Images: (1) Chakrasamvara Heruka (Father) in YabYum union with Vajrayogini (Mother) symbolizes the union of compassion and wisdom.
(2) Tomb of King Ramses the Great
'Also, when we try to cultivate divine pride or the sense of identity as a divine being in the practice of deity yoga, we try to overcome the feeling and perception of an ordinariness. I think this helps us to make the potential of buddhahood within ourselves more manifest.
To attain a firm pride of being a deity requires a stable visualization of the form and appearance of the deity. Normally, because of our natural tendency and consequent notion of self we have an innate feeling of 'I' and 'self' based upon our body and mind. If we similarly cultivate a strong perception of our own appearance as a deity, we will also be able to cultivate divine pride, the sense of identity as a deity, by focusing on the divine body.'
"Because the object of meditation in the practice of Highest Yoga Tantra is yourself in the form of a deity, and also because of the practice of single-pointedly focusing your attention on certain points within your body, you are able to bring about movement of the elements in the body. Some meditators have related their experiences of this to me. When you are able to hold a clear image of the deity single-pointedly for a long period of time, this obstructs your normal sense of ordinariness and so leads to a feeling of divine pride. However, during all these stages of meditation, it is very important constantly to reaffirm your awareness of emptiness."
Dalai Lama - A Survey of the Paths of Tibetan Buddhism
"I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”"
Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"A slow tumbling against a mountain crest,
Breath, slow and heaving, controlled and unbridled.
A memory well settles near the peak
And dips it's basket through a silted past. /
A road has been trenched out along its belly. At the peak
of each breath a rumble beneath the surface.
We are a crew on our journey.
Passed halfway, the fog rolls in. /
Passed halfway we cannot tell:
Is this ascension or do we
Plumet across an impossible canyon
Between the body and anything but? /
There are time when the mountain feels upside down,
Or, more accurately, inside-out, that sediment
Has flipped and we shuffle along
The innards of a funnel to a point unknown. /
A black hole that rises out of a trajectory,
Eternally confuddled by fog-drifts and shifting
Cloud layers that paint a kaleidoscopic mosaic
Half-seen through the fog and ever out of reach. /
Yet at points the clouds accumulate around a central axis,
Whirling ever-slowly against an invisible pillar.
Ascending or descending from the haughty peak.
While, far below and above we fall backwards into peat /
Bogs, whose nature is ever-evolving, a multivalent
Clamor of creature, texture, flora and facsimile,
A patchwork of ever-rolling life-like mosses
And ancient metal, stone, fabrication, and beetle dung. /
And the face of the mountain is a bright angel,
Curls fountaining endless against their cheeks,
And the other, this fermentation and reproduction
Of the endless potential of a single wave /
Born of some long-ago explosion, born from
A bomb, atomic or otherwise, birthed into the bog
By a mother whose face held an expressionless ecstasy,
And whose baby ripples as an afterimage /
Of his molten-made body. And us, our bodies
Extending, stretching fingers into the bog
And legs striding towards the funnel snout
To an unresolved heaven, undecidedly
Skywards or otherwise, yet always urging us,
Begging for our feet to touch her heights
And ferry her into the moist bog-land below. "
Trenches - Personal Piece
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIR74qry3IM









