Footprints Wings Phantasms Paperback - 2018

Takara delivers an inspiring parapsychological philosophy readers will want to share with others. We all struggle to overcome life's inevitable sufferings. Answering that challenge, Takara paves creative paths to transformational self-actualization. Flying across time and space, swimming through instructive deserts and gratefully quenching our souls at oases, we can unite with one another and with every entity in our beloved universe.

In Footprints Wings Phantasms, Takara shares her understanding that profound wisdom arises from experiencing transformative journeys along an elemental path to awakening. This book is a response to a deeply philosophical collection of poems, The Desert Swimmer, by Peter Dong Feng, PhD, a poet and professor at the University of Qingdao in China, where Takara gave lectures for seven summers. Feng's metaphors inspired her to create these reflective poems.

Everyone celebrates their high points and successes, but those in the process of awakening can also appreciate the right questions, efforts, and even failures, by stepping back, observing, accepting, and learning to fly. Due to hereditary and environmental tendencies--and the force of change--we have the capacity for whole creativity, but we live in a waking sleep amid shifting dimensions of confusion.

A new era is emerging. We have begun to recognize the potential of awakening. We are learning how individuals unite with the collective consciousness of energy exchanges. Surpassing both the self-centered "I love you" and the simply united yet inert "I am you," through process philosophy, we can envision possibilities: traveling via paranormal non-locality; becoming others; and discovering infinity, the universal song of balance.

Taking a leap of faith up into the often unobserved skies of subjectivity-plus-objectivity, Takara seeks to present to people of all ages possibilities inherent in awakening. Each person must discover and develop constructive intentions. She affirms the creative balance among the forces of yin passivity, yang activity, and the transcendent third force. Recognizing phantasms, her poems explore metaphors like carefully walking, fearlessly flying, and falling into experiences.

In Takara's youth, experiences of Jim Crow racism infused her with fear, dread, and courage. Through core teachings from her family, and gifts of strength and faith, she rebounded, seeking truth, justice, and goodness. Gaining insights while traveling internationally, she came to understand that life is always a transformative journey, a process enhanced by knowledge, by being present, and by the vital life force, qi.

Footprints Wings Phantasms challenges readers to be attentive to experiences. Transformation requires learning the value of "knowing thyself." Ever yearning to understand the great mysteries, Takara works to attain greater awareness of self and community. She aims to facilitate peaceful relations, by exploring the process of juggling the natural forces of naked freedom.

Awareness and detachment open possibilities for new ways of being. Through suffering, we can know the true joy of healing. As described by the mystic San Juan de la Cruz, in "the dark night," the soul travels through the influence of grace and undergoes purification of senses and spirit, before ascending the ladder of transformation. As we climb, knowledge and humility move us closer to enlightenment.

This collection tests traditional poetic boundaries by emphasizing a type of lyricism with hidden narratives about practice and process. The individual learns how to observe, direct, and accept change. Standing still does not result in growth. Readers are invited to fearlessly take flight--exploring organic life, self's shortcomings, and Nature's magical dance.