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.