they are and I see Armando quietly and calmly listening and accepting them. This man has more friends and has healed more lives simply by his presence than anyone I have ever met. I had a dream that one day Eckhart Tolle would walk down that path and shake Armando’s hand.”
Constance: “Now we step back to hear the full chronology. At the request of Lorna Davis, Todd Schuster, who I believe is an agent in NYC, contacted Namaste Publishing’s agent Bill Gladstone saying he had a most wonderful story to tell that involved Eckhart Tolle and could he get it to Eckhart. Bill advised him he would have a better chance of getting something to Eckhart if it came through me, his publisher.
When Todd emailed me, I agreed to talk to him and asked him to send on the story for me to read before I would decide whether it was important enough to pass on to Eckhart. Upon reading it, I was so touched by Armando’s story and thought Eckhart would be too. It so happened that I was set to meet with Eckhart here in my home office the following week at which time I gave him Armando’s story to read. After he finished, he looked up at me and said, “Yes, I will meet with him.”
As it happened, Eckhart was to be in NYC giving a talk on March 31st and then another talk to students of NYU the week of April 1st.
“Oh, my God, it’s going to happen!” I said to myself. I quickly informed Lorna Davis who was elated as well. We all worked at keeping this a secret so as to surprise Armando when Eckhart walked to meet him on his bench. There were also several of us there to witness this sacred encounter.
After a 20-minute walk from our entrance into the park, we approached Armando sitting on his bench. We watched from some distance as Eckhart walked up to Armando. When Eckhart reached him, Armando stood up and looked with shock and disbelief at first. Then the two men embraced. We stood there watching and there were tears while this tender, soulful hug continued for some time.
Armando kept repeating that he couldn’t believe it, that he couldn’t take it all in immediately. His spiritual teacher was standing right in front of him and it wasn’t a vision. He kept repeating how breathless he was with surprise and gratitude.
Soon, Armando put a small towel on his bench and invited Eckhart to sit. We stayed put while Eckhart and Armando conversed or maybe a more appropriate word is “communed.” When Eckhart pointed to us, it signalled Eckhart didn’t come alone and we were now invited to join them.
I can only speak for myself, but I am confident that the five of us in attendance would say the same thing: our hearts were overflowing with love and gratitude as we witnessed this miracle in Central Park. Armando was animated, talkative and full of joy. He exuded warmth and love, with a heart so big and so wide open he could embrace all mankind.
There are too few stories today that inspire us, that are heartwarming and that show us the power of loving connection and remind us of the goodness in mankind.”
=> Unlock Your Free Ebook “The Courage to Awaken” by clicking the banner at the top of my Facebook Page
Via Daily Dharma: The Deepest You
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Monday, September 28, 2026
Via Daily Dharma: Recollect Dharma
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Sunday, September 27, 2026
Via White Crane Institute \\ PEDRO ALMODOVAR
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| This Day in Gay History | |||
September 25Born  1949 - PEDRO ALMODOVAR, Spanish filmmaker, was born; Almodóvar is the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, and quirky stylings, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humor, strong colors and glossy décor. He never judges his character's actions, whatever they do, but he presents them as they are in all their complexity. Desire, passion, family and identity are the director's favorite themes. Almodóvar is openly – dare we say brilliantly? -- Gay and he has incorporated elements of underground and gay culture into mainstream forms with wide crossover appeal, redefining perceptions of Spanish cinema and Spain in the process. At one time, it is believed, he owned the film rights to Tom Spanbauer’s mystical book, The Man Who Fell In Love With the Moon (though we now believe Gus Van Sant has these rights.) Around 1974, Almodóvar began making his first short films on a Super-8 camera. By the end of the 1970s they were shown in Madrid’s night circuit and in Barcelona These shorts had overtly sexual narratives and no soundtrack: Dos putas, o, Historia de amor que termina en boda (Two Whores, or, A Love Story that Ends in Marriage); La caída de Sodoma (The Fall of Sodom); Homenaje (Homage); La estrella (The Star); Sexo Va: Sexo viene (Sex Comes and Goes) (Super-8); Complementos (shorts 16mm). “I showed them in bars, at parties… I could not add a soundtrack because it was very difficult. The magnetic strip was very poor, very thin. I remember that I became very famous in Madrid because, as the films had no sound, I took a cassette with music while I personally did the voices of all the characters, songs and dialogues.” After four years of working with shorts in Super-8 format, in 1978 Almodóvar made his first Super-8, full-length film: Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim (Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim), a magazine style melodrama. In addition, he made his first 16 mm short, Salome. This was his first contact with the professional world of cinema. The film's stars, Carmen Maura and Felix Rotaeta, encouraged him to make his first feature film in 16mm and helped him raise the money to finance what would be Pepi Luc: Bom y otras cgicas del monton. Almodóvar's subsequent films deepened his exploration of sexual desire and the sometimes brutal laws governing it. Matador is a dark, complex story that centers on the relationship between a former bullfighter and a murderous female lawyer, both of whom can only experience sexual fulfillment in conjunction with killing. The film offered up desire as a bridge between sexual attraction and death. Almodóvar solidified his creative independence when he started the production company El Deseo, together with his brother Agustín, who has also had several cameo roles in his films. From 1986 on, Pedro Almodóvar has produced his own films. The first movie that came out from El Deseo was the aptly named Law of Desire (La Ley del Deseo). The film has an operatically tragic plot line and is one of Almodóvar’s richest and most disturbing movies. The narrative follows three main characters: a Gay film director who embarks on a new project; his sister, an actress who used to be his brother (played by Carmen Maura), and a repressed murderously obsessive stalker (played by Antonio Banderas). The film presents a gay love triangle and drew away from most representations of gay men in films. These characters are neither coming out nor confront sexual guilt or homophobia; they are already liberated, like the homosexuals in Fassbinder’s films. Almodóvar said about Law of Desire: "It's the key film in my life and career. It deals with my vision of desire, something that's both very hard and very human. By this I mean the absolute necessity of being desired and the fact that in the interplay of desires it's rare that two desires meet and correspond." Almodóvar's films rely heavily on the capacity of his actors to pull through difficult roles into a complex narrative. In Law of Desire Carmen Maura plays the role of Tina, a woman who used to be a man. Almodóvar explains: "Carmen is required to imitate a woman, to savor the imitation, to be conscious of the kitsch part that there is in the imitation, completely renouncing parody, but not humor". Elements from Law of Desire grew into the basis for two later films: Carmen Maura appears in a stage production of Cocteau’s The Human Voice, which inspired Almodóvar’s next film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; and Tina's confrontation scene with an abusive priest formed a partial genesis for Bad Education. | |||
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 | |||
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