June 2, 2018

The  self looks out of whatever “I” is at the surrounding world, and struggle and strife and conflict and selfishness are seen everywhere. And the self, if it looks and sees, might feel a great sorrow directed both inward and outward to the world. Inwardly the self might try to determine its boundaries and see if it is possible to strengthen and intensify its center, and to defend and perpetuate itself. Outwardly the self might try to define its relationship to the world, and to find the way it is responsible in its actions in the world. The search inward for the center and outward for relationship spring from the sorrow that is felt, and there is a great desire to modify the conditions that bring the sorrow into consciousness. The “I” desires to be secure and stable and to live in a world that is right by some criterion.

Sorrow and desire and the self are a whole event. Sorrow and desire are of the same origin, they are the same thing. They originate in the struggle of the self to maintain itself, they are linked to the effort of the self to perpetuate the self. The desire to find security, to do something significant, to be something important, to save the world, to bring peace on earth, to make the world safe for democracy, to feed the starving in Ethiopia, to leave the children a livable planet, to see God – whatever is desired is the perpetuation of the self.

Whatever the self sees that it desires springs out of the opposite of that which is desired.  There is conflict, so the self desires peace. The planet is polluted, so the self desired to clean it up. The self does not perceive the source, so it desires to see God. The self sees what is not and desires that it be. What is not is the opposite of what is. Desire is opposition.

That entity that is separate and in opposition and desiring and sorrowful might begin to look at the origin of its desires. The I thinks that it’s work is not significant and makes no contribution to the wellbeing of the world. The mind says that it should be otherwise, that I should do significant work, that I should make a contribution. And so the I begins to want these things. This is the work of the mind determining how it ought to be, judging that as it is now is not acceptable, is not enough. Thus reality is fractured, is divided into how it is and how I want it to be. The I becomes an agent who wants, who is separate from what is. Whether the wants are noble or ignoble, glorious or squalid, important or trivial, it is all the same – the self separates as-it-is from as-I-want-it. the self is in conflict with reality, is separate, is divided, fragmented. “At the first distinction, heaven and earth are set apart.”

Is it possible that it be otherwise? Can the possibility be examined without desiring it? The integral undifferentiated entity in the state of wholeness, at one and identical with reality, is without desire. There is no yearning, no hope, no grasping, no striving. There is no defense and no resistance. There is pure being. How does this state come about? the moment the self wants it the possibility is obviated. How does desire desire its own demise? It can’t of course. The state comes about through indirect means, and can’t be willed. There is attention to as-it-is, there is seeing, which is pure perception, and no kind of doing is involved.

The self and the mind of the self will want to turn this into something to be avoided at all costs. The mind will hold that the only acceptable state is striving for something, hoping for a particular end, yearning for some state, intending. All of this is powerful motivation for all sorts of doing. The mind will hold that without doing there is no excuse for living. So the creature called Human Doing is born. All of this willed motivated action springs from fear.

There is great fear that comes before attention. The fear is that without doing there will be annihilation.So the mind is afraid to see. What the mind can’t know is that there is within the act of perception spontaneous right action, that springing out of seeing is thoughtless motiveless doing and this is a seamless integral function. Seeing and action as “wholeness enfolded in the implicate order” has no self and no mind. It is. The entity in this state is Human Being.

May 25, 2018

What’s it all about, ha? Aren’t you the one who knows? I just gotta ask, it’s a puzzle to me.   Keeps me up at night, to get this close to the end with no clue how it comes out. Is it about getting right with Jesus? About praying to Mecca five times a day? Hare Krishna, Hare Rama? Is it one hand clapping? About form and nothingness? The river flowing? Here and then gone? The lights going out out out in the void? Computer shutdown?

Well, old friend, there’s a remote possibility that it might be about one or some or all of those,  and it is surely about absolutely none of those. It all depends. Don’t you love that kind of answer? And as an aside, why do you need to know?

It depends? Start at the beginning. What is the thing called “you”, or “me” for that matter? There’s a roughly spherical cave of bone, within which there is a roughly three pound jelly-like extraordinarily complex mass of cellular matter laced with an extraordinarily complex network of interconnections. Completely and totally enclosed by bone, it (the brain of course is what I’m talking about) is activated by nerve impulses originating from sense organs that collect vibrations from “out there”, beyond the boundaries of the bone cave. From these impulses the thing called you has been created. Neither you nor I can truly imagine the miracle of this structure and its creation. The brain takes vibrations and constructs an image that we call reality. Part of that reality is the “in-here” thing I call Me, and part of that reality is the “out-there” thing I call the universe. These are in fact one and the same. The reality exists nowhere except inside the sphere of bone that is our skull.

The  hows and wheres of the whole vibrations thing I’m gonna leave for now, else this post turns into a chapter. But if you  spend a lot of time (another thing to leave for now) getting vibrations in the Jesus realm, or the Krishna realm, its likely that you will construct a reality that looks like some version of Christianity or Hinduism. But its not about either, or any other, all of that is your own invention. Maybe you create a reality that is your Mother, or the USofA, or the Detroit Tigers, or fantasy involving the Deep State and the Illuminati. Maybe you construct a reality in which a screaming shock jock is a stand-in for god, with a small g.

This is what Alfie has to say about your and my reality.  It’s not about anything, it is. It’s a creative process constantly taking place in the mind, and you and I are doing it. You may like it, or not, but it’s all yours. So what’s the  problem? Can you choose to create another reality? Do you want to?

Yes, in the reality that Burt Bacharach creates, he tells Alfie that he believes in love. 

May 23, 2018

Train

Walking the dog early on a crisp cool morning

Air crystalline, sun not up yet

Train whistle comes clearly up the ravine, and again

UP freight moving slowly through the south part of the city to cross the lake,

Mournful and reassuring at the same time.

And then, I was at the window of the second floor back bedroom,

It sounds, coming from the town’s train yard to the north of our house,

Some ten blocks away, early evening, high summer,

It calls. It calls from a great distance and time, to a boy and  a man.

I am passing through.

My dad answers,

We get into the car and off to the station

Park and watch the coupling and moving of the cars,

Locomotive growling, cars shuttling huge and dark

Bam! as they connect.

The Cotton Belt freight trains,

Passenger train from Memphis and beyond,

On to Little Rock and beyond.

At the station some disembark, some get on.

Sometimes we sit in the car to watch,

Sometimes my dad gets out

Stands by the tracks to be close.

Did he yearn to be on one of those trains,

Getting out of the traps life brought him

Traps – the great depression, a wife and little boy

Trap of a widowed mother in a big old house,

Having to make ends meet in a difficult time and place

Did he miss his big chance to escape?

Did he yearn to be one of those passing through?

Where would he have gone?

I know.

A journey to him forbidden, inadmissible, leading to ruin.

I know why.

I hear the train whistle today

This crisp early morning

Across that long distance and time,

I have escaped for him.

The little dog pauses, raises his head, cocks his ears, moves on.

I go with him. I go for him.

I know the destination.

May 13, 2018

Consignment

Big barn of a room

In the center a space to take money and answer the phone

Down at the far end a curtain covers the intake area

Elevator up to the price tagging and record keeping

All around the debris of lives discarded or downsized or ended

 

A cobalt blue glass vase

A pair of wingback chairs in needlepoint

Most uncomfortable

Sheraton style bedroom suite

Granny’s musty treasures

Shelves of china and glassware

No chips! Complete set!

And dinner service and warming dishes

Salt and pepper sets

China dogs and roosters

A silk blouse?

Denim skirt?

A silver bracelet?

Onyx beaded necklace with matching earrings

Coffee pot bread maker electric skillet

Tabriz rug, great condition!

 

In someone’s mind at some time each had value

Money or sentiment or comfort

Was each one hard to give up?

Now each has a tag

$50 this week $30 next week, then $10

Next month in the donation bin

Is each life diminished?

Or perhaps its freedom

 

How appropriate that I’m here

In the middle of this sea of discards

Reflection of the content of my mind

Up for a bargain price

Or into the rummage bin

Off to an orphanage in Sudan

Or to be torn into rags.

May 5 2018

Seriously:

Gotta heal the planet some say. Whats the problem? Systems and species are disappearing at an alarming rate and the balance is wildly out of kilter. The planetary illness is the consequence of actions of one species, and one only. Get rid of humankind and the planet can begin to heal itself. When and if it is healed, it might not look the way it did a couple of hundred or a thousand years ago, before the press and mess of us folks started the ruin, but global life systems have undergone many changes and likely could do so again. Will humankind change its mind and stop its ruinous activities? Not very likely is what I think. The sooner we become extinct the better for Gaia.

Our demise is not likely to be pleasant. Long and drawn out misery unless theres a sudden global catastrophe – global warming exceeds the limits of our adaptability, or Yellowstone blows, or the 1812 flu returns, or worldwide crops fail, or potable water dries up, or a big comet hits, or nuclear disaster is unleashed – or, -or, or, or. My thoughts are that’s the reason for HIV – a hidden sex linked way to reduce the population. Whats likely is strife, war, genocide, the worst nightmares of the human imagination. Alas poor man so stealthily betrayed. You gave rise to Bach and created Hubble to see into the universe and came to know quantum mechanics. It wasn’t enough.

April 24, 2018

The fallacy is that there is a battle between darkness and light, and that it is very important for light to win. Out of the ultimate stillness of bliss, God breathes the universe out into manifest form, and forgets himself in play. He creates a drama of looking for himself lost in the universe.

The counterplay of light and dark is an essential part of this drama. There must be enough perceived opposition to create the tension that keeps the play alive. There must not be a victory of one or the other, that would bring the production to a close. So dark seems to have the upper hand, threatening destruction, and light seems to have to struggle valiantly to overcome the destruction. This is a wonderful drama, and it is God playing. What is essential is for neither side to go too far.

Finally God will remember himself and breathe the universe back in, and all will be at rest until God breathes creation out again. And this wonderful drama will go on time out of imagining.

So, here I am, within and integral to this divine drama. What is my role? My tendency is to think that I must be I, and that it all must be seriously important. My tendency is to invest myself in the outcome.

But truly, where is my importance? Where is that which I call Myself? What is there for me to do of such great seriousness? I could strive and strive for some imagined end, some Good, for achieving heaven or whatever I might call whatever i imagine the destination to be. I could invest the game with utmost high purpose, I could create stakes in an outcome of cataclysmic proportions. I could think that saving the Earth from darkness is of great importance. I could think that ensuring my ongoing in bliss is of great importance. This, and the many variations of this theme that I might invent, is my way, unknown to me, of playing out the drama of God searching for himself in hide-and-seek.

I don’t recognize this for the most part. I think that the game is the reality. This is the fundamental illusion, The nature of the game is that reality is hidden and must be discovered, or rather re-discovered. If I were to recognize this I might be free to play the drama with exuberant joy, with enthusiasm, unreserved. Instead of deadly serious, it could be ultimate fun, the playing in itself could be bliss, here and now.

But its not important.

April 23, 2018

(This is a long piece that I have broken down into smaller posts for the reader’s convenience. The first was posted on April 18 and the second on  April 19. This is the final piece.)

It seems to me that men and cultures create all religions and belief systems in the attempt to explain the mystery of consciousness. They may have components that may be helpful to the perceiving-and-storage-unit that calls itself ”I” in its instantaneous here-and-gone existence. The Scriptures and the Vedas and the Koran are all made-up stories, not divinely inspired, told from the perspective of primitive cultures gathered fearfully around a campfire, trying to make sense of things, asking What?  What is to be gleaned from them?

It seems to me that prayer is mostly making demands of whatever I might think is out there to do what I think it should do. Give me what I think I need, heal my wounds, take care of what I love, defeat my enemies, protect me from fear, make it rain, win this game.  Occasionally there is gratitude, an impulse to say “thank you” and I am good with that kind of prayer.

It seems to me that there are insights that I can glean from religious myths.

From the Judeo-Christian mythology:

At the very basis, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thinking that you know good and bad, right and wrong, is the root of suffering, and gives the delusion that you know gods will, and you might take that for a license to do all sorts of atrocious things.  You shall be my people, but not all those others. The others are mine enemies, slaughter even the babies. Wrath and sore displeasure. You have free will, however there are these commandments. Make no graven images, but the commandments are written in stone.  Thou shalt love, as though love could be mandated.  He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest. What a mean ill-tempered insecure little god this is. Who may abide it?

And then, love is all. Love requires sacrifice, which means to make holy. The Source, that which is, nourishes me. Take and eat, drink this. The love in which I am nourished is absolutely free, all I have to do is show up. Grace, which requires no merit, comes out of the blue. The water washes me clean and unites me with all that lives. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my life. Death is not an issue. There is undivided wholeness, communion, in which I am an integral part.

It seems to me that I have only smatterings of understanding of other myths, but I am attracted to these:

From the Hindu myth

All creation is a manifestation of a single inhabiting divine substance

Thou art That

What can be said about the all-pervasive Brahma is not this, not this, not this

Vishnu sleeps for 5 million years, his dream is this universe, he awakens and the dream collapses, he goes about his day for 5 million years, and dreams again, another universe, another day, another dream, endlessly

Shiva dances the destruction that makes room for creation, ringed by the flames of the stars, the drum of time in one hand, the fire of creation in another, another hand lifts the veil of illusion, the fourth hand is in the position of “do not fear

From the Buddhist canon

Life is suffering that comes from attachment and desire

All is an illusion, extinguish the flame

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form

There is an eight-fold path to freedom, dharma

At the center of the wheel of dharma is emptiness

Stillness and silence, the shining void

 

From the Tao

It cannot be spoken of, it flows everywhere, it cannot be grasped or comprehended

The opposites, good and evil, darkness and light, life and death, arise mutually and are inseparable

There is a natural order, an inherent pattern – at the first distinction the ten thousand things arise

Make no effort, let it flow of its own accord

The wise man comes and goes imperturbably, making no effort, leaving no trace

 

And at last, the credits:

The discerning reader may hear echoes from many sources for these observations. They include the works of:

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

 

 

April 19, 2018

(This is a long piece that I have broken down into smaller posts for the reader’s convenience. This is the second piece, the first was posted on April 18)

It seems to me that there is an immense ocean of consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is what the universe is comprised of. This spark of consciousness called me is a drop ejaculated out of the ocean and into time and space, now, and I sparkle sunward, and AM now, and I fall back to rejoin the ocean. Nothing is lost. It seems to me that living and dying is the same movement.

It seems to me that what istranscends this particular time and place. Consider that there is an atomic particle released in the collision of two protons in a particle accelerator that comes into existence and is annihilated instantaneously. Consider that the Mayfly lives 18 hours, and I have lived 75 years so far. The ancestors of humankind emerged on this planet about 200,000 years ago, and there has been civilization as we know it for about 6000 years.

All have come into existence and are annihilated in an instant. The Universe is 13 billion years old. The particle and the Mayfly and I and humankind are here and gone in an instant. It is preposterous hubris to imagine that the fate of a doomed flash-in-the-pan species on a tiny rock circling a minor star far out on the edge of a small galaxy in a remote region of the staggering immensity of the universe is the whole focus of some Gods intention.

But it does seem to me likely that there is a source from whence it all comes. I call it the Source. I call it what is. It seems to me that it manifests creative energy.  Don’t call it God, that image is fraught with primitive overlay, superstition, and the encrustation of institutions and dogmas. It seems to me that the Source is not anthropocentric; it is not made in the image of man, as is God, nor vice-versa. It is not the ancient of days sitting enthroned in glory, or lord of my salvation or stern but forgiving father.  Not mighty king, jealous and demanding, nor the lord of lords, nor architect of the universe, having no authority, passing no judgment, exercising no will, granting no favors. It is like the Tao, unutterable, like the water constantly moving, it cannot be grasped or contained or codified or understood. It seems to me that it is energy, it is consciousness, it is that which is. Nothing is stable or permanent, everything is changing all of the time, it flows. I can be aware of it without understanding it.

It seems to me that there is an inherent underlying order within the flow of energy, a pattern that is the constituent of the universe that I manifest. Consider the implications of quantum mechanics, of string theory. Consider mathematics, too complicated for me to understand in itself, but with visible evidence, in the pattern of bifurcation, in the branching that occurs in growing things, the fractal edges of all shapes, in the spiral forms of the galaxies. Pattern is evident most spectacularly in the Mandelbrot set, staggering beauty extending into infinity. I can be in accord with this energy without understanding it.

It seems to me that this entity, “I’, here in this particular time and place, may have three purposes, the first of which is given, the other two chosen.

It seems to me that this is what is given. The quantum phenomenon is the most exhaustively researched event in all science. There it undeniably is, but the most erudite scientists and philosophers struggle to decipher what it signifies. Among the interpretations are these: there is no deep reality: reality is manifested by the act of observation: reality is an undivided wholeness: consciousness creates reality: reality consists of a steadily increasing number of parallel universes. And there are others.

What sings to me is this synthesis: the act of conscious observation creates a reality of undivided wholeness. And that is the purpose given to me – my job is to manifest this universe at this point in time from this particular point of view, and I cannot escape this. This does not mean that I think I’m god; it means that I am the essential observer without whom the universe is not manifest. Given my human limitations, I can’t be responsible for parallel universes.

It seems that I am able to choose two purposes. First, I endeavor to treat everyone and everything I contact with kindness, respect, love, and understanding. Second I choose to see beauty everywhere in all creation. And I do those insofar as this imperfect self can manage.

(This is the second posted portion of this writing. The discerning reader will find echoes from other sources. There will be credits at the end.)

 

 

 

April 18, 2018

(I will break this long piece down into more digestible bits and post them separately. This is the first.)

What? What is it?

This persistent question hangs there, in the far distant view from the mountaintop, in the empty space before the altar, in the storm, in intimacy, in the darkness, in pain and pleasure and beauty. What? What am I? What is this world, what is the universe, what force or energy acts, what is the importance of it all? What?

Throughout human history mankind has invented myths, stories, religions, and philosophies to try to answer, to explain, the inscrutable. All are invented by the mind of man, none divinely inspired, none full of the truth, at best a dim intuition, much like Plato’s shadows seen in the cave.  Each observer creates and sees his own version of reality. What is my own creation, what are my own views of the nature of things? And what are the questions that persist?  First, it seems to me that all beliefs, including this, are a trap, in that they put an end to seeing the constant process of change, to immersion in the flow of energy, to awareness of the stream of the Tao. Belief clings to something, awareness does not.

It seems to me that it is impossible to know what veridical reality is. Everything that I think that I know is subject to the limitations of my perceptual mechanisms and to the endless conditioning imposed by life on planet Earth. With my senses I can perceive only a minute fraction of the energy passing through me at every moment – radio waves, gamma rays, dark matter, infrared, ultraviolet, the strong and weak forces, all of these are imperceptible, even though they make up most of what is. I don’t have the tools to perceive them. What I can perceive is limited and interpreted by the structures imposed from birth by society, family, school and church, all unexamined conditioning.

The universe exists entirely and only within my skull. Wavelengths that constitute light, frequencies of sound waves, sensations in the nerves of the skin, the tongue, the nose, all of these are assembled in my brain into a representation of a reality, which I create. Where do those waves come from? What is the reality? Is it ephemera? A dream? An illusion? “Man is asleep. Must he die before he awakens?” Consider that there may be no reality beyond the  construct within the skull.

It seems to me there is an entity called “I” that thinks it knows things. It thinks it knows that there is an in-here called me, and that there is an out-there that is different from me. But there is no in-here without the out-there, of necessity they are interdependent, they go together. The observer is the observed. There is no figure separate from the ground, there is seamless wholeness. The entity “I” thinks it knows is that there is something out there in charge, and it calls that God. Or perhaps it thinks there is nothing out there and nothing in charge.

What is the thing that calls itself “I”? It seems to me that I am a perceiving mechanism linked to a device that stores input in the form of memory and then reassembles memories into some image I call reality, and housed in a sack of skin containing various kinds of protoplasm. The stimulus of this moment is processed through the memory bank and projected into the future, and this seems to me to indicate that there is something stable, fixed, and permanent. The illusion is that there is a control center manned by me, located just behind the eyes, running or reacting to my show. I seem to be central to all experience.

But nothing is permanent; everything is changing all of the time. Consider the pattern of a stream flowing over rocks, or of a whirlpool. The water is constantly flowing, never the same, but the pattern persists. A form appears to be there, but it’s not. Am I a pattern in the water? Is that pattern called the soul? Is there something that this entity has created that lasts beyond the end of the organism, transcending the physical? When the water changes course the whirlpool disappears. Does the dissolution of the memory bank at death put an end to it?

(This is the first posted portion of this writing. The discerning reader will find echoes from other sources. There will be credits at the end.)

February 25 2018

You can sense it

A constant presence

An arms length behind you

Just off the left shoulder

Pay attention

What might you feel

A frisson

A vacancy

An absence

A chill

Or perhaps nothing

 

But look

Turn your head quickly

You see nothing

Is it a hooded figure

Perhaps a radiant youth

Perhaps a fearsome hag

Or a diaphanous mist

Or a shadow

It will remain unseeable

Until the moment

 

Steadfast with you

A lifetime’s invisible companion

At some moment

After long preparation

After achievement and triumph

Or fear or suffering

Or without warning

Suddenly

The hand on your shoulder

 

Gone in an instant

The electro-chemical network

Called you

The pattern dissipates

What was before?

And what remains?