He stood singing by the river. A new song. One had never heard before nor imagined to be. The river was not shallow for this time of year, as some have told him. About knee high at its rocky center and shallower close to the shore, of course. Where the river turned from flowing east to flowing south deep swimming holes formed and it is in one of these pockets –under the shadow of the tropical flora that he saw the opening. He normally would not hesitate to go in. Today was different. He had not gone on a journey like this for a while. This is what he wanted though.

 

To prepare himself he stood firm and still with his eyes closed. First he noticed the sound of the river. How had he missed it? He laughed to himself. He hadn’t of course but the clear crystal-like sounds awaken like a bird at dawn when the eyes are shut. Nature allows this. Back in the city, to close your eyes and hear the sounds of traffic and yelling and hammering is abusive. No wonder people lose touch with the silence within them.

 

After the sound of water running over rocks he heard the wind in the trees. Yet another thing it is hard to find pleasure in when you are surrounded by air hitting concrete. At it’s best it brings with it smells from restaurants serving food that is devastating the planet. At its worst,well, you’ve experienced these city winds.  The wind in the forest will speak to you if you listen. It carries the fragrances of life itself along with its wisdom.

 

He took one step forward and touched his toe to the water.Whispers from the water could be heard - voices from the realms beyond. He remembered these realms. The creatures within them peered at him like eyes in the mist - some voices fierce, others gentle and yet others whimsical. They are beings like ourselves but who have listened to the wisdom of the land. Beings unique to their element. The water beings like open containers for the creative force of the universe itself. Earth beings, like stethoscopes, attuned to the heartbeat and flow of life and death. The air beings, like secrets being told by giggling children, like blessings holding up the very space that life can be in. And finally fire beings, like laughter from ten thousand portals into ten thousand universes and all the souls within them celebrating.

 

He removed his toe from the water laughing with childish joy. He opened his eyes, ran in to the water and dove deep into the wisdom and play of the mystery beyond.

 

 

What if I told you that you could never attain anything? Well, at least not for very long! A state of mind…? Sure you could attain that. For a moment. But can you attain awakening? Do you attain it when you wake up from sleep in the morning? It happens because something deep within has actually just let-be what is.

 

Lets experiment for a moment. If there is something you want right now, name it. It can be candy, to scratch your toe or enlightenment. It doesn’t really matter, they are all the same thing. You have an idea of what it would be like to have those desires fulfilled. And you would have an experience of some sort if you managed to manipulate your physical or mental world to fit with your idea (which again as nature would have it – doesn’t last very long). So whatever your idea is, the experience you managed to have would inevitably change and you would be back in the throws of addiction trying to get back to a particular state of physical or mental consciousness.

 

The experiment is, for just this one moment to stop trying to attain to that something. You allow the wanting to be, because stopping the wanting is beyond your power. It would cause you pain to try and stop the wanting. Stop the ‘striving for’ and just see who is there. Who is present when you are not striving?

 

If this is the first time you’ve ever done this you may be fumbling around trying to find something. Trust your initial experience. Initial before the mind kicks in saying ‘I’ or ‘me.’ Before that mental I kicks in there is a ‘nothing’ - an awakened place of nothing. What were to happen if you were to begin allowing that place to be every time you started striving? Experiment and see…

 

Blessings on your journey!

 

 

Sleepless

breeze sweeping

earth my hands

enamored with

edible leaf

plant. Me

the garden

sweating

at 8am

hammocking in plastic chair.

 

Tom drumming his fingers

on his bag blue

containers of last

years poison waiting

to be fertilizer now

that the distance has taken

their potency.

There is a guy aloft

on a coconut

palm.

 

If there is

a coconut with your name

you know fate

has called you. I did chose

 

though, to sit

right here.

**

He is scaling

another palm walking

up as if it were flat

and he, a monkey –

machete tied

to a ten foot rope

like a tail.

Ahh… wonderful mind… hmmm… where are you? I have convinced myself of your existence. I have given you shape and form as God did me. I have called you ‘mind’ and Ego, I have fought you like Don Quixote fought windmills.

 

When I ask myself, ‘what is mind?’ I have a vague experience of, well… ‘something.’ But what if that something is just a ‘something’ and all this talk has convinced me that this something is more a thing than any other idea floating around.

 

And actually, the same applies to ‘I.’ There is a vague experience but is it not merely a ‘thing’ I have constructed? Is this not true for anything I have an experience of and have given a word to?

 

Where are these ideas floating around you might ask? Well… certainly not in my mind! If anywhere they are simply in the all/everything and nowhere in particular. Sounds strange? But ask yourself if it isn’t true! And before you start doubting your own experience, listen to what is speechless in the answer you receive.

 

In Hebrew there is no word for ‘mind.’ Maybe there is a good reason for that!

 

the Demiurge is a Gnostic term for the created who thinks it is creator. In the Gnostic myth a being was created or maybe it was ‘Spirit given form.’ This form congealed and became, ‘I.’ This ‘I’ was a thought. This thought ‘I’ produced other thoughts. Some of those thoughts were ‘I am God’ or ‘I am creator’. The Gnostics say that this thought ‘I’ became the creator of all that is in matter – this is why the world is imperfect – because it’s creator is imperfect – a thought that is not true. A thought that is separate from its source and ignorant of it. The primal misperception as it were.

 

In each one of us there is this God – this demiurge. In each one of us there is a thought ‘I’ who does not acknowledge that it is only a thought and not the creator of that thought. It goes on to create many twisted things and many pleasurable things all in an attempt to service this ‘I,’ this ‘self.’ It is happening every moment.

 

We have learned to call this ‘I,’ Ego. We use our thoughts to fight it – to get rid of it. But it is the very thoughts created by the ‘I’ that are fighting it. This fight is what gives the ‘I’ meaning. To eliminate the ‘I’ - do not fight it, simply recognize that all the thoughts that it produces are as mistaken as their origin. Awaken to what is beyond ‘I’ - simply rest there and all delusion will gradually disintegrate like clouds on a sunny morning. Can’t beat that… (-:

 

Summertime sun plants itself

In that tear shadowing all

the paintings on the wall. You

 

have been staring at those paintings

of Goddesses and Gods,

They never stare back, do they?

Something nagging always

nagging like plump juicy fruit

begging to be gorged on.

 

The broken hearted have

learned. We try

and call them

back into striving,

like calling a bird back

into her cage.

 

Who? Where? What? How? When?

We all slip

eventually from

our delusions. Rushing traffic

on the other side

of a hedge is not

the ocean. no matter

how much I want it to be.

 

In the same way,

love is not love

until you’ve surrendered

your desire;

created the ocean

with your tears.

    

 

 

1. vti to know, understand, and accept something
2. vti to be aware or conscious of something, or to become aware
of something
3. vt to achieve in actuality something that has been hoped or
worked for

Astounding isn't it? How we cling to that which we want to get rid of most
(our ideas of what is). Astounding! How in our search for everything, we
fear the ultimate demise of 'me'. Masters talk about the death of self and
being reborn. It seems that is usually the most promulgated part of the
teaching. People forget, or leave out (maybe they just stopped reading at
that point), that it always comes down to being both. Both born
and unborn. Sure we change in the process of discovery and that
change can seem like death to 'little-me'  but really, what is the Heart of God without the
Heart of who you are?

Being always away you lose contact with living and the full expression of
light-in-extension. Being only in your own solidified and separate being is
lonely. We allow what is and then we allow it to shine through the unique
lens of our hearts. Only then are we One. In our unique expression,
realizing 'One' and the true meaning of being in-love.

The irony of realization is that we have so many ideas about what it is like
to realize something. Realization can never be an idea. It is the thing
itself, which never EVER matches our idea of it. What fun would that be!?

 

Journeying Hearts

to every corner beg

to come before

salvation. In the warm

 

encounter of a dreamy state

we’ve often glimpsed

the majesty of love.

 

Together - a tribe

of living-dead

before their queen -

mesmerized climbing 

to the source of light – and after

Hero’s Journey

they are turned away

to find their own.

 

Who am I? You’ve asked.

What breath, what scent,

has carried me thus far?

Why do I come? Leave all

the world behind

for this obsession?

 

To know is not the goal

To die is not the goal

To have is not the goal

Pointing the way is the fear.

Pointing the way are a thousand books

and teachers. Forget them!

It is The Secret

 

itself calling you

to be, to go beyond -

to the tiny speck of absolute

that lives

not

truth or sorrow, all the while,

allowing it to be -

that savior all the world

has known - has waited

for return. You

 

are savior now.

You’ve known but have not

trusted. The journeying heart

has always been

the cradle of conception.