mental cases

In the world of dream, what arises through our creation is simultaneously perceived as real. What we are imagining (image-ing) is perceived as true. What we are perceiving as true and real, we are imagining. The two co-arise.

We are caught in, are firmly continuing to establish ourselves in that space of no-space between our perception and our creation (our percepting and our creating).

We are Prometheus chained to the rock of our own devisings, a perpetual suffering machine. We continue to create our sufferings and simultaneously perceive them.We are in a dream of suffering. We are a dream of suffering. We eat our own liver with our own eagle.

Those who are joyous awaken from this dream.

the imaginal

If you can see it, you can experience it, and not only CAN you experience it, you DO experience it. AS you see it, you experience it. This level of experience is the realm of the imaginal. When you imagine a snake, you experience a snake. When you imagine love, you experience love.

The sensual (the input of the senses), the rational (ratio logic), and the perceptual (the processing of sensory input) provide modes of experience that are oriented more toward the practical functioning of day to day life. In that sense, they are more body oriented and in favor of the body's wants and needs.

The imaginal attends to a more subtle realm than body. The imaginal cannot be seen by the physical sensations and perceptions. The imaginal cannot be ratio-nalized; if one looks to do so, the imaginal is no more.

The imaginal attends to our becoming, to what we are moving toward being. When we are courteous and respectful with our imagining, when allowing and encouraging the expansiveness of our imaginal, we are developing our consciousness. This developing has no limit, no end.

magi

Our imagination does not arise from our experience; rather, our experience of the world emerges from our imagination. Our imagination is not mere fantasy to be poo-pooed with a dismissive invitation to come down to earth, to "get real." Our imagination is the essence of our consciousness, is the most real of all that is real. The closer we are to materialistic form devoid of all imagination, the less conscious we are.

We are magi, mages, magicians, imagineers. We are "made in God's own image;" we are imaginings of the Source. What power! As imaginings of the Life Force, our imaginings partake of the same vibrancy, the same "juice" as the creative imagination producing all that is.

What we imagine, we become. What we "think in our heart," so we are.

Yet we so often succumb to form, especially to the form of our physical body. We experience it as a weight, as an anchor, especially if it is sick. And here is the news: the body is always sick. We are, as Yeats said, "fastened to a dying animal." The Zen dudes put it this way: "Who is it dragging this corpse around?"

The physical body is a base of operation. An excellent base. The only base we have in this world of form. From it arises the imagination; in its vertical ascent and expansion, we co-create a new and everchanging world.

This is the second birth.

If someone chastises you again for staring out the window, do not come back into the room with its walls. Live in the realm of the boundless. Otherwise you are nothing but a breathing corpse.

Dear Unborn Kin

Dear Unborn Kin,

Some years back, for several months, I had dreams with the same adventurous theme: I was driving a vehicle (sometimes a car, sometimes a truck) with its driver's seat and operating apparatus (steering wheel, brake, accelerator, gear shift) way up in the sky and its tires upon the road down below.

I had to be aware of both places at once so as not to hurt anyone down below yet remain at the controls above. It was especially tricky going over bridges. Somehow I was able to do it. (Centering while opening was the essential mode of being.) Eventually the dreams disappeared. My training session was evidently over.

It takes no spiritual genius to decipher the meaning. We walk the earth as spiritual beings. Guidance comes from "above," from the realm of the Invisible. I am reminded of the words in the Christian Holy Book: "We walk by faith and not by sight." In this case, driving. We move through each nanosecond of each day by faith in the Source at our core and not by physical eye vision.

Hope all is well with you,

Your Loving Ancestor

this and that

Our worlds are built on the friction of opposition. No "this" exists without a "that." "This" is our salvation. "That" is our enemy. We swim in a sea of "this." We are wary of "that."

We choose friends and groups who swear to our "this." We revel in our mutual thisness. We distrust, dislike "those" who swear to "that." We wonder why "they" cannot, do not come live in our thisness.

We champion the hero of "our" thisness. We detest the hero of "their" thatness.

We do not realize that what we see as thatness, "they" see as thisness and wonder why "we" are so peculiar in our thatness.

the interflowing

I am mere mortal man. And yet it has been granted me to peer into Eternity. I see vast realms of Energy, interflowing. When we remove our accretions, our hesitations, our doubts, our fears, our stand-offishness, we also are this flow. This, this interflowing, is what I teach.

cortical adventure

The cynical part of me slides across a slick flat smoothness of my brain, no fissures to catch hold allowing deeper understanding, unending desert scenery unchanging.

The wiser part of me experiences brain as crags and hills, caves, canyons and ridges where calm and joyous exploration advances into adventurous unknowns.

I have also fallen into a crevasse and sat trapped in the dank cold at its bottom, peering up at times in hope of glimpsing a tiny strip of sky where breathes sweet air of release.

Adventurer, cynic, prisoner: my primary mode is and always has been the first. No crevasse entrapment for many years. But when looking at the human species, I must watch out for the gnarly grumblings of the cynic.

Solution: keep my eyes upon the infinite unfolding of being and the wondrous mystery of this existence, of this existing. Adventuring continues.

the personification of creative forces

This world in which we live and which we are is an interflow of creative forces. Ibn 'Arabi does a good job of describing these forces in his "The Bezels of Wisdom." The forces are personified (which creates horror among some these days and sends them shrieking holding their heads in their hands).

Not only do I find it of great value to personify these forces, I will go a step further and say this is the only fruitful way that I have found to be intimately acquainted with these forces.

The creative force I follow that surges through this world is personified as Jesus or Yeshua. The historical Jesus embodied this force. This powerful creative energy of light flowing from the Origin for a brief time flowed through that human body, then bounced back out into the unrestricted space of Now.

You may say this is just a story. Ah well. Then so it is to you. Blessings to you and the story you follow and in which you embed yourself and are embedded.

As for me, this is living experience that I can no more step out of than I can step out of this life force continuously calling me into existence. They are one and the same.

Yeshua is the force I follow and Yeshua continues calling me into existence.

our common core

As humans, we divide the world into two, lots of two's. We ourselves are built this way. We are a trunk from which extrude two sides. We call one right, the other left. They are quite different from each other. Even our face is made up of two different faces. Our right face and our left face are not the same.

Yet we are not split apart. We have a core, a seamless core where the two cooperate, work together. Oh sure, we can be at odds with ourselves, split into twoness, but that can't last for long. We have to re-solve this di-lemma (living with two lemmas).

The healthy natural way of re-solution is to come back to our core. Our body shows us how to do this. Walking is not possible without our twoness cooperating. We do it effortlessly. "After you!" No, after you!" "Okay, thank you." And by the lords and lordesses, there we are walking!

There is hope, dear friends. There is hope.

the cult of individualism

We say that images and soul are inside us.
Not so. We live inside Image and Soul.

We say we "have" images, we "have" a soul.
They are our possessions.

Another feeble attempt to establish our authority:
that we are the author of all things.

Madness lies in thinking we are possessors.
We do not possess. We are possessed.

warrior

Concern is expressed from time to time about my predilection for the martial arts and their teachings and about my use of the term "warrior" in the path I follow and teach.

At the beginning of my book "Embodying Spirit: The Inner Work of the Warrior," I have this quote from Nietzsche: "And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship."

I am no saint. A saint is one with no blemishes. I am very much human. I am a warrior.

A warrior is not a soldier. A soldier marches along following orders. A warrior dances and the dance is unpredictable in its rhythm and expression. The warrior dances to the rhythm of the cosmos, of the ever-flowing life force and to no human-created form.

If form follows function, then the purpose of the form is to reveal and to realize (make real) its function. If the function is the continuously creative and unpredictable unfolding of the life force, one's form is the form of no form. All forming is unforming. This is the warrior way.

When the forming is made into a form and one is looking to persuade others to follow that form, to adopt that form as the only way to solve-ation and no other, one has become a soldier and has soldered one's spirit to a frame.

The light around a saint is one of beatific holiness. A saint has nothing to do with this world, has gone on. The light around a warrior is the light of the blazing of the heart, consuming all human-created form. I follow the example of the warrior. I am no saint.

worry wart

Worry is the repeated visualization of disaster. As such, it is a demonic prayer form. Whatever we visualize, we now are. When we visualize disaster, we experience that disaster. Physiologically. Every cell of our body responds as if that disaster is actually taking place. Therefore it is.

The word originally meant "to strangle." Then it devolved into "to grab by the throat and shake." Now, in our more polite and abstract discourse concerning our self-harm, it refers to the causing of anxiety and distress through repetition of our favorite potential disasters. A worrier is a conjurer of black magic, one who sits and shits their spiritual pants. To worry is to forecast doom and to lend energy to making that doom happen.

The antidote to worry is not positive thinking, floating around as if everything is butterflies and roses. The antidote to worry is going out of one's mind. Not to worry, you won't miss it a bit. It will still be around. You just won't be caught up in it and grabbing yourself by the throat and shaking.

froth

Everything is being born. Continuously. Everything is dying. Continuously. Everything is turning into everything. Continuously. The One-without-a-second is forming and unforming. This froth on this wave of the Ocean chatters to itself and to the other frothiness. Prayers are sometimes sent out. Prayers of adoration and thankfulness. Prayers of petition. The petitionary frothing says to the waving of the Ocean make it this way, please. No matter which way the waving waves it is then called the Ocean's will. The adoring thankful frothing rides the wave and its waving with a heart of bliss and an inner smile. No petitions. It knows it is the Ocean frothing.

holding a world view is like a cat licking itself

Every world view is justified by self esteem. World views are held for their result -- you feel better in your own eyes -- and you are so much better off than THOSE -- those who do not share your point of view.

We have absolutely no grounds for holding any world view whatever -- except the grounds of making us feel more secure in our clung-to encapsulation. As long as you are clinging to the world view that world views are necessary, you will not understand this at all.

 If you praise yourself for understanding it, you have just trapped yourself again.

the new psyche of humans

I understand now. I have it all backwards.

In the present age, one lives in the external world as if it is the internal. In other words, there is no internal. The external is the internal.

This explains why folk are all caught up in politics and money and chemical and surgical alteration and theme parks and continuous feeding and searching for new thrills and why the news is now entertainment. This is the new psyche of humans. Nothing exists but the external.

I am a throwback to a previous age, with this rich internal life of relationship with the unseen, with the unborn that continues birthing. From my poor primitive point of view, not in sync with the times, I even pray. I pray that the internal will once again become the focal point and operating base of human consciousness.This makes me either a dangerous revolutionary or a pathetic remnant of a best forgotten human past. 

a radiant sun of the cosmos

What is my function here but to open as a radiant sun of the cosmos birthing out of and extending into all infinities simultaneously, rather than as a hypnotized member of a herd of skittering creatures taking little chipmunk bites at manufactured life?

Only thus am I a sphere of confluence and influence allowing a radiance, a flowthrough of these turbulent energies known as life-and-death, with no attachment, no clinging to the various forms of manufactured twinkies we call god and business and progress and love.

What is my function here but to open as a sun of this cosmos birthing? I do so and simultaneously die and am reborn every nanosecond, both within and outside all space and time.

merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels

"This is the place for dialogical (non-dialectical) dialogue as a necessary instrument for any cross-cultural encounter. It is the function of this dialogue to disclose or eventually create the field in which a symbolic consciousness can operate." Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being.

If your merry-go-round of thought cannot meet my merry-go-round of thought, perhaps we could stand them on end and create a mutual ferris wheel that reaches high into the Divine and brings back the living waters of understanding and mutual awareness.

Merry-go-rounds, being inclusive in their nature (only so many passengers are allowed and the same old music accompanies the eternal spin going nowhere) spin along on their horizontal plane and create friction, unless well-cogged, when meeting the merry-go-round of another. The cog fit is rare and usually sparks and flames arise from friction.

I speak of individual and cultural (religions and philosophies ingrained in each culture) merry-go-rounds here.

We create new space when, instead of spinning around and around AT each other, we create a mutual uprise into a higher awareness. We move from exclusion to inclusion. This is the hope of the world today.

crucifixion

A human is dualistic in nature. Here is always this or that. To be crucified means to be caught, suspended, nailed between all dualities, experiencing them all simultaneously, burning with the fire of this experience. The Self feels it all, whereas the self wants only one side of it, pleasure and no pain, honor and no dishonor, heat and no cold, cold and no heat, ad infinitum. To feel it all is suffering, is to be on fire, is crucifixion. One rises beyond all opposites, simultaneously conquers hell and ascends to heaven. Neither heaven nor hell exist. Only this. The Self is born once again. The ladder of duality disappears and one is whole.

make like a tree and leave

All the religions and philosophies and socio-political worldviews are like leaves on a tree. When one's attention is stuck on looking at one leaf exclusively, no other leaves can be seen, nor can one see the whole tree. When one takes a step back and allows the whole tree to disclose itself, all leaves can be seen as an integral part of the whole. All leaf bickering ceases. One leaves off all shouting of leaf exclusiveness and turns to the purpose of one's own leaf and all leaves: the providing of light and nourishment to the whole tree.

the nature of the mind

We are creatures and creations of story. We love to tell ourselves story. We speak story to ourselves all the time. We say this is true and real. We say that is not true and not real. (By saying something is not true, we bring it into existence.) We define ourselves to ourselves constantly.

We listen to our self-talk and believe it is real. What we do not do is look to see what is talking. The talk absorbs our attention like bubbles on the surface of a body of water bubbling up from somewhere. We take our bubbling as Reality and spend our life as froth.

We love our story of ourselves even when we hate it. We are story-spinners. We keep ourselves endlessly entertained. Can we drop our stories and just be? Can we go beyond the nature of our mind, track the bubblings to the wellspring and open from that realmless realm? Do we dare go out of our little minds?

explaining jesus away

You see, they say that the divine could not become human. Some say there is no divine to begin with: end of argument. But that is such an easy way out and a self-made prison. Reflected in their own glory, they preen their feathers. Some say the divine manifests in all of us, in all things all the time. That is true, but evades the understanding, the claim that the divine decided to walk the earth and invaded history. Myth, they say, like all the other hero and salvation myths of virgin births and stealing fire from the gods and resultant forms of crucified punishment. But who is to say that these are not test cases, trial runs of consciousness of the inevitable: the actual birthing of the divine in human form? Oh, now you are taking a metaphor literally, they say. Don't you know that all is story, in this case a powerful story to be sure, embedded in human consciousness across and beyond time? Well yes, and if that is the case, your story that all is story is a story and am I to believe your story that all is story and there is no place to rest my feet? You ask me to believe you and your story and thus explain Jesus away. Jesus is stuck in our craw and we cannot get him out. He is the gravel that grinds all human corn. Muslims say that he is one of a line of prophets and not even the final one. Buddhists say he is a bodhisattva, an enlightened being looking for and working for the salvation of the world. What are we going to do with Jesus? He won't stay put, won't stay confined to one box. Everyone thinks they have him pegged. But wasn't he pegged once and then he escaped all attempts to nail him down?

the furtherest outpost

Word has it that we are a stepping down (or stepping out) of energies from the Source. Those energies that some call Angels are nearest to and live in harmony with this Radiance that births all dark and light. The radiant energy continues to step down through contiguous realms of being until it reaches us, brings us into being, the furtherest outpost. Beyond us is darkness. We can colonize this darkness but only while maintaining a strong link with and embodying as the energies of our Source. This is the basis, the foundation of all religion, all spiritual paths, all practical journeying of the soul.

hardening of the oughteries

We know that when many different people stand and look at the same thing, they will have different points of view. We do not say that one person's view is more right than others, or that all are to dismiss their point of view as erroneous and adopt one single person's point of view as the only true one.

It is the same with cosmo-philosopho belief systems. And yet every religion (and I include agnosticism, atheism, conservatism, liberalism, and scientism here) claims it is the only true view and the other viewers are dupes and their view is false and, if not false, at least less worthy.

When we gaze in adoration and awe at our Source, at Reality, at That-Which-Breathes-Us, we fall silent. This energizing humbling silence dissolves our b.s. (belief systems) and we stand in naked openness, wordless.

islands of convenience

Explanations are islands of convenience upon which we erect rigid structures to describe the Ocean. We stay upon our little islands, sanctify the structures, and gaze in puzzlement and condemnation at other islands. Every religion, every belief system, every thought structure is such an explanation. Oh how I long for a Tsunami of Spirit to wash away all structure and rigidity so that all is Ocean.

legs on the angel

When I first awaken, I am in the diaphanous, transparent, or celestial mode. I have not yet formed into and as this physicality. In this mode of light and open consciousness, I comprehend more deeply and more fully the nature and origin of this universe and life. It is a gnosis, a knowing. The soul that I am smiles in loving appreciation.

It is at this time that I can read the writings of the true philosophers, the mystics of intellect and comprehensive awareness, with their meanings reverberating through my soul. I listen with a deep ear. I hear. I see. I join in.

As the earth night moves toward dawn, I am born more fully into my body, this body, the one typing. I settle into, center in. I smile with its familiarity, its weight, its aches, its promise as a sturdy embodying for active practice of the gnosis, the knowing. Legs on the angel, so to speak.

As the body gets more tired toward mid-afternoon, the celestial mode tends to fade yet not disappear. Physical fatigue and cosmic consciousness seem to have an inverse correlation. It is at this time I practice patience with myself. I smile as I remember that it is hard embodying as a human. I breathe and ask for help and move on.

undoing

The purpose of contemplation or meditation is not to accomplish something, but to unaccomplish: to dismantle the cogno-emotional veil that we use to hide us from the essence of our being. We are not trying to do something. We are opening to the undoing of something.

the poverty of the secular mind

A secular mind shuts out all thought of energetic beings not visible to the secular thought system, a continuing self-hypnosis of limitation. What is declared to not exist cannot be seen, felt, experienced. This deliberate self-will is the pride of humankind. As a result no angels can be seen, felt, experienced. No Jesus. No Buddha. No Imam. No Elijah. No Melchizedek. No God.

The poverty of the secular mind is beyond imagination. Yet it will defend itself ruthlessly, declaring that it both IS and SEES the only true reality. The ironic humor of it is that the secular mind is surrounded by a richness and thickness of Being, a Womb which births the mind that shuts it out, a Womb teeming with life, with energetic beings in innumerable dimensions and realms. The secular mind is a weak candle blinded by its own light which if extinguished will see what it once thought was dark.

confluential

We cannot not create. Our every conception creates. We are spheres of influence in an influential cosmos. We are spheres of confluence in a confluential cosmos. All interflows except for the walls we build, walls of positive negativity. Disbelief kills us. Vulnerability and surrender are essential aspects of our being. We surrender while continuing a firm and open centering.

willful blindness

Being positive of a negation makes little sense. The negation of the positivity of a negation is the beginning of wisdom. "I am positive unicorns do not exist." Well, they do. They exist in a realm you have decided to give no legitimacy. "I am positive God does not exist." Well, God does. God exists in a realm you have decided to give no legitimacy. In clinging only to the sensory world, for example, one is ignoring realm upon realm of being. In negating one's positively negatory stance, one is negating one's ignore-ance.

an ember in the ashes of our being

Take a look at yourself, at the people around you. We are animals. Animals who hide their genitalia. Animals with woefully inadequate teeth and claws. We have developed an animal society. Our actions are triggered by animal impulses. And yet, a gentle and powerful Spirit calls to us, woos us, reminds us of that from which we came. We are asked to return to the Spirit of ourselves, that small light which still burns like an ember in the ashes of our being.

combobulations

God (wups! as soon as I have said the G word some minds have already slammed shut) is no farther than our own consciousness. This does not mean that we are God nor that God does not exist. Some of us at times make up God, but at those times God is a god, worth about two cents, if that. We are the ones who are made up, current combobulations of the evolutionary flow, and we keep making ourselves up. This is part of the wondrousness of being alive; in part we are on a fixed course (characters all!) and, in part, we are the directors of our own stage show. Lord knows, we've got plenty of material to work with!

boundless

Don't look back. For it is the voices of the living that cause the dead to mourn, to halt, to grieve. You think your loss is great? Her loss is even greater. You lost one. She lost a whole world. Keep opening and she will move with you, unencumbered, neither of you held down by any wounding. The wound is the portal to new being.

zzzzzz

We recognize something by its form. We know it through its formlessness. Many humans do not see the formless. This is why it is said they are asleep.

changing the world

The nature and state of my soul is the nature and state of the world in which I live. If I wish to change the nature and state of the world in which I live, I must change the nature and state of my soul. The twin energies of humility and relentless intent are a good start.

spiritual intelligence

To be spiritually intelligent means to live in accord with that one single beam of Radiance which brings all into being. Within this Beam is all Awareness, all Life, all Time, all Space, all Nurturance, all Destruction, all Creation. One can give lip service to this Radiant Beam and even fool oneself with one's marvelous expressiveness, but it amounts to nothing. One can become all emotional about the existence and power of the Beam, but that is only emotion and not the Radiance. One can act as if one possesses the Beam, but its Radiance is not possessed. One can sit in mindful meditation and achieve a state of quiescence, but no matter how lovely and stress reducing, that is a side pocket of existence, a self light and not the Radiant Beam. To be spiritually intelligent is to live in accord with the Radiant Beam. Straight is its Way and narrow is its Path. Yet it is closer than one's very breath. Be careful when you say you have It, for when you say you have It, you don't. Likewise, be careful when you think or you feel you have It. You do not have It. It has you: this Radiant Beam of Grace and Light and Knowing.

the boundless sea

Here is a boundless sea. We are that sea and do not know it. A toothpick floats on the surface of this sea with no shore. We cling to it with all our might for fear of drowning. Ha ha ha! We are so funny. We are this sea and do not know it.

an interplay of forces

This world in which we live has no linear time. It is a surging, an interplay of forces.

That we see through metaphor is only part of the truth. Metaphor also sees through us. Symbols and metaphor exist to help us see and be seen. We know as we are known. Symbols and metaphor and the forces they represent are two-way passages of transformation. When we become the symbol, when we are the metaphor, we are an interchange of lower and higher energies. The alchemical process has begun and ever begins.

The collective unconscious is the pre-human life, the world out of which humanity arises -- our still existing cousins and kin. These are the depths from which we spring and which we still are while moving beyond. The supra-consciousness is above ground and opens as the infinity of becoming. The two are connected as a tree's roots are joined with the waters and the light of heaven. The symbol of the upside down tree is also relevant here with its roots in the heavens and its branches extending here below. This represents the collective supra-consciousness.

the moving of the unmoved mover

Within consciousness itself, what is the basis of understanding? If we live in and as a sphere of metaphor, what gives rise to metaphor? If I give it a word, I am lost -- it is nailed down and becomes a doctrine. I give it a name anyway: Awareness. Bare Ass Naked Awareness. And yet, have I not just shifted the focus of the question and not answered it? What is the basis of Awareness? It seems I cannot profitably question my roots. That is, if I want my answers in spoken and written language. All language is removed from the mover, while simultaneously creating the mover.

the melding and the melting

This melting melds and rises, this rising falls and melts. Ceaselessly, smoothly, this goes on and on. So smooth it is beneath our notice, this notice, this notice here: "I am somebody." This melting and melding, this rising and falling creates an identity and trots it through a world. The ceaseless surge and release becomes a puppet master inseparable from its puppet. The puppet cries and moans, desires and seeks, goes through all the melodrama puppets do. Meanwhile the melding melts and falls to rise and fall again. Ever new, ever changing.

failure

An essay from Brad Olson that I wish to share.

the threshold

I'm a dweller on the threshold
And I'm waiting at the door
And I'm standing in the darkness
I don't want to wait no more

-- Van Morrison

In a brilliant discourse on human immortality at Harvard in 1898, William James shows the illogic of the belief that human consciousness arises and perishes with the brain, a belief held by many today who consider themselves to be of extreme rational clarity. The brain is born, hello; the brain dies, bye-bye. The belief system in which this belief is embedded is called materialism or scientism. Many of its proponents believe that this belief system is not a belief system, but is reality. Only other folk (outside the materialistic belief system) are deluded by belief systems and hence inferior thinkers. The irony! The irony!

James’ major thesis is that the proponents of human consciousness death at brain death don’t go far enough in their thinking. “My thesis now is this: that, when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this the ordinary psycho-physiologist leaves out of his account.”

The permissive or releasing function is like that of a crossbow. When the physical impediment is removed by pulling the trigger, says James, what was held is let fly. The transmissive function is like that of the relationship between the energy of light and a prism. "The energy of light, no matter how produced, is by the glass sifted and limited in color, and by the lens or prism determined to a certain path and shape." When the prism is removed, the light remains.

Though highly appreciative of James’ arguments (much more subtle and extensive than my summary of them), I am more concerned with his idea of thresholds: that there is a higher, wider deeper consciousness that births our ordinal or ordinary one, that we are in tune with it at certain times more than other times, and the level of attunement has to do with the bar at which our threshold is set. When fatigued, for example, our bar is high and attunement is less felt.

My question is: what can we do to lower the bar? Now. In this life now.

cups of water

Water is freely given. Water rests within a cup and in no cup at all. A cup that says it is the only cup there is forgets that its purpose is to bear water. Cup worship forms and cup wars break out.

Water flows as it will and has its way, regardless of the will of the cup. Water takes on the shape of every container. When containers break or prove inept, water flows merrily on its way.

The cup is the horizontal, human made, and is in the realm of history and of time. We can see how cups go weird, get snobbish, say they are the only true cup, forgetting that the water is the worth, not the cup.

Water is the vertical, not made by humans, coming from above, falling to the below. Water always moves from the high to the low, and cycles back again, replenishing, vivifying all it moves through.

All cups proclaiming their cuppiness and forgetting their true mission of holding the water long enough for someone to get a drink are spurned and ridiculed and rightly so. Water is of the essence. Cups come and go.

(If this writing arouses within you the desire to castigate your favorite cup you love to hate, rest assured that you are engaging in cuppiness. "Be water, my friend.")

pleasing and displeasing the monkey

When you are pleased with yourself, you are simply reflecting energy back to an illusion -- a process of ghostly masturbation. When displeased with yourself, you are slicing this self with knives -- an act of ghostly mutilation.

Both are ways of enhancing your ghost, that you made up so long ago and have carried around like a monkey on your back for so long you think your back is your core. Please the monkey. Taunt the monkey. A monkey that does not exist.

Have no thoughts of pleasure or displeasure toward your self. 
Have no thoughts of your self at all.
If they do arise, smile at them gently and let them go.

re-flect: throw back

A reason self-reflective thoughts are regarded as foolish and a dwelling in illusion is because there is no self to reflect, only a reflection. One can't get rid of ego because there is none. To wrestle with an illusion is a form of insanity. To deny oneself is not an act of self-sacrifice; it is to awaken from the illusion of self. The ouroboros quits biting its tail and spinning round and round.

(We make up a self as children to deal with the trauma of powerlessness. We continue making up a self and selves as we go.)

An Interwoven Web of Harmony of Cataclysmic Forces

Just as we are composed of descending spheres of overlapping energy, we are embedded in ascending energetic spheres. We are not "midway" between such spheres. We are the bottom rung of a Holoarchic Ladder. At the very summit is a sphere of energy that encompasses and births all.

In addition to this vertical realm of "above and below," from which and through which all Awareness, Understanding, and Life develop and emerge, there exists a horizontal flow of Time with its vast aeons and cycles. Each aeon is composed of a rising and falling of energies such as that depicted in our own psychophysiological ultradian rhythm.

At the advent of each aeon is a rising or opening of Awareness followed by a decline or fall. Human existence right now is at the end of an aeon and the beginning of a new. Though being human, I am pleased with this, I am a thousandfold more energized by the vision and direct experiencing of the Holoarchic Ladder of the Life Force.

shrouds of the soul

And humans think, and cast interpretations upon existence, and these interpretations are shrouds to their souls.

And those with similar interpretations band together and rejoice.

And there are those who stand naked and vulnerable and open, having cast the shroud from their soul. They neither band together nor rejoice. Neither do they mourn. Yet they do not stand alone. For there is no separation.

the primacy of the invisible

I believe we will get through this -- this decline of the dominatrix, the decline of this most current attempt across aeons of time to put humans above all other life forms.

I believe in "the primacy of the invisible" -- concentric spheres of wisdom and intelligence thoroughly active from the submolecular to the metagalactic.

Let us call these concentric spheres, this interwoven network in which all life forms are both manifested and joined, the Holoarchy.

We will move through this by living in accord with the Holoarchy, by knowing deeply (no lip service) that all life forms are interdependent and living accordingly. When we do (and stop looking for the salvation of our own sorry separate souls), we will be continually surprised by what we find.

We ARE this interflow. We are a planetary and cosmic community. To build a society of separation and dominance is suicidal madness. The evidence is in, once again, that this is so.

As the juggernaut crashes around us, we will get through this. We will get through this by living in accord with the primacy of the invisible, which is not invisible for those with eyes to see.

travelling across thought communities

Each religion, including a-gnosis and a-theism, is a thought community. Each thought community opens to and receives knowledge according to its capacity, its bounds, and emotio-mental form. Thought community members recognize each other and congratulate each other for their perspicacity. Those able to be "converted" to all thought communities see and sense and feel their common ground. The exoteric (form struck) members of a thought community do not comprehend this, think their form is the only form. The esoteric (essence seen) members are the ones able to go beyond form and make this voyage.

the cross and the empty tomb

Life itself is a crucifixion. Each of us is, as Yeats said, "fastened to a dying animal." We are nailed to the spot, on the cross of space and time. We die, time and again, from this agony; a series of "little deaths" followed at some point by full bodily death.

And yet there is a resurrection. We may "die daily" as Paul said, but we are also born again each moment. More than that, when we turn within, turn to the inner Light and cast our fortunes with this Light, we identify with (become identical to) the Light which births us. We are a new bunny. We are the cosmic egg.

Nailed to the cross of life, we die, descending into the hell of our existence and blessing all there. We rise up. No longer identifying with the body (the tomb is empty), we open into the Light and Radiance of the resurrected Spirit we are.

This is the message of Easter, a reminder and reaffirmation of Transformation.

like bugs skating and yelling

We are like bugs skating on the thin film of the surface of a deep and wide pond continuously produced by a fathomless Spring and yelling with glee,"There is no Wellspring! There is only us and we are magnificent!"

off the grid

Every human has a thought structure. Developed from previous pain, desire, need, and want, this thought structure is a rigid grid limiting all future possibility. One tends to love one's thought structure and clings to it as if it were the Ultimate. In reality, it is a toothpick to which we cling as our life raft in a vast ocean. Our transformation as humans requires that it be let go.

Inspired Mind and Ratio Mind

Ratio mind looks to fit the world into its ratio-nale. What does not fit its ratio form is chopped off, seen as non-existent, derided. Ratio mind likes conclusions, seeks to bring things to an end, loves the bottom line.

Inspired mind keeps ratio mind in its pocket along with a measuring tape and pencil stub. Inspired mind breathes in the aspirations of the Divine, of the Source. With Inspired mind, all things are possible. Inspired mind is the mind of fresh beginning.

For the past 200 years or so, Western culture has put Ratio mind on the throne. In this year 2012, we put it back in its proper place -- a small, very small, subset of Inspired Mind, about the size of a dime in the vast Ocean.

We look to be ruled by Inspired Mind, not by Ratio.

two minds

Profane:
Pro ("in front of" or "outside")
Fanum ("temple" or "sacred")

Templum (temple): The clear and open space in which one receptively sits, open to the Divine and to the "divining" (seeking and finding) of Wisdom and Understanding.

Contemplation: Con-templum-ation. Sitting receptively in the clear and open space with either a question or problem for resolution or with open minded alert awareness.

Profane mind: Everyday chitter-chatter blah-blah-blah mind.

Sacred mind: Templum mind.

the laughter is our own

We love to scare ourselves, put ourselves in a bind. We tell ourselves we are an encapsulated ego. Separate and fearful, yet denying our fear, we seek security through power, power over, not power with. Faith and money are not far afield in this seeking. Faith is spiritual money. Money is physical faith. Ah! We feel better. We have woven a net over the Abyss. Something laughs. The net disappears. Once again we have no place to stand. We listen. The laughter is our own.

the realm of dynamic energy

Those who have made peace with their active intellect, who cam pick it up, use it, and put it down like the tool it is, find themselves in a realm of dynamic energy, of which portions are personified.

This is the imaginal realm, the realm of gods, of angels, of archetypes with whom one wrestles, dances, walks, and converses. This is the realm of those who have gone before and guide the way.

The active intellect and the emotional desire for security keep us pinned to the material world and our desire to be sucklings at its breast while making war on those seen as threatening our suck. We like to project this on other cultures, religions, and political groups but it is a tendency of us all. This has produced the divisive conditions of today.

The dynamic energy realm is here with us, IS us. To REAL-ize it is simple. All one has to do is go out of one's mind.

what is the sound of one flea sucking?

Every flea is sucking on the Lion. The leg fleas swear the leg is the only Lion. The chest fleas swear the chest is the only Lion. The throat fleas swear the throat is the only Lion. None of the fleas know they are the Lion. Those who do leap and jump with joy.

the two lemmas

The human body shows clearly our psychospiritual dilemma (di-lemma: caught between two lemmas). We are only roughly symmetrical. Our right half is different from our left half, yet the two are joined. We act as if we are one, yet we are forever caught between two opposing positions: "on the one hand" and "on the other hand." This is both hilarious and tragic.

The human body also shows a way out of this dualistic split in which we fight our daily duels (with ourselves, of course). A center line exists, our pivot point, our hinge on which we turn. When we reside at our center, when we ARE this centering, all contra-diction (contrary speaking) disappears. The two lemmas become one Cheshire Cat which becomes a smile which slowly fades away. An internal smile is born.

negating the negations

Becoming or being "friends" with all humanity, with the entire world, with the cosmos, with the universe is not about forming (FORM-ing) relationships or stepping outside of oneself, outside of one's small defined circle and looking to create some dynamic synthesis, is not an emergence, but is a submersion into the Ground of being, a step back, a negation of all the negations one has made and makes. The negations are not abolished, nor transcended, but are released through this stepping back into a richer deeper realm. The differentiation of self and other (via these negations) continues to exist but recedes in its significance due to this step back, this dwelling in the common Ground.

when we understand

When we understand -- deeply and truly understand -- that internal reality and external reality are the same reality, the world transforms. When I drop my bombs over there, I am killing and maiming myself. When I poison the Grand Canyon with my uranium mining and with the building of a huge Theme Park city at its gateway, I desecrate, eliminate forever a wild, unspoiled part of me. When profit is my god, I walk on the faces of the impoverished, of that portion of me that refuses to give up its open heart and stern dignity to my relentless tread. When I see that my soul and the world soul are the same soul, I tremble with fear and anticipation. For the world to change, I must change, for I and the world are the same.

downloading the One

In following the thought of Plotinus, four realms exist: The One gave birth to, expanded outward into Intelligence, then Soul, then Mattering. The four now co-exist simultaneously. We are Soul tending to the garden of Mattering. We are also Intelligence and the One. We are the downloading of the One and Intelligence through Soul. When we realize (make real) this, instead of ignoring it or merely giving it lip service, we come into our full powers as Soul.

born into a larger realm

When we understand, deeply and truly understand, that internal reality and external reality are the same reality, the world transforms. When I drop my bombs over there, I am killing and maiming myself. When I poison the Grand Canyon with my uranium mining and with the building of a huge Theme Park city at its gateway, I desecrate, eliminate forever a wild unspoiled part of me. When profit is my god, I walk on the faces of the impoverished, of that portion of me that refuses to give up its open heart and stern dignity to my relentless tread. When I see that my soul and the world soul are the same soul, I tremble with fear and anticipation. For the world to change, I must change, for I and the world are the same.

psychic nimbus

I see the entire human endeavor as the successive emergence of states of consciousness: defined and qualified by their inclusiveness, by their number and quality of psychic clusters, and by their internal ability to externalize and observe.

A state of consciousness that rigidifies itself is dead on the vine.

I value states of consciousness with high categorical differentiation, the differentiation accomplished by the continuous birth of cells of gnosis (knowing) with semi-permeable membranes.

A state of consciousness with few cells of differentiation and with rigid cell walls (no permeability) is that of a true idiot. It once passed for normal but is now giving way under the current world-wide flood of information.

Don't tell me your politics or your religion. Reveal your state of consciousness.

a few sizes too small

Have you ever loved someone who did not have the capacity to receive it? It is like the ocean in love with a thimble. We need someone worthy of our love. Worthy means enough room. How can the boundless love the bounded? It's not easy. It's like struggling to put on pants several sizes too small. This is God's continuing dilemma. He laughs, his big toe filling our body suit and says: Honey, you need to gain some room!

ordinary, planetary, and cosmic consciousness

Among humans, there is ordinary consciousness, planetary consciousness, and cosmic consciousness. We all possess (or, perhaps more accurately, are possessed by) ordinary consciousness: ordinal or linear consciousness allowing us to do the busyness of the human societal world.

Planetary consciousness opens to the understanding that Earth is an alive organism, an interflow of interconnecting life. Planetary consciousness does not just know this as one of many isolated "facts." Planetary consciousness experiences this, sees with the vision of Earth herself.

Cosmic consciousness expands beyond all bounds set by ordinary consciousness. Where ordinary consciousness sees with eyes of flesh, cosmic consciousness sees with eyes of fire (Henry Corbin's apt and accurate terminology). We are either born with cosmic awareness or it is granted to us along the way. Many seem satisfied, satiated by eyes of flesh and seem to never even consider the possibility of this state of consciousness for themselves. For more on cosmic consciousness, see Richard Bucke and see Tom Cheetham.

The Mystery of Consciousness (Part Three)

The Mystery of Consciousness (Part Two)

The Heart of Transformation -- Consciousness

This is the complete unedited video of my and Brad Olson's January 15, 2012 conversation about consciousness. In the video, we take a break at 51:10 and return at 1:01:23, so you may wish to skip that portion.

The Mystery of Consciousness (Part One)

This is the first portion of my and Brad Olson's conversation about the mystery of consciousness on January 29, 2012,

the shaman and hu tzu

A video of my talk this morning at Wu Chi Ku -- I read and comment on Chapter 16 of the Tao Te Ching

Brad Olson and I talk a little about consciousness transformation

This is a portion of my and Brad Olson's conversation about Story as the heart or core of consciousness on January 22, 2012.

Faith

Two powers that move, that transform our world are faith and reason. Reason operates predominately in the horizontal world, the historical linear realm, the reality that most swear to and live in. Faith has, up to this point, mostly operated in the vertical dimension, the reality of the above and the below, with faith in the above to counter and balance the misdeeds of the below. That must change. Faith must now operate in both dimensions, the vertical and the horizontal. This is the cross of our existence.

Faith in what? Faith in the Power that brings us into being, in the life energy coursing through us. Faith in our Source, God, the Wellspring, Allah, YHWH, Wakan Tanka, the One closer to us than our own breath. It is a willful choice. We either continue to have faith in our own reasoning as a species (which has led us to our current critical situation on this planet) or we have faith in The One Who Breathes Us. This is not a sweet bye and bye faith. It is a Faith of Now. We are embodyings of our Source. As such, we know each moment what to do.

On the missionary nature of the human species and the urge to create and deliver spiritual commercials

A metaphor is a vehicle of transformation (you are a "child of God"). A symbol is an open door for that transformation: Cross, Seal of Solomon, Caduceus, Grail, Wu Chi, Tai Chi, etc.

"I have found these metaphors and these symbols to be of transformative value and I highly recommend them to you." Thus we refer others to our symbology, our metaphor, our imagery as powerful tools of transformation.

If we get too insistent on this referral, too shrill, it becomes fundamentalism and our mentalism is no fun anymore. This is true for all metaphorical realms: science, religion, philosophy included. Deep metaphors and symbols do not need our salesmanship. They sell themselves.

The Heart of Transformation (Part One)

Bradley Olson and I converse about The Heart Of Transformation

thank you very much

We tried the God is Dead approach and wound up standing on an atom with great explosive force, gnawing at each other's souls with sharp and greedy teeth. Now can we please open as the shining core of that atom and know that God is Alive and Doing Very Well Thank You Very Much.

opportunity to re-member

Day after day we are given opportunity to remember.
Re-member: to call all our members together again.
The organs of vision, seeing, illumination;
of reason, thought, understanding;
of hearing, receiving, comprehending;
of heart opening, surrendering, loving;
of felt experience, immersion in the All.
We are members of a Higher Order, a Cosmic Body.
Day after day we are given opportunity to re-member.

relationship and story

Here is relationship, direct relationship with our Spiritual Teacher, with our Source. Merging of Love and Fire and Light. And here is story, the story we weave around ourselves as we go. Relationship and Story, this is our composition, who we are!

our cup is but a thimble

Our spiritual understanding cannot exceed our capacity to understand.  How then can we extend, broaden, deepen our capacity? By seeing through the form we use for understanding and by eventually dropping it altogether. In clinging to a rigid form, our cup is but a thimble. Capaciousness leads to no cup, no cup at all. Great capacity is open relationship.

in-form-ation and un-form-ation

On theology, doctrine, and creed: 

Once you climb the ladder there is no need to carry it around. 

Climb to the top, then leap!