bait

In order to exist, one must call oneself into focus.
What we call a self is what we have called into focus.
We call it our self or my self. A sense of ownership exists.

If you do not call yourself into focus, you do not exist.
You call a different self into focus every time.
A different focus, a different self.

What is doing the calling?
You cannot see it with the self you continue creating.
You can only see it by being it and none other.

When you are that doing the calling
you have died before you die
and are truly lively.

The one doing the calling is not
the one you think you are
nor the one you feel you are
nor the one you dangle like bait
before the eyes of others.

We are not a who.
We are a what.
And not even that.

As soon as we open our mouths we are lying.
None of us like that, so let's call it creativity.
We are creative endeavors calling ourselves into focus.

phoenix consciousness

We are in a continuous state of birth-and-death. The aspect of ourselves that we call our physical body has about 1/4th of its cells being born, 1/4th dying, and about 1/2 in middle age. As such we are birth-and-death. No need to fear death. You are death. More accurately, you are birth-and-death.

This is the state of the phoenix, always dying and being reborn, forever birthing into dying and dying into birthing.

Phoenix consciousness follows the practice of no clinging. No trying to hang on to and revive what has already passed. No hanging on to a description of oneself, to what might have been or should have been. No trying to force oneself into some rigidified mold handed down from the past by oneself, by society, or by the culture.

In not clinging to pre-established form, one opens awareness to the wisdom of the living universe. This has been called cosmic consciousness and mystical consciousness. I prefer to call it Awareness.

(In martial arts, a similar consciousness state is called zanshin. Also see Michael Murphy's The Future of the Body.)

All those folk we homo saps have set up (and it is a set up) as saints and holy and spiritual masters and sons of god are, in terms of the evolution of human consciousness, forerunners of what is to come and is happening now. Each of them spoke of Awareness and were often killed by those of hedgehog consciousness for doing so.

The second birth often spoken of in the spiritual domain is the birth from hedgehog consciousness to Awareness. Jesus said: "You must be born again." Buddha spoke of "going beyond." Lao Tzu said: "There is no need to run outside for better seeing, nor to peer from a window. Rather abide at the center of your being."

Phoenix consciousness. Perpetually arising out of the ashes of what has gone, into the fire and light of Awareness of the living universe and its wisdom.

hedgehog consciousness

Hedgehog consciousness is a separative consciousness. In theistic terms, hedgehog consciousness seeks God out there, a deity to be worshiped, feared, begged, persuaded.

Hedgehog consciousness requires that the cosmos be populated with characters, each with a persona (mask), each with a persona-l interest in the persona of the hedgehog. If that personal interest is not felt, the hedgehog becomes depressed, remorseful, rebellious, and propitiatory. Thus, hedgehog consciousness feels its separative self to be the center of the universe (similar to the pride of Lucifer with his thunderous "I will" sit on God's throne). When called on this, it either admits it or collapses into a pride-wounded denial.

Hedgehog consciousness is tricky. It will agree with everything written above, denouncing all hedgehogs everywhere, and go on being a hedgehog, proclaiming itself to be enlightened and perhaps even starting The Church of the Eternal Hedgehog.

In non-theistic terms, hedgehog consciousness sets up a membrane, however thin, between "self" and "all else." Hedgehog consciousness insists upon an identity, wrapping itself in a cocoon of self-description. Hedgehog consciousness regards itself as identical to its I.D.

(In a small protest against having to show my I.D., I once carried a signed note from my mother saying that I am who I say I am. When I produced it, it was never enough.)

From one point of view, hedgehog consciousness is amusing. From another, it is a painful dwelling place. One Zen master called a student who was fully stuck in such consciousness a "poor hole-dwelling devil." Nothing funny about being that.

religiosity as a too-tight womb

In the previous distinction between religiosity and spirituality, a move is made beyond a focus on the fundamentalist mindset found within all religions to include rigid thought structures found within all human consciousness states. In other words, religiosity can be found in both religious and secular realms.

Religiosity is an initial stage in the development of human consciousness. We are born with a "pure" consciousness state, "trailing clouds of glory" as Wordsworth puts it. We learn quickly to adopt a thought structure either similar to or in reaction against the prevailing thought community into which we are born. This thought structure tends to harden. We make it our profession to see the world as this way and no other way. We become professors of our thought structure, missionaries of our mind. We become hedgehogs.

In alchemical language (alchemy was a precursor to "modern" chemistry and can be seen as rich in symbology of the human psyche), at that stage of consciousness we are dragons. Dragon refers to the psyche of a person abiding in an external world. The purpose of psychological alchemy is to allow the dragon to transform.

Many of us humans are still in the embryonic stages of consciousness, by whatever animal name or metaphor. Many others are opening beyond religiosity to spirituality, to awareness of cosmic citizenry. This requires being born out of our borne-ness, to open to the unborn, to be willing to go out of our minds.

The alternative is to remain stillborn.

religiosity and spirituality

In continuing this hedgehog-phoenix discussion, it is important to make a distinction between religiosity and spirituality.

Religiosity (re-lege) means to swear allegiance (al-lege) to the same viewpoint (lege-acy) over and over again. Religiosity can take place within any thought structure, whether that thought structure be deemed "religious" or "secular."

Religiosity is not confined to adherents of traditional religions. Anti- or non-religion folk also have their religiosity. Religiosity is equivalent to getting on a pogo stick and jumping up and down on that sucker for your entire life, no questions asked. One's head is frozen in a thought form and if it is felt to be attacked, one bristles.

Spirituality means to move with and as spirit, the lifeforce that courses through and brings into existence all of life. Spire-it (spire refers to breath) has to do with in-spire-ation, with as-spire-ation, and though we may shrink from its power and transformational capability, with ex-spire-ation.

In-spire-ation means we allow room for the lifeforce to enter, to move within. For this we need to practice great capaciousness.

As-spire-ation means we look to swim upstream to the source of this spire-ation. We aspire to be like the source of the lifeforce, the model for all creativity.

Ex-spire-ation means we continually let go of what we think we know and of who we think we are. We stand naked in the universe, humble and open. We breathe out (ex-spire) lovingkindness to all.

I will use these terms (religiosity and spirituality) in forthcoming posts concerning hedgehog and phoenix consciousness states.

the hedgehog and the phoenix

Forty years ago, my research on the relationship between religious fundamentalist beliefs and peak experiences [Breed, G.,& Fagan, J. (1972). Religious dogmatism and peak experiences: a test of Maslow’s hypothesis. Psychological Reports, 31, 866] showed that folk with high fundamentalist beliefs were less likely to have peak, oceanic, or mystical experiences. Stating it another way, folk having mystical or peak experiences were less likely to be religious fundamentalists.

My later research showed that people with concrete conceptual systems were more likely to go against the evidence of their senses and yield to group pressure to accept a false conclusion than were people with abstract (open) conceptual systems.

Today I call these differences in human consciousness: the hedgehog and the phoenix. The hedgehog, when challenged, rolls itself into a tight ball with extended bristles. The phoenix, when challenged, lets its old self burn into ashes and rises anew. A huge difference in style.

opening to true power

A voice spoke as if it were my own:
You have yet to claim your full powers.
I thought: I must do something about this.

Immediately from deep within the vision came
of the wilderness encounter of Jesus and the Adversary.

Three powers were offered to Jesus

• The power of alchemical transformation. "Command that these stones be made bread."
  
• The power over death. "Throw yourself off this temple pinnacle and no harm will come to you."
• The power of ownership. "All this shall be yours if you fall down and worship me."

Each of these "powers" would require Jesus to listen to a voice not his own.

He rejected each in turn, saying he would listen only to the voice at his core, the voice of God, of his Source, the Godhead, the Tao, the Wellspring, Allah, Wakantanka, the One Whom No Name Captures.

Jesus listened to the true power. So may I. So may we all.

quivering mass

I see all religions as speaking of
an energetic interflow amongst all living.

If each of us had the temerity, the nerve
to take on the consciousness of each religion's founder,
we would know that this is so.

Each of us is as vast as billions of universes,
but we contract our awareness and go through the day
like a small mass of emotional jello looking for its whipped cream.

robbing ourselves of energy

Though the word "sin" has accumulated undesirable baggage,
sin means separation.

When we regard anything as energetically separate from ourselves,
we are no longer scintillating but sinning.

We have chopped the universe into fragments.
We are no longer at peace but in pieces.

We do this by deflation (seeing ourselves as less than)
and by inflation (seeing ourselves as more than).

"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

When we fall for the illusion of separation,
we cheat ourselves of radiant energy.

moving on up

Four aspects of a human that govern behavior are the head, the heart, the hara (center of balance), and the genitals. A nation is no different.

A nation that wars is responding with male genitalia. A huge phallus is erected, admired, polished and sent to other countries to "keep the peace" with its rapine threat. Or to flail about smashing and destroying. This is often portrayed as an act of love, of concern, of caring.

Maybe we could get by (by "we" I mean all humans on the planet) with continued phallic escalation in the past, with dominance belonging to the ones with the largest erections, but no more. Though we differ in so many ways, we are all members of the Navel Tribe. We are one species on a small planet. Our lives are interconnected and interconnecting.

As a species, we need to move up the chakra ladder a rung, to center ourselves in our hara rather than our phallus (which is not gender specific, by the way).

nondual intuition

I look to understand
what calls me into existence.

Direct understanding.
No intermediary.

An energy exists.
Beyond the sensible.
Beyond the rational.

The Paraclete, the Christ-ians call it.
The Buddha-ists say Prajna.
The Sufi refer to Malakut, the sphere of the Soul.

The Cosmic Angel.

One understands the Cosmic Angel, that vast alive
aware energy permeating the universe and calling it into being,
through nondual intuition. Splitness does not work.

Not two. Not two. Not even one.

Grace has no boundaries, no separation.
Grace and knowledge are the same.

Prajnaparamita.
Direct knowing.

housing development

Every time I say a word I lay a plank of thought.

Some have built whole houses with their thought planks,
touting them as safe dwelling places. Many enter and reside.
Heretics are always wanting to add a new wing or redecorate.

When dwelling in silence, no human construction is in sight.

the angel of the cosmos

"Be sensible," they say.
"Come to your senses."

Why should I restrict awareness
to these nerve endings, glorious as they are,
mere temps in the Office of Eternal Splendor?

"Think about it! Think about what you are doing!"
Well, okay. I am. I do. Think about it.

You know what no one says?
"Open to the Intuition
that calls you into being,
to the Vast Awareness."

But It says
and I listen
and I take It by the hand,
this Cosmic Angel, and am lifted into realms supernal.

giving jesus the runaround

Why must we keep eternally circling,
crucifying ourselves and eating our flesh,
self-admirers needing redemption
from an echoing self-gazing hell?

Why must we keep eternally circling?
Crucifying Jesus and eating his flesh?
Haven't we had enough yet?
Isn't he totally digested?

Why have we made the cross a pogo stick
upon which we eternally bounce?
Impaled. Released. Impaled. Released.

It's all the nonchristians too! An epidemic!
Perpetual motion machines of condemnation and salvation.

Why, I swear! Jesus needs to come back
and chase us with a chain saw!
But I bet we'd run around in circles.

release

That aspect of ourselves we call ego is attachment.
Attachment to our image.
Attachment to our habits.
Attachment to our attachments.

The ego is a fearsome beast and very clever.
I invite it to sit down beside me.
It rests upon the carpet like a panting tiger.

I breathe in and out.
I breathe in lovingkindness.
I breathe out all attachment.

I release, let go.

Breathing in lovingkindness.
Breathing out lovingkindness.
No attachment. No deals. Just here.

soup

Each of us lives the life we have signed on to.
We look to make the best soup out of the ingredients at hand.

Regardless of our gender, we are broth-ers.

Don't stew about it. Keep a bubbling boiling 'til tender.

Give yourself away to the hungry.

Don't fear.
The soup we are eternally replenishes.

spheres of influence

The way to change the world is not through politics.
The way to change the world is through one's sphere of influence.

We radiate energy outward in all directions.

The quality and power of that energy varies
with whether we are centering or not,
and what center we have chosen.

Doubt radiates doubt, fills the universe with doubt.
Fear and anger do the same.

Mindful Aware Compassion fills the universe with that big MAC.

The radiance of our energy transforms the world.

Each of us is a sphere of influence.
Every sphere of influence has a center,
a vibratory quality, and an area of influence.

We center in our heads, our hearts, our groins.
We center in wanting what we do not have
and not wanting what we do.
We center in lovingkindness and compassion.

We choose our center every moment.
This is a practice. We practice centering.
As our center goes, so goes the world.

We are spheres of influence.

The quality of our influence vibrates outward in all directions
from our chosen center. This influence occurs whether or not
we are in the direct presence of others. We are influencing
the quality and character of the world all the time.

The world is one big energy system
and we are its transformers.

flagstaff high school

infusion

We have different bodies.

We have a desire body, flaming and hot;
a cognitive body, cool and detached;
an imaginative body, colorful and rambunctious;
a social body, influential and interwoven;
a spiritual body, yakking with the saints.

And more.

We in-habit these bodies,
as comfortable as old shoes.

The physical body is the bookmark in space and time,
keeping our place here in the middle of the story
of this Aeon of Strife and Discontent.

We give it an infusion of compassion.
We do this with our heart body,
the body with strong connection
to the heart-thrum of our Source.

On this morn's walkabout I saw

Jesus with a snowball on his head
-- I love that Jesus --
He is always up to something

world shaper

I must be careful how I speak.
When I open this mouth and thrum these vocal chords,
whole universes sing themselves into existence.

I must be careful what I think.
I can damn the world to hell in a nanosecond
or bliss it into some fairyland nirvana.

Howling winds of arctic windswept plains.
Haunting breeze of lush equatorial jungle.
This mind contains vast realms yet unseen.

We are all mad inventors sitting inside the labyrinth
of our cavernous minds, conjuring up some lumination.

Lighting a path we create as we go.

rise and shine!

And the knowledgeable will be radiant
like the bright expanse of sky (Tanakh)
And they that be wise shall shine
as the brightness of the firmament (King James)
The enlightened will shine
like the Zohar of the sky (Zohar)

The above three renditions of Daniel 12: 3 point to one truth:
Rise and shine!

When we come up out of
the gloop of self-concern,
when we stop staring at our feet
and lift up our eyes
to "the bright expanse of sky,"
we become radiant.

To rise is wise.

When we rise, we shine.

Even our corpse-suckles get happy.

shaman warrior way

Putting legs on the Christian fish symbol is like putting legs on the Tao symbol. (I understand the whole Darwinian evolution stance, but speak not of that here.) If one looks closely, the fish and tao symbols are remarkably alike: a curved line representing heaven and all "light" qualities, another curved line representing earth and all "dark" qualities. To put legs on either or both is to assert human dominance in the universe -- a ploy that has always failed since it is a lie.

In previous Warrior of Spirit gatherings, folk had little trouble with lovingkindness, with centering, with opening, with mindfulness, and so on. Great difficulty arose with surrender. Surrender is perceived as cowardice, as failure. We are supposed to stand atop the mountain peak with lightning striking all around and thunder out with upraised fist: I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE, THE CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL!

Malarkey. True up to a certain point and within certain realms (like deciding to get out of bed everyday and face the music or choosing which of the 80 brands of toilet paper to buy) but total malarkey when it comes to the cosmos.

Surrender is the most heroic act one can perform. It is the shaman warrior way -- to let go and be rendered, torn apart, trusting that one will be put back together, though in new, strange, and unaccustomed ways. A painful process in which the character one has built over the years and placed on the stage to speak its lines is dis-membered, its parts flung to infinity, only the beating heart remaining.

And that heart is enough. The universe, the life force of our Source, the Wellspring, fashions a new body out of and around that heart. We are born anew with new eyes, new awareness, new understanding.

New country-western song: "Don't put no legs on my tao sign"

juice

Words have juice.
Example. Irruption.

Irruption.
The tearing of the fabric of reality.
Disclosure of what lurks beneath.

Larks rise straight into the air, singing.
No longer lurking.

The lark beneath no longer lurking.
Irruption.

Life is a lark.
A lurk no longer.

Irruption.

Can you feel it?
Can you feel your lurk larking?

writing the bones

I hear from time to time that many don't understand what I am saying in my postings -- one implication being that I should use more common terms, another being that I should flesh out my bare bones writings with explanations and references and footnotes, maybe slow it down a little and start with A before I hit X, Y, and Z.

Not interested.

Another thing I hear is that I am "preaching to the choir." Probably so, but all I know is I get up in the morning and write what comes. Conversion of the masses and obtaining large followers swaying in time to a common beat is not my goal. If I wanted to do that, I'd get some backup singers (three lovely jazzy women) and a band and hop on the T and V. Get me an electric blue suit and have my beard trimmed.

Not interested.

Just want to write the bones.

in the know

Early on (18th century), science put emphasis on what was looked at and ignored what was doing the looking. Even later, when psychology, attempting to emulate the "hard-core" sciences through emphasis on statistics and probability (both based on crop yields under different treatment conditions) and behavioral measures, began to investigate humans, the "psyche" in psyche-ology was ignored, even disparaged and ridiculed as a notion.

If it couldn't be measured, it didn't exist.

This rabid pursuit of the various scientific hounds after their respective foxes, like any compulsive behavior, spun totally out of control, producing both desirable and undesirable fox meat.

Meanwhile, the psyche was relegated to a few (shudder!) unscientific psychologists and to the smoldering ash heap of religion, now seen as the dogmatic domain of the unlearned, carrion eaters of scientific refuse.

Both "sides" lost out. As Carl Jung put it: "Faith lacked experience and science missed out the soul."

As a mystic trained in the scientific method, having won both spiritual and scientific spurs through grace and grit, I found a common denominator -- that which does the looking. The way I found it was through a third method, the method of the martial arts. One does not practice the martial arts for long before recognizing and cultivating the life force (ki, chi, prana, mana, spirit).

The energies of the universe pour through us, embody as us, call us into being within each nanosecond: the timeless irrupting into time.

Our job as humans seems to be to disrupt it, to ignore it, to ride it for pleasure or for profit. Few of us seem to open to BEING it.

As for me, I laugh and giggle at the paradoxical humor and the wonder of it all. In both mystic and scientific realms, as some old fool said somewhere: the universe that is embodying as us is exploring the universe that is embodying as us.

No need to get all serious and stuffy about it. Neither science nor religion know what they are doing. None of us do.

Brad Olson and I were yakking in front of a warm fire at Charly's yestermorn and thought we might do another one of our Brad-George open conversations entitled "What's It All About, Billy Bob?" Brad said we could say "I don't know" in many different ways (and at great and entertaining length). The mutual laughter of good friends is precious treasure: the life force manifesting in good and right relationship.

Ain't that what it's all about, Billy Bob?

the work

As I seek the philosopher's stone, the "incorrupt medicament,"
I find that, corrupt as I am, I am the medicine I seek.

And it is doing its work.

Gerhard Dorn was right: "See therefore that thou goest forth
such as thou desirest the work to be which thou seekest."

In order to find that which I seek,
I have to become that which I seek.

The seeking of something will invariably cause one to become that.

This is the work.

It is working.

Unrelenting Compassion

"Vajrapani is a means of accomplishing fierce determination and symbolizes unrelenting effectiveness in the conquest of negativity. His taut posture is the active warrior pose (pratayalidha), based on an archer's stance but resembling the en garde position in Western fencing. His outstretched right hand brandishes a vajra and his left hand deftly holds a lasso - with which he binds demons. He wears a skull crown with his hair standing on end. His expression is wrathful and he has a third eye. Around his neck is a serpent necklace and his loin cloth is made up of the skin of a tiger, whose head can be seen on his right knee." (Wikipedia)

Charter for Compassion

There is an urgent need for a new focus on compassion. Bringing together voices from all religions, all nations, all backgrounds, the Charter seeks to remind the world that we already share the core principles of compassion.

Charter for Compassion

bare bones

How clever I am!
I decorate my skeleton
and walk around
as if I am someone.

Festooning it with a persona,
draping it with will and intention,
going out there to be some body.

off the air

Off the air for a while until I become
something more than old news to myself.

morning muse

In the game of Cosmic Horseshoes, what is at Stake?
And where is it placed?
In the Vamp of the Heart?

my little pen i have built for myself and must not be violated ever

All doctrine is scaffolding
that must drop away.

This includes the doctrines of
Who You Think You Are
and
What You Think You Are Not.

You've set yourself up
with WYTYA
and get really pissed
when others don't go along.

You've mutilated yourself
with WYTYAN
chopping off whole arms and legs
even ripping out your heart.

All doctrine is scaffolding
that must drop away

letting that cosmic rocket
that is you

TAKE OFF!

freak show

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!
I've got nothing up my sleeves but arms!
You there, in the back. Come in closer.
That's it! Now if you notice over here,
we have three rings. In the first ring
is Passion riding the red horse of Attachment.
And a splendid sight they are with their
flaring nostrils & fast beating hearts!
In the second ring is Dispassion allowing
the fox of Detachment to eat his guts.
Don't look away! Show a little dispassion!
And in the third ring we have the Hermaphrodite,
dispassionate passion become Compassion!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the joining of the opposites,
which I see makes your lips snurl
and your regurgitory organs leap into play.
You ask could God have ordained such a creature?
It's your call, folks. Ring one, two, or three!
For one thin dime, you can enter the ring of your choice.
What's that, boy? Everyone is in a ring already
and why pay a dime? Somebody claim this kid!
Now . . . .

old man

I hear that I am an old man.
I don't know what that means.

Yes, I've ridden the earth around our sun 71 times.
Sure, at some point I might be drooling and shitting my pants.
But I'm doing just fine, thank you!

Yep, there are some body aches from years of ju-jutsu slams to mat,
but I gave as good as I got, and we all ended up laughing and going for a beer.

And there are some soul aches from a tortured and broken heart,
but everyone walks around with those kind of wounds.

It takes me longer to walk from here to there,
but I have no hurry.

I hear that I am an old man and for the life of me,
I don't know what that means.

Oh, yeh! According to the actuarial tables,
I am securely within the realm of bucket kickers.
But death has been my ally all my life. No new news.

I feel as if I am in first grade in my understanding of the universe.
I have my seat assignment and the teacher seems pretty interesting.

My spirit is as clear and bright as ever
and I am grateful to the graciousness of my Maker.

I am just beginning to learn how to learn something.

shaman

If we do not have the concepts, we cannot grasp reality.
Vast realms lie around us and within us, unknown.
The fewer the concepts, the more meager our world.

Concepts are a way of seeing.
The greater the diversity and richness of concepts,
the more vast one's vision.

The inability or unwillingness to tolerate a wide diversity of concepts creates psychic plaque, effectively closing off the richness of the energetic field surrounding one and calling one into being.

Opening to and embodying the full range of concepts both available and emerging into being allows us to know as we are known, two-way streets of comprehension.

Concepts are living gateways, passages, entrances, wormholes to realities of supra-ordinate splendor.

Conceptual galaxies spin within our inner world linking with and cousins to the external galaxies we all admit and admire -- no separation, the spin within and the spin without are the same spin.

If you do not know what I mean, you do not know what I mean.

ego

We speak of getting rid of our ego, but no one knows what the ego really is, other than our center of consciousness.

I think what we mean is riddance of a sense of separate self. We keep our center of consciousness -- and we cannot even keep it since it is what is doing the keeping.

I will no longer honor the phrase "getting rid of ego." Instead I will use "no clinging to your reflection" since a sense of separate self is an identification with second-order reflection in the mirror of phantasy.

humus

As humans, we have a strong need for approval.
We make others gods and ourselves their servants.

Humility means we make the servant role the god role.
Now we are the god and others serve our need.

The greatest servant of all is the greatest god.
This can start a servant competition.

radiance of being

No hope
No fear

Joy

evolution of delusions

When any of us says something is true, we are saying we believe it.
"It is part of my belief system, therefore true."

Some aspects of one's belief system are held as true by the majority,
hence form a popular delusion that works for the moment
within a certain context, i.e., the current worldview or
generic thought domain.

The next realm's thought domain, as evidenced by
the copernican, newtonian, einsteinian, quarkian progression,
might and probably will reveal our current meta-view as
old-fashioned, ignore-ant, even primitive.

I don't know that there is anything to do about this,
except to acknowledge it, and to possibly step outside
our belief system, our thought domain.

Of course, for many, this is unthinkable and will not be thought.
For others, it is understood but seen as far too much trouble
and that attention is best directed elsewhere.

For some, however, the possibility / probability of existing
outside thought, without reflection, is attractive and viewed
as a worthy endeavor.

story

We can move into a Story of our choice,
feel powerful and good.

We can stand in our own being (which is not our own)
and say there is no Story that is real,
thus spinning our Story of No Story,
and feel powerful and good.

One single thought and a story exists.
Even those who say they do not think,
as soon as the mouth flops open,
are caught within the web of a story.

We live in story. We are creatures of Story.
We beget and are begotten by Story.

I choose a Story of Cosmic Adventure,
which goes something like this:

Each of us a sphere of influence
radiating outward in all directions our moods and attitudes.
We transform the world around us
through the wavelengths of the energy we are.

Shitty wavelengths, shitty world.
Joyous wavelengths, joyous world.
Mediocre wavelengths, mediocre world.

When two or more spheres
are in radiance together,
a tremendous force is born.

the known universe

Joe Night sent this. Thanks, Joe!

balance beam

Forget my paltry post.
I mourn the Haitian people.

capacity

"I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in."
--Peter commenting on the Transfiguration, Acts of Peter

Peter's comment is an exquisite statement of our situation.

We are like pencil points in varying degrees of sharpness
on the page of life, pencil points pressed firmly to the page
of everyday, writing out our lives with little awareness of
the entire pencil that we are, much less who or what is
holding the pencil.

We scribble, get dull, stop and sharpen ourselves
with various activities and concoctions,
awareness staying focused on minutiae,
perhaps lifting our heads, our eyes for brief moments
to stare at far horizons, to contemplate something larger,
more vast than our scribble on the page.
We live in the prosaic,
uncomprehending of the poetry of it all.

We cling firmly to our lode limit.

And then Bingo!

We fall in love with a person, with an idea, with a quest,
with the simple fascination of being alive.

Capaciousness, Exuberance, Enthusiasm, Energy!

Boundless.

Circle with no circumference
whose center is everywhere.

We hum, we sing, we dance.

Life holds no mystery.

Hearts wide open!

"I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in."

nominate the BadassSattva of the Week

I, this very morning, through the grace and power of The Muse Upon Awakening, was a conduit for the addition of BadassSattva to the Noirior Pantheon. See here.

Now I am inspired to add a nomination for the BadassSattva of the Week: Reverend Billy & The Church Of Life After Shopping.

If you have a nomination, please enter here in a comment.

The BaddestassSattva will be decided this Friday.

becoming a badass sattva

Let's take a look at two popular sayings. In this dualistic-duelistic world of ours, of course they have contradictory meanings. Ahhh, a 2 X 2 table, one of my favorite scientific devices! Two sayings, each with two meanings.

The first conventional wisdom: "It's all in your imagination."

The prosaic meaning lays negative emphasis on imagination. "It's all in your IMAGINATION." Meaning: You are just making it up. It is not real. Implication: Wake up, you dreamer! Make yourself useful.

The poesaic meaning lays positive emphasis on all. "It's ALL in your imagination." Meaning: We are creative beings, making all this up as we go. Implication: Be careful of your thoughts, your images, your icons. They bear fruit.

The second conventional wisdom: "You can't do it to save your ass."

The prosiac meaning lays emphasis on incapability. "YOU CAN'T DO IT to save your ass." Meaning: You are so screwed up and such a wuss you can't even do what you need to do. Even if your ass is in a sling. (Now there's an image.) Implication: Be fearful and timid. Yield to the almighty powerful one telling you that you can't do it.

The poesaic meaning lays emphasis on meaningful wisdom. "You can't do it TO SAVE YOUR ASS." Meaning: If saving your ass is your motivation, it won't work. You can't do it in order to save your ass. Implication: If you are "laying up your treasures in heaven" to save your ass, you are just going to live in assdom. This is where the badass sattva comes into play. All badass sattvas vow to not go to heaven until all go. This is what makes them such badasses.

The badass sattva knows deeply that: It is ALL in the imagination and you can't do it TO SAVE YOUR ASS.

fun

Christopher Walken dances and flies to Fatboy Slim --

bear claw

I leave behind a trail of writings
like a skunk leaves scent,
like a mouse leaves droppings.
I breathe in heaven's blessings and exhale words.
In cyberspace they form and stand alone.
Black scratchings floating in infinite whiteout sea.
Brief formings in the fog.
I reach as high as I can, claw the bark of the tree.
That tree standing there. In the middle of the garden.
I wander away, satisfied. Scratched that itch
with all the alphabet I could find.

entering the monkastery

At some point the sun will flare then die,
ending this chapter of
The Ongoing Embodying of Conscious Existence.

Meanwhile

we monkeys prance around
doing our part, eating and drinking and mating,
taking ourselves seriously, oh so seriously,
while screwing around and having a ball,

trying not to regress to the mean,
each new crop of monkeys arising,
rediscovering angst and alienation,
self-medicating and looking for the eternal bailout

Transcendent monkeys aware of the cosmic heartbeat
Orderly monkeys putting toothpastes back in tubes
Scared monkeys shitting their metaphysical pants
Redeemed monkeys singing hallelujah

Shopping monkeys hunting and gathering
Sex monkeys finding salubrication
War monkeys wanting one domi - nation
Coffee monkeys plotting evolution

Monkeying around while the cosmos has its way
but, by Hanuman!, exploring around out there
seeking some salvational crevice
in which to hide the monkey tribe

God has a great sense of humor
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head
and loves her monkey children

the story of jesus: theology 101

So God said, "I'm gonna shoot right in there and try that out myself." Like all of us circling around out there in the archetypal void, desiring and waiting for our opportunity to become a little more firm in our matter, he chose his mama and his birth family. Bingo! He was born as Jesus in a little dinky town from nowhere. He went through the whole of existence, from being squeezed through the birth canal to pain and suffering to joy and laughter to getting whacked by the government after being told to shut up but he wouldn't do it. He could build a one-match fire, hiked around a lot, took a boat here and there, slept out of doors, visited friends, said a bunch of things that folk are still trying to understand, was kind of an outlaw, ate food, drank wine, pooped and peed, and "was like as we are, yet without sin." And what is this sin thing but separation from God? And God embodying could not and would not be separate from God. He jumped right in here along with the rest of us and gave it a whirl. Now that kind of God I really really like! And then he took off, zoom into the skies, saying I'm gonna go fix up a place for you, for the capacious, for all who have the capacity, the room for lovingkindness and openness and generosity, all of which come from nowhere but the Big Dude himself. And that's the way it went and that's the way it goes.

quest ions

quest, a wisdom-seeking journey
ion, a particle that is either positively or negatively charged
quest ion, a particle on a wisdom-seeking journey

Of what are you aware?
This is the extent of your spiritual domain.

What occupies your awareness the most?
This is the center of your spiritual domain.

When you allow your cognitive machinations
and your emotional turbulence to subside,
what is at the core of your spiritual domain?

Who or what have you made your Lord, your Example,
the one whose actions you follow and embody?

Of whom, of what are you aware
beyond the realm of surface appearance?

Do you constantly encase yourself in the flesh?
In social roles? In your own image?

Can you sense the Beginning and the Flow of it all?

Are you as large as the universe?
As small as the subatomic?

Are compassion, generosity, and lovingkindness
the energies that sustain you?

Does your heart laugh?

the shining of the absolute

Think of it as a light shining out into the unknown.

What is shining the light? We do not know.
Even our vaunted science-priests can't pierce that veil.

All we can do is love the light
and praise the mystery that shines it.

You want to stick a name on it?
Next thing you know you'll be asking me for union dues!

We can think of it as a stepping down.
(I paraphrase Ibn 'Arabi's framework here.)

First the Absolute beyond all comprehension.
Since nothing can be said, the less said the better.

Then the Absolute manifesting as God
tickling that God-spot in our heart-brain.

Next the Absolute manifesting as Lord.
As Bob Dylan says you gotta serve somebody.
This is that somebody.

Now comes the Absolute manifesting
as half-spiritual and half-material things.
That would be us hue-mans.

And finally, the Absolute manifesting itself
as the sensible world, symbols of the Absolute.

A light shining out into the unknown.
And we are the light bearers.

Don't rant and rail at me about it!
Welcome to the universe.

aftermath

tomorrow they'll all be herded back into
their institutional pens
leaving the streets to us geezers and bums
the psychologists will have plenty of work
salving family abrasions
debt counselors will spring into action
the local library will announce
it doesn't supply tax forms
kids and teachers will count the days
until spring break
stores will replace the ghost of santa
with a flood of valentines
those zonies who don't live in the snow of this mountain
will slide off it like melting ice cream to their desert homes
the foxes will come back
out of hiding
the ravens will circle around as always
playing and rasping at peculiar human ways

be attitude

Blessed are those whose sanctified butts sit on righteous pews of holiness. For long moments, they forget they are urine and shit-filled bags of mucous and puss.

Blessed are those who arise in the morning and go on anyway. For they are the salt of the earth, sprinkled on the bland flat food of corporate America.

Blessed are those who have found a niche of companionship and love. For they refute the arrogant bastards of the supremacy of war.

Blessed are those who refuse to paint their face with decorum. For they wear the paint of the spirit of Crazy Horse, Jesus and Hafiz.

Blessed are the spiritual marines of all religions and no religion. For they shall inherit the wind, the holy wind that breathes and sustains the cosmos.

Amen.

new year's re-solutions

Can we solve ourselves once again?
Become re-solute in our solutions?

We have hope in this 1/1/2010,
in this semi-arbitrary demarcation of time,
of the past dropping away and a beginning new and fresh.

All past sins of omission and commission,
all we failed to do and all we did we wish we didn't,
dropping away and a brand new child standing here.

A child looking to live a saner, more sanctified life,
looking to no longer do this and begin doing that,
looking for a re-solution of the problems of existence:

hatreds dissolved in love, angers replaced by understandings,
one's own separate soul opening to union with the Divine,
grit supplemented by grace.

Re-solution: opening as a clear solution,
as a free and loving heart.

night window 2010 eve

sun's bank shot
off moon
glints
3 a.m. snow cover
into
brain pocket

soul lit by cosmic
ricochet

systems of thought

Systems of thought (theologies, philosophies, theories) are based upon intuition, upon an awareness that opens from a portion of our consciousness differing from sensation (the input of our physical senses) and from cognition (the thinking ratio-nal mind).

Our greatest systems of thought (Taoist, Buddhist, Hebrew, Christian, Islamic, Newtonian, Einsteinian, Confucian, Vedic, and so on) come from humans with the greatest intuitive capacity. The rest of us generally choose one (or more) of the pre-existing systems of thought and make it our own.

A system of thought is like a jungle gym, a workout frame for spirituo-cogno-philosopho exercise. We swing around within these workout frames, developing our spiritual muscles, opening our awareness to ever higher, wider realms.

Sometimes some of us get stuck in one, our personal favorite, and declare it to be the universal-forever-truth that should be the cookie cutter for all humankind (look out for any limbs or parts that don't fit the mold!).

My experience is they all point to one reality -- the reality from which all intuitions spring. One Ocean condensing, many rains falling, multiple streams streaming.

doubt

Doubt is a funny word. It looks as if it should be pronounced "doo-bit." Maybe it should be spelled with a "ght" like in "drought." Dought. But then I guess we might mispronounce it as "dough-tee."

Doubt has sometimes had a bad reputation. A "doubting Thomas" is often thought of as not a good thing to be. Well, I doubt that doubt is bad. Unless one gets stuck in it as a professional doubter and assumes the lifestyle of skeptic of everything (one's own skeptical stance excluded, of course).

Doubt means "Well, I don't know about that." That's reasonable. And truthful. As such, doubt is an antechamber to knowing.

Doubt is not "I don't know about that, so it's a lie." One has set oneself up as the Illuminator of the Universe, the God of All-Knowing. Laughable. Pitiful. A balloon waiting to be popped. A tough skin is usually developed so that one is less poppable. The defensive "doubter" floats through life inhaling his own vapors.

No. Doubt is honest not-knowing. A true doubter searches for knowledge. Take a look at Jennifer Hecht's Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson.

Doubt does not have to result in a quest for knowing. One can adopt the stance of "Well, I don't know about that, and I am not going to investigate it." This happens as commonly as when one is reading something, bumps into a word or concept one does not understand, then just skips over it. A minor form of unexamined doubt, but one that builds over time into an insulated world.

True lively doubt produces a quest. Thomas: "I'm not going to believe until I can stick my hands into his wounds!" A true scientist. He achieved his goal. He got some experimental results, but he decided to modify his procedure; he only had to stick his eyes into the wounds, not his hands.

May we pursue our doubts with vigor and with open minds! May we not become so enamored of doubt that we make it our religion.

the old style and the wisdom style

The old style was to stand in one's own point of view, defend it against all comers, and try one's best to get the other to see it your way. The wisdom style is to maintain one's point of view while simultaneously being converted to the other's view point. This is essential for the interreligious dialogue and interconsciousness dialogue needed in a global community. Ueshiba showed the practical embodying of this in his founding of Aikido: keeping one's own center while moving with the center of another.

winter solstice

The sun begins its return.
Dark has gone as far as it can go.
Find your swim suit.
Walk naked around the house.
Sing a song. Hum a tune.
Light-en up!

light beings

At this time of year we celebrate the return of Light into the world. This returning is something that takes place every in-breath of our lives, moving deep into our being and circulating within heart's blood.

The return of the Light is not out there somewhere. We are its returning. We joy in and join in the Light. Whatever our religion or belief system, we are a birthing of this Light. We are the Light born into the Darkness that we are.

This is the time of year for deep appreciation of the Light. We bathe in it. We store it up. It is a resurrection. Our cells illuminate, are luminous. With roots in Darkness and Mystery, we are beings of Light. We are becoming ever more aware that we are cosmic persons.

the adventurous

We are born, and though we have the societal scaffolding to help us figure this out, this who we are, this where we are, and what is going on, we still have to understand it for ourselves.

For the adventurous, it is a continuing comprehension.

It is tempting to succumb to
the deep-seated sofa of dogma for relief,
butts and heads deep-sprung, locked in,

but the future of humankind lies with the adventurous,
those with ever-expanding vision and the nerve
to surf nakedly with loving heart on the immediacy of now.

the batter in the mixing bowl

Using age-old metaphors, I speak. Man has been cast into the outer darkness of his own singular individual thought and tries in vain to recapture the common language of the Babylon Babble-On Tower, when all spoke as one and communication was instantaneous. At that time, man was a giant hive of open buzzing communion with no thought. No thought. Pre-logical. Participation mystique. A buzzing hive of endeavor that looked to build a tower, a giant termite mound to the heavens. And once again, as in the Eden Fall, the heavens said we cannot let them do this. And knocked man back down into the mixing bowl from which he was trying to climb -- now put on reverse spin, a paradoxical mixing bowl of separation. Each now thinks their own thoughts, marching to a different language from all others. Knocked down twice. Kicked out of Eden. Tower destroyed. The batter is still up with two strikes and a lot of balls. What will be the next pitch? Do we hear it coming even now? As we stand at home and look to knock that sucker right out of the park and into overdrive.

what does christmas mean to you, little boy?

Sitting here in the wee hours of the morn, I assigned myself a task. Or rather, it seemed to come unbidden. "Georgie boy, what does Christmas mean to you?"

Hmmm... The excitement of the child I was who believed in two magic and supernatural figures, much more powerful than the Tooth Fairy but of the same order: Santa Claus and Jesus. I had learned from the adults that Jesus was born into our hearts but Santa Claus actually came into the house! Scientific evidence: the milk and cookies were gone.

The time of year when as a psychologist I knew a time bomb was being planted that would explode in early January when distressed folk would be coming in from having faced their extended families once again. Old wounds would have been opened either through new raw encounter or through deep-seated memories. Post-Christmas months are a boom time for psychologists.

The joy of winter solstice, of knowing that despite all appearances, the dark had gone as far as it could go and the light was now returning. The memory of open bonfires in large back yards and all-night joyous celebration.

The blessedness of the Light of Awareness born on earth in the form of the baby Jesus.

Lights, lights, colored lights everywhere! In yards, on houses and lampposts and trees.

A tree brought inside the house! Then festooned with bulbs and icicles and ornaments.

Mistletoe for kissing any feminine being within reach.

Most of what I have written so far is based upon the sights and sounds and smells of memory. What does Christmas mean to me now as an older fart sitting here typing?

Pretty much what every day feels like. Joy at being alive and in interaction with all beings, both visible and invisible, that make up this earthocosmic existence. Feeling the magic of it all.

renewal of spirit

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Psalm 24:9

This verse is a formula for increased spiritual energy if one reads it with one's heart and not just with one's eyes. We are not to walk along, eyes downcast to the ground, nor lie within on a sickbed of despair. We are to lift up our heads, and by lifting up our heads, be lifted up.

We can start by lifting up our physical heads, looking toward the heavens and toward the far horizon. The spiritual body is affected by the stance of the physical body.

When we lift up our physical and spiritual heads, as "everlasting doors," the life energy surrounding us, in which we live and move and have our being, has room to enter. We walk and move and speak with renewed energy.

It all begins with a simple postural change. As the body goes, so goes the soul and spirit. The reverse is also true. Lift up your spiritual head and your body will follow.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in!

situation

The simplest way to say it is that people who live in separation, who firmly believe they are separate beings living in a world of separate objects are dangerous to themselves and others. People who know, who experience themselves as a dynamic interflow with others are the salvation of the world. The first live in fear and hostility held in check by a sense of ethics and morality, a veneer of socialization, but always scheming, consciously or subconsciously, what's in it for me? The second are spiritual warriors who live in joy and harmony, and face the world of division and separation created by the inharmonious; practicing a spiritual discipline based upon a unique combination of will, life force, and love.

merge-inity

If you sit quietly, you will notice you have a front and a back. To the front of you is the "external" world -- your arms and legs and body, the room or outdoors, the world of humans, the earth, the solar system, the universe -- extending beyond infinity. That is your front. All of this is your front.

Now notice your back, what is behind. Not the objects you may envision there if you turn around; that would be your front if you did so. Drop visions of an imagined front and attend to the you that is behind your front. It is a void, an abyss, an openness extending to infinity and beyond. This is the realm of the intranaut. This is inner space, the space behind your front. This vastness is where thought is born. Thoughts arise and disappear. Images form and dissipate. Emotions surge and vanish. Spiritual energy, the flow of the life force, moves through. The wellspring is here.

Infinity to the front of you. Infinity behind you. The you that you have been conditioned to think you are is the gateway between the two infinities. When you shut down and walk around as an individual with a social security number, as a skin bag of flesh and bone, the gate is closed. When you let go of that, you are a gateless gate and the two infinities merge as one.

intranaut two-step

1. The inner infinity is as vast as the outer infinity.
Our inner world is as as vast as the outer world.

2. The inner infinity and the outer infinity are one infinity.
Our inner world and the outer world are one world.

We are the gateway between two infinities.
It is only when the gate is closed that we have a problem.

taking off your habit

habit: outward appearance; attire; dress; hence, a garment

If one looks with an unbiased eye as possible at the many different religions in the world and their subdivisions (Garrison Keillor wrote once that his church kept splitting until finally each person was sitting in a room by themselves), one lets go of the extremes of mockery of all religion and its opposite, exclusivity (my religion is the only true path), and can open to the consideration that the cosmos itself is trying on different attire for expression of morality (right relationship), compassion, and wisdom; that the cosmos itself is manifesting in ways that fit the current consciousness of humans. Water takes the shape of its container.

Each religion continues to evolve to greater awareness with the evolution of human consciousness. Smaller consciousnesses (awarenesses) inhabit (are clothed by) more closed-minded understandings and interpretations of their religion than do transcendental awarenesses (consciousnesses) within the same religion. "When I was a child I spoke as a child ...."

Religions that are alive, grow. That doesn't mean get fatter, expand outward. It means grow up, like a tree or lotus, seeking ever more light. Light-seeking increases until there are no more bounds, only light. When there are no more bounds, all religions merge. The cosmos stands nakedly transparent once again.

sureness

A friend of mine (who in his own terms is somewhere between a skeptic and an absurdist) is concerned about my sureness. Of what am I so sure? Whatever words one uses to answer this question are immediately subject to attack. For example, I am sure I am here. Volumes can be and have been written on what "I" and "I am" and "here" mean. "I" have read and reflected upon many of them. I do not wish to replicate their arguments and counter-arguments here. In fact, the wisest course for me to take would be to say nothing at all, to keep silence and just be. But I write books and blogs. I am foolish. I speak up. I speak of what I am so sure.

I understand the game of science -- of hypotheses derived from theories, of hypothesis testing via experimentation, of statistical probabilities in weighing one's results, of open disclosure of one's findings to one's professional peers, of peer review and critique, of subsequent theory modification with newly formed hypotheses, and so on. I have played that game. Successfully. It is a good game with a major object being not to fool oneself. It promotes a certain kind of sureness. But this is not the sureness of which I speak.

"Science" means "knowing." The science I trust and follow is experiential. My life is my experiment. I have made it a point to place myself in many situations with many types of people. My experience is my data. The results are coming in all the time. I come to certain conclusions and publish them for peer review in my blogs and books (and in conversations with a few close friends).

This is what I know so far. Of this I am sure.

• I am born out of a great mystery.
• Western science says this mystery birthed this universe about 13 1/2 billion years ago.
• I am part of that birthing. I can trace my ancestry back to that birthing and before that to the mystery that gave birth.
• This birthing continues, called by some scientists an unfolding. Hence my statement: I am the cosmos unfolding.
• I feel at home in the universe, a cosmic citizen.
• This unfolding feels like a loving act, a graciousness.
• The great mystery, the source is birthing me (and all that is).
  
• I am the energy of the source, embodying.
• I identify with that energy and as that energy more than I do this current embodying and its societal manifestation.
  
• When my physical being gives way, as it surely will, the energy that I am will return to the source.
• I am happy.

These statements are not a theory, not a religion, not a philosophy, though they could easily be made into any of those. I could get a preacher suit, some backup singers, and hop on TV and get some good times rolling with a jazzed up crowd. But that is not my calling.

My sureness is based upon experience. I could recount my specific experiences but they would still be my experiences and would be unconvincing to the unsure. Nor do I wish to convince anyone. Everyone must find (and be found by) their own convincing.

Lao Tzu ("Old Dude") sums it up quite well:
Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.
They feel no wear, feel no tear, need no mending, no repair.

He was and is surely correct.

thought bubble arrangements

As intranauts taking a look at inner space, an obvious sight is thought bubbling out of nowhere. The arrangement of these thought bubbles and their content in a certain order is known amongst humans as reasoning.

When one arranges these thought bubbles in a certain pre-determined order, an order keeping one's thoughts within one's particular corset of understanding, this is called pre-judged reasoning. No thoughts are allowed which the corset cannot contain.

When one shrugs off all all corsets (strait jackets) of understanding imposed by society and its members, thoughts can and will arrange themselves according to the life force which births us. This is called intuition.

When one takes a position (personal, religious, philosophical, emotional) and then uses only thought bubble arrangements that support that stance, one is approaching life bassackwards. One is becoming a cyst in the organic flow. A certain rigidity occurs and one is living death.

When one moves out of pre-judged thought bubble arrangements and thereby becomes un-reason-able (no longer having a pet reason to defend), one opens to creative arrangements of thought produced by the life force itself. This is relatively new to the human species which is ruled mainly by emotion and pre-judged reasoning.

Opening to the life force and the vital knowledge it contains and offers washes away the usual mind sets to which we fall prey and allows fresh new understandings to emerge. We are the life force streaming and the knowledge and the wisdom it contains.

incarnation

In embodying, we condense the vast awareness that we are into a single space-time locale. Incarnation is an exploratory journey in space-time: the n-dimensional encapsulated in roughly 3 dimensions.

Upon incarnation, we tend to get lost, forgetting the true range and scope of our awareness. It is as if we are in a deep-sea diving bubble and begin to think the bubble is our bounds.

In actuality, the "bubble" is transparent, permeable and open to transmission and reception from all realms.

worship

The best way to worship a duck is to become the duck.

poetic stances

I cut through all the theistic and a-theistic stances by pointing to what seems to me the obvious fact that we are the universe embodying. All metaphors conjured atop this fact are pure poetry. These poetics have value in the beauty and the energy they provoke. It is in the rigid belief in one's poetics as THE TRUTH that difficulties arise, as has been proven time and again in the various and seemingly unending religious and ideological wars.

We are the universe embodying. All of us. Human and non-human. The mythopoetics we concoct to describe the nature of the universe and our "place" in it will be ongoing. I simply wish we could appreciate each other's poetry and not get so all-fired stubborn and outrageous with the stance that my poem is the best and only true poem.

prayering

All this is the Source sourcing and there is no Other.
We are always at home in endless opening.

If there is no Other, and only This, to whom do I pray?

My prayer reverberates to infinity.
From whence does it, my prayer, come?

From the same infinity to which it goes,
a mobius strip of prayer,
traveling endlessly while always here,

moving forever to infinity
while rising from the wellspring
to which it goes.

The energy of prayer circulates,
mobius-iates forever.

embodying heaven and earth

American thought and thus, way of being in the world, is founded upon the supposition that each person, each individual, stands against the world. In this, American religions and American science agree. A person is a subject (from his/her point of view, the subject) and everything else is an object. We prize object-ivity. In doing so, we subject ourselves to trouble. We stand alone, heroic and tragic figures facing chaos which we forever vainly attempt to bring under our subjective rule.

My approach to life is radically different. (This may be why some have voiced difficulty in comprehending what I am saying.) If you think of the "objective" approach described above as a tree growing from earth upward, my experience is as a tree growing from the heavens downward. More accurately, I open out of the cosmos into and as this world. I long ago met "little Georgie" who was growing up and out from the earth and he and I have merged. In fact, we were never separate. Separation is an illusion.

American science and American religions hold the view that humans are self-directed units alienated from the cosmos (include nature here) that must somehow be reconciled while remaining forever apart. (Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put us back together again.) With the religions, there is hope there will be supernatural intervention.

My experience is that we are the cosmos embodying and there is no separation. All is an interwhirling, an interpenetration, a perichoresis. All is natural. What the religions call God is not supernatural, but is with us and within us all the time.

As a result of being the cosmos embodying, I do not make a living.
I am a living.

headmind and heartmind

Many of us keep ourselves from entering the inner depths of our soul through continuous attention to external matters and to thoughts with their accompanying emotion about those matters. These reveries about the external world can be called dreaming. We awaken out of a night's sleep into this dreaming, this continuous self-hypnotic revery.

To begin to enter the depths of one's soul is to leave the dreaming behind. The major point of entry into the vastness of the soul is the heart. To do so, one must get past the dragon that lives in the head -- the dragon of criticism, judgment, blame, and cynical mistrust.

And past the chattering parrot that perches on the shoulder of the certified accountant that takes stock of all and looks to make sure that the books are balanced in one's favor.

All three of these head-dwellers must be left behind.

One goes out of one's headmind (often thought, mistakenly, to be the bastion of sanity) and into one's heartmind.

One's heartmind is the opening to the depths and the radii-ations of one's soul, of the soul that one is. One moves beyond the body and away from the roof-top chatter of the head.

(To be continued)

spirations

Efforts to remain the same by such illusions as seeing oneself as a solid and unchanging entity in an everchanging world are in essence the holding of one's spiritual breath.

Seeing oneself as a fixed entity is en-sickening. One becomes a cyst, a hardening. And perhaps even rails at the world for not hardening with one, and in the same manner that one has chosen.

Spirit is breath, an inspiring and ex-spiring; the holy wind that comes and goes and ever flows in unpredictable fashion. One who lives in spirit is that wind, the wind everchanging.

Before the next inspire-ation can occur, one must ex-spire.
If one is living in-hell, one must ex-hell.

the swollen foot of the object of my affections

Healing from this foot surgery requires me to not walk very far, essentially confining myself to the house. Much reading has occurred in the last six weeks.

In reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, I was amused to find this poem given by one of the characters to a lady he was wooing. I change the gender.

On the convalescence of the swollen foot of the object of my affections

A captivating little foot,
Though swollen and red and tender!
The doctors come and plasters put,
But still they cannot mend her.

Yet, 'tis not for his foot I dread --
A theme for Pushkin's muse more fit--
It's not his foot, it is his head:
I tremble for his loss of wit!

For as his foot swells, strange to say,
His intellect is on the wane--
Oh, for some remedy I pray
That may restore both foot and brain!

I laughed aloud. My soul still grins.

response ability

Response-ability means able to respond. Each of us is responsible for our level of hassle and our depth of healing (wholeness, holiness). Other people do not hassle us. We hassle ourselves with them. Our situation does not hassle us. We hassle ourselves with our situation.

An old zen story is relevant here. A person was fishing in a boat anchored in the river. A boat came downstream and struck his. He spun around, flying into hassle mode to chew the person out, face red and contorted, muscles tensed, about to enjoy a strong outburst of righteous indignation. There was no one in the boat. He laughed, moving into healing mode.

May we move through the day as if there is no one in those boats.

c.h.a.n.g.e.

A series on healing is emerging. Here is the first installment.

Each of us is experiencing change at all times. In fact, we are change. Thoughts flow, blood circulates, emotions surge, breath varies in rhythm, relationships wax and wane, life's meaning crystallizes and disappears. We are in process. We are process.

Change for each of us can be either Continuous Hassle Amidst Newly Generated Energy or Continuous Healing Amidst Newly Generated Energy. We are the ones who decide whether it is hassle or healing.

How do we do this? What is the process by which we choose a sickening hassle or an enlivening healing? I am not so interested in why we hassle ourselves as to how we do it and how we can shift to a healing mode. (Less whyning, more howling.)

Mister Buddha said if you have a poisonous arrow stuck in you, you want to get it out, not sit around and talk about the arrow's history, quality of workmanship, why it is stuck in you rather than someone else, and such. You want to get it out.

We either hassle ourselves or open to healing within five realms of being: physical, mental, emotional, interpersonal, spiritual. These realms of course are not independent of each other. The goings-on in one realm will affect all other realms.

For example, you may believe that folk don't know what you are thinking, but your thoughts are continually expressed through your physical posture and expression, the emotional energy you release, the rhythm of your interpersonal dance, and that subtle yet powerful realm we call spirit.

The energies of the five realms move as one. Hassle in one produces hassle in all. Healing in one produces healing in all. You might say it is a CHANGE reaction.

(To be continued)

the create and the uncreate

I am the created and the uncreated.

The uncreated moves through me, gives me sustenance,
calls me into being, promotes my understanding,
my comprehension, my awareness.

The uncreate is outside space and time and is eternal.
The create is its fruit and will ripen and drop from the tree.
The uncreate goes on. The create has its life span.

It is from the uncreate that boundless energies flow,
bearing wisdom and light.



Since my awareness extends in all directions without end,
the world is within, is a subset of my awareness.

Since my awareness extends in all directions without end,
the universe is within, a subset of my awareness.

Meanwhile I walk down the street.
I am vastness while a mere creature.

the crux of the matter

I was sitting on the sofa the other morning minding my own business as usual and thinking about something I think about off and on, trying to comprehend it. And all of a sudden I got that urge I know so well to start writing because when I start writing the thoughts seem to come. This is what I wrote:

If you get freaked out by Jesus talk, hang on! Don't get your shorts in a wad. There's treasure here. What does it mean to die daily? What does it mean to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow in Jesus' steps?

What does it mean to follow the crucifixion path? Why should you even bother? Aren't you supposed to amplify the splendor of you infinitely and eternally? What is this crucifixion stuff?

Whatever one's theological or atheological beliefs, the image of the Source of all being deliberately assuming human form and enduring more intense suffering than any of us will ever experience or can begin to imagine, and not just enduring but moving through with a heart of forgiveness and love into an overcoming of hell and death, is a powerful one.

Our suffering is put into perspective and a way through and out is shown. In Jesus' journey, the universe itself has modeled this path for us.

Drop your prejudices for or against christianity for a moment (christianity is beside the point here) and take a look.

You may not have thought of it this way, but you are nailed to the spot you are in. X marks your spot. The situational weather around your cross (X) may change, but you are always where you are, in fixed position, unable to move from your cross except by dying, and dying is what shall surely happen, is what you shall surely do.

Meanwhile, you labor and you suffer and you love. While nailed to the spot you are in, while being the nailing you are, you labor to keep an open heart from which you suffer and which is the true source of love.

You do not seek suffering. Being a human on earth is enough.

To deny yourself and take up your cross daily means exactly that. Rather than falling for the glamour of personification of yourself as misunderstood tragic hero(ine) or whatever your favorite image, icon, idol of yourself may be, deny that and take up your cross. Stand fully present in your spot and face and deal with whatever comes, whatever arises. This is our labor. This is our suffering. And from this we know and can fully express love.

Well, there you have it! That's what came.

what's the poop?

We are not only aspirants to and embodyings of the divine, we also are poop bags, hosting in our bodies 2 to 3 pounds of poop at any given time. Uncoiled and stretched out we would be about 27 feet long -- a voracious eating machine at one end and a poop ejector at the other. Spiritual shit bags.

Factoid: Americans poop 4.5 million pounds of poop per hour. Source: The Poop Report

cosmotheandric beings

What does it mean that we are in God and God is in us and that we are forever fleeing God and forever returning? If we equate "God" with our Source (and our Destination), then what does it mean that we are in our Source and that our Source is in us and that we are forever fleeing our Source and forever returning?

That we are in our Source means that we are like a baby in the mother's womb. She knows so much more than we do. She is protective. And she is ever expanding (like the expansive universe). At some point she will birth us. We will take our place at her side.

Our Source (God) is also inside us. We are the nerve endings of our Source. We are the Source expanding outward. We are the voyagers of God. Our Source looks through our eyes. Our Source is closer to us than we dare to think, closer than our breathing and the beating of our hearts.

We are inside our Source and our Source is inside us. We are our Source sourcing. We are Source-erors in the best sense of the term.

Like dolphins leaping into the air and plashing back into the ocean, we are forever fleeing God (our Source) and forever returning. Even when fleeing we never move away, only into other realms. Fleeing is our duty as voyagers. But we always report back.

This is true for all humans everywhere on the globe, no matter their politics, religion, or creed. Every human is re-Source-full. Every human is born of the Source and is the Source borning. Every human is fleeing. Every human is returning. We are all this together.

not two, not even one

We can think about our beliefs. That means we can step outside our beliefs and look at them. When we are outside our beliefs, where are we?

We can be aware of our thinking about our beliefs. That means we can step outside our thinking. When we are outside our thinking, where are we?

We can know of our awareness of our thinking about our beliefs. That means we can step outside of our awareness. When we are outside of our awareness, where are we?

vision

Where there is no vision, the people perish
(Proverbs 29:18)

To disparage the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy is a remnant of an outmoded version of science where one supposedly adopts an object-ive and sterile stance of observation, affecting nothing by one's being. Not possible. Every observation is affected by the observer. It's an interactive universe.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is a gift. If we believe in something, we help make it happen. And if many believe it, great change occurs.

Humans are visionary beings. A common vision is already a reality, a reality whose fruits will be forthcoming.

the jubilee of jubilees

I'm a-tellin' you! The Big Shift is happening right now! The human consciousness state has the chance of opening to new realms. All aboard! If you are looking for consciousness transformation sometime in the future, don't look too far ahead. I'm a-telling you! It's underway. Don't go looking around out there for it. It's an inside job.

morning musings

We come in layers. Beneath all the layers is being. Being has no subject, has no object.

Being is neither lust nor drive nor will nor desire. Being is pure awareness.

"The sage (wise person) acts without making decisions," says Chuang Tzu.

This is not impulse.

Action comes from being. Being is of the Wellspring, the Source.

The Source enters daily life through the action of being. All beyond that is layers (I, me, mine) and metaphor (all the images and stories we make up).

This is why the wisest of all keep silence.

Those who break the silence are called bodhisattvas. But the bodhisattva is another story.

The daily world of humans is a world of story. We love our stories and do not wish to shed them. Beneath and outside them is an entirely different world.

self construction

I know two people.
Let us call them Macaroni and Zucchini.

Macaroni lives by his three main constructs of "Hard Work," "Doggone Politicians!," and "Financial Success." Zucchini's three main constructs are "Flow," "Paradox," and "Eternal Springtime." One can see why Macaroni and Zucchini could have a difficult time communicating. Fortunately, Macaroni understands "Paradox" and Zucchini comprehends "Hard Work."

How does this happen? How do people get so far apart in their construction of the world?

We invent ourselves through successive approximation.

In early childhood we help shape our character by accepting a set of terms (constructs) by which we construct ourselves. We select from the menu offered by stories, songs, televised images, and the examples of those around us.

As teens, we often shed these constructs (or at least attempt to) in favor of a new set and thus a new identity. Now we define ourselves in those terms, terms which often exasperate our previous co-constructionists whom we now regard as knowing nothing.

Unless we concretize our constructs by staring into the eyes of our very own narcissistic Medusa, we will shed that identity also.

The healthy person will make this ongoing process conscious, gradually developing a set of core constructs aligned with the rhythms of the universe itself.

voyage within

"Know thyself." As intranauts, we follow the inbreath, in and in and in to the core, our core. As extranauts, we follow the outbreath, to infinity in all directions, to our expansive limits, knowing there is always a beyond.

When our awareness sinks within, we see all the "stuff" with which we have stuffed ourselves, our outrages and inrages, our fears and shrinkings, our name(s) we have made for ourselves, our favorite images and holographic movies -- all the asteroidal debris that lives and whirls within us. As we continue following the inbreathing of our minds, we move past the debris and come to a darkly shining inner core, our sphere of being. We rest calmly within.

This is the core of our being. Always existing. Always here, even when we don the superficial clothing we call ourselves, the persona, the mask which tries but cannot conceal the pulsations of universal energy at our core, that is our core.

When we follow the outbreath of awareness from this core, we find that nothing exists except this universal energy which assumes the "ten thousand" shapes and formings. Dogs, cats, galaxies, people, trees -- all living breathing manifestations of this lifeforce which springs from our very core and calls us all into being.

perfect love

"Perfect love casts out fear." (I John 4:18)

Love requires the annihilation of our self, our stances, our posturings, our cajolings, our whinings, our sarcasms -- all that good gooey stuff we treasure and are convinced is us;

that stuff piled up over the years on which we have planted our flag and colonized as an unassailable force;

that view of ourselves as righteous and the rest of the world as wrong.

Without this release, we continue to dwell in fear, with no love except for that which agrees with our colon-ization. Imperfect love, which is not love at all.

Perfect love is surrender. Rumi said it well: "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home." Total abandon to That-Which-Breathes-Us -- our Source and our Destination.

the point of silence

I cannot reveal all I know. Not because I do not want to, but because it cannot be put into words. Not even if I were the most learned erudite vocabularian ever existing.

Jesus spoke in parables and in sayings obscure to common sense. Buddha and Chuang Tzu told stories and spoke in metaphor. Muhammad spoke what was told to him and could not speak what was not told.

To see in the dark requires that one look indirectly at the object. But it is more than that. Lao Tzu said it well: The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

As long as we are talking, we are beside the point. So all we can do is point. The best words point without getting in the way of the point. Each of us takes a look for ourselves.

On this Thanksgiving, when I ask myself what I am thankful for, I begin with a list and end in a deep and rich silence.