what matter I sit

What matter I sit,
one lone star blazing in darkest firmament.
I know no other radiance.
I see me from afar and know my bounds.
What matter I sit.
They call it love.
I distrust that much flipped word.
Grace. Mercy. Companionship.
Three arrows from the quiver of the Divine
shot full through my heart.

a symbol of the age

A symbol of the age just past (Pisces) is the fish. I am thinking particularly of the simple form seem on the backs of some cars: two curved lines whose points touch at one end and are openly apart at the other. A symbol of closed openness.

A symbol of the age we are now in (Aquarius) is the fish symbol with greater dimensionality. One curved line of the fish spirals down, the other spirals upward. A double helix.

Since we are the symbols we employ, in the age we now embody our consciousness spirals down into the depths of the unconscious (“deep calls to deep”) while simultaneously spiraling upward into the supernal heights of the supraconscious. This simultaneous deepening and opening of energies has no closure at either “end.” There is no end. In either “direction.”

Each of us is this simultaneous sinking into the depths while rising to the heights. This sinking is not a drowning. It is the sinking referred to by Tai Chi master Wu Yu-hsiang (1812 – 1880): “To release energy, sink, relax completely, and aim in one direction!” One sinks down and opens up!

As energy beings, we sink into (this requires deep trust) the unconscious, our depths of unawareness, while simultaneously opening to the infinities of the heavens. The infinity within is joined with the infinity without. Inner infinity and outer infinity become as one (which they always have been except for the static of our noisy distractions). “As above, so below.” “As within, so without.”

A working symbol of the energies we now are is this double helix. We are an onrush of inwardly spiraling energies accompanied by a simultaneous outward spiraling. In more poetic terms, we are “rooting and grounding in love” (Ephesians 3: 17). Rooting and grounding in the depths of our being while opening completely in love.

cosmonaut

I live neither in a democracy or theocracy. Those shoes are outworn. I live as an integral part of a cosmocracy. I am a citizen of the cosmos. I am borne out of nations, out of religions into a living breathing experience of the cosmos. I am the cosmos personified. So are you if you dare open to it. As a species, this is our future. This is what we are becoming. This is our now.

the Grail quest

What is the Grail but an open cup of life's sacrificial blood? Are you not that cup which the Father, our Source, lifts to his lips and drinks deeply? Are you not the Holy Chalice continuously and immediately refilled with spirit, with life force so that your cup forever is full no matter how drained? The seeking of the Grail is the seeking within for that which you already are. The Grail within and the Grail without are one Grail. You, the Grail, the Father, the Mother are one. The Grail quest must be made but in the end, a true beginning, you will find that the one who seeks is the one who is found.

our situation

We exist in and are a creative endeavor of such marvelous dimensions and gigantic proportions that it would take our breath away if it were not our very breath that gives it life.

run-down batteries

I think one of the reasons we humans in this post-modern age have lost faith in previous myth is that we are like run-down batteries too weak to project richness of meaning into the cosmos. Carl Jung put it this way: “Projection is now confined to personal and social relationships.” Many of us regard this diminished projection as rational and sane. Well, either I’m an archaic dinosaur or a heraldic visionary of the renewal of myth on earth. I see it. I feel it. I know it. As my friend Brad Olson told me the other day, Joseph Campbell once said: A myth is as good as a smile.

gods of this age

This age worships two gods: Money and Positivism (the belief that no meaning exists in the universe except what we project into it). Seeing them as gods reduces their potency. Both are illusions, just two of the "roadside attractions" on this journey in whose tents we can stop and get lost.

the language of history

The history taught in schools of conquest, intrigue, and invention is not our true history, but mere braggadocio and scratchings in the sand. Our true history can only be told in mythos, in parable, in metaphor, and poetry.

real eye zing

We are all manifestations of the Mystery. Its sons and daughters so to speak. A prime aspect of our journey is real-eye-zing that, with its blessings and its responsibilities.

entertaining angels

When our eyes began stopping at objects rather than seeing through the superficial and allowing "objects" to disclose themselves to us, we lost our vision, while the universe remains enchanting. We entertain angels, unaware.

capacity

The God you see is the God you have the capacity to see. When the cup is shattered, the water is everywhere.

petard hoist

1. The answers you receive depend upon the framing of your question. 2. You cannot frame a question beyond the frames you can conceive.

on hierarchy

If you take a ladder and bend it into a circle, you can see that the steps are not hierarchical, with gradations of “up” and “down,” but are identified spaces or places within an infinite circle of being. We are not evolving into something. We are revolving as something. This revolution is not going around in circles in the sense that one comes to the same old place again. It is a spiraling, a spiraling encompassing all direction, and thus no direction. As soon as there is direction, one is on a ladder again.

doubt

Doubt has no doors, no entry way for thru traffic. Doubt sits on its haunches, gnawing its own bones. The gods whisper, scuff their feet in the vestibule. Doubt cracks another bone, eats its marrow.

restoration

Throw down Occam’s razor,
which neglects to cut the hand that wields it!

You want the simplest explanation?
Then you take it! I want the richest one!
The one opening treasures of the heart,
a heart filled, overflowing with mystery
now assuming this shape, now that.
Gods, goddesses, the Muse, dragons,
alchemical furnaces making gold,
the gold of strong sound spirit.

Plunge us like a white-hot iron
into this world of pus-filled greed,
cauterizing this wound of quantity.
Restore Quality to the land!

sway

We are all swayed by images. We call that thinking.

Some images we regard as internal, as internally produced.

Some images we regard as external, as externally produced.

The first is personal thinking. The latter is societal thinking.

Both are internal. There is no external.

Imagery “out there” does not exist. All imagery is “in here.”

Everything we detest and love “out there” is “in here.”

Everything we love and detest “in here” is “out there.”

“In here” and “out there” are images we are swayed by.

We call this thinking.

consciousness structures

Consider all systems of thought as consciousness structures. I perceive that many folk tend to adopt the consciousness structure into which they are born without too much thought. Others adopt the con-struct after giving it some thought. Still others reject the consciousness structure and open to other realms. In this time of blatant materiality, this has led to a scorning of theism and an opening to a-theism. Matters not. It is still just another consciousness structure. A con-struct. Structuring one into just another con job.

A consciousness structure is a consciousness structure is a consciousness structure. One can step back, if one has the will and the nerve, from every con-struct one constructs.

Most seem to think (or not-think) that their con-struct is reality and others’ con-structs are less so. Some engage in con-struct imperialism, insisting that their con-struct is the true and real and all other con-structs are simply constructs. Others recognize that con-structs appear to be a requisite of human consciousness. The latter tend to empathize with Lao Tzu who, paraphrased, might say: The con-struct that can be con-structed is not the true con-struct.

transition

Homo Sapien fear and kill Homo Noetica. Restricted consciousness has always been fearful of wider awareness. After safely dead, Noetica are then adored or ignored. Never mind. Sapien are on the way out. Noetica are the wave of the future.

beyond the three-dimensional

Consider that human consciousness has been on a journey from the pre-rational to the rational and now to the post-rational realm. Pre-rational consciousness is a two-dimensional “flatland” realm scarce conceivable to us who live in the three-dimensional world of rationality, of ratio logic. Physics has zoomed beyond the 3-dimensional ratio world into realms of four (and more) dimensions. Human consciousness is now opening beyond, but not jettisoning, ratio-nality. We are opening into a fourth dimension of reality.

We know that our sensory apparatus only “picks up” an extremely small portion of the gigantic energy field in which we live, of which we are a part. We bop and shop and drop within this small lit match flicker of consciousness that we call reality. It is reality, but is only one small room within a huge palatial mansion on vast grounds.

The fourth dimensional realm can be considered as a realm of creative imagination, of the Imaginal (Henry Corbin’s term). Our consciousness opens beyond the perspective enforced by 3-dimensional consciousness into an aperspectival realm (Jean Gebser’s term). One moves beyond the three-dimensional Wal-Mart world into a larger, more comprehensive energetic realm which does not negate the Wal-Mart world but incorporates it.

One can open to this larger energetic realm in one of two ways. One can be “seized” by it (“for many are called but few are chosen”) and/or one can open to it through prayer and meditation. The key is the placing of attention. Whatever we attend to is energized. Whatever we attend to, we become.

References:

Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. (Princeton, Bollingen, 1998).

Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin. (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1985).

the path of contextual awareness

A letter lives in a word. A word lives in a sentence. A sentence lives in a paragraph. A paragraph lives in a chapter. A chapter lives in a story. A story lives in an atmosphere. An atmosphere lives in a cosmos. A cosmos lives in the mystery of the unborn. A letter has meaning only within its context. This is the spiritual path, the path of contextual awareness.

Ante up!

Every species has its light of day.
It then goes extinct or transforms.
The human species is at this juncture.

We are on a fast moving train
with no one at the controls
headed toward a cliff
(some say we have already gone over).

It is Transformation Time.

The politicians will not save us.

The “news” media will not save us.

“Dancing With The Stars” will not save us.

Hard abs and a tight ass will not save us.

The latest clothing will not save us.

Neither fine eating nor fast food will save us.

In the language of the ancients, it is the end of a kalpa.

It is the end of a cosmic exhalation followed by a pause.

personal energy and universal energy

Consider that there is personal energy and universal energy. The first is limited, the latter limitless. Thought arises from both realms. Thought arising out of personal energy is generally "roof-top chatter" about self and its beloved trio: I, me, and mine. It rattles on forever, unable to bear silence. Yet silence is what is needed for existing in and as universal energy. When one opens out of the shielded cocoon of personal energy, universal wisdom comes through. Thought and actions come from a higher wider deeper realm. When living in personal energy, one lives in a linear, cause-and-effect world. When living as universal energy, one lives in the realm of the eternal now, where all is unfolding.

rocket science

Rocket science: In and as the wider realm of being that we are, our little sense of separate self is perched atop a massive energy that is going where it already is.

the whole duck

The duck's feet paddle unceasingly and at times ferociously. Above the water, the duck floats serene.

We often live our lives as duck feet, moving, moving, always moving. Bodies moving, minds moving, emotions moving. "Head 'em up! Move 'em out! Rawhide!" "Yeah, Baby! Yeah!"

We may try to balance our duck feet self with "exercises" designed to help us become the above water serene floater. Meditation, prayer, walking, biking, yoga. We take a "breather" from our ceaseless paddling.

We switch back and forth. Feet. Floater. Feet. Floater.

The true art is to become the whole duck.

nondual

We stand atop our constructions like standing atop the zen 100foot pole. The next step is to leap. This is no leap of faith. Faith and doubt are two patches of the same Velcro.

your approach

your approach is your approach
your approach is not the only approach
your approach is the only approach for you

you do not know what you are approaching
nor who it is that is approaching
that does not stop you

you are your approach
what you are approaching is you
soon you will see the back of your head

do not turn around
you are being approached
by you

the holy trinity
the approacher, the approach, and the approached
the eternal game

flow and cosmopathy

There are two modes of being. One is to love life as it unfolds, allowing the creativity flowing from its wellspring. The other is to use life to accomplish other things. The latter produces and requires a certain cosmopathic stance (cosmopathy: sociopathy extended).

beings from the future

We help bring about on earth the future in which we live. Much has been made about living in the present, but we must be careful to not dwell in too constricted a present. We are beings of telos with the gift of envisioning a future. We help bring about on earth the future in which we live.

When our future vision is of our own personal enhancement to the exclusion of all else, we help produce that earthly condition. All earthly creation suffers to our own glorification. This, of course, brings about our own doom.

We help bring about on earth the future in which we live. When we live now as beings from a future where all life on earth lives in harmony, awareness, and right relationship, we help bring that to pass. We help bring about on earth the future in which we live.

jedi meditation

In the northern climes, the old farmhouses have a "boots and coats" room, an antechamber between the outside storm and the house proper with its cheery warmth and light. Similarly, in formal meditation, one enters a psychic antechamber away from the external storm of being, shucks one's accumulated garb, and prepares for entry into the warmth and light of Being. Over time, one walks through daily life in all three places at once. This is sometimes called in-form-al practice, practicing without form.

Noah's Ark

"You shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you." Genesis 6:19

I think it is time to build an ark in which all duality can exist in harmony. An ark of consciousness. No need to look out there. It has to occur within.

I am convinced that external societal change will only occur by a change in consciousness. "As within, so without." Noah's ark provides the imagery for such change. The animals were taken in two by two, no pair excluded. The pairs were subsumed by a larger structure, one capable of containing all duality, all twoness.

This is the consciousness required of us on earth today. One that speaks to integral awareness, to an awareness that contains all duality, a container that has no bounds.

Each of us is responsible for our own consciousness. We can continue to squabble and squirm in the dual duel while the earth is being destroyed around us. Or we can open our consciousness beyond duality, beyond its fingerpointing and blame and shame. We can live in the light of integral awareness and operate from here.

The waters are rising. The dualistic poise is a poison destroying the earth. We must move into the non-dual, open to a higher inclusive awareness. We must move to planetary and cosmic citizenry. Otherwise we are lost.

the eternal temps

Existential facts: When we live in the eternal present, dropping all schemes, judgments, and other cognitive and emotional paraphernalia, naked, vulnerable and open, no bounds, we are One with our Source.

When we live in a temporal linear world, we are divisive creatures looking to save ourselves from lostness and the anxieties of separation. In the past few decades especially, we have attempted to do so through becoming a huge mouth of consumption. Our spiritual / existential bellies have not been filled and the earth is overflowing with our defecation.

In the temporal world, we look to HAVE faith. In the eternal present, we ARE faith. Along with faith comes grace, humor, and per-sever-ance (ability to cut right through illusion).

In the temporal world, we frantically seek security where there is none. In the eternal present, we live in the relaxed security of no security at all.

This is what is truly meant by being born again. We are born out of the temporal into the eternal present. It's funny. This is what is known in the trade as "stress reduction." We look to relieve our creaturely stress and find the vastness of our being.

us

Everyone HAS a story.
We like that.
We like our stories and want to tell them.

Everyone IS a story.
We don't like that.
We say no no. We are more than our story.

When we drop our story then, who are we?
Don't answer. That's just another story.

abyss

I do not speak of the abyss of pain, confusion, and swirling lostness. I speak of the abyss of the unknown, of the highest deepest widest realm of ignorance, where all rationale and carefully constructed sculptures of self fall away.

human beans

Even though we do not know what we do not know, we set our bounds with certainty. Hahahahahaha . . .

poetics and the angel of the abyss

Poetry is not airy-fairy boop-dee-doop. Poetry is raw-boned encounter with the angel of the abyss. Heidegger said it well: "Poetry is the saying of the unconcealedness of what is."

The ego-consciousness likes to skim and skitter on the surface of being, for to go to the depths is to go to its death, its transformation. And it likes the way it is, thank you very much!

One has to become the abyss and only then will it transform. "This very abyss is full of the darkness of God, and where one experiences it, let him climb down and howl in it (that is more necessary than to cross over it)." (Rilke)

poesy

We dismiss the power of poetry, its ability to vanquish current bounds, to open doors to other realms, to tumble all walls down. Check this out:

Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?

Angels? Legions and legions of angels? Beings that we cannot see nor trade nor buy nor sell?

Poets blow the world wide open, give us room to reinvent ourselves. Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Moses, Muhammad, Hafiz, Rumi, Chuang Tzu, the Seers of the Upanishads, John Lennon, Swedenborg, Peter Kingsley, . . .

God save us from the orthodox and the convenience of the conventional.

E = mc2

When solving Einstein's E = mc2 for humans, Energy = mass (humans) moving at high speed (c square). Dividing both sides of the equation by E, one gets 1 = humans moving at high speed supported by boundless energy. When we are one (not fragmented), this is so.

the procedure of the process

What is stated is not the truth.
What is stating is the truth.
"What is stating is the truth" is not the truth.
What is stating is the truth.
As soon as stated, it is untrue.

What is objected is not the truth.
What is objecting is the truth.
As soon as objected, it is untrue.

What is projected is not the truth.
What is projecting is the truth..
As soon as projected, it is untrue.

What is subjected is not the truth.
What is subjecting is the truth.
As soon as subjected, it is untrue.

A true arrow reaches its mark pre-shot.

recon

When we open to ourselves as an integral process of this everchanging, ever emerging universe, we do not need reconciliation. We are forever re-conciling, continuously bringing about friendship and good will.

Only when we stand apart, view ourselves as separate do we feel we need a plan of salvation and reconciliation to bring us into the fold, or feel the need to conjure a vision of ourselves as a mighty force standing in a howling wind and shaking our fist at all and sundry, "bloody but unbowed."

As embodying process of the cosmos, we do not need our cilia reconnected. We are always reconciliating.

greater than

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Source from which all is unfolding and That to which all unfolds are the Alpha and Omega of existence, the Wellspring and the Ocean.

The Wellspring, the Springing, and the Ocean are not separate, are all one.

The Springing (us and all that is) can be divided into parts. Because it can be, we do.

The Wellspring Ocean can be named and each name signifies aspects of Its essence. The name is not the essence.

The name Wellspring Ocean signifies the Whole, the simultaneous Alpha Omega (Beginning Ending) and Omega Alpha (Ending Beginning).

The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts of the Springing. (W > S1 + S2 + S3 + . . . + Sn)

The Timeless is greater than the sum of the Timed. (T > Td1 + Td2 + Td3 + . . . +Tdn)

cementing our heads

We concretize our illusions by acting as if they are so.

formatorium

Some, feeling adventurous, move from one form to another.
The true adventurer moves from all form to the formless.

Form is like a consciousness corset.
Some feel comfort in being all snugged in.
To others it feels like prison.

The adventurer speaks from the formless.
The formers make something of it.

Poor Jesus! They built a church on top of him.

Deep calls to deep

The ocean in which we swim and which we are has different depths. Often, swimming in the shallows, we think we are deep. Swimming in the depths we know of further depths and know we are shallow. The ocean laughs and keeps on oceaning.

of cosmic birth

I am of cosmic birth and I know it. The former is true of us all; the latter, it seems, of relatively few.

Some seem to know themselves as encapsulated entities in a social network. Some live as meat bound by skin. Some seem to never think about it.

We are of cosmic birth. The cosmos peers through "our" eyes. (We own nothing, though we say "our" and "my" and "mine.")

We seem yet to have accepted that we are of planetary birth. So awareness of cosmic birth and cosmic citizenry may be too much to ask.

What would your life be like if you knew, deeply and thoroughly, that you are an embodying of the cosmos, that you are the cosmos itself at play?

tach-o-meter

"Anonymous said...What does that really mean-heal our consciousness?"

Heal means to make whole. Consciousness means awareness.
To heal our consciousness means to make our awareness whole.

Our awareness is not whole when we are attached.

Attached to a thought and its emotion.
Attached to a person or a thing.

Attached to our salvation and prosperity.
Attached to our degradation and our ruin.

Attached to a path of holiness.
Attached to an image of self and of the world.

And so on.

Thoughts, emotions, persons, things, salvation, prosperity, degradation, ruin, holiness, self, the world all arise and disappear all the time in this eternal now. To be attached is to preserve the scabs of your self-inflicted wounds in your scab scrapbook.

With attachment, our awareness is not whole.
We look over there while the action is here.

We create a head on top of our head.

Consciousness Healing 101:
Be aware of attachments.
Detach from attachments.
Detach from detachment.
Laugh.

rolling and spraying

We may not ever really understand what others are saying. Rather, we immediately and without thought relate it to ourselves, our world, and respond from our own movie house in which we screen their verbiage.

We may respond as a hedgehog or a skunk, either rolling tightly into our own being, protecting ourselves against any unwanted meaning, or spray the other's emissions with our protective scent, thereby obliterating forever any deeper understanding, any finer comprehension.

To hijack one of Harold Bloom's terms, we "self-overhear."

the healing of consciousness

When I say the healing of consciousness, I mean both the making whole, the healing of our consciousness, and the healing powers of our consciousness itself. The two interwhirl, each affecting the other.

The greater the healing of our consciousness, the greater is the healing by our consciousness -- the healing, the making whole of all around us.

Our presence stimulates healing, resonates with and strengthens the healing process that lies fallow, that struggles within all life forms around us. The effects are felt and seen.

As we heal our consciousness, we immediately and automatically begin healing the consciousness of all. "Heal thy neighbor as thyself."

the transformation body

Though we remain who we are at our core, to exercise the transformation body we interweave, interwhilrl with our surrounds. We grieve with the grieving and laugh with the joyous. As the Christian Paul put it, we become "all things with all men."

The transformation body is one of empathy, moving with the feelings and the lifeforce of another, not of sympathy (feeling sorrow or pity).

Rather than confronting the world with one's rigid pre-determined shape (usually produced by longstanding habits of fear and anger) and demanding the world conform to oneself (which it never does or only gives the illusion of doing so), one maintains one's center of being and moves fluidly with what is.

The enjoyment body provides a strong base for the transformation body. Each strengthens the other as they unfold.

the enjoyment body

To exercise the enjoyment body, the happiness in being the particular manifestation you are, it is best to settle down closer to the wellspring that continuously births you, that gives rise to you. Otherwise you stay in the fluff and paraphernalia of the surface world in which there is little or no happiness, only momentary thrills.

Each of us has our way of exercising the enjoyment body: stillness, silent openness of prayer (non-petitionary), meditation while walking or sitting or running or biking or martial arts or dancing or other forms of mindful moving, expression of compassion toward others (human and non-human), service, and more.

The enjoyment body is not sensual enjoyment. That comes with the physical body. The enjoyment body is larger than the physical body. Like all the bodies, the enjoyment body is strengthened by exercise and becomes ones "normal" mode of being.

Walking through the day in and as the enjoyment body and facing and dealing with whatever arises becomes one's way of life.

body

We have (are) at least six bodies.

The physical body (the meat and potatoes of sensual existence).

The emotional body (whoa, whoa, whoa, feelings!)

The cognitive body (the little engine that could).

The enjoyment body (happy being the particular manifestation I am).

The transformation body (shape-shifting capacity).

The cosmic body (360 degree awareness in all directions without end and without thought).

Our practice is to exercise each body.

car talk

"Afterlife" say some.

"No afterlife" say others.

"This life" I say.

Always here now.

What are you doing
looking over there for a ride
when you are the vehicle?

water drops

"Are we the drop of the water or the water of the drop?" asks Raimon Panikkar.

My experience is that many humans identify with the drop: a self-encapsulated individuality.

What we have termed "spiritual life" is time set aside to pursue identification with the water.

For many of us, we then go back to being a drop, hoping we can and will set aside some time again to opening to being the water. This is called "spiritual practice."

When we know fully and deeply that we are the water of the drop, the drop takes care of itself. One does not have to practice being a drop being the water anymore. One is the water.

intergalactic endeavors

As you know, time and space fluctuate according to our mood. Does no one else see the implications of this? Each of us is a cosmos producing our own galactic and intergalactic endeavors.

Many of us still have on our cosmic training wheels, perhaps even falling for the hype that tells us we are powerless particles.

We can only conceive and give birth to that which we can conceive. Here is a conceptual starter kit --

Fledgling Cosmos Training Manual:

1. Open and expand as far as dared.
Note: Cosmic outbreathing is of great assistance here.

2. Populate your cosmos with fearless resonance.
Note: Space and time in your cosmos are the eternal now.

3. Greet all that comes and send it on its way.
Note: Fixation leads to polarity. A cosmos divided against itself does not dance.

4. All that comes your way is you in various guise.
Note: Look out for enchantment of either positive or negative nature.

5. Be inventive, creative, withoutrageous.
Note: You are the only cosmos of its kind. Remove training wheels and go for it.

the bottom line

We are worms rising out of the dirt, a writhing mass of humanity addicted to the promise of security and of eternal ultra-orgasms.

We breathe in the illusive vapors of our bottom line,
of our ass crack firmly seated on all that lives.

We slurp up all of life into this dark cavern of insecure need: sea turtles, porpoises, gold, coal, oil, air, water, trees, the earth, our children and grandchildren, chickens, cows, turkeys, each other.

We belch out our pain and pleasure.

Bottom feeders.

chop, chop

When I say "my mind"
are there now two of me,
mind and one who claims it?

When I say I know my own mind,
are there now three, am I now triplets?

Is there no end to this falseness of separation?
Shall I get indignant? Start a church?

When I make a move,
who is moving and who is making?
Am I two? Is one in charge
and the other the servant?

What am I going to do with me?
Must I do something or is me okay?

I chop myself in pieces and stare at the parts.
The meat, the emotions, the thoughts.
Good god, the relationships!

Time to pull myself together.
Who is doing the pulling, who is the pulled?

I know I've got that Zen manual
around here somewhere.

aw shucks, it was nothing . . .

Our attempts to be modest reveal the egomaniacs we are.
How can one rein in a nonexistent horse?

a horse named phantom

Words arise from mystery.

To regard logical thinking as reality
is to reverberate forever within a framed illusion.

You may think you think thoughts.
Quite the reverse. Thoughts think you.

Thoughts that bubble up out of mystery.
The mystery you are that no matter
how fast you spin you will never see.

Feelings, whoa, whoa, whoa, Feelings!
are not the mystery either.
Feelings and thoughts co-arise,
one big cogno-emoto-bubble.

Bah-lurrp!

And off we go
chasing that soap-bubble pipe dream.

Spending our lives whipping that frothing horse
into ever more lathery fury -- that horse named Phantom.

What's to do but to laugh?

To become calm and still
as the wellspring
out of which we are thunk

while riding the hell
out of the horse we spawn.

death

Though we are a death-dealing society,
raining destruction on everything we touch,
collectively and as individuals we fear death.
We can dish out death but we just can't take it.

We continue searching to eliminate aging.
While we look to find a cure for death,
we frequent body chop shops for tucking and pleating and bleaching.
We worship our appearance and neglect our soul.

We forget that we are integral streamings
of a cosmos that has no beginning and no end.
We came out of the streaming into this form
and shall leave this form as the streaming that we are.

To try to prop up the form forever
is a cruel and ignorant joke.
We have mistaken the scab for the wound.

"Live forever, O crustaceous one!" becomes our battle cry.

Laying the scab to rest is no cause for fear or weeping or mourning. The ancient wisdom saying is: Weep for those who are born and rejoice for those who die. Of course we hilariously pathetic bipeds
run that one bassackwards.

Fear life, not death.
Better still, fear neither.

I love the scab of my embodying.
I treat it well.
But I lay it on the altar of the eternal.

I die before I die.
And am thus thoroughly alive.

our gods

We have not changed
so much from days of old.

Our opinions are our gods
and we follow them religiously.

They are alive and we worship them,
bow down before them with our lives.

We live in gossamer prisons
of the wispings of our minds.

so tell me

So tell me
what if ALL beliefs
about who we are
and what is going on
are wrong!

the crippled act

Note that when you think certain thoughts you become small, a particle in the cosmic soup. Other thoughts and you become huge, a heavenly dragon in the cosmic sky. No thought combined with a certain Awareness and you are the cosmos itself, the eternal wellspring springing.

We are in the condition we are in on earth because we think small thoughts and succumb to them, making ourselves weak creatures of conflict and despair. We dummy down, refusing to open to our birth right and the awesomeness of its response- ability.

Just let me slide by another day becomes our prayer.

The day we stop fooling ourselves with our crippled act is the day the world transforms. This day. Now.

the meditational pupal slug

The purpose of meditation is not to tuck oneself away in some reverberating chamber of calmful solace, a pupal slug in its hideaway nooky cave. When one emerges, one is still a slug, albeit a less stressed one.

Meditation is to become still, to listen. Meditation is a disrobing, a casting away of all one has through logic, reason, and emotion, so carefully constructed into the magnificent wormy self one inhabits as one's own pupil.

One goes to zero. And then, not even that.
For if one is thinking one is zero, one is not.

Still. Open. Past all visions. Past all powers. Beyond.

A circle with no circumference.

A sphere with no surface.

We go through the day this way.

We are in this eternal here now this way.

No need to zip up the pupal suit again.

We stay undressed.

We are Awareness.

cultural embeds

When we are embedded in a culture, and we are,
we tend to wrap the culture blanket of suggestion
and demand around us and proclaim it as reality.

Even our ways of breaking out of it are proclaimed
by the culture.

Many show no sign of knowing
they are an embed, much less
having a desire and will to unembed.

We are the living dead,
creatures of the underworld.
The culture blanket keeps us snug,
assures us we are all just fine.

It is a lie.

It is not the culture blanket's fault.
We are the ones who wove it and keep weaving.
Weaving and dodging an awareness.

Our awareness, looking and seeing who we are,
what we are becoming, and awarenessing our way out.
Out of the hell we are creating.

Throwing off the blanket.
Getting out of bed.
Opening awareness beyond the embed.

we move

we move invisibly
in invisible realms
furnishing each downward step
with resting place and atmosphere
these rooms fantasized before
trembling gently new
unfolding
no names holding
upwardly moving steam
downwardly condensing
touching form briefly
and on our way again

mid-life

Pardon me for calling this to attention, but death is mid-life. All you sprouts out there wandering around in chaotic formation, take heart (or else succumb to the deepest misery), death is only half-way through. What goes down must come up. Death is our come-uppance. This life is what's going down.

There is no ascent of man. We have not ascended. We have descended into this form. Have you not noticed? We continue to descend. And yet there remains in us a strong spark of that from which we came. We are light making its descent into the nether regions.

Each of us wanders through this world of denseness, making as much light of matter as we can.

Middle age is not measured in years. Middle age is at the point of death, that door swinging on its hinges into the next half of life, the ascent, the eternal return.

We have taken on matter. We have become matter. We have become attached to matter. We have made matter of the utmost importance.

At our midlife (death), we will release ourselves from material fascination and move on. What comes down must go up. This is a principle, a major principle, of the non-material realm.

the myth of no myth

The myth that some propose, as enlightened vanguards of a new humanity if only others would follow, that matter is what matters and that the scientific method is not just a method but a conceptual system of consciousness to be adopted, this myth of no myth in which one bravely stands naked and unadorned in a ratio-nal material universe with homo sapiens as the apex of wisdom, cherries atop the cosmic malt, is, as myths go, akin to diving into the shallowest part of the pool.

We humans are story tellers, myth makers, connoisseurs of explanatory tales. Tales which in turn create who we are. Each of us lives a story of our own devising (with a little help from our friends) and do our best every day to live it faithfully and truly. We are mythologists. We are mythical creatures. We love story.

The myth of no myth has been on the menu for centuries. Few order it, preferring a richer diet. I'm glad it's there. It's a good cleansing agent. Blessings to those who adopt it as a life style. Some do it quietly. Some are like fresh vegan converts, proclaiming loudly and with missionary zeal the benefits of their new eating habits while denouncing the foraging of others.

"Adopt the myth of no myth! It's good for you!"

Maybe so, but I think it's not going to happen.

my commentary on a fragment of Empedocles

For from what does not exist at all it is impossible that anything come into being, and it is neither possible nor perceivable that being should perish completely; for things will always stand wherever one in each case shall put them. -- Empedocles (490-430 BCE)

1. For from what does not exist at all it is impossible that anything come into being. Being does not come out of what does not exist at all. Being comes from somewhere, from something. None of us know what it is. We call it different names. Some get infuriated, agitated over other's names for it, thinking their name for it is most appropriate or that it should be given no name at all. Yet we speak and write a language that names names. I call it Wellspring. I call it Source. Sometimes I call it God. Sometimes Godhead. Sometimes Father. The name I call it changes my relationship with it. It responds, is responsive. And why not? It calls me into being, energizes me, keeps me going. It is the most personal relationship possible -- this relationship with the one who breathes me. You, of course, call it whatever you want. Or do not call it at all.

2. and it is neither possible nor perceivable that being should perish completely. Completely is the key word here. Our experience of the world as perceived through our physical senses is that everything is always becoming something else, forever transforming. No abrupt start. No abrupt stop. Continuity but in differing form. Our experience of life as perceived through the transcendent eye, that true and real spiritual organ, is ongoing existence. We do not perish completely when the corpse drops. We are a continuing manifestation of the Wellspring.

3. for things will always stand wherever one in each case shall put them. Wherever we put our attentional energies now is not only where we stand now but where we stand later after the body drops. "Lay up your treasures in heaven," says Haysoos. "Die before you die," say the Sufi. Both these sayings point to the same principle. We will always stand wherever we put ourselves.

pay no mind

They say pay no mind to the understanding that we are a vile species that the earth would do well to shrug off, to exterminate like the fat bloated oil sucking ticks we are. They say that understanding leads only to self-loathing and despair.

They say pay no mind to the understanding that our brand new god Technology is even now failing us in irretrievable destruction and death. They say that understanding leads only to anger and despair.

They say pay no mind to the understanding that we have slain all other gods and regard ourselves as post-Christian and post-modern and post-post-modern and post anything else that anyone thinks of. They say that understanding leads only to no legs to stand on and despair.

They say pay no mind to the understanding that all is fair game for conversion into money and personal power and lubrication of self. They say that understanding leads only to jumping into the feeding frenzy and the endless pursuit of stupor and despair.

They say pay no mind . . .
They say pay no mind . . .
They say pay no mind . . .
They say pay no mind . . .

the four horsemen

there's one who sits in judgment
one who swallows it whole
one who questions everything
one who's just out cold

drama queens

we are all drama queens
characters in a story of our making

in the grifter language of old
we myth the mark

the wider context

Compassion. Understanding. Beyond bounds.

context

We have no meaning without context. Each of us maintains the context that gives us meaning. What happens when we dare step out to a context of no context? Is it even possible? Is this what the spiritual paths mean by dying to self?

We fear that if we step out of the snug cocoon of context we have woven about ourselves, we will die. And we will. Without context, the self we know, the self we wear like comfortable pajamas (or a hair shirt) will disappear.

We fight to maintain our context, the text by which we con ourselves. We make our living with our context. We get through the day with it, snug in its bubble.

As missionaries of self, we look to sell our context to others, while preferring to think we are giving it away.

Like dung beetles, we sit in our context, enjoying its sweet aroma, so happy to have a home.

where do i hide my mind

i hide it in a flower
i hide it in a book
i hide it in a path of love
i hide it in your look

i hide it in a project
i hide it in my kin
i hide it in my body fat
i hide it in life's din

i hide it in its seek
i seek it in its hide
i play this game endlessly
until i go inside

what we call

what we call the soul is the mind
what we call the mind is the light of awareness
what we call the light of awareness
has no beginning and no end

to make an object of the soul
is to sit stuck
slack-jawed
fasten-ated

what we call the soul
is the light of awareness
no was no will be
is

comprehensions of reality

Our comprehension of reality and our designations and definitions as to what is reality and what is fantasy are determined by our own experience and our experience of others' experiences, some of which we hold up as models and others denigrated and shunned.

Thus, our acceptance of others' experiences and the interpretive spin they put on their experiences is determined by their accord with our own experiences and our own spin. This is the way we stay encased in our same-o same-o world. A way out is opening to new experiences. This may be called personal growth.

Some are fearful of doing so, having erected a firm foundation on which to stand, though the foundation itself floats in midair. Some are too tired to make any effort. Some are righteous in their mindset (whether religious or irreligious) and believe they possess the truth (logical positivists, proponents of scientism, evolutionary psychologists, and those who cast blame on "religion"for the world's ills fall within this category).

As for myself and my spin, I tried on the mindset of those cheer-leading for a disenchanted universe. I find that mindset lacking. A large data set from our ancestors and from all cultures is lopped off, discarded as non-data. My experience is that the universe is enchanted and enchanting. I take it personally and find that I am taken Personally. I use the capital letter because I experience the cosmos as a live embodying of the Mystery just beyond the view of fundamental science.

shaman theologian

To know anything, you must "go native." You must become that which you are trying to understand. To know God, you must become God, a simultaneous leap into each other's skin, laughing and whooping with the playful joyousness of it all.

Do you think that the one who gave form to the platypus, to humans has no sense of humor? I say unto thee: Jump into while being jumped into! Leap into the leaping!

We know as we are known, and we are known as we know.

We are inquired into as deeply as we inquire.

We leap into God as God leaps into us.

This is what is meant by shaman theologian.

exercising the subtle body

A way for moving out of the sensory temporal (temporary) world is well-known. A first step is mindfulness, being here now in this moment. One is mindful while sitting and while on the move. Both practices are essential for developing capaciousness.

In sitting mindfully, one can meditate on something. This is eventually let go and one simply sits and opens.

One moves into contemplation (con-templum-ation), the templum being the clear open space required for divine seeing by our augur ancestors. It is in this open space that one hears, sees, merges with the world that exists beyond the temporal. One is developing, exercising one's subtle body. This is the body one truly is, the body that goes on after one's dense matter falls away.

In christian language, it is called laying up your treasures in heaven. In buddhist language, it is called opening to your buddha body. In taoist language, it is called waving with the ocean. In bhagavad gita language, it is called getting up off the chariot floor. In hebrew language, it is called meeting and merging with the shekinah. In persian language, it is called opening to the xvarnah, the light of glory. In zoroastrian language, it is called meeting the logos angel. In alchemical language, it is called coniunctio. In zen language, it is called but not called.

Attention directs energy. Whatever we attend to, we become.

beyond lament

There is an entire inner Infinity which encompasses and gives birth to the observable outer Infinity. As a human, each of us is a gateway between the two Infinities, which are one. In this Kali Yuga age, the tendency and rule is to give more attention to and to "lay up our treasures" in the outer Infinity, though its formation arises from the Inner.

In this age of dissolution, we celebrate appearance and form rather than that which births us, that which gives rise to formation. Lamentation is definitely in order, appropriate. But lamentation does not get us very far. We can only sit so long in the ash heap and scrape our running sores with pot shards.

We must get up and face the god we have created. This is effective only if we move out of and from a deep centering in the Inner.

The Inner is more powerful than the external, gives rise to the external. The external we have now stems from our shallowness.

Deep calls to deep.

the event of the birth of the other

Long ago, and even now,
there was and is a circle
with no circumference,
a sphere with no surface,
boundless with no origin.

A stirring formed,
compassion being born,
but not without doubt.

For how can there be compassion
with no object of compassion?

The boundless birthed the bounded,
doubt required compassion,
compassion demanded doubt.

And with that,
an eternal yearning
saturated the cosmos,
a groaning for what was,
a lamenting,
countered by the glee
of sweet release.

Twins at birth, each now
consoles the other.

Doubt
con-soul-ing
compassion
con-soul-ing
doubt. . .

The boundless
birthing the bounded
is content in its dreaming;
the cosmos rejoices
in its divisive interwhirling.

The great sacrifice has been made
and all is on the altar and is the altar,
holy fires raging with sweet incense of
burning doubt consumed by compassion.

appreciation

I hang my butt out to dry on this blog or another most every day. From that point of view (somewhat selfish), I appreciate all comments made. Mutual self-disclosure is much more satisfactory and enlightening. I like it when your butt shares the clothesline.

A friend of mine reminded me the other day that when six-year-olds are asked a question in the class room, hands shoot up everywhere, comments ready and forthcoming. As students get older, a question is asked and everyone sits in embarrassed or stuporous silence. No one wants to reveal what they are thinking lest it be WRONG. One must be RIGHT or one says nothing. RIGHT-WRONG has been manufactured and put in the hands of others. I call it the Lady Gaga Effect. Not only must one exist in stupor, but by Zeus, if one does say something, opens one's mouth, it must have STYLE.

Alan Watts said: Sincerity is simple nerve.

I have a more deeply and profoundly felt appreciation than the first one I mentioned. I appreciate the sincerity and nerve expressed by all. I do not always respond directly to each of your comments, but I am directly affected by all. I listen to what you say and I thank you.

iamyouarehesheitis

The names we give to the grammatical structure of our language can be revealing. I am specifically referring to first person, second person, and third person (I am, you are, he/she/it is and we are, you are, they are).

One always refers to oneself in and as the First Person. All others come after the I that I am. I am not talking about ego here. I am pointing to one's felt sense of being. I speak from a First Person stance. I know no others as First Person. Even if I say I do, in some fawning, falling at the feet endeavor, it is a lie.

You, whoever you are, no matter how much I love you and no matter if I sacrifice my life for you, are always "you." I, First Person, am sacrificing my life for you, Second Person.

First Person and Second Person may run along together, and may even do well with Third Person, as long as Third Person is a he or she and not an it or they.

When Third Person is a he or she, Third Person can quickly become a you, Second Person. First Person can sit in a room with many Second Persons, but there is only one First Person.

When Third Person is an it or they, Third Person has no place in the room. (Except maybe as an indentured servant with strict bounds.) An it or they Third Person is kept out there somewhere, an object of fear, mistrust, and disdain, convenient for explaining all one's woes.

There is Fourth Person but I won't go into that here. Too far out.

the language of mythopoetry

Every culture has a secular language and a spiritual language. Speaking and thinking in the secular language calls forth, produces a secular world. The consciousness called forth by a spiritual language produces a spiritual world.

Rejection of spiritual language and a total reliance on secular thought and consciousness has produced a disenchanted world. Some call living in the world of secular language "stark reality." It is stark alright but only one version of "reality."

The reality in which we live is determined by the language we speak. Spiritual language coincides with, affirms, and is produced by a spiritual consciousness or awareness. Spiritual language is the language of the life force calling all into being. Spiritual language is spoken by all wishing to bring light into the world. Spiritual language is the language of mythopoetry.

The language we speak and dwell upon in our consciousness creates the world in which we live. As within, so without. As we think, so we are. Our language is a tool for world transformation. The language of disenchantment has been spoken long enough.

knowing as we are known

The knower is not separate from the known. Learning is revelation, opening to aspects of oneself previously ignored. The opposite of revelation is ignore-ance. The knower is not separate from the known. This has profound cosmological implications.

We, in this post-postmodern era, have jettisoned all gods, a' la the presentiment of Nietzsche. Or at least we say we have. What we have done is to make gods of ourselves. And then get worried and shaky that we are not god enough. We are on the right path but have not dared to pursue it to its logical, Logos-ical end: the beginning of our life as cosmic beings.

We are spiraling around to new understandings. (No linear path here.) God is not dead. What we previously thought of as God is dead. This is no time to stand around, fists on hips, bawling our calf-like challenges to the universe while convincing ourselves we are bellowing like bulls.

We are co-creating a new knowledge of our Source. The co-creator is our Source Itself and is intimately personal. We know as we are known and when we set aside, come out of our calcified shells of bravado and despair, we open into the true being that we are: the Source sourcing.

The post-postmodern way is to make objects of ourselves and to learn who we are through this objection. We subject ourselves to our objections. We throw ourselves under the bus of our objections, forgetting that our ob-jections are pro-jections of our sub-jections. We throw (ject) one or a few aspects of what is within without and regard that part, that portion as our object, our objective.

Infinity in all directions, we project our objections, eternally hoping to build a fitting nest, a home that satisfies. And it never does. And it never will.

Eventually we may come to know that we are That which births us. To know that we must unknow. (Sunyata, kenosis, empty, of no reputation, nothing in our own eyes, not hing-ed, the gateless gate, conduits.) To be unknown is our nightmare, our fear. No fear. That which breathes us knows us.

certainty

If we wish to understand the internal cosmos, our internal nature, we have to lay ourselves on the line, no holding back. Abstract knowledge, retreating into some hypothetical bubble of a viewing point, does not work here.

Abstract knowledge is a language of uncertainty; one is considering various hypotheses as to one's being, trying them on for size.

A logic of causality and deduction, while useful for some purposes, must finally be set aside when looking to comprehend what gives birth to a logic of causality and deduction.

Certain knowledge arises out of being itself, before there is any separation, any codification, any partialing oneself off as a parcel.

That which is doing the seeking is that for which we are searching. What we are searching with is that which we seek. This is certain and moving with it is certainty.

department of the interior

We have conveniently (and are we not all about convenience these days?) divided our world into interior and exterior. We make of ourselves mobile self-contained units, particulates moving through the world, containers of fantasy and peculiar imaginations which by no means must be regarded as real.

All interior movement not conforming to a pre-defined world of the exterior must be either manipulated for and by the mass market, medicated so as not to get out of hand, or if spoken of, met with ridicule and scorn.

To redress this imbalance, we need, individually and collectively, to attend more to our department of the interior. The interior or esoteric world is real, as real as, more real than the nose on our face. The esoteric world is a spiritual world, populated with powers, forces, and entities.

"As above, so below" has been the practice reminder. Now we cry, "As within, so without!" We repeat this healing formula in every way we know how until the discrepancy, the split we have created has disappeared.

AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT!

you-niverse: early morning reflections on soul

Many are willing to short-change themselves by believing that body is the prime material from which all else arises. From body an entire universe is born, the universe of you, the you-niverse.

In this view (and we must not forget, it is a view, not a fact), matter matters most.

From whence does matter come? What is the matter? Matter arises from mystery. The hand holding the scalpel slicing the brain is mystery slicing mystery.

Soul cannot be object-ified. Soul is the eternal subject. The soul I am is the sole "I Am."

Soul is entirely subjective, the primal realm upon which all objectivity is based. You may object but this is because you do not wish to be subject. This is the eternal rebellion.

We vacillate between the subjective and the nominative case. One way out we love to take is to say we are the verb, the vacillation itself. While this is true, and we can zip and zoom in our zen state, dropping all distinction, the question still remains, who or what is doing the zooming? Until and unless one knows (is) the answering of that question, the zooming is simply a fly ball about to land in one's fielding mitt.

When we know we are the mystery from which we spring, we are soul full. Whatever we make of that is our personal metaphysics, and we can and do make of it what we want.

Through our you-niverses, we are co-creators of the universe.

the way we are

Hale = Hearty= Health

In-hale-ing, Ex-hale-ing
Creation, Annihilation

Birthing, Dying
Condensing, Extending

Expanding, Collapsing
Opening, Centering

Condensing inward with no stopping
Falling into the Fertile Void

Expanding outward in all directions
Representing the Fertile Void

Tide in
Tide out

Ocean

sounding the matter horn

The universe is the outbreathing of the Great Mystery
hidden behind that surging of time the Big Bang boys can't see.

The outbreathing is the life force,
the in-spirit-ation or in-spire-itation of the cosmos.

The universe has no spirit-matter split.
That splitness is created by us.

Matter is an extension of spirit, of the life force.
Matter is spirit in its densest forming.

What is the matter with us? What is the matter to us?
What is the matter with us depends on what the matter is to us.

No separation. Nothing is the matter.
Separation. Everything is the matter.

like the wind

When one no longer rests in the story that one co-creates for oneself and steps back from and beyond that and beyond the beyonds while simultaneously living the story that one co-creates, this is the development of capacity, of capaciousness. One is no longer a corporeal being, skin-bound, but a vastness incomprehensible by the subject-object world.

I know. I know. We love to live our story. No problem. Do it. Live it fully and completely with all its nuances. Be the best you that will ever exist. You have no competition, other than your disparate parts.

Outside your story, what are you? What? You do not wish to consider the question? Then let the dead bury the dead. You may as well write your obituary now.

I would rather be like the wind, which "blows where it blows, and you hear its sounding, but cannot tell its final beginning nor its destination." Open. No Story. Capacious.

Lord of being

We understand only as we open to understanding. Letting go of our plots and schemes, our angers and anxieties, we open to our Lord of being. Each person's Lord is different, depending upon understanding.

heart and soul

Many of us do not like the word soul. We have been fooled too often (once is enough) and have adopted the sparse language of the day, the Occam's Razor language of science. Soul is considered as too ethereal, too ephemeral. One smells a con job.

The word heart, however, is fine. No problem there. Heart is matter, is material. Heart matters. Soul, we think, has no substance, does not matter. So we discard soul and open to heart.

Once again, as we do so often in this hard-boiled don't-give-me-that-crap era, we regard the material as the divine. Divine is defined here as what matters, what is appearing before us as matter. And since we are matter, we matter, and regard ourselves as divine.

Not that we would say it that way. Oh no. But if we could, we would kiss ourselves on the lips, smacking with self-satisfaction. (Which has its shadow side, the kicking of ourselves in the butt with self-loathing.)

We are hearty creatures with no soul. We have condensed the universe down to our selves, isolated balls of being in a vast nothingness. We are interested only in breathing out, extending our own aura into the world, forgetting that something is breathing us, and that at some point we will need to breathe in. We don't want to breathe in because we have put ourselves into a dead cosmos from which, we have decided, we receive no nourishment. Alienated protoplasmic blobs, we dance our own little boogie and that's that.

That is not the world I live in. I have soul. I am soul. I live in a thick rich nourishing environment of soul. Soul is not a noun, an objectified thing. Soul is a verb, linking subject and object. Duality vanishes when we have and are soul.

The universe, the cosmos is alive. It is not some static deadness waiting to be discovered and exploited. The cosmos is a living being with whom we play and interact. We are microcosms of that macrocosm. We are micro-cosmic, holons of the Whole One.

Heart and soul. We are heart and soul.

It's okay to breathe in.

embodyings of soul

The modern and post-modern mind has decided that the universe, the cosmos has no soul, no intelligence, and is simply mass and matter to be exploited, turned into toothpicks and toilet paper and fast food and whatever will give the stock market an upswing.

So delusional, so erroneous, so wrong.

The cosmos is soulful and we are its embodyings.

joy

Do you know what will vanquish any roots of hell that burn within you? Joy, sheer open joy.

bet you can't throw yourself over your shoulder

A logical positivist is one who says there is no meaning to life, only description and operational definition, but by that announcement pronounces meaning.

story

Must we forever be weaving stories around our personal and specie-al existence? Is a human living without story both idiot and genius, some sort of supernal fool? A consciousness in the immediacy of now, no footprints behind, no trail ahead, yet fully awake and aware. No resume', no reputation to defend, uphold.

division

"If you divide a pool into five pools, each will reflect the moon. The moon, meanwhile, also divides into five because it conforms to the pools and not because it has any inclination to do so. Thus, it is one, and yet it is not one. If you then combine the five pools into one pool, it will reflect one moon. The moon becomes one because it conforms to the pool, not because it has any inclination to do so. Thus, it is not one, and yet it is one." Chiang Wei-nung

Many pools of understanding exist on earth today. The pools are at war with each other, each claiming accurate representation of the moon. And each pool is correct with that assertion. Within that pool, the moon is accurately reflected. Where the pool tadpoles go astray is in asserting that their pool is the true and only pool.

Each pool gets its chief tadpoles to speak for it and all within the pool exclaim "Yeh!" and "Right On!" and "Stomp Those Stupid Mucker Stuckers In Those Other Pools!"

Each is reflecting the moon as seen from that pool.
Same moon. Different pond.

Each would like to give the other the moon. And do.

Meanwhile the moon is the moon, reflecting light equally upon all.

I shake my head and laugh and cry and sing.

consciousness

Humans have risen from the earth and continue opening into and through evolving realms of consciousness: vegetable, animal, psychological, spiritual.

Vegetable and animal consciousness are concerned with survival and dominance. Psychological consciousness is concerned with self-awareness. Spiritual consciousness is concerned with moving in harmony with the life force that calls us into being, with What Is.

With the first three, it is easy to fall into pursuit of our individual self-glorification. We constantly look into our mirror and adjust the make-up of ourselves.

The warrior of spirit has no mirror, throws all her/his energies into spiritual consciousness, into life-force awareness, leaps into the flames of existence with total abandon, dies before s/he dies, and thus truly lives.

This path is for everyone, but few take it.

line, circle, sphere

Line.
You are a vertical line.
The line looks as if it has a top end and a bottom end.
It has no end, extends forever "upward" and "downward."

Physically, the line is your spine.
Energetically, it is a line of light.
The sword of the spirit.

Circle.
You are a circle.
You are a circle with no circumference.
At the center of the circle is a dot.
The dot is the line of light.

Sphere.
The circle with no circumference is a sphere.
You are a sphere with no surface.
The sphere that is you extends infinitely in all "directions."

At the center of the sphere is the dot, the line of light.
You are a firm center in infinite space.
The space is filled with the radiance of you.

You sit in a chair. You walk around. You live this life.
You are a sphere of energy extending subtly and infinitely.
You are a sphere of influence.

Line. Circle. Sphere.

cosmos

For we all share the same body.

possessed

Through separating things, we've gotten them all mixed up. The most powerful instance of this is life and death. We have chopped up this ongoing ever-changing transformational flow into those two antagonists.Then we have come firmly down on the side of one while abhorring and fearing the other. How odd we are. How funny. How infinitely amusing.

Some of us get really attached to our feet, our face, our hands. We want to have them forever. The operative word here is "have."

Some of us get all attached to these personas we have so carefully crafted over the years. We just hope and pray our personality survives the jump, lands safely on "the other side," and goes on cavorting in its familiar peculiar ways. The operative word here is "our."

Some of us just absolutely l-o-o-o-v-e our mental ability, thinking the other humanoids are absurd stuporous brutes who just don't get it (whatever "it" is). We fancy ourselves as the intelligentsia of the universe, kind of the Teacher's Pet, and we know we won't be shelved with an eternal dunce cap. The operative word here is "fancy."

And so on. Survival, darling, we are talking survival. And in the form we are, with maybe a few little tweaks and changes, that wart, that guilt, that shame, a small surgical operation, nothing too drastic, you understand.

Some are scared shitless they are going to totally disappear. For others, that would be a blessed boon.

All these shenanigans start, as I said at the beginning of this death and doom and salvation and afterlife glory epistle, with our chopping up what can't be chopped into what we want and what we don't want.

Chaio Hung put it this way: "The wise person has no life. Not because he slights it, but because he doesn't possess it. If someone has no life, How can he be killed?"

The Zen dudes and dudesses put it this way: NO CLINGING!

Or as one of my favorite puns (somewhat outdated, but then so am I) puts it: Cling, cling, cling goes the folly!

grace and grit

How does one open to supra-sensory awareness? The simple answer is by grace and grit. Grace means this awareness is given to us. Grit means we must have the stamina to allow ourselves to open to it.

What? The stamina to open? Isn't opening easy? No. We humans like to remain closed, protected, secure. Do you know how to get fit physically and mentally? Join the Marine Corps and go through their boot camp. One is thrust into an entirely new world of awareness. What you thought was awareness before was cushy goo.

Opening to supra-sensory awareness is not for the faint of heart. It is joining a Spiritual Marine Corps. It is a lot easier in many ways to coast along in the world of appearances and never open beyond the physical senses that are given you for a short while.

Let me switch metaphors. Let us say you are sitting in a chair and over there is a door. The chair in which you sit is the world as it appears to your physical senses and nothing beyond that. You sit in the seat of sensory awareness. You may even found a religion and say there is nothing but sensory awareness -- the Religion of One's Extended Butt. That is a very popular religion these days and you will find many in your congregation.

As long as you think the chair is all there is, you will never leave it. You will live your life in the butt-sprung seat of sensory awareness and that's that. And I'm sure you can come up with many fine reasons as to why that is a wonderful thing to do.

If you have even a hint though that you are sitting in a chair and there is more to life than that chair, and you seem to be getting glimpses of a door, you will no longer be satisfied with Ass Extension as a philosophy of life.

You are going to want to get up and walk (a spiritual practice not as easy as it sounds) over to that door. The surprise is going to be that you were never in a chair and there is no floor, no room, and no door. You've been out here with all that gives birth to the world of appearances the whole time.

Grace means we always already exist in the realm of supra-sensory awareness. We are also prone to believe we are separate chunks of matter and appearance is all that matters, and it takes some grit, some stamina and practice to open beyond that proneness.

Does the universe exist in a grain of sand (the one grit that you think you are)? Yes.

The best answer I can give as to how to know that is an ancient one: Knock and it shall be opened. Have the grit to keep at it. Grace will come.

conversations

Seems like some of the things I write irritate the bejesus out of one of my friends. We talked about it this morning. These aggravational items fall within the realm of the experiences I have had and continue to have in what might be termed the mystico-theosopho-philosopho-psychologico areas of consciousness. He and many others have not had those experiences so I could easily be labeled as delusionally insane and dismissed. To his credit, from my point of view, he did not write me off and so we continue our conversations.

He was surprised that no one else had approached me in the straightforward way he did on this matter. I surmised that (a) some folk did not understand what I said much of the time anyway, so, just like not bothering to look up unintelligible words in the dictionary, just slid on by and went on with their lives, without further exploration or questioning comments, (b) some folk got riled that I spoke of what to them is the unseen, the unscientific, and hence, the ignorant as if it were seen and real and decided not to make too much of it since that's just George and he's too old and set in his ways to get converted to modern reality anyway, (c) some folk have had and do have similar experiences and so fully comprehend what I am talking about, and (d) some folk just don't want to think about such things.

My friend allowed as how I had a few things in my favor that kept him from deleting my every posting -- I seemed to be fairly intelligent and well read, seem open to a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints, and seem to have a sense of humor. Plus he said something that just cracked me up. He said I didn't seem to be trying to lead some kind of mass movement, and that if I was I seemed to be totally inept at it.

I love that guy. I hope he comes on and argues some with me. You too. Isn't that called a conversation?

journey

Journey.

What is the story of humans but one of genesis and return, of descent and ascent? All the books humans deem holy speak of this -- the Qur'an, the Tanakh, the Bible, the Buddhist sutras, the Book of Mormon; even the Old Dude, Lao Tzu, in his Tao Te Ching.

Journey.

Where we came from, our descent (which means both a fall and our line of ancestors) and where we are going, our ascent (implying transformation). All the holy books, all our revered explanations of us, say that we are on a trip, voyaging, casting out into the deep.

Jour-ney means how far we can travel in a day (jour). We go as far as we can while there is light. At night we hunker down, build artificial light, tell stories of the journeyers who have gone before. That is, until we lit the globe so that jour is all the time.

We have lost the rhythm of descent and ascent. Some say we are perpetually descending now, that all is lost. Others say no, we have just begun our ascent, having finally rid ourselves of those old stories we told around our night fires.

But if we listen carefully to our own heart, we can hear the thump of its closure, a door shut with finality, followed immediately by its opening with as much assurance as it closed. It had to be closed before it could open, and open before it could close. Closure or openness standing alone means nothing. Each requires the other for its meaning.

I see the feet of those walking this aeon path. We are part of that parade. Our lives consist of genesis and revelation, of the great fall and eternal return.

Journey.

Our souls burst with happiness, with joy for the pleasure and the gift of participation.

There is a caution here. Jesus said it well: I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. This refers not only to individual death and transformation, but to species death and transformation. We can work on the physical plane for only so long, then we move to a different plane. Humans will work no more. What is born out of humans will work.

Journey.

just can't stop writing

Hmmm... Notes To Myself, the blog that this one superseded, continues to get hits from around the world. Maybe I should have just one big fat blog, rather than the nine I have. But I like having my thoughts sorted out into different categories.

mind set

It is the mindset that does us in. Today is Sunday. What if you had your Monday mindset today? You think that is silly. Why would you do that and ruin a perfectly good day? My point exactly.

It-inerary

We are composed of multiple Its, fragments of ourselves that take ascendance from time to time, then recede into subterranean background.

We place some of these Its on hold, to be lived only at certain times: on vacation, with a certain set of friends, in particular subsets of circumstances.

We repress some Its, lock them in a dungeon, never to surface, visited only infrequently and brought scant food tossed haphazardly through their barred cells.

We glorify other Its we are, trying on their always too large shoes, clomping around like children at play with wishful dreams.

We keep our It circus going, performing in multiple rings of our devising -- the acrobats of agile moves here, the clowns there, the lion tamer with lions in Its protective beast-taming cage.

Each of us is a nation, a small nation of Its, each with Its own m.o., i.d., and raison d'etre.

Irruptions in the fabric of time, we person-ify ourselves. Deep within each persona is the embedding of the Unseen, the Unknown.

sniffs of transcendence

Many profess no belief in a transcendent reality, that only their meat & matter is real. This profession of no belief is itself a transcendent reality, rising beyond the meat one claims one only is. Subjectivity exists and is transcendent.

Of course, one can insist that one's subjectivity is the only subjectivity in contact with TRUE REALITY and that all other subjectivities are WRONG. But isn't that a stance of exclusion, a religious stance at its worst, a stance that one who professes anti-religious, anti-transcendent sentiments abhors?

I find this rather amusing: stiff-legged dogs sniffing each others' butts for any scent of transcendence which will set them growling, while knowing that scent only because they have a transcendent component themselves.

Those who are anti-transcendent fall readily into the old familiar trap: my transcendence is the only worthy transcendence -- a stance at once both hilarious and painful.

line dance

Boundaries exist only where we place them.
We are bound only as we bind.
We bind ourselves with our boundaries.
Bound and determined.

hand in glove

How beautiful that the Source of all being would embody as a human! And that is you, my dear! That is you!

the imaginal

"his head is in the clouds" they said
while i had no head at all

vast boundless range

no orthodoxic form
no braces or clamps
would ever reek a do

infinity cannot be stuffed
within society's shoe

vortices of energy

Vortices of energy, that is what we are.

And then we add on our whims, our quirks, our absolutely righteous way of looking at things, our fears, our doubts, our loves.

We each become characters in our own story and bravely and defiantly and hesitantly confront ourselves while convinced we are confronting others.

We move in and out of character-logical disorder.

Vortices of energy assuming human face and passion and melodrama.

Vortices of energy, that is what we are,
temporarily assuming human form.

i gather we are

I gather we are to be sober intellectuals now
and not see angels or hear the muse.

I get it, I totally get it. I respect the brain
and the dispelling of all illusion.

But it's going a little too far.
Why tout one body part as supreme?
Might as well worship the penis or vagina.

The true brain is not that slab of meat
producing intellectual stand alone jabber,
pretending to skewer all story other than its own
and roast it on its Hitchens-Harris grill.

The true brain is the heart
that hears the kingdom of the dawn
and sees its genius, that is amazed
at the sight and sound of angels singing
of the life we are and are to become.

Keep the brain and all body parts
and let them assume their place
as part of the schema, not the totality.

We are the singing of the wisdom of the spheres
neither brain nor genitalia will ever comprehend.

the anger of the lord

The words, "the anger of the Lord," often puzzled me. Now I know why. When I was in a separatist (dualistic) state of consciousness, the words would conjure a vision of the Lord way over or way out there somewhere being angry at, after all, what he had created. It seemed rather petulant on the part of the Lord and lowered my esteem of him. Simplistic thinking on my part.

In open relational (nondualistic) consciousness, the phrase takes on a vastly different meaning. It is not someone, something out there being mad at me and us humans. It is that, as light beings daring to live in density, as dense matter, we are furtherest removed from the Source of light. Anger is better translated as discomfort. We are the discomfort of the Lord. We are the felt discomfort of the Light opening into and as the densest Dark.

To combine the separatist and relational ways of speaking, we are both the furtherest outpost of the light and the interwhirling of the light and dark. As re-presentations of the light, we have gone native. In our attempts to colonize the darkness, we have inter-married. We are darkness opening to the light and we are light opening to the darkness.

This is a delicate balance. We can be swallowed up by the darkness. All prayer is a call for help. Help comes. We can be overpowered by the light. These days the former is more likely than the latter. This balance is our felt discomfort and is "the anger of the Lord."

push pull

When we take a stance, the anti-stance is immediately called into play. We create our counter-force. We counter with stronger stance, which directly strengthens the opposing force. All political parties, religion arguments, philosophical stances are inside us and we make ourselves all hopping mad. It would be funny if not so painful.

let it go

An age-old symbol of healing and transformation, the snake sheds its outgrown skin. It does not stay to beat up the skin it shed, nor to excoriate those still abiding in such skins. At first it may pride itself in its new raiment. Then it realizes that must be shed too. And so goes our onward transformation, neither casting aspersion on what we left, nor captured in adoration of what we are and what we will become.

mister theo and mister atheo

Theo and Atheo were walking down the road.
Each claimed the other was his shadow.
"I cannot be your shadow," said Theo. "I am light."
"Proves my point," said Atheo.
"What shadow would dark have but light?"

candles

We harden, needing no one else.
We soften, needs far too many.

We melt.
We stand firm.

Our downfall is our uplift.
Our uplift, our downfall.

Light, heat, warmth.

We weep.
We glow.

homeboys and girls of the ganglia

The universe, the cosmos is alive! Every aspect of the cosmos, rocks, trees, birds, galaxies, black holes, humans, is reporting vital information to its central nervous system. We are one vast symphony of informational music in our movements, our meanderings, our sudden stops.

fric and frac

All art is the creation and resolution of f(r)iction.

We are creatures of f(r)iction.
Our lives are lives of f(r)iction.
Without f(r)iction, we do not exist.

Our teeth grind against themselves, against food.
Our feet grip, wear down the earth.
We follow beaten paths.

Nirvana is the absence of f(r)iction,
the candle blown out,
no sputtering against the flame.

No nirvana us, we are the fires of f(r)iction.

Love is lubricated f(r)iction, our highest art.

Sharp corners worn round, muscles honey toned,
dis-armed, no leg to stand on,
love waits in the wings,
then knocks us over with a feather.

Love is the highest form of f(r)iction.

moving as one

Substantiation must precede transubstantiation.
Then they move as one. Alone each is ineffective.

the living breathing aware universe

There are as many sense organs in the universe as there are humans. Each human is a sense organ. All humans together make up one sensor, a sensor taking in vast information. All is fed to the Source from which the sensor springs -- a living dynamic everchanging evershifting resonance of intricate and intimate data comprehended by the One organically connected to the sensor and its sense organs. At times we stop in the information feed and sense our Source.

i laugh aloud

i laugh aloud no endarkenment no enlightenment no no only merely a thrumming humming universe rolling right along cavorting joyously expanding deflating puffing up casting down all around no ending no beginning no need and if you use this to build a doctrine and preach you are so far off the mark you better just go sell shoes to them as ain't got no feet or watermelons to the mouthless

my mom the alchemist

When I was a young teen suffering from heartfelt pain, my mom said that my heart would be placed within the hottest fire, heated white-hot, removed and hammered hard, then plunged into the coldest of water. She said this process would be repeated, that I was being tempered. She said I had only two choices: to keep my heart open or to slam it shut.

going to ashes

The phoenix rises out of the ashes.
First ashes, then phoenix.

Sit down. Go to ashes.
No hope. No expectation.

If you are going to cling,
cling to nothing. Let go.
Dis-solve. No solution. Ashes.

A tiny ember burns. On its own.
Then flares. Into flame.
Rise up. Your work is done.

Born anew.

Go wash the dog.

methinks

methinks i writes too abstractly
too compactly too exactly

if'n one doesn't know what i mean already
one's brain could feel like confetti

i got no call in the matter
i serve to you what's on my platter

nothing i know that i can do
'cept shut my mouth and not say boo

but it builds within and comes on out
just won't follow no other route

i write my mind i write my heart
every ending is another start

guess i'll keep on doing what i do
and hope your brain doesn't turn to goo

thanks for your readership!

comprehension apprehension

Only that which we do not comprehend
can rescue us from our rigid states of comprehension.

We tend to fear or disdain what we do not comprehend.
We refuse to even begin to comprehend it.

We have comprehension apprehension.
We lift all drawbridges from our moat.

We congratulate ourselves on our self-sufficiency.

Only that which we do not comprehend
can rescue us from our dead-on certainty.

oh, those two again

Science is a quantitative endeavor.
Science does things by the numbers.
Science does things.

Spirituality is a qualitative endeavor.
Spirituality opens to quality of relationship.
Spirituality opens.

Science handles the horizontal dimension.
Science likes a level playing field.

Spirituality attends to the vertical dimension.
Every direction is up with its down.

Together they form a cross.
Sometimes they are cross with each other.
Sometimes a cross road at which we stand.
Science, Spirituality -- which shall we choose?

Both. We are that cross.

We stand with arms outstretched.
One arm pointing to the past, the other to the future.
Our heart is in the present.

We look down and see our rooted groundedness.
We look up and see vast heavens.

We are the vertical living in and as the horizontal,
spirituality living in a scientific world.

We are the horizon-seekers who are vertical,
matter-of-fact scientists opening to spiritual quality.

Some of us insist on one more than the other,
even to the exclusion of the other.

When that happens we become either
mere fenceposts or logs lying on the ground.

The cross. The cross is where Its at.

Thursday Street Scenes (2)

Thursday Street Scenes (1)

grim reapers & joyous re-juicers

the attitude makes the day
we sow what we reap

whine gets whine
grind gets grind

magic gets magic

I Mage
I live in Magi Nation
I Magi

I Magi Nation

I Mage-ician

no whiny grindy
sage mage

Tuesday Street Scenes