re-formation

We are spirito-energetic beings with great capacity for re-forming. We are continuously reforming and what we call death is simply an extension of THIS reforming. In that sense we are dying now and always dying. We are not just living-and-dying. We are dying-and-living. Mister Paul says "I die daily." I die every nanosecond is more like it. And come to new life every nanosecond.

Our clinging to the same old form eventually produces a trail of fingernail marks leading to the edge of the Abyss of Divine Recreation (Re-Creation). Hell is our insistence on clinging to the same old form. May we develop the capacity, the capaciousness, the room, the trust to continue letting go of old form and opening to new.

this love thing

In the lowest form of love, I love you because of what you do for ME. You lift my spirits, assuage my doubts, endure my pettiness without leaving. I make you the "wind beneath my wings" -- a heavy responsibility. If you are also loving me for what I do for YOU, we lean upon each other as we walk. This mutual leaning is co-dependence. If either of us were to leave, the other would fall. This form of love has an undercurrent of anxiety, fear, and doubt though on the outside it can look all sweetie-weetie.

A higher form of love can, from Hallmark standards, not seem like love at all. This form of love is independence. I am here to manifest the spirit that I am. My aim is not to lean on you nor you to lean on me. I wish for you to manifest the spirit you are. We walk together in mutual regard. I love the beauty of your soul. While remaining independent, we are helpmates. We each sit in the seat at the center of our soul as we journey along together.

of the essence

When we pursue the martial arts, the healing arts, and the spiritual arts in their depths, we find that centering while opening and opening while centering are the essential (of the essence) practices. All else follows after that and is mere technique.

mythopoets

A mythopoet conjures forces and is conjured in return. A mythopoet puts names and faces on the unnamed, the faceless. We adore our great mythopoets: Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Teresa of Avila, Rumi. Others could be named. If not careful, we encase them in a sarcophagus, view them as holy relics which must not be disturbed. Mythopoets must run free, cannot be contained. The beauty of the writing, speaking, and being of a mythopoet is the transmission of the capability of opening to the mythopoet's consciousness. We become the consciousness of Jesus, of Buddha, of Lao Tzu. A mythopoet conjures forces which conjure us in turn.

vision

Though it is extremely unfashionable this day and age to live in the realm of mythopoetry, I do so. I walk within the world that Jesus walked where miracles are ordinary and the ordinary is miraculous. I open to a cosmos thrumming with life, taking shape in strangely familiar personification. All, all is family: the singing of angels, the curses of the disgruntled, the soundings of the spheres; each with its place in this cosmic drama. All are within and within is also without and knows no bounds. If this is strange to you, take heed how strange is a world not seeing that objective law floats on a sea of subjectivity, like a pip within its shell not seeing beyond its eggish head, nor condescending to notice what hen warms its hatch.

grit

Like an irritation within an oyster, each of us develops a sphere of understanding around us, our own little cosmos by which we are entranced, neglecting the oyster, much less the mighty ocean! That's alright. It's just the way we are.

transformation

In order to travel further, you must throw off all habits of thought by which you define yourself and stand naked, open, and vulnerable in the light of the Unseen. Otherwise, you remain encapsulated in your self promotional shell and will die in that form.

outside the camp

I am a phenomenologist -- I must experience a phenomenon before it makes sense to me. This is why I have so little patience with dogmas, doctrines, and creeds. I cannot belong to any organization that requires adherence to a structured world view regarded as sacrosanct, the inviolable truth. Such scaffolding is anathema to me.

I follow the example of Jesus here: "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Thus I comprehend christianity but am no "christian," understand buddhism but am no "buddhist," open to the tao but am no "taoist," and so on.

To throw another fifty dollar phrase in here (one coined by Ewert Cousins), I follow the methods of a shamanistic epistemologist, in which "the mystical structures of reality are discovered through entering into the religious consciousness of other traditions" (Beverly Lanzetta).

There has always been a conflict between the orthodox ("straight thinkers") and the mystic. The orthodox love the scaffolding and the mystic ranges "outside the camp."

cosmogenesis

Life makes no sense without a frame, a context within which one beholds. This frame determines one's life, one's way of being in and as this world. One is the world that one is "in."

One's frame of mind creates one's world. A small frame creates a small world.

I open to the frame of boundless interwhirling. Within this frame is mutual rebirth. The inner mother births the outer father. This is the soul I am.