imagination

All is Imagination.
This does not mean Not Real.
This means Most Real.
Change the Imagination,
change the World.

***

We are the Imaginings 
of the Unimaginable.

adventures of a spiritual geek

I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut about my cosmogeek endeavors. I’ve seen people’s eyes glaze over. But here lately I’m not keeping quiet. A large part of it is I want to report back before I kick off. The geek speaks! How do I want to present several decades of data? Chronologically would be way too boring (for me, if not for you). How do I download this hard drive?

A definition common among self-identified geeks is: "one who is primarily motivated by passion, indicating somebody whose reasoning and decision making is always first and foremost based on his personal passions rather than things like financial reward or social acceptance…. A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest." –Wikipedia

My entire life has been spent, and no doubt will continue to be spent in looking to comprehend what it means to be a human, what it’s all about.

A fisherwoman told me the other day if you want to catch fish you have to know what they are biting. You match the hatch and the catch, she said. You find the hatch under rocks and logs. It’s not just lying around, she said. You have to look for it.That’s a useful metaphor for what I have been doing in my life as a CosmoGeek: turning over rocks in odd places. Trying to understand the hatch and what it catches, the bait-fish duo, then opening to comprehending the stream and its environs, the astronomical seasons, the astrological signs, the state and extent of the cosmos, and back to who it is holding the pole anyway? And wasn’t I, when it got right down to it, trying to catch myself? Well, I’m getting ahead of myself, but you see how it goes with a geeko mind.

While other boys were exploring four-barrel carburetors and/or the intricacies of the female anatomy, I was looking to comprehend belief systems, thought communities, religions, ways of life, philosophies, superordinates, supra ordinates.

Why, I pondered later, in the ‘70s, did R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, when asked what it all means, reply “Don’t mean sheeit?” This puzzled me. Was this profundity? Or simply a casual tossed-off expression of a tortured mind? And if it don’t mean sheeit, what does it mean?

No one wished to talk about it.

biopsy

I was born into this world with a clear and open heart. I wanted to please the Large Ones, who seemed to know what they were doing. I found that some of them were ill of heart. Others were heart itself. I followed the heartfelt ones and kept a wary eye on the heartsick. I learned well and yet never totally adapted. My inner world with which I was born was different and I would not let it go, for to do so would be to die. I made myself proficient in all the ways of the external world: physically, mentally, emotionally, socially. I invaded the external world, opened into it and, as far as possible, did not let it invade me. I followed the inner laws and understandings. Doing so brought conflict with the dogma of external ways. At times I was lost with nothing to follow but the beating of my heart. I began to understand that I was being breathed, not breathing myself. I saw the interflow of all existing, seen and unseen. The boundary between internal and external dropped away. Awareness and understanding continue increasing. I see the earth vehicle, the physical body, beginning its demise. This is as it should be. I am graduating. On graduation day, I will leave this world as a clear and open heart, the way I came in, but different.

looking to express the inexpressible

Two major forms of human consciousness exist: quantitative (linear historical) and qualitative (beyond the conceptual domains of space and time).

Quantitative consciousness relies on an imaginative discernment of discrete quanta which follow each other in logical procession. Qualitative consciousness opens into a boundless realm  of the immeasurable: of Love and Truth and Beauty.

Quantitative consciousness believes in fact, not minding that facts are ephemera arising from one’s own subjective state. A person existing in quantitative consciousness lives in linear time, clings to history and its perceived ongoing march into the unknown as reality.

Qualitative consciousness lies beyond, within, and outside the bounded and limited capacity of quantitative consciousness. Qualitative consciousness is a deep and expansive visionary experiencing of that which brings quantitative consciousness into being.

Quantitative consciousness is the imaginary. Qualitative consciousness is the Imaginal.Quantitative consciousness is linear. Qualitative consciousness is holoarchical. Quantitative consciousness is historical. Qualitative consciousness is the eternal now.

Quantitative consciousness is so-called “normal” consciousness. Qualitative consciousness is so-called “transcendent” consciousness.

With qualitative consciousness, we live in a roller coaster ride of drama. With quantitative consciousness, we are always already home.

ice tray and templum

One form of consciousness attends to life in terms of pre-existing categories, like an ice tray with delineations into which water is poured. That which can take on ANY shape is given THIS shape and THIS shape is regarded as Truth and Reality.

Another form of consciousness allows life to disclose itself. Categories are loosened and released, axes for grinding are set aside. Contemplation arises: con-templum-ation. A templum is a clear open space in which one arrives with either a question or no question at all. One sits (or walks) quietly and allows disclosure, revelation.

Two forms of consciousness: one imposes itself upon the world and attempts to wrestle it into submission; one allows the world to disclose itself.

Ice tray and templum.

once upon a time

Once upon a time there were people on a planet. Each had a story of What Is Going On. Each of course thought their story was true and right. Squabbles resulted. They threw literal and metaphoric bombs at each other. Metastories began to emerge with such story titles as Members of the Navel Tribe, Embodyings of the Cosmos, and Get Back In The Soup. Each began to see their story was part of A Larger Story. What's that? How did it come out? Oh, it's still coming out.

On Thought Systems

If one is firmly anchored in the grounding of the Cosmos, one can readily move into the core of each thought system and adopt its energetic matrix without losing one’s cosmic center. One is thus “converted” to each thought system without becoming a member of its institutionality while simultaneously comprehending its depths and essence. This is what Ewert Cousins called shamanistic epistemology.

This is also what a certain type of therapist does on an individual level when opening into the thought system of her client. He becomes his client without losing his own core identity. (“Enter and blend” is the Aikido maxim.) This is partly accomplished through opening to the metaphor and imagery used by the other. S/he becomes empty so s/he may be full. There is nothing mysterious about this, though it is out of the ordinary. It is called Listening and Seeing.

Of course one can stay seated in one’s own home bounds without venturing out of one’s adopted thought system. This is not my choice nor predilection. My practice is to open to the thought systems of the world (religions and philosophies) and comprehend their depths and meaning.

Thoughtology

We consist of a continuous stream of thought packets, arising from our ground of being, bubbling up as if from a volcanic floor in deep ocean. The thought packets arise and disappear, unless we attach ourselves to them, call them our own, call them “me.” We then build a personality around specific thought packets, magnifying them, clustering them as if they are eggs in a nest which we fuss over, keep warm, and hope to hatch.

Each thought packet consists of three distinct but interwoven aspects: cognition or belief, emotion, and imagery. The thought packets to which we cling, disallowing their flow through, their going by, are formed into an identity composed of all dualities: belief - disbelief, strong emotion for - strong emotion against, images of salvation and of doom. We cling to this identity and will defend it to the death (which it is).

We call these favored and solidified clusters of thought packets our self. We make it inviolable territory and walk it through each day.

An alternative is to allow packet flow with no clinging. We are the volcanic floor from which they arise. We are the vast boundless ocean through which they flow. We are the cosmic sky above to which they rise and merge. We are this vastness with thought packets forming and unforming, arising and disappearing. No clinging.

burning

We burn for that which we do not have. This is a peculiar form of hell -- a small version. After we get it, we stop burning. Meister Eckhart says that what burns in hell is what we are not. When we are fire, fire does not burn us. When we do not open to the Mystery that births us, we burn. We burn in anger, in fear, in separation. We burn for That which we do not have. And yet It is here within us all the while. We are children of the Mystery, offspring of the Source. When we truly know that, identify with, become identical to that, we stop burning. We leave hell. The heat changes to Light.

Realms

Three Realms:
-- Realm of Surface Crawler Consciousness
-- Realm of the Imaginal, Mythopoesis
-- Realm of Mystery, Where No Words Hold