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.