charisma

Note to myself --
Charisma (χάρισμα): the gift of divine grace, a favor which one receives without any merit of one's own. An embodying of the radiant energy of the cosmos and thereby of its Creator. Are love and charisma the same? People who are loving are charismatic, are radiant. You can see it, feel it. When any of us are loving, we are charismatic. We are receivers and transmitters of the natural energy of the cosmos. We are radiant. We are in tune. (Also see chrysalis: a preparatory or transitional state. Much richness of thought and understanding here.)

can you help me out here?

The "give me some money" phrase I hear on the streets that most often works for me -- no tragic story, no cardboard sign -- simply "Can you help me out here?" Direct. To the point. Contains essential elements: you, me, out here. And no "will you," producing my need to make a conscious effort of will power. "Can you" -- Are you able to. Of course I'm able to, most of the time I have some money in my pocket. I don't always respond affirmatively, but I do always admire that well-honed polished request: Can you help me out here?

Glance

FB Tip: Use few words. 
Glance is the new absorption.

Notes made while sitting on porch in South Dakota

We are composed of cosmic material, the same elements as the cosmos.

The cosmos is manifesting itself as consciousness.

The cosmos is becoming aware of itself.

Other lifeforms (from subatomic to metagalactic) do not have the same consciousness as humans. They speak a language other than English, etc. Those languages can be and are learned.

There is a future but the future is always now.

There is a past but the past is always now.

The cosmos contains past and future in the Always Now.

We re-member the past. We member the future.

Our seers say the cosmos began as an awareness. Is it also moving toward awareness?

Is a current of expanding awareness moving through us seeking Ocean?

Teleology is at play here. We are always moving toward Something.

This Something is not known. If it were known, it would be past.

This Something is in the future. Its seeds are present now. We are membering It.

Our consciousness thrives on novelty. The Something is forever novel.

Can humans, individually and collectively, assist and advance this current?

We are carriers of cosmic Awareness. Breeding grounds.

All are carriers of this Light. Some are more illuminative than others.

Density must be worked through.

Imagining and envisioning is membering the Future. Embodying the vision is the next stepping.

the simultaneous and the sequential

We live as the finite and the infinite. Considering the finite as the horizontal world, the world of everyday doodah, and the infinite as the vertical, with its above (supra awareness) and its below (sub awareness), we are caught in the cross hairs of the combo of the two, +.

We are the simultaneous (vertical) and the sequential (horizontal). We are the simultaneous embodying within and as the sequential. We are the sequential seeking the simultaneous. We are sequential simultaneity.

In music language (thanks, Thomas Mann!), we are each a chord and its melody; the chord of course being the simultaneity and the melody being the sequential. The particular chord I am is playing out its constituent notes over time as the melody of my horizontal life.

We could even go so far as to say that the combined chord of all life (not just the humanimals) is playing out over time (time and space are the same) as a Grand Symphony, the musical harmony of the spheres with its chords and dischords, the Grand Music of the Ages and the Eternal Now.

If the chord I am contains the notes of the melody of my life, am I foreordained with no variation? No. I am also the composer in that I can rise into the Above of the chord and also sink into the Below, now emphasizing one, then the other, playing the notes of the depths of the abyss and sounding the heights of the heavenly.

I find the greatest joy comes in letting go, allowing the Great Composer to play "me."

Notes to myself

The Unfolding of Consciousness

You are the universe unfolding. This is not poetry. This is not Sedona woo-woo. This is fact. You are the universe unfolding. If you are not the universe birthing itself, who are you? Surely you do not claim to be outside the universe. An analysis of your physical makeup shows the same elements as earth.

You are the universe unfolding. Unfolding, like those slow motion photos of a plant coming out of a seed, rising into the air and spreading its leaves. Unfolding, like a tight bud of a flower slowly, but inexorably opening.

We have made much of the pseudo-fact that we are individuals, charting our own destiny, masters of our fate. We have given ourselves social security numbers, drivers licenses, birth certificates to prove our uniqueness, our separateness from all others.

We are not separate. We are all interweavings of a vast network of interconnection that has no end, no edge, no circumference. A network that extends from the submolecular to the megacosmic. We live within the warp and woof of a holocosm.

You are the universe unfolding.

***

I am not proposing this as a theoretical model for “scientific” testing with gatherings of data though that could be a worthy endeavor. See Jean Gebser and Ken Wilber’s works if you want that kind of information.

I am proposing that you take a look at your own consciousness, look at the places where you get stuck, that seem to be an evolutionary dead end, where consciousness can no more unfold. Look at your own unfolding. Open to new thought systems. Allow yourself to go beyond thought.

I am saying that the evolution of consciousness is an amazing phenomenon, taking place not so much in front of your eyes as behind them. Learn to stop seeing so you can see.

In other words, apply these insights to your own consciousness, your own fertile ground of this universe unfolding.

***

Beyond all, supporting all, calling all into being is the Godhead, the Eternal Ground, the Wellspring. These are aspects of God the human intellect cannot comprehend. And yet we are the Godhead unfolding. We rest upon the Eternal Ground. We are the Wellspring springing.

How is this done? Through grace and mercy and lovingkindness.

Is it not obvious by now? The One who births us loves us. We are not separate from our Wellspring. Knowing this, truly knowing this, and living in accord with knowing is an integral part of the unfolding of our consciousness.

***
Part of our unfolding is taking risks, going outside of all established camps, meeting God on our own in the wilderness. We follow spirit rather than the letter of the law.

The wilderness is a refuge. Dwelling in the wilderness, we are cut off from manmade creeds and dogmas and learnings and rules and supposed-to’s and have-to’s and all the legalistic stuff we have heaped upon ourselves. We are alone with our Source.

We are taking refuge by sitting quietly in the wild.

I refer to the Inner Wild.

***
Another way of taking refuge is practiced by our Buddha buddies.

We sit quietly and deliberately open with great appreciation for our Teachers, those who have come before us and spent their lives teaching us by word and example. Where would we be without our Teachers? We take refuge in our Teachers.

We open with great appreciation for the Teachings, the stated and unstated understandings of who we are, where we are, what is going on. Where would we be without the Teachings? We take refuge in the Teachings.

We open with great appreciation and lovingkindness for the Spiritual Community, all others who are open to the Teachers and the Teachings, some of whom are in our immediate daily lives and some elsewhere. Where would we be without a Spiritual Community? We take refuge in our Spiritual Community.

We take refuge in this ongoing stream, this river, this current of Teachers and Teachings and Community. We love our Teachers. We live by the Teachings. We live in Community with others, past and present and future, who do the same.

***

Man is psychically distinguished from all other animals by the entirely new fact that he not only knows, but knows that he knows. In him (and her), for the first time on earth, consciousness has coiled back upon itself to become thought. -- Teilhard de Chardin

Yes. And in addition, not only do we know that we know, we also have developed and are developing the capability to know that we know that we know, to step outside the thinking process and take a look at our thoughts.

This ability to dis-identify from our thinking, to no longer automatically exist as identical with our thinking (which has both cognitive and emotional components) puts us into a new realm (a realm which is really very old, or more accurately, timeless).

This third realm (the first one being knowing, the second, knowing that we know) of non-attachment to thought, though having been practiced by a few humans in various cultures over time, is the next evolutionary step in human consciousness.

At some point it will be the norm. Folk who existed primarily in rational dualistic divisive thesis-antithesis ratio consciousness will be seen as embodying a necessary but relatively primitive phase of human consciousness development.

Thinking will not be done away with, but will be viewed
as just one tool in the human repertoire.

This future is also now. Right now, each of us has access to pre-thinking (just knowing), thinking (ratio consciousness), and beyond thinking (which also includes access to the first two).

Methods exist for this transformation of consciousness.

how it was

It was 1943. I was 5 years old. World War II was in full rage. We were fighting Hitler and the Germans on one side and Hirohito and Japan on the other.

We lived in Prichard, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile. My father and my grandfather worked in the shipyards helping build ships to kick Hitler's ass.

We kids were on the alert to spot enemy planes, memorizing their silhouettes. Everyone had blackout cloths for their windows so no light could be seen at night. Air raid sirens would sometimes go off to give us practice in the blackout drill.

The atomic bomb was being built but we did not know it.

Much was rationed. We had stamps that allowed us to buy only so much gas and sugar. Butter was not butter but was a colorless glop requiring the breaking of a red pill into it and kneading it into a more butterlike color.

We kids were involved at school in assembling packages for "the boys overseas." As I recall, these packages at times included bandages.

One morning I awoke and my mother was gone. She was nowhere in the house. My grandmother said that she had gone to the hospital. I was alarmed. My grandmother said she had gone to get a baby.

After some time, my mother came home. My sister Ginny had been born.

new blog

Intranaut is now up and running.

new blog

I will begin a new blog, Intranaut, within the next several days. (An astronaut explores outer space; an intranaut explores inner space.)

If you wish to be on the distribution list, send an email to me and it will be done. [See email address at the right. Substitute @ for (AT).]

George

the particulars

It doesn't matter so much what I believe in terms of the particulars of the Christian story. What happened, happened. What did not happen, did not happen. What matters is what I do with what I am. And the particulars of that don't matter so much either. What matters is that my dualistic tendencies move in harmony with the nondual.
Then all is well.

mucking it UP

What I am struck with this morning is comprehending the universe forming into human-ness and the human-ness in turn opening to the universe, and especially in the example given in the Christ-figure. Though I have been deeply disturbed and outraged by what often passes as "christian," I appreciate my Christian roots with the insistence that the Source deliberately, purposefully took on human form and lived a human life. A good story any way you look at it.

The realm of the dual (twoness, oppositeness, splitness) and the realm of the nondual became as one. Here is the way Bruno Barnhart puts it: "The Christ-event is the incarnation of nonduality" (his italics, p. 110, The Future of Wisdom).

Something shifted in the universe. Now the door was open for new God-Humans to be born. The phenomenon of Christ showed it could be done, blazed the trail, opened the womb-doors.

The Light opened into the Muck. Now it is our turn, our responsibility, to keep the pathway open. We are the universe embodying. Our job requirements are to: (1) be aware of this, and (2) deliberately cooperate with the process, with the procession of these energies. We are the cosmos in the flesh.

a fig leaf hastily plucked

Self-pain, self-problems are a referent for "you," bookmarks of consternation to mark your place. Without them you would have to face the horror of complete nothingness. You cannot bear the possibility that you do not exist, that you are a figment of your imagination, a fig leaf hastily plucked and maintained to cover your nakedness, your naked essence. Better to be a suffering character on a manufactured stage than open to the vast no-thing you are.

stfu

Self-conversations are conducted to convince myself I am alive. I just absolutely must hear my echo. Self-talk, the continuous invention of the melodrama of me, the creation of myself out of very thin air.

diversion

In the realm of spirit, it is important to not look at or look for the fruits of our actions, not only because we drop immediately into a second-order reality, but we are diverted into a realm of being whose only fruit is the looking for fruit.

phantoms of the mind

All consciousness states are phantasies (phantoms of the mind). We cannot not phantasize. Unless.

And only a small percentage of earth's population has ever even attempted this unless route. It occurs only with a combination of one's intent and willingness and the grace of the universe, of God, our Source. This is the report of the spiritual explorers of consciousness states, the intranauts, the teachers whose explorations I follow, and at whose findings I place my base camp and whose tracks I follow.

As for me, I am still a phantasy addict, moving in and out of them, learning as I go. The Source is gracious, allowing more and more room, more space between them. I dwell more and more in bare naked awareness.

My phantasies have always been less of a personal nature, anyway, and more on a cosmic scale. But a phantasy is a phantasy is a phantasy. And this is where we humans live. Phantastic!

states of consciousness (continued)

A few posts ago I wrote of 3 states of consciousness: horizontal, vertical, cosmic (or spherical). A problem with delineating states of consciousness in this way is that one may begin, in "class"ifying oneself to feel inferior or superior. Inferior, because one does not experience a particular state and thinks one should and therefore is deficient in some way. Superior, because one believes that one experiences these states and many others do not, so that one is in a class of one's own or else hanging out with the other cosmic nerd elite.

And yet these consciousness states exist (and others). What to do?

A way out of this self-ranking is to realize there is only one consciousness state that allows approach to and merging with our Source -- bare nakedness --a stripping of all thought, all imagery, all desire, all whim, all fantasy no matter how "wonderful" and "pure" and "good."

Reduced to ashes. And then not even ashes. Becoming as nothing. And not even nothing. All other consciousness states than this one are fantasies, dreams, illusions. Take heart. If it is to be named, a name for such a bare naked consciousness state is love.

Don't get all caught up in that though. Such a word sets off such a chain of fantasies that one may not surface for aeons.

one foot hopping

What is the sound of one foot hopping?
George's 20th day using a walker.
Poor baby!

Tomorrow, maybe, pins protruding from 2 of the toes
on the "corrugated" foot will be removed and this
bandage that has been on since the inception of God
will be removed. Maybe the doc will even take the staples
or roofing nails or whatever they use these days out too.

Then I can perhaps begin the process of flattening out this
reconstructed mass into a serviceable weight-bearing unit
and begin visiting my wino and street-bum friends downtown again.

If I sound whiny, I would prefer that
you recontextualize it as impatience.

I know. I know. There are many a lot worse off.
But this is the life I am in charge of
and this is the one I want back on the road.

tach-ometers, isness, and self-traps

Contemplation, sitting with God, is not so much a detachment, as is often said, though I understand what that means, but an attachment, a joining of two forces, two energies that have always been together and are now as a joyous communion, co-mune-ion, laughing happily in each other's presence, neither of which can do without the other. Or perhaps could do, but life would be stark and grim. (I speak here of God and not of the Godhead, though the Godhead is present, always present, how could it not be?) God and I are very much attached to each other. In this sense, contemplation is pure attachment.

This is different from the generic mindfulness approach where one systematically detaches from everything.

* * *
To live with God is NOT to abandon the affairs of this life, but to live in the isness. One can continue to attend to as much detail as one's particular level of obsessive-compulsiveness demands, but only out of the isness, this flow of IS. One is nowhere but in the isness, this ever-flowing process of unfolding.

* * *
"...the failure to let ourselves participate in being contracts our awareness into a separative mode of cognition. . . ." (Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge)

We hold back. We will allow ourselves to do no more than the actions of the little roles we have created for ourselves, the self-defined bounds beyond which we do not dare to open. We restrict our lives to manageable proportions, following some recipe we have concocted or inherited.

"I shall live to this extent and no more. "I have defined the character by which I am known and I will continue living up to it (or down to it)." "I am afraid of becoming different than the way I have always imagined myself to be." "I know the way the world is and I am going to continue responding to it in this way." "I am going to wear this same outfit (known as "me") for the rest of my earthly days." "Other people will be upset if I am who I really am." And so on.

"...the failure to let ourselves participate in being contracts our awareness into a separative mode of cognition. . . ."

Once we contract our awareness we fool ourselves into thinking that the world and ourselves is that big and no bigger. We have taken a contract out on ourselves and successfully killed or maimed our souls. We separate ourselves from life and fool ourselves into thinking that the separation is what life is.

states of human consciousness

There is vertical thinking and horizontal thinking.

Horizontal thinking proceeds on a straight and narrow line (sometimes widening) from premise (one's starting point) to conclusion (a satisfactory, for the moment, end result). One feels satisfied. One has "thought it through."

Horizontal thinking is just like it says, concerned with the horizon -- a point "over there" (considered to be in "the future") that one wants to reach. Horizontal thinking is ratio logic, estimating odds and probabilities, the ratios of various indicants to "success" to indicants of "failure." Ratio logic, hence called "rational."

Horizontal thinking is considered to be rational thinking, not just in the ratio of success/failure sense I have just described, but also in the sense of a value judgment. To be thought rational is a social judgment that brings its own rewards. Horizonatal thinkers often do not engage (at least on purpose) in vertical thinking, considering it as irrational, fraudulent, untrustworthy, and suspicious.

Vertical thinking disregards linear time, realizing and experiencing now as the only time there is. All knowledge is present now. What one needs to know is present now. We are already at the horizon, all horizons. It is called vertical thinking because we plunge into its depths and open to its heights of conscious awareness. Vertical thinkers can and do think horizontally but tend to regard it as an overly simplified procedure that has little bearing on the vibrant world of everchanging possibility.

Each of these two ways, admittedly oversimplified in my presentation, is a form of consciousness, a consciousness state. Both consciousness states can be cultivated and there are valid and honorable ways of doing so.

I wish to point to a third way. I call it cosmic thinking, or cosmic awareness. Horizontal thinking has a definite linear point of view. "I" am "here," at "this point," and wish to get "there," at "that point." Vertical thinking has a curvilinear point of view. I can "rise above" my situation and see the arc of its significance. I can "sink below" my situation and see the roots and soil of its beginnings and its nurturance. With horizontal or linear thinking, I am more fixed in time to comprehend my situation and its solutions. With vertical thinking, I exist, am fixed, more in space.

With cosmic thinking/awareness, I am neither fixed in time nor space. I am an omnipresent being and all "problems" and "solutions" continuously flow through. This state of consciousness has variously been called kensho, Christ consciousness, Lila, and what the old Zen master Bankei referred to as the realm of the Unborn. This state of consciousness, no matter what label we give it, will at one point become the normal consciousness state of humankind.

As my friend Ken McIntosh says, compassion is the key.

Where compassion drops off, consciousness stops. Compassion for one's own linear situation helps produce linear or horizontal thinking. Compassion for all below and all above helps produce vertical thinking or consciousness. Compassion for and with the entire cosmos, infinite and in every "direction," helps produce cosmic consciousness.

to my friend on Navajo Road

A friend, a fine codger who clearly sees through the pithiness of the world and expresses it in his life style and in his fine wry manner, sent a letter to me the other day containing a green disc about 3 inches in diameter made of a soft but firmly tough waffle-ly design, of simple elegance, obviously concocted with an intent of opening obstructive jar lids. No logo, which I like. The folded sheet of letter paper surrounding it contained these words in his own penmanship (you remember penmanship don't you?)-- Get a grip!

I love that man, (1) for his motivation and action (the two don't always go together you know, (2) for having such a device at hand (the epitome of its kind), (3) for sending me the exact message I needed to hear at the exact right moment (we haven't talked for quite some time, our conversational high-wire artistic feats of derring-do generally taking place at the parking lot of Basha's or over a cup of coffee in what passes for their coffee corner), (4) for the immediate use to which I put my green waffle grid grip device (GWGGD) after sitting and admiring it for some moments with chuckles of appreciation that are great medicine unavailable at any pharmaceutical supply store, which was, (5) using it on the right handle of my walker for exactly the right compression needed to soften the nerve and bone ache (which I have been bearing like any stoic marine) of my right hand in supporting my weight while my left wussy foot heals. during these 2+ weeks.

Jim, though you are some years my senior and I feel advised to call you Sir, that Sir is a measure of profound respect. Maybe someday I can grow up to be more like you, (Now don't get all weepy, that is part of a callous move to get you to buy me the next cup of coffee.)

Love to you in our mutual Geezerdom and our eternal models of role.

I've got a grip, Brother!

Thank you!

the silver cord

I know I'm supposed to be writing about things like how those Yankees and Phillies are doing and how about that Glenn Beck, huh? and is democracy a viable proposition and have you checked the price of bread lately and what are we going to do about Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile, Pakistan, the Blue Dogs, the Tea Baggers, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Libertarians, Joe Lieberman, unemployment, social security, hair loss, mass murderers, the abysmal education system, global warming, the sun being extinguished at some point, how meat is processed, and whether Fox News or any of the other news is really news, and who is having a baby by whom when, and so on, and so on, but all I can seem to write about is my/our relationship with our Source and the state of our consciousness.

I have been out of step with the rest of humankind as long as I can remember. My concerns are not other people's concerns.

If I could just make this final break with any concern at all with what the world conjures up, I would be gone, gone beyond, totally gone. "If ever the silver cord would break. . . ."

after midnight

We build up what we build up. And we tear down what we tear down. What we build up in our lives takes prominence, and what we tear down goes to ruin.

We are the ones who do this and no one else. Who we are is what we have built up. And who we are is what we have torn down. This is no cause for lamentation or rejoicing. For we are where and who we are. And we even now build up what we build up and tear down what we tear down. We are shaping ourselves each moment.

And yet if we are trying to shape ourselves into something, we have not sense enough to know the shaping.

Contemplation is key here. Con-templum-ation. The templum is our capacity, vast open space in which we sit quietly and open and listen, no agenda of our own. It is in the realm of the templum that we let go of all we are, all we have made of ourselves and listen to the Word, our Source. ("In the beginning was the Word.") When we disappear, we can hear. We open with great room. We become the templum. the temple, the place and space of capacity and great understanding.

* * *
2:15 a.m.
Awoke with these words reverberating:
BEHOLD! I WILL NEVER LEAVE THEE NOR FORSAKE THEE.
My heart calm and open and knowing this eternal truth.

* * *
We can live now as if we have already dropped the body. It is a matter of identification. At our core is our Source, the Mystery which we cannot even begin to imagine. And yet is so familiar, so family-iar. Through quietness and calm and ever-increasing confidence (con-fidence: telling all, disclosing all, and listening to our Source's Disclosures), we identify with, become identical to the Source who is our core. We have already moved to "the other side," because "the other side" and "this side" are not different. This is not religion. This is direct experiential knowledge. We know as we are known.

early a. m. thoughts

God is not anything you imagine, including your imagining that God does not exist. You cannot imagine God out of existence. Even your imagination that God is all in your imagination is your imagination. Your imagination, pro or con, has nothing to do with God.

Nor is God truth, beauty, and love. Once again, vain imaginings. We erect images of God or No-God and fall prey (fall down and pray?) to these images. In this way atheists and theists are much alike. Each grouping congratulates themselves on having the correct imaginings.

* * *
Do you know the difference between a mage and a sage?
I'll bite. What?
A mage knows nothing and doesn't like it.
A sage knows nothing and it's mighty fine.

* * *
Jesus said, A man made a big dinner and sent his servant buddy out to tell the invited guests that it was ready. The first one said, "I've got stuff to do." The second one said, "I've got stuff to do." Each of the rest on the invited guest list said, "I've got stuff to do."The servant came back and said "They aren't coming. They say they have stuff to do." The man said, okay, go out to the road and invite everyone you see. (From the Gospel of Thomas)

Here's that "stuff to do" thing again. The easy understanding of the story is that we don't stop to smell the roses. So we schedule "Rose-Smelling Time" in our planner. A perhaps more difficult understanding (because we don't want to hear it) of the story is that we allow no space because of the fear of facing ourselves, of being alone with ourselves. We must stay occupied at all times by invading troops.

We distract ourselves from all the shit we've piled up inside over the years. Or from the vast aching hole at our core that we know we can never fill. We really don't like ourselves but it's alright because we have "stuff to do." We live, what, 70 - 80 - 90 years? in a state of total distraction.

The story doesn't say that anyone ever came to the dinner. But I bet the people on the road did. No one on the road has any "stuff to do." When on the road, every moment is free and open. That dinner party is still going on.

cruise control

I am convinced that a major reason that some do not understand what I am talking/writing about in this blog is because of not having the "relevant background knowledge" (see this seminal article by Sol Stern on E. D. Hirsch's approach to education).

I am writing from the perspective of and to those who already have background knowledge in the exploration of, and findings in, the study of human consciousness.

This basic background curriculum is based upon an insatiable appetite for understanding human thought processes through an avid reading of novels (American, European, Asian, African, South and Central American and from all cultures everywhere), the devouring and comprehension of the major thinkers (regardless of national or cultural origin, and the more "outside the box" the better) of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, religion, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, communication, physics, poetry, alchemy, astrology, and so on. This must be supplemented by deep unafraid encounter with humans of all types, "classes," and understandings, ESPECIALLY if their belief systems and ways differ from your own. Learn how to weld and raise bees and fire guns and slaughter your own meat or vegetables (even beans scream when boiled or bitten). Stop aligning yourself with one encampment and ignoring or being against all others.

Acknowledge that you don't know zip and are constantly learning.

This may sound overwhelming but what else do you have to do? Jump on that same old pogo stick over and over? Surely you have perfected its every nuance by now.

Read Stern's article. Even if you decide to keep driving the same old consciousness vehicle you have been in for so long with its set cruise control and butt warmer, what the heck, you can drive while multi-tasking can't you?

ways we trap ourselves

Rather than opening to boundlessness, we trap ourselves within our consciousness. Two major traps exist. Some fervently believe in realism and consider themselves realists, not like all the other fools. A realist, with the ardor of a Lourdes-visiting pilgrim who has laid aside all "crutches," fervently believes that only what the generally agreed upon set of physical senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, sound, etc) pick up is "real." All else is fantasy,

Two general types of realists exist: thinking and non-thinking. The non-thinking realist has thoughts but gives them little attention except insofar as they serve to gratify his/her physical "realistic" needs. The thinking realist gives more value to thoughts, including them as "sense data" for a "true" view of reality.

The thinking realist usually does not practice meta thought, the practice of stepping back from his thoughts for consideration and reflection. What he thinks and senses is real and not to be questioned. This is called ordinary consciousness. This consciousness state is one in which many live (without giving it a second thought).

The second consciousness state in which we trap ourselves is called enlightenment. We hypnotize ourselves with the reflected light of symbols and concepts we call holy: Jesus, Buddha, Allah, angels, nirvana, heaven. bliss, rapture, the Pope, Rumi, Benny Hinn, the cross, prosperity, progress, the Secret, and so on. Some of these listed you may see and pooh-pooh with delight. Others are your sacred cows and not to be messed with in any way (though you do like to milk them).

Whatever we cling to as holy is no longer holy.

The concept of enlightenment is one of the most dangerous known to man. You are what you are what you are what you are. To try to fashion yourself into what you are not is ridicule-ous. Diets don't work, not even spiritual ones.

Though I do not consider myself a christian (nor a buddhist nor any other ian or ist), I really like that Jesus dude. He was always blowing up people's consciousness states, speaking in paradoxes and koans (which are as clear as a bell if you are in the same consciousness state as the speaker, but make the mind go wanky if you are not). He even lamented from time to time that nobody knew what he was talking about. (And we still don't. But we did what we humans often do in our perpetual search for security -- we built a Savings & Loan institution on top of him.)

Here are some words of Jesus that might sum up what I am trying to say"

"His disciples asked him: When will you appear to us? When will we see you? Jesus replied, When you strip naked without shame and trample your clothing underfoot just as little children do, then you will look at the son of the living one without being afraid." Gospel of Thomas, 37.

Forget enlightenment. It's just some more shuck and jive about saving yourself, that sweet precious little kernel of individuality you cling to with such desperation.

Trample that clothing underfoot. Stomp both realism and enlightenment into the Ground. Go naked. Run free.

intellectual structures

Our consciousness consists partially of an intellectual structure. One's intellectual structure is a web of relationships of concepts (emerging forms, abstractions, emotions) developed over one's lifetime to make sense of sensation.

Intellectual structures vary in complexity. Some are very simple with fewer concepts and differentiations, and the web of relations among the existing concepts may be habitually automatic in their pathways. Some intellectual structures may be thus almost entirely predictable with little creativity or newness of pathways -- some concepts always being in the forefront and connected by straight well-plowed furrows.

At the other extreme are intellectual structures ever-opening to new concepts, new routes of connectiveness amongst these and the other more-established concepts -- an intellectual structure that is alive and vibrant with new possibility and with adherence to and resonance with the supreme intellectual structure of life and Light itself.

Intellectual structures vary in sensitivity, openness, complexity, responsiveness, clarity, concreteness, awareness, vibrational quality and capability, inclusiveness, focus, range, speed, curiosity, and potency.

Some intellectual structures are more attuned to the rhythms of the universe, the cosmos, the Source. Others are more attuned to societal customs of humans. A balance between the two is a goodness, though I favor the former over the latter. The latter often excludes (or attempts to exclude) the former while the former always includes the latter.

what must i do?

A recalibration is needed. A sharpening of focus. I have only this consciousness to effect change in the world. What are the transformations, the dedication needed? One person's consciousness counts much. More than all the guns, the bombs, the wealth of all the gold, precious metals, and paper currency amassed in one large pile.

This consciousness is all I have, all I am. I have only this consciousness to become the change, the transformation so needed in this world. First I must disregard all whines of protest against the values I know as true. I must trust my own consciousness, its spirit, its soul, its core. I must recognize that this consciousness I am walks and talks with God, my Source, my deep and intimate Friend. I must recognize and act upon the fact that "my" consciousness is fed by, springs into being from God's consciousness, that I and the Source are one, that I am not Him, but He is me.

The transformation happening on earth amongst humans now is like a great and ever-widening rift. Those on one side of the chasm are those who choose to stay in separative consciousness, who continue to live in an I-it world, where everything other than themselves is an it, devoid of soul and feeling, existing for one purpose only, the care and entertaining of themselves. That species of human is receding into antiquity and will die forever.

The earth now is birthing unitive consciousness. I see it in myself and speak for no one else -- an awareness of being at home in the universe. My heartbeat is the heartbeat of the cosmos. My breath, the universe breathing. My consciousness, planetary and cosmic consciousness. The earth is being reclaimed, restored, returned to the rightful place of kinship. Kinship with the vastness of all being. I see this. I know this. I am this.

What must you do? For you it is the same. You are a unique manifestation of the Source. The Source speaks as your heart mind. You know what you are to do. Honor your Teacher. Love and study the Teachings. Be a member of the vast Spiritual Community, both seen and unseen. Turn away from separative consciousness. It is a hellish fiend. If it is your individualism you are concerned about, unitive consciousness promotes, depends upon unique individuality and its full expression. Separative consciousness is a rubber stamp of hellish sameness.

A great transformation is happening. We are fortunate to be alive at this time. I will do all I can.

interlinkings

There are forces at work in the transformation of life on this planet that make the efforts and travesties of governments, nations, countries and their panoply of bureaucrats, politicians, power brokers, archists and anarchists, great women, great men, the smug, arrogant, and greedy, develers and developers, entrepreneurs, shuckers and jivers, philanthopists, religious groups, terrorists, terra-ists, neo-hippies, the sleek, the slick, and the workers of legerdemain seem blustery, naive, self-serving, and of little consequence. We can't even feed the hungry, for earth's sake!

I am not advocating that this turmoil of action and inaction cease. We will keep on doing and not doing in both admirable and despicable ways.

I simply point to the understanding that as relative newcomers to this Grand Adventure (4000 or 15 billion years or so, depending on your metaphorical frame, either one being a mere bubble on the surface of the boundless ocean of being), we have no idea of what is going on, no program agenda, except that catastrophe always seems to follow resurrection (or is that the other way around?), but do seem to have settled on one agreement, which so far I have yet to see on a bumper sticker: SAVE OUR BUTTS! We are finding out the hard way that our butts are interlinked (now there's some graphic imagery) and with all the other butts of the visible and invisible universe.

I don't know that our system of shrivel-ization based on money, private property, the divine rights of landed gentry, and the accelerated threat of force and violence is going to be able to handle all this.Something new has to be born.

the revaluing of meaning

If you were talking with a theoretical physicist, you may not expect to understand his language completely or maybe even partially, unless you were also schooled in that language. You would no doubt comprehend, however, that he was describing the universe (reality) as accurately as he could, and would make modifications in his language and theory as required and needed.

The same is true for a theoretical theist, who unlike the phys-icist is not looking to describe the physical world, but the realm of the theos, or meta-physics (that which goes beyond and underlies physics).

These days physics is regarded by many as the supreme language of description, partially because of its practical product-ion (hubble telescope, a better can-opener, the ability to bomb the moon, etc.) and partially because it requires no reflection on meaning.

Theoretical theism, or metaphysics, has been relegated to the trash heap of scorn by some because meaning has been devalued, constricted into the physical realm only (the meaningfulness of sustaining a 4 hour erection, the ability to tweet at will, the satisfaction of castigating one's opponents, demeaning thus taking the place of meaning).

Theoretical theism, or metaphysics, focuses precisely on questions of meaning. What is the Ground of existence? What is the supreme value? What is life? Who is asking these questions? Can one step out of duality and its oppositional behavior? What does it mean to step out of linear time and live in the eternal now? Is the Source approachable? Is there a hierarchy of beings of which we are a part? Is the universe alive and conscious, self-aware? What is this energy called love?

I appreciate the irony of the word theoretical. "Retical" refers to rhetoric, the expounding of ideas. "Theo" has connotations of theos, of God. So theoretical physics, amusingly, means the expounding of ideas of God, in the physical realm. O shudder! O horror! I can see the supportive pillars of materialistic science looking to stand alone in non-theistic splendor, begin to crack and tremble and fall -- fall into the supportive arms of its true partner -- metaphysics and physics entwined forever in conjugal bliss.

"the waters saw thee, O God"

A couple of scriptures, the second of which may not be too familiar.

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Genesis 1:2

"The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled." Psalm 77:16

Deep dark water. No form yet born. Only voidness, emptiness --empty of every thing. In all directions.

Imagine you, your consciousness, rudimentary awareness, simplistic dark consciousness, alone. Consciousness both dark and deep. Unfathomable.

All of a sudden, shaking you to your depths, fear springs through the cold dark icy stillness of your core. Something moved, moved across what you now know to be your face.

Something powerful and on the move. Something so dark that by comparison your darkness was light. And you saw It. And It saw you. And you were afraid -- an electric thrill of fear moving through you, illuminating your depths with Its darkness. And you recognized It though never having seen It before.

The Spirit of God.

It moved upon your face. And you were never the same again.

Because It had a face, you had a face. A reflection of the Spirit of God forevermore. Fear vanished. Love appeared.

foot fetish

This sliced and reconstructed foot has been a blessing. Non-weight-bearing, it has been calling the shots, defoliating the peacock plumage of my magnificence and revealing the subservience of the plucked chicken underneath. I go where it wants to go (primarily nowhere) and at its pace -- a slow lurching forward of the walker with definite rest stops required. (Those ads for Geezer Scooters are starting to have appeal.) My butt is getting wider (extended sitting) and more muscular (skootching on its cheekiness up and down stairs); my shoulders and arms becoming hewn oak.

Today is the day though. My foot will breathe air once again and I will get to see its new format. Maybe then a boot will be affixed for weight-bearing maneuvers with crutches and maybe even a cane (I have several ready for road testing) and some skipping and cavorting!

The plucked chicken may grow new plumage yet!

"no, no, no, that ain't me, babe"

To live not being suckered in by the world's continuous insistence (through addresses of all kinds -- phone calls, conversations, mail, etc. --external addresses, and internal addresses, "me" addressing "me") that I am a certain way and no other; to not be sucked in by the calls to existence of "me" as a certain individual with these responses and these reactions; the one for whom an obituary has already been written; the one whose life is set upon an irrevocable trajectory. To not allow that preordained daily coloring within the lines and within the lines only of a caricature of my true existence. To not succumb to that death. May as well put it on fast forward and get it over with.

Living such a "life" puts me furtherest from God. And God it is I aim to know ever more deeply, to give up all robotic endeavor and be the open suffering sensitivity (the two are the same), the ever expanding capaciousness filled only by my Maker who started this journey with me, produced me as a subset of his boundlessness, is with me, and shall always be -- heart of my heart, soul of my soul.

Amen, Selah, and Yes Indeed!

night check

2:37 a.m.
I awoke and looked at my theological underpinnings to see if any were shaky. Didn't want any collapsing on me during the night. They weren't. I only have one anyway -- knowledge, direct knowledge of God. All else (love, trust, faith, service etc.) are based on that one.

I really don't have a leg to stand on. I rest in knowledge, ever-increasing knowledge of God. Detachment is key here. As long as I am attached, I know nothing.

i don't just give up, i give in

[Note: all my dear friends who freak over theological language, substitute X or The Great Pumpkin or the Mystery or That-Which-Can-Never-Be-Named or the designation of your choice. "God" is fine with me and "God" I shall use.]

No matter what I do, God stays the same. There is something comforting about that. I am the one who has to become different. I can't get away with all my shit. God is not going to meet me halfway here and become more shitty just so I can feel better. I wouldn't anyway. I would just say what kind of God is that, that gets all weirded out just so I don't feel so alone in my weirded-out-ness?

No matter what I do, God stays the same. If I go off on a rampage, drinking and whoring and transgressing all social and moral bounds, God stays the same. If I get all holy and churchy or synagogy and boy scouty, God stays the same.

Some might ask, where's my incentive? I ask right back, what are you trying to do, make an impression on God? Give me a break. Try that trick on someone who will change when you do. It's called manipulation.

So now what? No matter what I do, God stays the same. It's a blessed relief, really. Can't get away with any of my tricks. And I've got a bag full of some highly inventive ones in which I have great pride -- some of them so tricky I don't know until much much later that I was being so tricky. All to no avail. God just stays the same.

So I wind up just hanging around with God. He doesn't seem to mind. We walk together, sit together, laugh and cry together. And no matter what he does, I just stay the same.

Notes To Myself

In changing the name of this blog from Embodying Spirit, I am acknowledging that I am writing (especially lately since I have been "laid up" with this healing foot) "Notes to Myself." Looks as if I am engaged in some sort of post-post-post-doc studies of my own devising (there's no school out there that I know of that teaches what I wish to and am learning, and I probably wouldn't go to it even if there was). So I'll post my notes to myself as I dive and delve into the practical realities and principles of this Mystery which we bemoan and wail and rejoice in and puzzle over and often look to escape and avoid. No avoidance here though. Too far along on the path for such shenanigans.

You can chime in with comments anytime you want but as Chief Dan George said in The Outlaw Josey Wales "I shall endeavor to persevere."

Recent notes:

Inversion -- That this world which we so tout and fret over and give priority to is a econdary world, a shadow world we continue to make up, co-create, fall on our knees and worship -- a mass hypnosis worthy of Jim Jones. Inversion means this second-order reality is given top priority. Prime reality is regarded as non-existent or of no consequence.

Only that which our sciences (which view the universe through a constricted limited lens producing a contracted awareness) hold to be real is real. Science and a-theism are our newest religions. Contracted awareness is our "enlightenment." We have thrown out both the baby and the bathwater, but by Jove (wups, not supposed to mention gods), the pan we are left holding is of the latest technological design!

Being nobody is natural and fine -- In the eyes of "the world" (human-created society) we are supposed to be something, a somebody, to amount to something. In our heart-of-hearts, we know we are nothing. All that we are is given to us by uncreated grace. Beyond what we are given, in being called into existence, we are nothing. We are fine until we fall out of graciousness and begin looking at ourselves through the imagined eyes of "the world." It is then we suffer our (self-inflicted) doubts and fears and waverings and uncertainties. We have relinquished control of our lives to a fantasy. I am done with all that and have been for quite some time. I look through my own eyes, which are the same eyes as the graciousness that births us all.

Divine knowledge -- There is no room for anti-intellectualism in the discerning of Divine Knowledge (the knowledge and wisdom of primary reality). Fear or scorn of hard-to-grasp concepts keeps one intellectually stunted. Dictionaries, Google, encyclopedias, friends exist for good reason. If a person figures that because they can't understand something, then it is not worth knowing, that is the height of laziness. "Knock and knock and knock and the door shall be opened." Of course, a person may have more important things to do, like file their fingernails.

Conversing -- I must use ordinary logic to speak of the non-ordinary. I must use the language of the IHOP menu to order the Sublime.

Corpse-dragging -- If one does not have the will to know, does not have even simple curiosity enough to query, to question, to look into things, one is already dead and is just dragging one's corpse through the same old structures and strictures that one settled for long ago, just taking up space on the planet until finally found and buried.

Solitary bird -- Think of a solitary bird flying high. This bird is detached intellect. Not hampered by making a name for itself, by how it looks in others' eyes. Not weighed down or distracted by appetite (desires fleetingly fulfilled). Unencumbered by the bonds and chains of security seeking. Unconcerned with bodily woes. The bird, detached from all anchors, detached and with strong will to know, this will being its energetic propulsion, soars higher, breaking through all clouds of unknownness into the sunlight of Isness, the bright clarity of the Divine Intellect, the all-inclusive knowing, no bounds, from which it sprang, in which it resides, and in which it always Is.

skootch-hop-skootch liberation

Back home after a couple of days in Phoenix for foot surgery. Cast on foot puffy-amplitude-worthy of Pillsbury Doughboy. All going well.

Skootched up stairs on my butt to get to computer for this posting.

Here is a journal entry from this a.m. --

(2:30 a.m.) Propped in my futon sofa bed, gargantuan bandage wrap around the bone-chiseled, bone-broken, re-set with internal pins, left foot lifted in air on pillows somewhere in the altitudinal proximity of my heart, body bent in U, I sip black coffee as pain pill chaser and read dense theological tomes of Meister Eckhart, who makes more sense to me these days than any other writer-thinker, underlining and exclamation marking and marginal noting with brief setting aside of book for aha! reverberations in consciousness.

Blessed! Truly blessed to be knocked flat on my back for greater revelations, deeper contmeplations. God is good. My friend, Mr. Walker, stands by with its ever-open invitation to move to fresh surrounds, kitchen, bathroom, living room. Skootch-hop-skootch liberation.

But it's the overall aspects that thrill. Enforced hermitage! What more could a man want?

knowing as you are known

"Where individuality ends, there God begins. God wants nothing more of you than for you to go out of yourself and all individuality and let God be God within. The most insignificant individual structure that takes form in you is as big as God. How is that? It completely obstructs God. Once the structure appears, God and all his Godhead disappear. Once the structure is transcended, God enters. . . He reveals himself in the soul in boundless wisdom, which is himself. . . " -- Meister Eckhart

Consider yourself as consciousness, as awareness. Open to your being as consciousness in process, changeable, ever-changing.

Consider that you have choice and that you choose what fills your consciousness -- now this, now that, now the other. As your attention shifts from here to there, and there to here, the consciousness that is you is transformed.

When you both will and allow yourself to be still, when you allow your attention to rest on one thing and one thing only, one simple focus (a flower, a cloud, a tree, a word, a sound), the consciousness that is you becomes clear and still and open.

This quiet stillness, this quiescence is as far as many meditative practices go. Our detached and unlimited will to know allows going further. When we drop all identification, knowledge and wisdom are revealed. We know and we are known.

We disappear. Only God, only the Godhead remains. This is grace, the grace of the One who breathes us. Unlimited comprehension opens.

tsunami

Human society, this world, is based upon separation and divisiveness. Our society, our science, our religions, our daily life in their current forms are based upon, could not exist without this mental habit of chopping reality into pieces and bits.

So long as we succumb to this largely unconscious, habitual way of thinking, we will be at war within ourselves, with each other, and with "nature." Competition, war, backbiting, plotting, scheming, force, opposition, foot-dragging, hatreds, stridency will always be our way of "life."

Moving out of this mistaken view is our only hope for societal transformation. A tsunami of consciousness change is required, a change that once effected will cause us to see the sheer arrogance and nightmarish horror of separateness and division in which we once lived, and wonder how we could have been so blind.

We are not separate. We all call each other into existence. We must be careful what we are calling.

A tsunami begins with one small shudder within the existing order.

The existing order of human society resides within my and your consciousness.

Off the grid for a while.

will and wisdom

"No one is so foolish as not to desire wisdom, yet why do so many remain ignorant?" asked Eckhart. Because, first, they forsake their unlimited and detached will to know and think instead that reality is something to behold. -- C. F. Kelley

We ditch our will to know the Ultimate, divert will's waters into the irrigation of our irritations and their soothings, flood our plains of stupor with tepid motionless waters.

We forsake our precious unlimited will to know and hang around beholding life, waiting to die, forgetting that in doing so we are already dead.

We are ignore-ant because we give up, surrendering our will to superficial blatherings, watching our life go by as just another reality show.

Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1328) was so far ahead of the generally accepted learning curve that we are still catching up with him. He incorporated all the major thinkings on earth at that time and came to this conclusion: if we keep knocking on heaven's door, it will open. But not unless we knock and keep on knocking.

If we want wisdom (instead of mere knowledge), we must use our "unlimited and detached will to know." We possess, we are given, we are unlimited will. And it takes unlimited will to pursue and open to wisdom. We've got what it takes.

But in opening to wisdom, our will must be detached -- not attached, no clinging, no velcro-brain. How can we be filled unless we stay empty?

Second, wisdom cannot be acquired without disciplined intellection sustained by divine grace.

"Oh God! Does that mean I have to think!? This will thing sounded okay, but this is starting to sound like work (shudder). How come the universe can't just pop my head open and pour some wisdom in? And discipline! Don't even begin to speak to me of discipline!"

Discipline means to become a disciple, a follower of wisdom. It doesn't mean wearing a hair shirt or flogging oneself with brain-cracking whips. Disciplined intellection means to turn one's attention to higher and deeper understandings and to keep it there, unwavering. To open our heartminds to that which breathes us, sustains us, gives us life.

This is where the Overdrive kicks in. When we knock with unlimited and detached will to know, the Door opens. And keeps opening. I find this astounding. We are born to open to wisdom. And the Universe is in our favor.

those who leap and those who do not

"American DNA is a notoriously complex recipe for creating a body politic, but two strands in particular have always stood out in high contrast: the risk-averse Puritan work ethic and the entrepreneur's urge to seize the main chance. Proponents of neither m.o. like to credit the other with anything positive; huggers of the shore tend not to praise explorers, while gamblers remain unimpressed by those who husband savings accounts. Yet blended in much the same way that parents' genes are in their children, the two ways of operating have made us who we are as a country.

That's not just a metaphor, either. Geneticists have shown that there is literally such a thing as American DNA, not surprising when nearly all of us are descended from immigrants. We therefore carry an immigrant-specific genotype, a genetic marker expressing itself—in some environments, at least—as energetic risk-taking and competitive self-promotion. Even when famine, warfare, or another calamity strikes, most people stay in their homeland. The self-selecting group that migrates, seldom more than 2 percent, is disproportionally inclined to take chances. They also have above-average intelligence and are quicker decision makers. Something about their dopamine-receptor systems, the neural pathway associated with a taste for novelty and risk, sets them apart from those who stay put." -- James McManus, What Poker Can Teach Us

I wonder if these differences are also true of the "huggers of the shore" and the "explorers" within America, of "those who leap" and those who do not, whether the leap be geographical, mental, social, or spiritual. Some seem to remain content with the same old ideas, same old society, same old spirituality, same old geographical placement. Others will not stand still for such.

I recommend reading the entire article. Each of us "plays poker" with our lives whether we think of it that way or no.

is you is or is you ain't my baby

Now I know you have far more important things to think about than your own consciousness, but stay with me for a moment here. How can you actualize your potentiality? I do not mean how can you produce more widjits. Nor am I speaking of taking educational courses or attending an endless series of Zam-Bam-Wowie Seminars.

Your consciousness is one of a few billion human consciousnesses on the planet. Then there are the zillions of non-human consciousnesses (those we label and dismiss as animals, plants, insects, etc.). And the multi-zillions of trans-human consciousnesses of those who have gone before us and continue going on.

Never mind those. You really have trouble in believing in them anyway. You only have eyes for you. So I ask again. How can and do you actualize your consciousness potential?

We 21st century humans divide the world automatically and un-conscious-ly into subject (that would be you), object (everything you perceive as not you), and verb (what you do to and with all the objects and what you perceive all the objects do to and with you).

Take a leap for a moment. What is the greatest verb? The greatest verb is is. Without is, there are no other verbs.

To actualize the potentiality of your consciousness, of the consciousness that you are, drop the subject (I, I, I), cease object-ing (turning all not perceived as you into objects, even if they are objects of your affection), and open to Is. (Bucky Fuller said it long ago, with his "I seem to be a verb.")

Thomas Aquinas nailed it too, with his "no potentiality is actualized save by that which is in act." And the Zen dudes and dudesses certainly agree with that.

No subject. No object. Only the Great Verb. Is.

The thick hull of separative consciousness so carefully nurtured as protection but which imprisons breaks open. All potential stirs with great release.

Here is the exciting part. I'll state it baldly. Our consciousness opens to God's consciousness. Our consciousness is a subset of God's consciousness (and I speak not here of some white-bearded floater in the sky). The is we are extends into Is. And Is is all the is there is. Unlimited potential here. This is the journey we are on.

meself in the wee hours

"Erudition, no matter how scientific or comprehensive, is at best only ancillary to the direct knowledge gained by detached intellection." C.F.Kelley

"When the mind is happy, the whole universe is happy."
Seung Sahn

Click into here for eventual delightful closeup:

Illustration by Gustav Dore, A Wild Ride

subjecting ourselves to objection

When living in the Energetic Mode, living as Energy, as the LifeForce that we are, we live as pure Awareness, and not as "objects" of awareness that we cling to. The objects are the sites of our objection. We object to the free flow of Awareness. We settle.

We settle Awareness into one or a few "spots." We "object" if these spots are not re-cognized by "others," who also have their favorite spots upon which Awareness stops. Pit-stops of consciousness which become holy shrines.

This stopping of Awareness is perhaps more easily seen in the phenomenon described as getting "stuck" on someone. Awareness is no longer free-flowing, but continues to return to the "object" of one's affections. One thinks one cannot live without what one is stuck on. Hypnosis. Self-hypnosis. Puppy love.

Don't laugh. You are probably doing the same. You have your favorite pit-stops of Awareness, your ideas dipped in bronze dangling from your consciousness's rear-view mirror for your perpetual contemplation and satisfaction (which you will defend with zeal if you sense scorn). You object. You "object."

When living as Energy, as the continuous unfolding of the LifeForce, we do not "object" nor do we "subject" everything to our "selves." All action is the action of the LifeForce that we are.

What is called "normal" on earth today is a consciousness that is pitted with stops and clings and stucknesses. Pure Awareness is considered, if at all, as not possible.

And yet, in our finest moments, we humans are pure Awareness.

the moon agrees

Having naturally and with little effort removed myself from the societal onrush of the generational hordes behind, all pushing for their rightful place on the planet, giving them room as all the elders are expected to do, becoming a balding grizzled repository of cultural, theosophical, and other peculiar knowledges no longer in fashion, I sit perched on the side of this slumbering volcano which long ago blew maybe a mile off its elevation thereby producing several peaks named after the relatives and by the whimsy of the dominant by god members of the domineering society on a first name basis with the map makers and the politicians who continuously seem to have little idea of what to do but funnel more power to the powerful, I stare out the window at the moon and laugh.

This left hoof will be hacked by a chopper with the right credentials, experience, and bedside manner in a couple of weeks, so I done got me (past perfect tense, self-obtaining, for all you grammarians) a cell phone capable of twitting and tweetering and texting and no doubt many other things I will never comprehend for when I have "tears in my ears from lying on my back in my bed," as the old song goes, thus finally dipping my toe into the baptismal waters of the twenty-first century, becoming a communication monster.

Thanks to all who take a peek at this blog. My posts should get really interesting when I am strung out on some whammo pain medication. Though I no doubt will appreciate the soporifics, I still think that, as always, laughter will be the best medicine. The moon agrees.

one is not supposed to speak of these things aloud

One is not supposed to speak of these things aloud. Too easily misunderstood. Folk have been killed, and perhaps even worse, set on a pedestal (a slower form of death). But how is transformation in human consciousness to occur without pointing to the existence and nature of the transformations?

I speak in words that make sense to me, that describe the consciousness that I am as clearly and succinctly as possible:

I am the Lifeforce (Spirit) opening into and as the densest of matter. I am an invasion, an infusion. I feel and see and know and am the vast infinity of Spirit, opening into, as, and out of dense matter, this physical world here. I am a merge and an emerging. I am an outbreathing of Spirit into the realm of and as Man. I am complete subjectivity with no object. I am an embodying of Spirit.

This is my conscious awareness. This is my experience. This is who and what I am.

mage-ician

I call a world into existence with each thought.

Each thought is followed by another thought so rapidly
that this world I continue calling into existence
appears to have continuity.

A rapid succession of depressing thoughts creates a depressing world.
A rapid succession of happy thoughts creates a happy world.
Both are conjurings of thought.

Thoughts are habit-forming.
I create the same world over and over.
I wear this world like a habit.

When I open beyond thought, without thought,
I am neither this nor that.

creating a head on top of your head

Some look to "getting rid of the ego." When attention is focused on "an ego to be rid of," one creates "an ego to be rid of." One is creating what one wishes to annihilate.

The popular conception is that one is doing this in order to be "enlightened," that "getting rid of the ego" is necessary to be "enlightened." Now one is in double trouble.

When attention is focused on being "enlightened," one creates some anticipated state of consciousness out there somewhere in the "future," wherever that is. One is now creating "an ego to be rid of" and an "enlightenment to become" and a "future." No wonder Zen masters hit people in the head!

bhagavad gita

I am giving an ongoing recounting and commentary at the Warrior Notes blog site of one of the greatest warrior stories ever told, the story of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. All are invited to tune in.

memo to myself

Keep opening to this! --

He sees in the darkest dark, hears where there is no sound. In the midst of darkness, he alone sees the dawn; in the midst of the soundless, he alone hears harmony. Therefore, in depth piled upon depth he can spy out the thing; in spirituality piled upon spirituality he can discover the essence. So in his dealings with the ten thousand things he supplies all their wants out of total nothingness. -- Chuang Tzu

I see the dawn in the darkest dark.
I hear harmony where there is no sound.
I see the essence no matter the depth
and cleverness of the obfuscations.
I deal effectively and well
with the ten thousand things
by being as nothing.
I do this by giving myself totally
to the Way and its Virtue.

the birthing of humanity

Wittgenstein said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." But whereof one can speak, one must speak.

Here is what I must speak:

Humans are moving into a higher consciousness, a wider and deeper Awareness. Do not keep looking at the daily news of murderous and stuporous insensitivity. That is the old consciousness. Humanity is on the move. A birthing is happening. The pressures of the womb, the womb of humanity, are increasing. We cannot stay in the foetal position to which we have become accustomed. It is time to be born. We are at the beginning of a consciousness change of humanity -- opening to the nondual rather than the dual is its longterm action.

unbuckle your seat belts, we are in for a ride!

We are moving into, are already in the beginning of a new era, the Era of Synthronicity, where every one and every thing are sitting on each other's lap simultaneously.

The old way, the Era of Materialism, has already blown apart. Both communism and capitalism, its two major ideologies or operating systems, have failed. The globalization that is occurring via communication is transcending those dinosauric power bases.

The old way is dying, is unsustainable.

We are moving into an era maximized by fluid grace, where all interacts with all. The rigid and the domineering will not make it. We are becoming synthronous, where we all (human and non-human, all life forms) are sitting on each other's laps simultaneously.

We have never faced this before. There is no map, only the journey. So center within your breathing and your open heart, unbuckle your seat belt, and don't hang on. Transformation is here!

deeming and re-deeming

The topic of redemption arose yesterday, briefly, a couple of times. I let it ponder itself in my heartmind this morning.

We often look to redeem ourselves. In our own eyes and in the eyes of others. A natural human inclination, redemption means I turn in my old self for a new. I become as new.

There are some tricks for doing this. One is I lift myself up above others or out away from others into a special domain. I justify myself. Another is to go the other way, looking to redeem myself by seeing myself as a worm or as dirt. I punish myself. Neither of these work very well or for long. They are tricks I play.

What is true redemption? A clue is found in the word "redeem" itself. I have deemed myself as one way. Now I look to re-deem myself, to deem myself differently, as better, as more whole.

When we go a little deeper into demption, we find that the entire redemption saga comes about by deeming ourselves (as something) in the first place.

The Perfection of Wisdom says it well:
Just so the fool who has admitted into himself the notions of I and Mine
Is forced by that quite unreal notion of an I to undergo birth and death again and again.

Redemption means to be born again, anew. But if it is the I that is redeemed, to die again is certainly to follow. In this life now. One's self washer is stuck on an eternal redemption cycle.

True redemption is to stop deeming. No longer deeming myself as anything, not even deeming myself as nothing, simply giving up this whole deeming of me I do, I am redeemed and never need to deem again.

dream time

All persons in a dream are me. All objects in a dream are me. All emotions in a dream are my emotions. All thoughts in a dream are my thoughts. All judgments in a dream are my judgments. All things done to me in a dream I am doing to myself. All things I do to others in a dream I am doing to myself.

The same is true for the dream we call awake.

The only way I know someone is through characteristics of my own. If I do not have certain characteristics, then neither does the world. I cannot see other than what I am.

To ject means to throw, to hurl. This dream is one large projection, one large subjection, one large objection, one large dejection, one large rejection, one large injection, one large conjecture. I deliberately eject myself from my abjection, assume a different trajectory. I belong to the ject set, the ject sect.

What is love but one large hurling of the heart?

I create my dream dream and play every part. I create my awake dream and am it all. What I see is what I ject.

I have prejudice against the dream dream as not real,
prejudice in favor of the awake dream as real.

I can awaken from the dream dream.
Can I awaken from the awake dream?

interwhirling

We are made in the image of the God whose image we are making.

This is what the Buddhists call dependent co-arising.

With everything mutually, dependently co-arising, we are bigger than the little pinpoint we make of ourselves. We are as large as the Cosmos. Our awareness continues expanding to real - eyes this.

attention attention attention

Whatever we attend to, we become.

When we realize that, truly know that to be real, rather than in our mind saying yeah yeah, and moving on to forage in other gardens, when we realize that whatever we attend to, we become, when we know this to be true, then we have found a simple tool of transformation -- our attention. It is right before our eyes, behind our eyes, and with our eyes -- our physical eyes and our spiritual eye.

Though it is a simple tool (whatever we point it to, it goes there), if the one who holds it is unsteady, it will point all over the place. This is why meditation and prayer and mindful awareness are such excellent practices.

Sometimes our tool of attention drops from our hands and we live in a fog. Sometimes we point it at ourselves, stare into its laser eye, and are blinded. Sometimes our slurpy desires get hold of it and point it toward search of satisfaction. Sometimes we point it at others and get all judgy.

Whatever we attend to we become.

My practice is to attend to the Buddha field, to Christ consciousness, to the Source of Wisdom by whatever name. Sometimes my attention wavers and I fall out of my practice. But I remember the Samurai saying: Seven times down, eight times up!

Whatever I attend to, I become.