August 28, 2018

Learn how to see beauty without the impulse to own it, to grasp it, to have it. Observe it without thinking. See it, let it go. Make no record of it. Learn how to experience love without possessing it. Learn how to experience compassion. Experience, let go, record no trace.

Learn how to be in the state called Life and to be fully alive without clinging to it. Learn how to live Death , how to face it directly and clearly without running from it. Learn about the state of perfection called Wholeness, learn about the reconciliation of opposites, about their enfoldment into wholeness, and make no move into it. Do not try to get there.

Learn to approach the Godhead directly, with pure observation. Learn to come cleanly, relying on no beliefs, using no tools. Beliefs and tools will always be a veil between you and the ultimate reality.

August 8, 2018

It is as it is. Let us imagine that there is an entity called “I”, and that this entity is everyone. This fact, that it is as it is, the I finds intolerable. The I has so many notions about how it should be different, or should have been different. The I has so many demands that thought constructs. As it should be, as the I wants it to be, as the I demands it to be, as the I tries to think or desire or project it into existence – is as it is not. As it should be is unreality, a construct or conditioned thought. It is an escape from reality. It is an attempt to be somewhere other than the here and now.

When the I is in the past, in the state of remembering, sorting, correcting, discussing, putting straight those things that went wrong, fondling those things that gave pleasure or comfort, weeping or raging over those things that hurt, when the I indulges in any of these states, it is in unreality. Most of the time spent in the past is invested in how it ought to have been, opposed to as it was. In all of this the I chooses illusion, refuses all that is, which is as-it-is at this moment.

When the I is in the future, there is no frame of reference other than the past. All that is imagined, all that is constructed, is put together out of the shards of memory. Whether the I puts together a shining golden vision of heaven or sees despair and destruction, it is an image projected out of and through the perceptual filter of the past. Memory is the only frame of reference. All that can be imagined springs out of whats already know. So when the I is in the future it is in the past, refusing all that is, which is as-it-is at this moment.

The past exists only as electrical traces in the brain, there is nothing real about it. The future exists only as electrical traces in the brain, it is an illusion generated out of the past. So there is no place to be in reality except here, no time to experience reality except now. There is no reality to experience except as-it-is.

The I is addicted to thought, it imagines that in thought there is reality, it imagines that thought holds some secret, some clue that will enable it to escape the pain and sorrow of the past, the imagined suffering of the future. Or it looks to find in thought a way to recapture and prolong the pleasures of the past, or to produce in the future a state of bliss. But thought, evolving out of the unreal past into the unreal future, is always of its nature a veil. All the ceaseless motion of thought, the constant restlessness, the endless cycling between past and future, all of this stands between the I and as-it-is. How then can reality be experienced clearly, truly?

Thought is not the way there. Reality is to be experienced directly only through the act of seeing. Seeing can happen only when the mind is silent, when thought has resigned. Seeing happens of itself in silence. when there is relaxed alert attention, and no effort is required. Seeing is a perceptual process, it has no thought in it. It is totally free of perceptual filters, it has no concepts attached, it does not look through the veil of the past toward the future. It is an act which is purely in the here and now.  It has no notions of what ought to be, thus it is free to apprehend what is, there are no barriers. With no barriers there is no separateness, there is wholeness, which is as it is.

July 31, 2018

When there is unconsciousness there is no awareness. Awareness comes usually through the shock of pain, of suffering. The shock brings awareness to the center. The center identifies as the self. In self-centeredness there remains suffering.

The self may seek to eliminate all that is not the center. And so the process of emptying, of reduction, is begun. This comes through increasing awareness.

When there remains something that is the center, that is still the self. When there is awareness it is the center that is aware. The self at the center might begin to observe without thought. Pure thoughtless observation is the beginning of attention. When there is attention only, the center may dissolve. Only in this state of centerlessness will the supreme identity be seen.

The greatest desire cannot bring this about, not the most intense yearning. The self cannot will its dissolution. This continues the investment in motive.

The self can practice awareness. It can practice one-pointed silence and stillness. It can begin to observe without thinking. The practice of awareness can lead to attention – seeing. It can lead to attention only when there is no motive to do so.

There is total security in pure observation – there is no self, no image of the self. There is nothing to loose, nothing to protect, nothing to fear.

July 22, 2018

I’m visiting with my great friends in surprisingly charming Hood River Oregon, sitting on the balcony with coffee. Across the way is the Columbia River, and in the distance snow covered Mt Adams. Breakfast is on the way. I am content.

Tomorrow I will drive to Eugene and meet up with Sarah to check the city out. She wants to get away from Texas heat, and I’m inclined to agree with her. Maybe a relocation? We will see.

July 12, 2018

Order is. Disorder is.

Light is. Darkness is.

See if you project a future in which order and light vanquish disorder and darkness. See what you desire and demand.

Any future projected by the demand for order is the continuation of disorder. Any future projected by the demand that light prevail is the continuation of darkness. Any future projected by the desire to return home is the continuation of lostness. The desire for security is the opposite of security. The desire for transcendence is the opposite of transcendence.

All opposites arise mutually. All demand and all desire generate opposition. The desire and demand to end desire and demand create the continuation of desire and demand.

What then is one to do? First give up the notion that there is anything to do.

Learn to observe. Learn to see desire and demand and the opposites out of which they are generated without any movement of thought.

Learn to sit still. Learn to regard desire and demand and their opposites without thinking that there is anything to be done.

Learn silence. Learn to hear the clamor and conflict of desire and demand and their opposites with a voiceless noiseless mind.

Out of observation and stillness and silence all of it can be regarded as-it-is. In the pure regard of as-it-is demand and desire vanish. In the pure seeing of as-it-is all opposites drop away.

In stillness and silence all that is is wholeness.

July 1 2018

The I asks, what am I? What is the universe, and what is my place in it? What is my purpose, and where am I going?

The Universe is One-Turn, and this is what it does, its purpose. Where it is going is Re-Turn. The entity called I is a reciprocal behavior of the universe, and its purpose is returning, participating in the constant cycling of creation. The behavior is an automatic function, it is breathing. The ego in the skin sack is breathed whether or not it knows it, whether or not it gives consent. The I exhales as the rest of creation is inhaling. The rest of creation exhales as the I inhales. It – the I and the rest – can’t will it, can’t help it. It is an organic function. The exchange of breath – one turn, in and out, is the universe, happening over and over incessantly. It is constantly being re-created,  from the vast reaches of space flowing and returning on itself, to the instantaneous coming into existence and transmutation of subatomic phenomena. Breathing is its own re-creation – this is what the universe is doing. This is its purpose, and so far as there is an I, it is the purpose of I.

Why? It is Gods nature and pleasure, it is God dancing. This process is true glory,  it scintillates with bliss, it is ecstasy, out of the self. It is the music of the spheres, the union of the source with that which springs forth. But is is veiled by the mind of the I. The first thought hides the reality and the self forgets the dance.

Recognizing is re-cognition, knowing again. When thinking stops, the veil is lifted and I can remember. One of the implications of recognizing the process and the dance is that there is no place to go, everything is already there completely, and the I is there completely. There is only this divine process, there is no end state. There is no destination, there is no future fulfillment, theres nothing to achieve, nothing to do. All grasping, reaching, striving is to no end. All notions of personal and social progress are utterly irrelevant and are further investments of the ego in itself. The idea of progress is a doing, it is the product of linear and sequential, cause and effect thinking and has nothing to do with reality. All that there has been, is now, and will come, already is. Since theres no thing, and since no thing has no beginning and no end, there is no cause and no effect. What causes a rose?

The universe and I are blossoming and flourishing as a natural and spontaneous process now, without direction, without knowing how, without the need for a why, without volition. These innumerable blossoming gestures incessantly recreating the universe look very much like a wonderfully intricate and magnificent dance. Out of the shining world of pure being, the Tao springs and flows. Out of the essence of God the universe sparkles forth. Out of the Brahman, Shiva dances destruction and creati. Shiva and I are the same, and our purpose is the dance.

The I doesn’t like this notion, especially the I inculcated in the Western traditions. The dance is all gesture, nothing about it survives nor should. It is breathed into existence and passes out of existence in an instant, and the next gesture takes its place, perfumed by its predecessor. This all happens naturally and is a gesture filled with grace, graceful and no-thing.

June 29,2018

In the early 1980s I was undergoing a lot of stress, and was seeing a brilliant therapist. I  quickly learned that when she pointed something out, I should act to resolve it then and there, else it would continue to kick me in the ass. When she suggested that I would benefit from a therapeutic encounter group event, I did it. In those days it was called The Life Training, consisting of ninety intensive hours over two weekends, and the event included a couple of hundred other participants. It revealed the workings of the reactive mind  – the personal dramas, beliefs, mind talk, childhood reactive patterns, fears – all were exposed. In their place it offered the alternative of a mind responsive rather than reactive, clearing mental debris and allowing for conscious choices.

When I completed that event, it was as though the glue that held my mental constructs had dissolved. Like a marquetry table in the rain, the components of the old pattern came away and were washed off the surface. There was an immense vacant space where the old pattern had been. Slowly new constructs emerged. During that time there was what I have come to call an Opening, not in the Quaker sense, but a conduit through which a stream of writings poured out, without any conscious contribution from me. They simply emerged, complete in themselves, in one sitting at the computer and  without edits.

During this period of reconstruction, I had been doing a lot of reading – Alan Watts, Krishnamurti, Castaneda, Buddhist writers, others. (A list of these is appended.) Surely the writings have some echo of these influences, but the mind that I call myself did none of the writings. They poured out from an unknown source, or place, or entity. There are twenty of them and they occurred during a period of six weeks. When the outpouring was complete, it was over, never to be accessed again.

The few to whom I showed the writings were freaked out, or dismissive, or they completely misapprehended what was there. And so I kept them to myself for a long time, many years in fact. My friend Ann recently asked if there were anything in my life that I would do differently, and I came to realize that it has been my calling to share these messages, however belatedly. This is the impetus for this blog, and so I have been transcribing the messages without edits, offering them as the Channeled Writings. Some of them have already been posted. They are entitled Seer, Desire, Importance, and I Am. The remaining sixteen writings will constitute the remainder of the blog for now until they are all posted.

They poured out of the Universe through my fingers and onto the original pages. I have shirked my responsibility to send them onward for far too long. I commit to sending them back out into the Universe. They will appear here as The Channeled Writings. Perhaps someone will see them, and SEE them.

But, it’s not important

.

The readings:

Alan Watts

Krishnamurti

T. Suzuki

Carl Jung

Joseph Campbell

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Ram Dass

Fritjof Capra

James Gleick

Nick Herbert

Rumi

Carlos Castaneda

And surely others who I have forgotten

June 28 2018

I am

Watching stillness

Hearing silence

Feeling that which has no sensation

Touching no thing

Engaged in not doing

Present and removed

What is this

Where is this

“I”?

I is an entity which represents a confluence of energy patterns

I is an aperture through which the universe is regarding itself

I is a natural flowering of Earths organism

I is a gesture unfolding itself within the frame of time

I is the context of the universe within the context of the universe

I is the illusion of separateness turning within the uni-verse

I is what the universe is doing

I is i am within I AM

June 12 2018

This dream

What is in it

What is it about

Who is it meant for

What does it signify?

Weddings are called off all of the time

A wine glass slips to the floor and shatters

A lamp in the form of a seated monkey

Smooth warm wood hard and dry

White lace torn to shreds and used as a clean-up rag

Smell of wet dog

Palm tree bent over in the fierce wind

What does it signify?

Theres a sound is it a shriek

Or is it a moan

Is it steel against steel

A howl a scream

Pierced and bleeding

Deep in the hot wet night

Tossing in the foamy tide

Sinking surfacing then gone

What did it signify?

Theres a long elegant line

Theres a slick texture

Theres a bolt of silk

Intense saturated blue and lemon yellow

Measured and cut on the table

Slips to the floor

Heavy boot tramples mud

What could it signify.

June 10, 2018

 

I have seen this,

That each thing comes at its own time,

That there is a moment that arrives unexpectedly,

There is no preparing for it

Asleep or awake the moment arrives

That in that instant

Everything and all action and all being are concentrated.

 

I have seen this

That there is a form that persists

That the components of that form

The particles, the quanta of energy

Are in constant flow

Here and then gone

And yet the form remains.

 

I have seen this

That the threads have been spun out

Each in its own context

Each with its own color and texture

Each at its own time

And that there seems to be no relationship

And that each seems a separate entity.

 

I have seen this

That at the moment

Arriving from who knows where

From within or beyond

The infinite number of individual threads

Without any thought or effort

Coalesce into a new form unimagined.

 

What is it that says

“I have seen”

What is the form

When is the moment

Of what is a thread constituted

What energy works

Who weaves

How is it to be comprehended?