the poverty of the secular mind

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

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

confluential

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

willful blindness

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

an ember in the ashes of our being

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

combobulations

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

boundless

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

zzzzzz

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

changing the world

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

spiritual intelligence

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

the boundless sea

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

an interplay of forces

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

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

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

the moving of the unmoved mover

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

the melding and the melting

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

failure

An essay from Brad Olson that I wish to share.

the threshold

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

-- Van Morrison

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

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

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

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

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

cups of water

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

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

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

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

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

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

pleasing and displeasing the monkey

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

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

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

re-flect: throw back

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

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

An Interwoven Web of Harmony of Cataclysmic Forces

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

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

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

shrouds of the soul

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

And those with similar interpretations band together and rejoice.

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

the primacy of the invisible

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

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

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

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

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

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

travelling across thought communities

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

the cross and the empty tomb

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

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

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

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

like bugs skating and yelling

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

off the grid

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

Inspired Mind and Ratio Mind

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

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

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

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

two minds

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

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

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

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

Sacred mind: Templum mind.

the laughter is our own

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

the realm of dynamic energy

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

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

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

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

what is the sound of one flea sucking?

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

the two lemmas

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

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

negating the negations

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

when we understand

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

downloading the One

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

born into a larger realm

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

psychic nimbus

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

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

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

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

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

a few sizes too small

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

ordinary, planetary, and cosmic consciousness

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

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

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

The Mystery of Consciousness (Part Three)

The Mystery of Consciousness (Part Two)

The Heart of Transformation -- Consciousness

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

The Mystery of Consciousness (Part One)

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

the shaman and hu tzu

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

Brad Olson and I talk a little about consciousness transformation

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

Faith

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Heart of Transformation (Part One)

Bradley Olson and I converse about The Heart Of Transformation

thank you very much

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

opportunity to re-member

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

relationship and story

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

our cup is but a thimble

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

in-form-ation and un-form-ation

On theology, doctrine, and creed: 

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

Climb to the top, then leap!

fire as a log arhythm

I see the dream out of which I awaken.
I do not see the dream I am in,
the dream I am.

All is fire, heat, and light
opening joyously
to join its Burning.

heart and soul

We are embodyings of the lifeforce. We call it karmic streaming and genetic flow and look to make sense of it that way. We are the springing of the Wellspring, its latest presenting. Keys on a piano, each sounding its own note. One piano. Every person and everything we call a "thing" is making music. Can you hear it? The inanimate is animate. Embodyings of the lifeforce.

the Light returns

Solstice, Christmas, and all Festivals of Lights are celebrations of rejoicing that the Light has once again overcome the Darkness, that Light is born into the Earth and into our hearts and souls. Where would we be if this did not happen? This is an affirmation of the Cosmos, of the Source of our Being, that we are cared for, looked after, held as worthy, appreciated. In our rejoicing, in the gladness of our hearts, we return the caring and appreciation to each other and to all that Is. A circuit is completed. The Light so freely given is reflected and returned. The reverberation of Light glows throughout the planet. We rejoice, re-juice, gain new Energy by giving it away. When our hearts open, allowing this, we smile, laugh aloud. We sing. We dance. This is the meaning of Merry.

the PRT crowd

Philosophy, religion, and theoretical physics ("theo" "rhetoric": god talk) continue to re-visit the substrate of thought: the universe is observing itself. Most folk don't give a hoot, are busy pondering other consequentials. But for those of us in the PRT crowd, that conclusion and the resultant awareness is always startling. One is looking to understand that which is looking to understand. In religio-speak, God is looking through our eyes.

soulular energy

I cannot see the soul you are unless I see with the eyes of the soul I am. You cannot see the soul I am unless you see with soul eyes. We cannot see with soul eyes unless we move beyond appearance, unless we see through appearance. When our eyes stop at the surface of others and of the world, we live in the superficial. We are not even one molecule deep.

"Deep calls unto deep." When the deep eyes of the soul I am see the depths of you and you look back, a connection occurs that overthrows the superficial, that is the salvation, the transformation, of the superficial world. We live in epiphany -- a deep understanding of and resonance with the soulular, the interflow and open connectedness of our true being.

This is the nature of "the second birth," of being "born again." We are borne (carried) out of the superficial, out of the realm of appearance. We are born now not of water (the amniotic fluid) but of spirit (the lifeforce of The-One-That-Breathes-Us). We are no longer humanimals but spiritual beings. We see, operate, move through time and outside of time (Love knows no time) as the souls we are.

All the spiritual paths, the "consciousness disciplines," know this and teach this. When we give up the world of appearance, we gain soul. "And what shall a person give, in exchange for their soul?"

dressing in the thought patterns of yesteryear

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui ("I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in"). -- Acts of Peter

We cannot see beyond our capacity. When our minds are filled with the usual stuff, we cannot see beyond the usual stuff. We are surrounded by wonders and see only our fears, our angers, our desires. We fill our consciousness with this, with that. In order to see, we need to create room. We need to have a clearance sale. Better yet, vanquish all those thoughts to other realms.

We get up in the morning and put on the same old clothes, dressing ourselves in the thought patterns of yesterday and yesteryear and yesterdecade. If we want to see, the best thing to do is to have no clothing at all. We are naked anyway, maintaining only the illusion of clothing. Our souls are bare. Our hearts are open. Our wounds are showing and speak with loud voices. The social contract is to act as if this is all covered. Ignore as you are ignored.

We wish to know the meaning of life, yet we keep ourselves occupied. This is the sign we place on our soul's door: Occupied. Do Not Disturb. We can keep ourselves in this soporific trance all our life. No one will fault us for it. It is expected.

If we truly wish to see, we clear. We open room.

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui ("I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in").

consumed

Do not come to me with your latest salvational plan! I find solace only in the burning flame of my heart. This heart! The only heart I have and am. This is where new birth arises!

Get out of my way with your pre-structured visions of Christ! I do not want to be welcomed into your holy order. I experience Christ anew, each moment, as He and I move in harmony and disharmony, as I learn His Eternal Tango -- the Tango of the Blazing Heart.

This is the time for us all to shed our doctrinal clothes, even you Buddhists with your non-doctrine doctrine, your thin transparent raincoat of no thing. And you Christians, with your smug self-satisfaction of a reserved seat in the celestial choir. And you Taoists who want to be the water without ingestion for fear of choking and drowning. And you Muslims shrouded in a Law with no taste of the open-hearted surgery of Rumi and Hafiz. I have no time nor inclination to mention all the rest of the blustering clusterings, but you know who you are, you Legion of Doctrinaires!

Goodbye! I have no time for you! I live in and as this roaring alchemical furnace. One walks with me here in this burning, this heart flaming. And don't tell me you know Him, because you don't! To know is to possess and no one possesses this eternal One.

Stop staring at me, let your own heart burn!

gnosis and a-gnosis

There are those who live in the world of Appearance and know nothing of the realm that births these Apparitions. They live in the external and know nothing of the internal, suppress it even if there is opportunity. They say there is nothing hidden and, even if there was, one cannot know it. A-gnosis. Not knowing.

There are those who live in the world of Appearance whose feet walk another Ground, whose hearts are open to the tastes of wider Mystery. They occupy both external and internal, knowing that the internal is the Eternal. They too say there is nothing hidden. It is here for all to see. Gnosis. Knowing.

four realms

Supraconscious: Identification with the Interflow of All.
Mesoconscious: Hovering above the conscious, knowing there is something more.
Conscious: Attending to societal daily life.
Subconscious: Propelled by animal desire and fear.

radiant interflow

And Man said, Let us open to the Radiant Interflow of all things, human and otherwise, the molecular, the submolecular, the bodily, the cosmic, and the supracosmic. Let us open our Hearts to each other, all and everywhere, and stop stomping each other into the dirt. Let us feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and speak Truth from the core of our being. Let the Radiant Interflow be the guide of our actions. And it was so. And the Babe of 2012 was born. Galeropia 4: 10 - 12.

genesis

And Man said to himself, Let us build an earthly paradise with new kitchen appliances and earn our living by the manipulation of money which is no sweat at all and become dependent on long-distance trucking for our food and put a pot on every belly and a frenzy for new gadgets and f**k all this spiritual crap from ages past. And Man did. And Man surveyed his domain and saw that it was bad, very bad. II Melanoma 2: 1-3.

fruit-bearing tree

Whatever we follow, we become.
Follow means to be absorbed by.
When we follow music, we become music.
When we follow justice, we become justice.
When we follow understanding, we become understanding.
Whatever we follow, we become.

I follow the God-Man Jesus.
I do not follow the doctrine.
I do not follow the common conceptions.
I follow the God-Man.
In following the God-Man, I become Joy.
I become an embodying of the Unseen and the Seen.

You follow what you follow.
I follow Heart-Music and Joy.
I do the Wu Chi Ku in my soul.
I "dance before the Lord with all my might."
Whatever you follow, you become.
In following the God-Man, I am becoming a god-man.
This tree is bearing fruit.

the party of the heart

The Christian mystics, Buddhist mystics, Islamic mystics, Jewish mystics, Hindu mystics, and all the other mystics shed their clothes of doctrine and enter their naked hearts for wisdom and for love. When they see each other, they laugh with pleasure and dance their heart dance. When the theologians of all those realms meet, each tries to convince the others of the errors of their ways. The first group has a party. The second group has a debate.

story

When we are babes and children, other people tell us stories of who we are and what is going on. We adopt our version of those stories as Our Story. As we grow older, we continue to revise Our Story based upon formal education and upon our experiences in life.

We generally do not think of Our Story as a story but think of It as The Truth. At certain times in our life, we may switch Our Story to a different one. This may be called Conversion or we may call it Finally Waking Up. What we wake up to is a New Story or a wider and deeper rendition of our Old Story.

Everything is story. Everyone weaves their story about what is going on. Those with similar stories form a Story Force. There are usually only three or four Story Forces going on on the planet at the same time. Stories have great power of transformation.

Due to childhood visionary experiences, I have always been embedded in a Cosmological Story, a vision of us humans as semi-blind creatures fumbling around on a magnificently beautiful planet. We are insignificant yet somehow mysteriously important. Or, if not important, treasured and loved.

I opened and continue to open to all the cosmological stories of all cultures of all time periods. I like all the God-Man and God-Woman stories. The idea and vision of our Source becoming human and walking around is thrilling. I like that story and I like all the Prodigal Stories, where the human gets totally lost and diverted from their original purpose, forgetting who they are and living in a strange land either in unsatisfactory riches or in hog pen slime. Then at some point they awaken and return home. Great rejoicing occurs and a big party is thrown.

I figure if you are going to have a Story, you may as well make it adventurous and the Best One Possible. I have yet to encounter a story outside of the Cosmological Story that is any better or makes any more sense to me. But I live and let live. Everyone has their story and I have mine.

P.S Not only do we have our Story. Our Story has us.

falling off the know ledge

We can know only according to our capacity. Small capacity, small knowing. How can we increase our capacity? Through surrender. Surrender to the One who breathes us. How does one do that? That is a matter between you and Him. I give you a hint though. It's Personal, involves your Heart, and ends up in Laughter. Open Hearty Laughter produces and is Great Capacity. It only comes through surrender to our Source. Then we know as we are known. Capaciously.

hearts of light and love

We owe our existence to Mystery. I call that Mystery God. The Mystery deliberately took on human form and walked the earth. This is also a Mystery. One might object and say we are all embodyings of the Mystery. There is a slight difference in consciousness, however, between us and Jesus.

Read on. I am well aware that there are many levels of understanding here. You have yours. I am not looking to convert you to anything (though, in my opinion, if we all converted to each other's spiritual path without leaving our own, it would be a mighty fine thing). I am simply saying what I see and understand.

As both Henry Corbin and Emanuel Swedenborg have pointed out, three types of consciousness exist: natural, spiritual, and celestial. Natural man ("man" includes both genders) thinks that only matter matters and is caught up in the world of appearance, of physical sensation. Spiritual man sees through the world of appearance, follows the promptings of a wounded heart of Love, opens to a wisdom of Light. Celestial man lives directly in and is the Love and Light of Mystery. Jesus was and is celestial man. Whether we follow Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Krishna, Lao Tzu, or another spiritual teacher, may we all move in that direction, our opening to celestial consciousness.

I believe that we are at the end of the age of natural man (the Kali Yuga). It has been tried and found lacking. What has been proclaimed as the end of the world (Apocalypse) is the birth of the new. This is taking place in the spiritual realm, not the physical. Rather than ruling our internal lives with an external focus, we are beginning to rule our external lives from hearts of Light and Love.

mind sets

We generally regard our own mind set as reality. Though we may not speak of it this way, we regard this consciousness set as our sacred ground, as our "scientific" base for knowing reality.

Those with different mind sets are regarded with suspicion and are thought to be out of touch with reality. We are thus free to continue our judgment of "them," to assign to them various labels of degradation, and to consign their souls to hellish domains.

We pilot our little space ships of consciousness through the universe preferring to dock only at space ports containing flag ships bearing similar insignia to ours. Unless . . .

Unless we go out of our minds and open with Love. It is said that Light is the intelligence of the universe and Love is its heat. We transform. We move from being self-contained mindsets, busybodies of the cosmos, to radiant spheres of Light and Love.

No mindset needed.

dear unborn kin

Dear Unborn Kin,

We in our time have destroyed the temple within us and have thus become mere sensual animals seeking continuous entertainment and advantage. We call this, with pride, rational behavior. It has led to our ruin.

Some of us are outlaws from this societal norm. We nurture our inner temple, this place of con-templ-ation. This inner temple allows free and open communion with our Source and all those who have gone before us.

We are seeing the rebirth of this place of connection, this inner temple, this meeting place of the celestial and the terrestrial, where true wisdom and power reside, where vision is once again forthcoming, and through which we work our way, in consort with the divine, out of this darkness in which we now dwell.

By the time this letter reaches you, you will already know if we were successful. I am betting my life that we are.

Lovingly,
Your Ancestor

the essential work of our age

For the human species to survive in any meaningful way, we must be prepared to birth a new consciousness which opens to the living heart of the best of our previous consciousness systems and goes beyond what has yet been seen. This is the essential work of our age.

the veil of the temple of your heart

When the veil of the temple of your heart is split, when the comfy little illusion of reality you have woven is no more, you will be born. You have no idea what awaits you, for all ideas are veils. It takes courage to allow this leap; beliefs are of no avail -- are the veil. Courage (coeur-age) is of the heart. Full open heart. When the veil of the temple of your heart is split, when the comfy little illusion of reality you have woven is no more, you will be born.

conduits

As humans, we are body and soul. As body, we are made up of the same material as all creatures of the earth and the visible cosmos. As soul, we are composed of the same spiritual elements as all beings of the invisible realms.

As body, we resonate with all that has physical existence. The entire physical realm is our larger body. As we treat it, so we treat ourselves.

As soul, we attune to the harmonic wonder and mystery of the Great Soul. We interflow with That which births us, which breathes us. We receive direct Personal energy and companionship.

As humans, we are embodyings of heaven and earth. We are ladders firmly planted on the ground and reaching into the sky. Angelic spheres of energy ascend and descend within our being, bringing heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

Conduits. This is who we are. All else is chatter.

on not killing ourselves with our thoughts

Every thought is accompanied by emotion. Every emotion produces physiological changes. These changes stress the body. The body knows no difference between the images you create with your thoughts and "reality." For example, an imagined poisonous snake produces the same alarm reactions within the body as the presence of a real snake. You can sicken and kill yourself with your thoughts. "As you think, so you are."

Practices have been developed for moving beyond thought. Here is the simplest one I know. Sit in a quiet place and put your attention on your breathing. When your attention is captured by a thought, bring your attention back to your breathing. That's it. Over time, you will be able to step outside of any chain of thought. You can simply be here. Breathing.

Now there is room for Awareness. A whole new world opens.

thoughts from reading henry corbin in the early a.m.

"In the beginning was the Word." The Word in Its ruminations eventually gave rise to the concept of self-doubt. Every concept is experienced immediately and fully. Self-doubt produces anger; self-doubt and anger co-arise. The Word now includes both Light and Dark. No opposition here. Inclusion. The self-doubt and the emotions that arise with it, the Dark of the Word, are fed back into the Light of the Word. Dark becomes Light and Light becomes Dark and the two are not at war but eternally merge into each other. Dark is not evil. Dark is a momentum within the Word allowing creative and continuous transformation.

We humans have much to learn from this. Our self-doubt and the anger that arises from our doubting ourselves lead us to war. War against ourselves. War against each other. Were we to follow the example of the Word, we would see the darkness of self-doubt as an ally allowing our own creative and continuous transformation. Rather than making war, we would allow the continuous flow of Light into Dark and Dark into Light to transform and open our Heart.

a person whose focus

A person whose focus is on the world of appearance rather than upon deeper reality rides roughshod over the tender toughness of the heart of nature, sells the soul of the earth for material gain and pleasure. Hungry ghosts with vast mouths, narrow constricted throats, and forever unsatisfied and bloated bellies. We celebrate them as successes. We are them.

my proof to me of God's existence which will not be accepted by anyone caught in Aristotelian logic nor of an argumentative nature but will be understood fully and completely by the Fedele d'Amore

How can the Object of such Love not exist?

transcendence of humanimal

Our job, as humanimals, is to open to a higher forming, as caterpillar opens to butterfly, as plant opens to flower. If we do not, we are seed fallen on barren ground. We die without giving anything back. There is no return on this investment.

Each of us has a personal God. We may not think of it in those terms but there is something above all else we worship in our lives. The greater the radiance of our God, the greater our radiance. The more smudgy our God, the more smudgy we are. You can tell a person's God by the radiance of their being. We become the God we serve.

No more brilliant radiance exists than the Source of our being. When we open in love to the Source of our being, we transcend humanimal. A circuit is completed and that love reverberates forever.

capacity

In the spiritual realm, the realm of the psyche, we can only know what we have the capacity, the capaciousness, to know. We cannot comprehend what falls outside our capacity.

How do we increase our capacity, our ability to see the presently unseen? By continually knocking on the door of the bounds of our walls. "Knock, and it shall be opened." But not with one or two feeble knocks followed by a sigh and the words: "I tried. God knows, I tried." Tried brings only trials.

That-Which-Breathes-Us knows the difference between true knocking and just messing around. "God is not mocked." Sin-cere means "with heart" or "from the heart." When we sincerely knock through our asking, our reading, our listening, our moment-by-moment relations with all around us, by the very way we walk, talk, and eat our food, walls will drop away, our capaciousness of consciousness will expand.

This opening and expansion is an extension of Grace. One has to be graceful, grace full, to receive Grace. Knocking at the door is graceful action and when the door opens, Grace is on the other side.

three realms

Three realms: (1) the humanimal realm, (2) the inner or esoteric realm, (3) the unending depths of the inner; the esoteric of the esoteric.

The humanimal realm contains the potential for the birth of humans. Much of the socio-political world is inhabited by and created by humanimals. This is the world of turmoil, the cauldron out of which true humans can be born. Humanimals know little or nothing of the esoteric realm and are motivated by their genitalia, their mouths, and a false image of themselves. We are all humanimals until born into the inner realm. We stop attending to our advantage in the exoteric and open as pilgrims of the esoteric.

The inner or esoteric realm is the realm of spirit, of spiritual intelligence and awareness. When we open in this realm, we become human, no longer humanimals. We receive guidance, knowledge, and understanding. We belong to a vast community of those who have gone before us and those yet to come. We are at home while on an unending journey, a journey of boundless compassion and understanding.

The realm of the esoteric of the esoteric, the inner depths, is the Wellspring from which all knowledge, wisdom, and compassion arise. As we turn away from the humanimal, open to our humanness, we begin to live in the realm of the Angelic. We do not know what this means until we live here.

The three realms. We choose the realm in which we live, in which we cast our fortune, our life. We find that not only do we choose, we are chosen. Love is mutual.

a pome: 2:35 a.m. on a fine november morning

S/he sat within the womb of social custom
fearful of making a move lest s/he tumble
into unknown realms.

Grateful when social custom allowed
revolt against social custom
sensing wild free-flowing freedom
while remaining within the womb,
the womb of social custom.

Who dares to leap into life,
naked babe wielding sword and rose?

duende

You want life presented to you? A crystal plate of petit-fours to munch in cute little crumbless nibbles? Here! I toss it from you!

I see your mouth! A gaping hole of fangs feeding on life's wound. This mouth of wounding tells all, yawns open, revealing insatiable depth.

The narrow way is made a broad highway. No path exists now, no path at all. No path but the rich dark blood gushing from each pounding of the heart. This can be trusted! This and only this! This life arising from fierce darkness, of mystery, of being.

vehicles

Ego is a way of maneuvering in the material world. Our learned ways of manipulating the material world (consolidated into what we call ego) are of no value in maneuvering in the spiritual world. A different vehicle is needed.

The vehicle for maneuvering in the spiritual world possesses characteristics opposite to the vehicle for maneuvering in the material world. Where the ego vehicle is blaming, judgmental, clinging, suspicious, desirous, unsatisfied, opportunistic, greedy, self-admiring, self-doubting, ambitious, masturbatory, violent, contemptuous, and stuporous, the vehicle for maneuvering in the spiritual world is mindful, open, loving, acceptant, calm, surrendering, forgiving, contemplative, energizing, engaging, diamond sharp, relentless, present, aware, quiet, and knows no bounds.

Two very different vehicles. The consolidated ego and the radiant sphere. We are all wounded. The ego is the protective scab over our wound. The radiant sphere is the opening of our wounding to the healing of the Wellspring, the Source which births and breathes us. Driving our ego vehicle, we go nowhere at all. As a radiant sphere, we are always already everywhere.

the cosmic ultradian rhythm

Every hour and a half we fall into the depths of matter. Every hour and a half we open into the transcendence of spirit. This is called the Ultradian Rhythm -- a physiological or biochemical rhythm that comes with being a human. We sink and we rise in a 90 minute cycle.

What is true for an individual also has its counterpart in the cosmic cycle. "As above, so below." "As the macrocosm, so the microcosm." We have reached the end of an age of sinking (the Kali Yuga it is called by some) and are opening to an age of strong lifeforce and trance-end-ence.

interflow

"...(N)ot only do we create a picture of the world, but the picture retroactively changes us" (Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 361-362). As I have said before, whatever we attend to, we become. The implications of this are enormous.

Meister Eckhart states it boldly: "We are entirely transformed into God and changed into Him." Attending to the Radiance of our Source changes us into that Radiance. Attending to the denseness of matter changes us into that denseness. Attending to the Radiance of our Source while engaging life fully as a human transforms the world.

inclusion

In early personhood (age 12 and on), I began learning the art of disappearing so that others could appear. Later, as a practicing psychologist, this was essential.

Rather than being an evangelist of my own consciousness state, looking for as many converts as possible, turning out little clones of George ("if you will only be like me, your psychospiritual problems will disappear"), I condensed into a centering point, thus allowing full play to the other's expression of their psychic state. This disappearance while being fully present is called listening.

Without losing one's own center, one is "converted" to another person's way of thinking. This is true not only for the consciousness states of individuals, but also for the larger more inclusive consciousness states known as world views or religions or cultures and their subcultures. This is why I am a Christian Taoist Pagan Agnostic Buddhist Islamic Hindu Atheist Wakan Tankan Scientist...

As the world continues to shrink and we are increasingly tossed into each other's laps, it is important to be converted to each other's way of seeing without losing our own view. We center within our own being while opening to the views of others.

No longer are we colonialists looking to colonize the world with our superiority, we are neighbors. Neighbors opening and listening and speaking when it is our turn. This is called consideration -- con-side-ration (sitting side by side). We ride this bus together.

laughter and delight

you have such diverse life experience. what do you think led you to the peaceful spot you are now? (as opposed to other more violent, hard, judgmental spots)

An excellent neighbor friend posed that question in her response to a Geezer blog post where I spoke of sitting in the sun on a geezer bench downtown amusing myself by running through the various hand strikes for attacking a person's body. I responded: Laughter and Delight.

True, but what prompts these twin energies, this double helix spiraling, this interwoven ascendency of flame and light that I feel at my core, that I am? It's certainly not little Georgie though he does his part in staying open to this indwelling flowthrough of cosmic energies.

When we are young, we choose our role models, consciously or unconsciously. And maybe they also choose us because we have some kind of raw material that suits, like a cookie dough that is primarily suited for only one kind of cookie. The dough boy or dough girl chooses the cookie type s/he will become and the cookie type also calls the dough into shaping and firing. I chose Jesus, Hopalong Cassidy, Michael the Archangel, and Gene Autry.

I saw early on, as a kid, that I had to leave my heart open no matter how much it got hurt. I also saw that to lie down in the road and let others leave their tire tracks across your face was no good. One had to have an open heart while standing up to whatever came. Voila! Warrior.

Now I could go into the sociopsychological and cultural influences that shape a person, that shape us all, but that was not "what led me to the peaceful spot" I am now. I was taken and shaken. My awareness was opened dramatically yet lovingly to knowing that I am an embodying of the cosmos, of the Source, of the Wellspring. I was 12. I have written of it elsewhere. That awareness continues to fine tune itself. I look like little Georgie but I have stars in my eyes.

I am peaceful because I trust That-Which-Breathes-Me. As Rumi says, "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home." I know that Whoever. I am a warrior because I have no fear. I am the Source sourcing and so are we all.

Thank you, dear neighbor, for asking the question.

bubble boy and bubble girl

Rather than opening as an unadulterated expression of Mystery, we have introduced a bubble in which we dwell. We call it a self or soul. It is a figleaf of our imagination with which we try to cover ourselves.

It has wrenched itself off from the tree of life. It's such a sap.

The bubble soul self constantly wants to dress its wound. It wants stuff to stuff its hole, that aching void it has created.

It wants adventure. It wants entertainment. It wants drama. It wants turmoil. It wants peace but not that much peace thank you.

It wants to possess other self soul bubbles and bind them close, maybe make a bubble raft in this vast and lonely cosmic ocean it has created through its bubbularity.

It wants to stand alone. It wants somebody else to fix things. It wants. It wants. It wants.

Bubble boy and bubble girl. Where's my pin?

Pop! Holy Shit! What a vast openness!

salvational campaign

I figure if we are going to launch a campaign to save something (whatever our favorite salvational target of interest), we may as well go all the way and Save Everything. Better still, how about a campaign to Destroy That Which Is Destroying What We Want To Save. I guess that would be humans and the natural course of the universe itself. In order to Save Everything, we would have to Destroy Everything. But wait! Isn't that what is already going on every nanosecond?

once upon a time

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in stark reality. Black and white. Up was up and down was down and by god don't give him any of the all is relative stuff because he had trouble with his relations anyway and he prided himself in his hardheaded stubbornness and believed that once fooled, always a fool and he had fooled himself too many times, made a fool of himself over other people mostly and got hurt and so he closed his heart and said what heart? the head is where it's at and kept strict accounting of everything and lived in ledger domain thanking god except he knew there wasn't one that he wasn't foolish anymore like all those others until a chevy pickup almost ran him down one day and the startle sent a lightning flash unbolting his pent upness and he fell to the ground weeping and sobbing and couldn't hold himself together anymore, see him over there? wearing rainbows, his head all exploded into a cloud of glory and the vast unseen, wondering why people took life so seriously, making things so grave and he thought about starting a church of the eternal chevy pickup but said nah! too black and white, everybody has to get run down by their own vehicle

consciousness states

We live both AS a consciousness state and WITHIN a state of consciousness. When I say that we are living AS a consciousness state, I mean that we are unaware of our state of consciousness. We have not separated ourselves from our state of consciousness. We cannot look at the state we are in. There is no we, no I. We are “caught up” in our consciousness state. The consciousness state is us.

When I say that we are living WITHIN a state of consciousness, I mean that we are aware of our state of consciousness. We feel that we exist independently of our state of consciousness. We move around within it and look at its components and marvel at its mystery. The consciousness state is both us and not us. We are an observer and are aware that we are an observer.

When I live AS a state of consciousness, there is no subject-object split. I am neither subjective nor objective. I AM. When I live WITHIN a state of consciousness, I am the subject and all else is object. When WITHIN, I am not aware that I am both subject and object. When WITHIN, it seems clear to me that I am the operating factor and all else is operated upon.

As soon as I say that I live AS a state of consciousness, I am no longer living AS a state of consciousness. As soon as I say that I live AS a state of consciousness, I live WITHIN a state of consciousness. As soon as I say that I live AS a state of consciousness, I have cast myself out of that Garden of Eden into exile. I am outside looking in. This is why “those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know.”

When I live AS a state of consciousness, I am a flow of knowing, of gnosis. When I live WITHIN a state of consciousness, I have removed myself from the flow of knowing. I live in ig-gnosis, in ignore-ance. I ignite myself with my own being. A certain darkness settles, an ig-night.

A holo-archy of states of consciousness exist. This holoarchy is similar to but different from a hierarchy. In a hierarchy, one is on a rung of a ladder. One is separate from the ladder and from all the other rungs. One has one’s state of consciousness and aspires to the states on higher rungs (or slips and falls to a lower state). A holoarchy is a set of nested states of consciousness. One can open to wider consciousness. The opening to wider consciousness has no end.

When one lives AS a state of consciousness, one lives holoarchically. One is an ever-widening sphere of consciousness, a sphere with no surface, no bounds. Information flow is immediate and certain. One lives in im-mediacy. No mediation is needed. One lives as certainty, an inclusive certainty.

The reverse is true when one lives WITHIN a state of consciousness. One lives hierarchically. Information flow is mediated. One needs a mediator and is either in a search for one or has found one. The mediator tells one what is real and what is not. Mediators who live AS a state of consciousness differ from mediators who live WITHIN a state of consciousness.

Let us call living WITHIN a state of consciousness Exclusive. Let us call living AS a state of consciousness Inclusive. Exclusive consciousness sets up barriers and excludes. One becomes objective (and even objectionable). Inclusive consciousness can be thought of as surrounded by a semipermeable membrane allowing free informational energy interflow. When there is no membrane, inclusive consciousness becomes a state of ecstasy.

living in the world of soul

We know that we are made in the fashion of creatures. We have teeth and claws, genitalia, and a voracious mouth. Out of this animal base, something more is struggling to awareness. We call this, soul.

We make a distinction between the creature world and the world of soul. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" -- Jesus (Mark 8:36). What is soul but that which aspires beyond the world and its satisfactions?

We live in the land of the visible, afraid of the Dark, the Invisible which surrounds us and is True Light. We love our little creaturely ways, and snack and snark on our sensual pacifiers. Standing in a pool of dark we take for light, we live in a blazingly yet softly lit universe of Radiance, Mercy, and Compassion. Our awareness grows and we see this. We are this. We become this.

We leave the pool of darkness we take for light and open to the Darkness of the Mystery which births us. We drop the dark known and open to the Radiant Unknown. We laugh. We are still creature but no longer creature. We live in the world of soul.

standing on nothing

The highest teaching is that we stand on nothing, and this nothing is everything.

The highest understanding is that there is no "under" standing.

As soon as we stand on something, the whole universe concretizes like Kurt Vonnegut's Ice Nine.

When we stand on nothing, the whole cosmos springs to life.

Standing on nothing is not the same as standing for nothing.

In standing on nothing, a great open heart beats for all.

the merciful lifeflow

Only that which is nonexistent exerts influence, and not that which is existent. If the latter seems to exert an influence, it is only by the authority of that which is nonexistent. Ibn Al'Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom

In my workshops, I focus often on Energy Flow and upon our conscious opening to this LifeForce that brings us into being and sustains us. This Energy is neither an onrush of emotion nor the focused calculation of intellect.

While these two (feeling and thinking) are necessary components of a human, they can also get in the way of the flow of Spirit, of the LifeForce. This is why I teach centering and opening. Centering and opening allow a conduit for the flow of this vital Energy. One moves in accord with the continuous unfolding of Life Itself.

That great visionary Ibn Al'Arabi, in one of his writings, speaks of this LifeForce as Mercy:

The Mercy of God flows in all created beings,
and courses through the selves and essences.

We humans generally move through our day riding the waves of emotion and thought and societal demand. We give rare place to this Energetic Mercy which we are. We may take a few moments in our prayer closet or meditation chamber to acknowledge Its existence, then firmly slam the door and go on our way.

Energy Flow teaching focuses on living as a conduit of the LifeForce, an embodying of Spirit, a taoing of the Tao, a surging of the Source. It is more fun, less stressful, and leads to great unexpected adventure.

energy knots

Each of us is an energy knot in this vast and infinite multidimensional web of energy extending in all "directions." We call this knot ourselves. We love the knot we are.

Lately (within the past several hundred years), we have developed great admiration for being tightly knotted. More recently, a knot-help industry has arisen for assisting us in "finding our true knot." We develop knot-esteem.

We polish and furbish our knot and insist on its instant gratification. We pour stuff into our knot holes, somehow feeling we are not whole. And we are right about that.

Wholeness comes from loosening of the knot we are. Opening to the wider web. Allowing interflow. Soon we realize we have strong connections. Energy pours through the loosened knot. We become less and less knotty. We relax. No longer are we a knot. We are a wave (a waving) of an infinite sea of energy. All is well.

the crusted scab of rigid thought

Pull off the crusted scab of rigid thought and let the blood of your woundedness flow! You there, thinking you know what it is all about, stand down! Step out of your thin-skinned certitude and keep stepping, raw nerve endings blazing with life!

We cannot bring to heel our healing, which is always advancing beyond any certitude of thought. The instant we think we've got it, it's gone, leaving us sitting behind in a kiddie pool of thought and vain imagination.

Giddyup and go! Snap out of that trance dance! Come on, admit it! The shit you know is not the Eternal Shit! Step out here naked and foolish with the rest of creation. Throw off those clothes and stomp them beneath your feet!

let me get this straight

Let me get this straight. Two views are prevalent these days.

View 1. Consciousness stems from brain. No brain, no consciousness. When brain dies, all dies. No afterlife.

View 2. Consciousness produces brain. Brain is temporary stopping place for consciousness. When brain dies, consciousness continues.

I like and open to View 3. Something more vast than View 1 or View 2 is holding these views.

new species emerging

Even as we are destroying this planet, even as we face, perhaps even because we face, potential annihilation, a new species is emerging. Homo sapien is being replaced by Homo Noetica.

Forerunners of this species have been around for some time according to human clock time, but only for less than the blink of an eye from the viewpoint of the cosmos.

Sapiens deliberately killed many Noetica, instinctively realizing the threat and danger of their replacement.

Even now, the two species walk the earth, mortal enemies. Enemies because of differing (perhaps orthogonal) agendas. Enemies, because though they walk the same planet, they live in different worlds.

Sapiens live in separative consciousness. As a result they seek power “over.” Sapiens feel the world is a place of scarcity and of competition. Sapiens want to own the world. Sapiens are fearful and hostile.

Sapiens are both slaves and masters, having invented and brought to life a social system based on hierarchy. Hierarchical participation makes one simultaneously slave and master. Unless one is at the “top” (wherever that is) as Absolute Master or at the “bottom” as Absolute Slave. Those at the “top” get all the goodies; those at the “bottom” get whatever trickles down, usually little or nothing.

Noetica live in unitive consciousness. As a result, they naturally comprehend power “with.” Noetica know the universe as a place of abundance and plenty. Noetica know that nothing can be owned, that “property” relies on theft and greed, an action and a quality of separative consciousness.

Noetica are at home in the universe. Noetica know they are star material. Noetica know they are earth walking.

Noetica are loving and open with fierce intent — the fierceness and the gentleness of the universe unfolding. Noetica know they are the universe manifesting.

Noetica have trouble with the triviality of the sapien world.
Noetica do not fit in a world based on greed, hostility, and stupor. Noetica live in a larger realm.

Noetica cannot abide a hierarchy. The social system of Noetica is based upon holoarchy — systems within systems within systems. Everything is in relation. No slaves. No masters. Holoarchy is the way the universe operates.

Noetica are appearing on earth in two ways. Some are born as Noetica. Some are born as sapiens and become Noetica.

Any sapiens can become Noetica. Any sapiens can shift from separative to unitive consciousness. This transmutation is the Happening of the Day.

Awareness

The evolution of human consciousness requires opening to the powers and energies of the Origin, our Source, while letting go of concrete systems of conceptual thought designed by our ancestors to explain and contain those energies. (The one who said the old wine bags cannot contain new wine has himself been thrust into an old wine bag.) This is both a painful and exhilarating process. We continue being born, letting go of past consciousness structures in our birthing. We are being born into new Awareness -- forming conscious partnership with The-One-Who-Breathes-Us. We are Earth walking. We are the Cosmos embodying. We see and we are seen.

the context and the Context

We do not create our Context but we create our context. The two interflow and change extends in both and all directions. This is our power -- living as the spiritual body of our soul, as radiant spheres of influence.

The quality of our radiance affects the entire realm of being. Our context, which we create every moment, every nanosecond, helps transform the Context. By Context I do not mean the socio-political world (though that is affected too). I mean It All.

As Sir Arthur Eddington put it: When the electron vibrates, the universe shakes. As our context goes, so goes the Context.

lullaby baby

Infinity is in every direction
and wherever I am is home.

I create a blanket of bounds
and wrap myself in it,
projecting onto it all my desires and fears.

I float through this life
wrapped in my holographic blankie
resonating with others of similar cloth.

When the body drops I continue
my holographic journey until
I realize I am doing this to myself.

I awaken to worlds beyond my bounds.

simultaneous citizenship

Transformation of this world comes through seeing the world that produces this world. And not only seeing it (through our visionary organ of sight), but becoming its citizen. Simultaneous citizenship -- living in the world that produces this world while living in this world.

dying as a profession

"true philosophers make dying their profession" Plato

Attachment embroils one in the melodrama of that to which one is attached. Many are addicted to and thrive on melodramatic energies, but wisdom is not to be found there. With detachment, one still participates but in a calm fashion, without the boiling of the embroiling. With detachment, one sees more clearly, has access to an observatory for the viewing and understanding of wisdom.

Detachment is a form of dying. Like all dying it is also an opening to new life. One must let go of this moment to live in the next moment: a continuous dying from which new life and its wisdom springs. "True philosophers (lovers of wisdom) make dying their profession."

knowing

What hardly anyone seems to get is that we ARE the universe embodying (in Christian language, we ARE children of God; in Buddhist speak, we ARE the body of Buddha; in Tao talk, we ARE the Tao taoing). Instead we are fascinated with societal minutiae and spend much of our lives staring at and dealing with matters of inconsequential triviality. We love illusion and entertainment and suck them unto ourselves like a snake swallowing a glass egg -- never filling and always searching for more. What a different world this planet would enjoy if we opened awareness to this one understanding: WE ARE THE UNIVERSE EMBODYING.

personifying

I know that the Energies moving from the Beginning and from Beyond the Beginning are the same energies moving undiminished in the unfolding of this Eternal Now. The outbreathing of our Source continues and we are that outbreathing.

I know that some do not like to do so, but I take that personally. As a person I am in the image of that which births me. Not as a human with arms and legs and head and body, but as a person.

I do not personify our Source. Our Source personifys (makes a person of) me. As we are breathed into being by that which is eternal and immortal so are we eternal and immortal -- as persons, not as humans.

Our personing will assume other forming according to the will (the Life Current) of our Source and according to our capacity to re-form.

Convinced we are eternal and immortal, what is it we do here? We open in full to the healing of this world.

thankful for those who have walked this path before

I am told I did not cause myself, that a sperm and egg conjoined, the glint in my father's eye met my mother's gasp. I know not of such matters. I feel more like the cosmos manifesting, daring to take on this form now. My progenitors are the holy ones, who both birth me and are my companions. I marvel that others seem not to know this about themselves.

transfer of accounts

A world exists beyond our world and exists invisibly within this earthly world. We cannot touch it with our science but dwell in it with our gnosis, our knowing. Knowing comes from the heartmind, larger than the intellect. We continue in the world yet are not of the world. We die before we die. We settle our accounts before we are called to account. We live in the world beyond this world, the heavenly world, the spiritual world, while continuing to live in this world. This is our practice. This is our grace. This is our salvation. We lay up our treasures in heaven. We disengage from the treasures of this world and engage with the treasures of the other world, the world beyond which is here now. Mercy and justice are two such treasures and only exist in this world through those open to them in the other world. When one begins to call the world beyond, "this world," and begins to call this world, "the world I'm leaving behind," the transfer of accounts is being made. Every one of us is making this transition. Some of us make it consciously while now here.

baptism

In my first baptism (age 12 or so),I was dunked by a minister in the baptismal pool behind the choir loft in front of the whole congregation. It was an affirmation of what had already happened. My heart had been flooded with an Awareness I will not even begin to attempt to explain.

In my second baptism (age 37 or so), I took off all my clothes and jumped through a hole in the ice in a wild stretch of the South Dakota Missouri. I plunged into the brown murkiness, looked up, saw the light above me, and rose into new life. It was an affirmation of what had already happened. I was born out of the world of men and into the world of the Earth, the Cosmos, and all living, dying, transforming.

go out of your mind

A wisdom saying is that one is to go out of one's mind. What mind is that? The conventional mind, the mass herd mind we were taught and cling to. And its shadow, the mind developed by rebellion against the conventional mind, which after all is merely its reverse image. Anti-conformity is conformity in different guise. And the third mind, the consciousness state used to escape the first two. No need to tout #3 as holy. If so, one is still not out of one's mind. Like Mister Buddha said, when you reach the other shore, no need to carry the boat around. Ditch Buddha and his infernal boat too! Chase all those holy scalawags away including the scalawag doing the chasing.

the seeking of the Grail

We open into the agony of consciousness, transfixed on a cross of space and time. Emerging from the unconscious state, we are the space-time cross. We are the lance which pierces Christ's side and heart. We seek the Grail which contains the blood signifying both the wound we have inflicted by our expansion and its healing. The blood of the wound is the blood of the healing.

We are the body pierced and the piercer. The darkness of our unconsciousness pierces the supraconsciousness with our consciousness. We project the wound out there in Christ's body. We are the wound. We seek its (our) healing. We find it when we find the Grail cup, when we become the Grail cup, opening to and claiming the healing blood of the wound itself.

What does this mean? It means we open to the audaciousness of our rise to consciousness and its attendant guilt. Whom does the Grail serve? Those who are pure of heart, of consciousness, who no longer have a lance to thrust, even in toothpick size. Those who have become the Grail, catching every precious drop of the blood pouring forth from the wound, while expressing its healing power. This is the state of consciousness we seek. This is the state of consciousness we next attain.

confluence

Some say there is a world after this one.
I say it coexists with us now.

journey

Only when I went to zero, stopping at nothing, did I begin to open to the richness and fulness of the mysteries of the realm of life-and-death. Jettisoning the rigid form of past ages, I strode through the Eternal Night seeking the Lion requiring bearding. He was myself, my inner depths. We reconciled and emerged from the Tomb of Darkness to new life, the Light of the Eternal Dawn -- the Place where Dark and Light eternally merge as One.

awe

Last week I woke from a powerful dream in which I was imbued with awe -- the experience and the vision was such that I should have been in terror (not fright, terror!) yet was not. That state of wide open amazement, touched by the presence and imagery of a Power far greater than my own, when terror could be an appropriate response but was not, was awe. (So no longer give me your "awesome" about trivial events.)

I came upstairs to write using the computer, but found a note of frustration from my partner saying our cable link to the internet had been severed for several hours. She left a log of her calls to the cable techie and all the manipulations they had performed to restore the link to no avail. I looked at the modem where the light display indicated still no link.

Without thought and with the full energies of awe from the dream, I willed the modem to turn on. It did immediately. This is the faith that will move mountains.

synthronicity

Carl Jung helped popularize the concept and reality of synchronicity. A few years ago, synthronicity, the word and its meaning emerged into my consciousness in the wee hours of one morn. I spoke of the concept to Jean Bolen, a Jungian who wrote a book on synchronicity, but she seemed to give it little heed. Can't say as I blame her, confronted by a bohunk from the hinterlands waxing eloquent (or at least verbose) on such an abstruse topic.

Syn-throne-icity: simultaneous sitting on the throne of Creation. Folk have been crucified, drawn-and-quartered, stake burned for suggesting less. God and I occupying the same seat at the same time. This is, or can consciously be, a continuing occurrence for each of us. It is occurring all the time. We are self-hypnotized and refuse to open to it.

The seat at the center of the soul is also the seat upon which the Great Mystery sits. Synthronicity.

a parable for our times

Once there was a corporation. It was nothing but a tax break, a dodge. Then it convinced the humans who formed it to make it a real person. They did. An invisible nothingness became a being. With the obedience of the people who served it, it became larger than any human or group of humans. The corporation or Corp(se), as it began to be affectionately known among its intimates, took over the world. All humans were mere instruments of its will. A few humans did not serve the Corp(se). They followed their hearts and their hearts were strongholds of Spirit and Laughter and Love. The Corp(se) tried to ignore them, always pushing them aside. But the people persisted and would not go away. They followed Spirit, LifeForce, and knew the Corp(se) was doomed.

the matter of sub stance

We humans take a position and then we justify our position. We hover in space and swear we are substantial. Ha ha! Sub-stance-ial means beneath any stance. Why do we not swear we are suprastantial, above any stance? Because we are not above taking a stance. We are sub-stantial. We are beneath the stance we take. Encased within it like a skinny person in a fat body. Surrounded by our stance, we are a victim of our circum-stance.

A stance is a trance. A way out is to dance. A dancer dances rings around a stancer. The trance dance of a stancer is a sight to behold. Come out here and take a look. Careful, don't get too entranced or you and I will be looking at you.

on personal transformation

The only thing you wish to transform is a misbegotten piece of residue to which you cling like a drowning person in an ocean. It is giving way beneath you. Then what will you do? Look at the you who wishes to transform, not at the residue. Turn around in your consciousness and look. Who is it looking at your mind and your mind stuff? If you say "me," you are wrong, mistaken, still a poor deluded fool hypnotized by his own hypnosis.

You cannot grasp the Ungraspable. But you can see It. And there is no longer you. Both seer and seen are gone. The seer is no longer making a seen. You are It.

The thin skin of the balloon disappears. The air inside and the air outside are same air.

Awareness expands.

But you shout! I want to be somebody!

Okay, then you are still on the wheel and you can give it another round.

No, no! I want to be a little wheel in heaven and be taken care of forever.

Okay, then you are still on the wheel and you can give it another round.

No, no! I simply want more adventure. Adventure with You. Adventure as You.

Hmmm. . . I think I have just the job for you. Have you ever heard of Bodhisattva? Come with Me.

birthplace of compassion

Everything we see in others exists within ourselves. Everything. Otherwise we could not see it. This is where compassion is born.

transmeat and meat

Some believe that consciousness is nothing more than a vapor arising from the meat we are. Others hold that conscious awareness exists independently of meat. I open to both views. Simultaneously. Conscious awareness has invaded the world of meat and interflows with meat vapor.

In chakra language, meat consciousness makes up the lower chakras. Transmeat and transpersonal or cosmic consciousness radiates from the higher chakras. We are embodyings of heaven (transmeat) and earth (meat). Jacob's Ladder, the Caduceus, and the Cross are symbols of this embodying. Feet on ground and head in heavens, we live our lives.

mindful awareness

Many folk think they are their thoughts. This is not so. Mindful awareness reveals that we are not our thoughts.

Many folk feel they are their emotions. This is not so. Mindful awareness reveals that we are not our emotions.

Many folk exult in being their body. This is not so. Mindful awareness reveals that we are not our body.

no longer bound

We cast aside the vertical and began opening to the horizontal with the advent of the "enlightenment" and science. This has brought us to the mess we are in. Now it is time to reclaim both vertical and horizontal by opening to the spherical. We encompass both vertical and horizontal and go beyond. The Celtic cross is a perfect symbol for this. The circle at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal depicts humanity's next step in its evolution of consciousness. The circle, when understood and experienced multi-dimensionally is a sphere. Each of us is a sphere of consciousness extending to infinity in all "directions" with no bounds except those we set ourselves. Each of us is a sphere of consciousness within the Sphere of Consciousness which births us. Our Source is a sphere with no surface whose center is everywhere. One of those "everywheres" is you, is me, is each of us. Our understandings and adventures are limitless -- no longer bound to a constricted and inflated separative ego struggling on a horizontal plane.

stretched upon the cross of all duality

In embodying as matter, we have freely taken on the reconciliation of opposites. We are stretched upon the cross of all duality. Our task is to reconcile, redeem, restore. We do this through our heart center, the exact location pointed to by the intersection of the cross's vertical and horizontal poles.

In the vertical realm, we unify the divine and the earthly. We are a conduit of energies connecting the above and the below, the supraconscious and the subconscious. Horizontally, we face this world and all its schisms, disputes and wranglings and separations. We drop all righteousness of stance, no longer looking to "give it to them" because they are us.

Stretched upon this cross of duality, we embody all opposites. We are "all things to all men." The war is over. We have ended it within ourselves.

mythos

Each of us lives in the realm of the Imaginal. We operate out of the Imaginal into the realm of the Everyday. We embody a mythos, a state of consciousness or awareness, peopled by many forms of energetic being.

Mythos does not mean unreal. The realm of mythos is the palpable presence of a higher, wider, deeper reality that encompasses, helps birth, and interflows with human societal or dense matter reality.

Each of us lives in the land of mythos and in the space-time realm simultaneously. We shall do so until we drop the body and move on into the mythos we already inhabit.

So-called hell and so-called heaven are simply extensions of the mythos we already are and that we continue to unfold.

my home town

Do you see where Nothing has yet to come into Being?
Do you see where Everything has come into Being?
Do you see that space between the two,
the river of flow out of Nothingness into Somethingness?
I speak from here.
Here is where I live.
This is my home town.
This is where my wings spread
and I soar. All birds uncaged.

looking into the eyes of the abyss

Western spirituality is based upon experiencing oneself as a concrete "I" which, since separate and in rebellion, must be saved or transcended. Eastern spirituality focuses on dissolving into the Infinite, the Abyss. Western spirituality seeks to resolve the dilemma of 1; Eastern spirituality resolves such by becoming 0.

Nikos Kazantzakis, in his writings and his ground-breaking life, looks to experience both positions and both resolutions simultaneously, to become a different sort of human, to live in and as a consciousness state incorporating both 1 and 0. When one embodies the two, one becomes more than either of them. A third is born and walks the planet.

This consciousness state is that of one who can and does stare into the Abyss without fear or hope. Not a Christian, which depends on the continuous surrender of ego (continuous because the ego is always reclaiming its separateness). Not a Buddhist, which requires annihilation (nirvana is the blowing out of the flame). Something new. Something more like, but more than, a Zen Baptist. (The Celtic Cross is perhaps a useful symbol of this merge, with its O at the intersection of the erect cross.)

I'm describing a consciousness state which moves into and goes through the Christian experience and into and through the Buddhist experience, and emerges with a consciousness that is seeking neither salvation nor bliss, which embodies all duality and goes beyond. (Note: I use Christian and Buddhist as examples because I am most familiar with those two paths. Other spiritual paths are faced with the same 1 - 0 dilemma.)

The Christianity nearest this 1 - 0 resolution is Advaitic or Kenotic Christianity. The Buddhist path nearest this is Zen. Both lead to following a Path of No Path, then leaving that behind. My writings of the Noirior and of the consciousness state of Stagger Li are further attempts to describe this state of consciousness beyond fear and hope, this intimate acquaintance with the Force which moves us in Its perpetual desire to be born. Kazantzakis called this state of being the Cretan Glance.

morning thoughts

We wear our social being like a pair of pajamas at an all-night party.

One of the best sentences I have ever read about understanding the Tanakh, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Buddhist Sutras, the Vedic Scriptures, and so on: "...the interpretation of every text requires the knowledge of its context and the intuition of its pretext." (Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God)

We "prove" that in which we already believe. We bring into existence that which we already are.

Fatigue is a form of faith -- allowing the consequential to become inconsequential.

personifying the universe

I understand, and admire to some extent, post-modern pre-apocalypse human effort to stand alone, bloody head unbowed, with no images of God or gods. So be it and blessings to you.

As for me, I dwell within, and as, a rich tapestry, a holographic weaving of soul and spirit, a cosmos that has not just a horizontal but also a vertical dimension. I can and do plunge to the depths and soar in the heights. As Heracleitus wrote: "The way up and down is one and the same."

Below me are aspects of myself that wish to claim dominion. I own them unless I allow them to own me. Above are those I serve and continue opening to, ever-widening circles and spheres without end.

Claiming to be a person, I personify the universe. I take everything personally -- gods and demons and angels -- spiritual entities by whatever name. All spiritual entities are both inside me and outside me, for inside and outside are one and the same.

I like opening to the angels of my being -- and beyond. I know I have my roots in darkness. Yet through this darkness comes a thread of light, exploding in ecstatic joy beyond comprehension. I see this. I feel this. I am this.