Saturday, May 9, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Hopeless
Go outside if you can
to a place not mapped, where ice might be gone and pink petals swirl in the street.
Take off all the dissonance and hang your identity where you are least likely to
remember (next to the scratchy guilt and plastic anger)
and just walk.
Look at the signs pointing to here and there and both.
Look at the dreams of this and that.
Allow the rain and sun to face you in the proper direction for perfect nonsense,
because no, there is no point. It is senseless, all this beauty
and your capacity
and the love you feel
(even for your denial).
Let the lust for bliss brush across the back of your neck
and cause you no end of troublesome delight.
to a place not mapped, where ice might be gone and pink petals swirl in the street.
Take off all the dissonance and hang your identity where you are least likely to
remember (next to the scratchy guilt and plastic anger)
and just walk.
Look at the signs pointing to here and there and both.
Look at the dreams of this and that.
Allow the rain and sun to face you in the proper direction for perfect nonsense,
because no, there is no point. It is senseless, all this beauty
and your capacity
and the love you feel
(even for your denial).
Let the lust for bliss brush across the back of your neck
and cause you no end of troublesome delight.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Sweetness and Light
Last night (in a parallel life), I was having pleasant dreams of sleeping with an angel, when an unfamiliar sound pulled me into reluctant wakefulness.
I followed the sound and emerged into a time of day long past my normal early-to-rise. From my front porch, I heard a distant rumbling. I smelled an encroaching desert that surely had not been present before...and there was the white mare, pacing.
She brought me an urgent message from her brother, the dark horse currently penned comfortably (or so I thought) in luxurious equine quarters on my land. Release me now, said the dark horse, whom I called Sweetness, as he was anything but.
I followed the mare in the direction of my beautiful stables, shaking my head and dragging my feet in protest, in spite of the fact that I knew she was God, and that what she says, goes.
"Listen!" I insisted to her twitching ears. "Sweetness is mine, he's legitimately adopted! I know he's stubborn and sort of crazy--he must have had a hard start--but he has a good life, with me. You can't expect me to just...just let him go!"
No reply. A wind was bounding across the land, a vast chunk of acreage I had both inherited and earned with blood, sweat and tears, having built everything on it with my own two hands, giving a home to all kinds of beings--animal, vegetable and mineral. I may as well have grown the wood and stone that these structures were made of. My whole heart, my place in the world, was here. And Sweetness...was a challenge, was a triumph, was a wild horse that I had gentled, an enigma that I thought I had come to understand. I had been on his back, without being thrown, without a saddle, flying across some plain. I had gained his trust and a sense of power, that way.
I could see him now, running across the confines of the corral, tossing his magnificent head. And the angel I had been sleeping with leaned against the gate, looking at me in a reproachful fashion. The mare joined him as he pointed to a place which was broken and splintered--again, as I had mended it many, many times. I sighed, embarrassed. I never realized the fastidious repair jobs were so obvious.
I watched Sweetness dancing from side to side, watching me intently. I saw burgeoning volcanoes, shifting earth and tidal waves in his eyes. Looking past him, I could see these same events just on the horizon of the one spot on Earth I thought was safe from change. My heart broke, and I admitted, maybe out loud, that I had seen these things in the beginning, but thought I could "adapt and overcome" with the right structure, the right attitude, the right words. The right feelings.
But Sweetness said, with just a look, I am finished here, with you. I knew he could have gone long ago, without any permission--that he could easily have turned to my destruction, any one of those times I was busy picking myself up from wherever it was he had tossed me. I was to open the gate, although it was now undeniable that nothing could hold the dark horse.
In obvious relief and approval, the white mare and my winged lover moved aside as I unlocked the symbolic barrier. I felt as if my fingers were numb, fumbling with the latch, fumbling with my own humility. The sky was beginning to match the color of my captive's hide, and muscular clouds rippled in anticipation. At last the thing swung open, and Sweetness bolted for the wild, without even an iota of hesitation or gratitude or recrimination. He was gone so fast that I wondered if I had imagined him.
I stood there, bereft. God and her angel watched me in silence. Hail fell, briefly.
I began a walking survey of my holdings with a heart that had somehow changed careers to become a vital pumping station for the ravaged mind, which had become a wasteland in some natural cycle, formerly denied. Ah, hell. The rabbits were dreaming of long tunnels and snug burrows with soft piles of their own kind. I let them go.
A pair of doves had already escaped through a tear in the wire of their aviary--gentle doves with gentle voices I had loved. The goat didn't seem to care whether he was untethered or not. Nothing bothered the goat. He was a Zen master. The cat had become feral, and the dog was howling in a rusty wolf-voice at the storm.
Nothing was fastened down. Nothing was the same. I had believed my outpost to be unique, protected and worthy of continuity. My founding fathers, my hard work, my attending to the reparation of mistakes, my contributions to charity, my long hours spent with the screaming banshees of my own emotions...did nothing count?
"God doesn't count," said my angel, after he shut the door against the din outside and the rushing sounds of grief. "Horses don't spend much time with numbers." His tone, as he shook drops of water from his wings to the wooden floor, was patient and kind and smiling. My heart held each drop, suddenly, like vast lakes, with room left over for lack of fencing.
One and one is...one.
I followed the sound and emerged into a time of day long past my normal early-to-rise. From my front porch, I heard a distant rumbling. I smelled an encroaching desert that surely had not been present before...and there was the white mare, pacing.
She brought me an urgent message from her brother, the dark horse currently penned comfortably (or so I thought) in luxurious equine quarters on my land. Release me now, said the dark horse, whom I called Sweetness, as he was anything but.
I followed the mare in the direction of my beautiful stables, shaking my head and dragging my feet in protest, in spite of the fact that I knew she was God, and that what she says, goes.
"Listen!" I insisted to her twitching ears. "Sweetness is mine, he's legitimately adopted! I know he's stubborn and sort of crazy--he must have had a hard start--but he has a good life, with me. You can't expect me to just...just let him go!"
No reply. A wind was bounding across the land, a vast chunk of acreage I had both inherited and earned with blood, sweat and tears, having built everything on it with my own two hands, giving a home to all kinds of beings--animal, vegetable and mineral. I may as well have grown the wood and stone that these structures were made of. My whole heart, my place in the world, was here. And Sweetness...was a challenge, was a triumph, was a wild horse that I had gentled, an enigma that I thought I had come to understand. I had been on his back, without being thrown, without a saddle, flying across some plain. I had gained his trust and a sense of power, that way.
I could see him now, running across the confines of the corral, tossing his magnificent head. And the angel I had been sleeping with leaned against the gate, looking at me in a reproachful fashion. The mare joined him as he pointed to a place which was broken and splintered--again, as I had mended it many, many times. I sighed, embarrassed. I never realized the fastidious repair jobs were so obvious.
I watched Sweetness dancing from side to side, watching me intently. I saw burgeoning volcanoes, shifting earth and tidal waves in his eyes. Looking past him, I could see these same events just on the horizon of the one spot on Earth I thought was safe from change. My heart broke, and I admitted, maybe out loud, that I had seen these things in the beginning, but thought I could "adapt and overcome" with the right structure, the right attitude, the right words. The right feelings.
But Sweetness said, with just a look, I am finished here, with you. I knew he could have gone long ago, without any permission--that he could easily have turned to my destruction, any one of those times I was busy picking myself up from wherever it was he had tossed me. I was to open the gate, although it was now undeniable that nothing could hold the dark horse.
In obvious relief and approval, the white mare and my winged lover moved aside as I unlocked the symbolic barrier. I felt as if my fingers were numb, fumbling with the latch, fumbling with my own humility. The sky was beginning to match the color of my captive's hide, and muscular clouds rippled in anticipation. At last the thing swung open, and Sweetness bolted for the wild, without even an iota of hesitation or gratitude or recrimination. He was gone so fast that I wondered if I had imagined him.
I stood there, bereft. God and her angel watched me in silence. Hail fell, briefly.
I began a walking survey of my holdings with a heart that had somehow changed careers to become a vital pumping station for the ravaged mind, which had become a wasteland in some natural cycle, formerly denied. Ah, hell. The rabbits were dreaming of long tunnels and snug burrows with soft piles of their own kind. I let them go.
A pair of doves had already escaped through a tear in the wire of their aviary--gentle doves with gentle voices I had loved. The goat didn't seem to care whether he was untethered or not. Nothing bothered the goat. He was a Zen master. The cat had become feral, and the dog was howling in a rusty wolf-voice at the storm.
Nothing was fastened down. Nothing was the same. I had believed my outpost to be unique, protected and worthy of continuity. My founding fathers, my hard work, my attending to the reparation of mistakes, my contributions to charity, my long hours spent with the screaming banshees of my own emotions...did nothing count?
"God doesn't count," said my angel, after he shut the door against the din outside and the rushing sounds of grief. "Horses don't spend much time with numbers." His tone, as he shook drops of water from his wings to the wooden floor, was patient and kind and smiling. My heart held each drop, suddenly, like vast lakes, with room left over for lack of fencing.
One and one is...one.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
More or Less Human
The human animal is fascinating, complex and incredibly wrapped up in its definition of itself, when operating through the possessing/rejecting, judgmental filter of ego. Our individual and collective commentary on life is our story, our current default identification. For most people, this language carries on as the reactive "noise" within and without...like a subliminal program which seems to be always functioning, always telling us what to run toward or away from.
Is this what it means to be human?
I can imagine a time long past (or far into the future) when it was easier to drop out of the layer of insistent chaos; when there were much longer gaps between news events and much less advertisement of everything that is supposed to make one an ideal example of the species. In spite of inundating ourselves with goods, services, information and all kinds of technology, we live in a culture of perceived scarcity, which we help to create by believing those messages screaming that, not only do we not have enough of anything, we aren't enough, either!
It is the special talent of marketing experts to create a kind of fear, emptiness and lack of trust in our own world, which then must be filled or resolved with some product. Being the pattern-loving creatures that we are, we as parents, teachers, clergy, and salespeople of all kinds have attempted this kind of influence upon our children, charges and friends in the name of whatever we feel is "good for them"...so perhaps this tendency is just one of those interesting human traits, taken to an extreme in our society.
The whole business today can be exhausting. It feels like an onslaught of voracious insects accompanied by a tremendous drought. But there is nothing "real or true" about it. When did being human become a control issue, a sales position, a currency? Why do we feel the terrible, aching need to either pursue or defend? And why do we insist upon interpreting the activity of "other species" or the movement of events through our own grasping or fearful language? Is it something that just can't be helped--a biological "drive", a viral replication of an invasive thought?
No.
I'll stand in that "position" as a human being until I drop dead (whatever that means!).
If I could sell what my body/mind/heart "knows", I could pay off my suddenly challenging mortgage today, and buy an island tomorrow...but this brand of being resists all labels and is literally priceless. So instead, I cram this writing into a demanding schedule out of sheer, overwhelming love for the process (words can be fun!) and the barely-hidden fragility evident in my people, in my species. I suffer and laugh with you, as you and me.
Walking on the beach or in the woods or down the sidewalk, I listen to the rhythm of the body and the pulse of the mind. Noise falls away; soon it is evident that underneath the clamor, there is a mute energetic motion, which lurches dumbly and blindly in fight, flight or fascination. And underneath that, there is a kaleidoscopic, shifting, ordered-and-organic, geometric-and-spontaneous patterning happening. And underneath that is an entirely uncommon world, although I easily feel it beneath my feet and breathe it in and out of these lungs. It's an "experience" in which I am no longer "human"--I am unspecified, unclassified, undone. I am absolute, immediate and so thoroughly perfect that there is no lack, no need, no transformation required. The concept of having or being "enough" does not even arise.
This is not dead silence or blank mindlessness, either. This is a dropping of an illness, a disease, a total shedding of a thick, itchy skin. What emerges is vibrantly colorful and prone to singing. The clarity of total health reveals the necessity, the fitting-in of the unconscious disease...which is known at once to be dreamlike.
There is no want in that "state". Every need is fed, even within the feeling of hunger. It is not a practical way of being in a society set up for competition...but wandering into that range of being (as opposed to "achieving" it) is the same as discovering a vastness that has always existed, dwarfing the idea of "human potential" as sunlight pales a candle flame. Really.
Also present is the understanding of absolute limitlessness, a total lack of boundary between anything and anything, because I am all things, all states at once. There is nothing to be said, no urgent speech required, and I am communicating as communication-in-essence.
Sitting in the sand or on a tree stump or on a park bench, I am a cosmic dimmer-switch, and can dial myself fully open or down, down, to the level of balancing my checkbook or struggling with a relationship. The full range of choice becomes available, but the reality of light remains. Who chooses is an unnecessary speculation. It is obvious. All the thousands of years of mythical and legendary god-becoming-man-becoming-god, all the shapeshifting and alchemy taking place behind the scenes makes perfect sense, to both the logical mind and the mind alert to rampant beauty.
Exploitation is not possible.
Shoring up an ego is a total "waste" of energy.
Common sense is, if anything, strengthened by the vast increase in sensitivity to the flow of events. Therefore, nothing is problematic.
People have asked such things as, "If this is true, why stay in the typical world? Why go back to the mortgage and the daily issues? Why even bother yourself?"
I am voluntarily attached, while also knowing I am free. I make no excuses for this attachment or disinterest...it became voluntary when I realized that I am responsible for everything, and response-able to everything. Oddly enough, there is nothing left to justify. For every effect, there are myriad causes.
I see some people calmly wander off when they trip over the true extent of themselves...maybe they return, maybe they don't. They are motivated by love. I see people throw themselves into whatever they feel constitutes complete service to the "betterment of humanity", out of utter compassion and love. I see people pointing to the very limiting (if comfortable) blind stupidity society exhibits while it panders to fear--the pointing may be done through humor, serious warnings or creative action. But it stems from love.
Whatever route the attempt at communication and opening takes, ego (as a valid method) takes a back seat, becoming a purely logistical function, a practical tool, a way of negotiating the consensus dream, if that's what someone wants to do. It takes a back seat because love becomes the driver.
Maturity appears to be a process of opening to the actual, which includes rather than rejects and loves rather than denies. What is real is all-encompassing. It attends to all the dynamics of a situation, is aware of itself as occupying both "sides" in any apparent conflict. Resolution is a natural thing. Sometimes it isn't peaceful or painless...but mature resolution has no need for excessive suffering.
Perhaps one of the landmark signs of maturity is the willingness to exchange a highly developed and sophisticated sense of identity--and all its righteousness--for something much more flexible, pliable and easy. Anything else is in opposition to the Nature, human and otherwise, that we are. This kind of fighting isn't implicitly wrong, but just the long way home...through a wasteland full of very harsh lessons. Necessary, maybe, up to a point...past that point, true suffering sets in as the final call to be real.
What does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to be?
What does it mean?
What does it?
What does?
What!
Is this what it means to be human?
I can imagine a time long past (or far into the future) when it was easier to drop out of the layer of insistent chaos; when there were much longer gaps between news events and much less advertisement of everything that is supposed to make one an ideal example of the species. In spite of inundating ourselves with goods, services, information and all kinds of technology, we live in a culture of perceived scarcity, which we help to create by believing those messages screaming that, not only do we not have enough of anything, we aren't enough, either!
It is the special talent of marketing experts to create a kind of fear, emptiness and lack of trust in our own world, which then must be filled or resolved with some product. Being the pattern-loving creatures that we are, we as parents, teachers, clergy, and salespeople of all kinds have attempted this kind of influence upon our children, charges and friends in the name of whatever we feel is "good for them"...so perhaps this tendency is just one of those interesting human traits, taken to an extreme in our society.
The whole business today can be exhausting. It feels like an onslaught of voracious insects accompanied by a tremendous drought. But there is nothing "real or true" about it. When did being human become a control issue, a sales position, a currency? Why do we feel the terrible, aching need to either pursue or defend? And why do we insist upon interpreting the activity of "other species" or the movement of events through our own grasping or fearful language? Is it something that just can't be helped--a biological "drive", a viral replication of an invasive thought?
No.
I'll stand in that "position" as a human being until I drop dead (whatever that means!).
If I could sell what my body/mind/heart "knows", I could pay off my suddenly challenging mortgage today, and buy an island tomorrow...but this brand of being resists all labels and is literally priceless. So instead, I cram this writing into a demanding schedule out of sheer, overwhelming love for the process (words can be fun!) and the barely-hidden fragility evident in my people, in my species. I suffer and laugh with you, as you and me.
Walking on the beach or in the woods or down the sidewalk, I listen to the rhythm of the body and the pulse of the mind. Noise falls away; soon it is evident that underneath the clamor, there is a mute energetic motion, which lurches dumbly and blindly in fight, flight or fascination. And underneath that, there is a kaleidoscopic, shifting, ordered-and-organic, geometric-and-spontaneous patterning happening. And underneath that is an entirely uncommon world, although I easily feel it beneath my feet and breathe it in and out of these lungs. It's an "experience" in which I am no longer "human"--I am unspecified, unclassified, undone. I am absolute, immediate and so thoroughly perfect that there is no lack, no need, no transformation required. The concept of having or being "enough" does not even arise.
This is not dead silence or blank mindlessness, either. This is a dropping of an illness, a disease, a total shedding of a thick, itchy skin. What emerges is vibrantly colorful and prone to singing. The clarity of total health reveals the necessity, the fitting-in of the unconscious disease...which is known at once to be dreamlike.
There is no want in that "state". Every need is fed, even within the feeling of hunger. It is not a practical way of being in a society set up for competition...but wandering into that range of being (as opposed to "achieving" it) is the same as discovering a vastness that has always existed, dwarfing the idea of "human potential" as sunlight pales a candle flame. Really.
Also present is the understanding of absolute limitlessness, a total lack of boundary between anything and anything, because I am all things, all states at once. There is nothing to be said, no urgent speech required, and I am communicating as communication-in-essence.
Sitting in the sand or on a tree stump or on a park bench, I am a cosmic dimmer-switch, and can dial myself fully open or down, down, to the level of balancing my checkbook or struggling with a relationship. The full range of choice becomes available, but the reality of light remains. Who chooses is an unnecessary speculation. It is obvious. All the thousands of years of mythical and legendary god-becoming-man-becoming-god, all the shapeshifting and alchemy taking place behind the scenes makes perfect sense, to both the logical mind and the mind alert to rampant beauty.
Exploitation is not possible.
Shoring up an ego is a total "waste" of energy.
Common sense is, if anything, strengthened by the vast increase in sensitivity to the flow of events. Therefore, nothing is problematic.
People have asked such things as, "If this is true, why stay in the typical world? Why go back to the mortgage and the daily issues? Why even bother yourself?"
I am voluntarily attached, while also knowing I am free. I make no excuses for this attachment or disinterest...it became voluntary when I realized that I am responsible for everything, and response-able to everything. Oddly enough, there is nothing left to justify. For every effect, there are myriad causes.
I see some people calmly wander off when they trip over the true extent of themselves...maybe they return, maybe they don't. They are motivated by love. I see people throw themselves into whatever they feel constitutes complete service to the "betterment of humanity", out of utter compassion and love. I see people pointing to the very limiting (if comfortable) blind stupidity society exhibits while it panders to fear--the pointing may be done through humor, serious warnings or creative action. But it stems from love.
Whatever route the attempt at communication and opening takes, ego (as a valid method) takes a back seat, becoming a purely logistical function, a practical tool, a way of negotiating the consensus dream, if that's what someone wants to do. It takes a back seat because love becomes the driver.
Maturity appears to be a process of opening to the actual, which includes rather than rejects and loves rather than denies. What is real is all-encompassing. It attends to all the dynamics of a situation, is aware of itself as occupying both "sides" in any apparent conflict. Resolution is a natural thing. Sometimes it isn't peaceful or painless...but mature resolution has no need for excessive suffering.
Perhaps one of the landmark signs of maturity is the willingness to exchange a highly developed and sophisticated sense of identity--and all its righteousness--for something much more flexible, pliable and easy. Anything else is in opposition to the Nature, human and otherwise, that we are. This kind of fighting isn't implicitly wrong, but just the long way home...through a wasteland full of very harsh lessons. Necessary, maybe, up to a point...past that point, true suffering sets in as the final call to be real.
What does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to be?
What does it mean?
What does it?
What does?
What!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
When All Else Fails
If a person could view this planet and human civilization through time-lapse photography, the fact that we belong to a larger "body" would become evident. One would see the ebb and flow of continent and sea, of population, of cities and monuments, mountains and valleys. There would be a rising and falling, an obvious pulse and rhythm. Whole systems would clearly spring forth and flourish for a time, like mushrooms on the forest floor, only to wither back into the rich, self-nourishing matrix of Earth. Expand the scene even further, and witness our solar system, our galaxy amidst millions of others, breathing.
By not exercising this spacious temporal vision, we become myopic and lost within the maze of our own tiny and temporary measuring devices...we crash into the edges of our mental maps.
We spend our time measuring out our lives through various entrancing concepts, large and small. It is a powerful gift! The measurement--the defining--can be done through something as huge as the idea of species or culture, or as small as a word in the back of the mind. We measure in an attempt to "succeed" at our lives. Grades, intelligence quotients, incomes; religious, political or other social movements; waistlines, biceps, gray hairs, approving people, how many nights we haven't slept, how many dreams have not come true, how many scary things we manage to avoid. We measure everything against some ideal self, relationship, society or world, which we hope will bring more security, a better sensation, greater power. And when the numbers and words, or systemic promises collapse back into themselves, as they inevitably do, we call this "failure".
Meanwhile, an underlying support system breathes. A perfectly adapted human body carries on with its dying/healing. A multidimensional universe whispers, points, invites.
It does this in great part through that natural and regular cessation--"failure". The end of a method, a season, an idea, a habitual way. The end of the road, the end of the chain, when the suspicion that we are fooling ourselves morphs into a full-blown certainty. Now what?
What do you do when you find that the idea, word, number, marriage, career, diet, nation, belief, escape, intention, emotion, goal, or whatever it is you lived by is not the thing? Most people, having hit the end of the chain, spend several minutes (or years) flat on the back staring sightlessly at the sky, recovering the wind which was mysteriously knocked out of them. Eventually, being naturally resilient and generally optimistic, they stand back up and attempt to determine the source of the problem. Ah, yes...the chain. I was running clockwise around the stake, when I should have been running counterclockwise! Of course!
Some people manage to yank the stake out of the ground, and spend their lives dragging the chain behind them or wrapping it around themselves (I am a chain survivor). Some people take the chain apart in an attempt to determine whether it is necessary or not to survival...how to make a weapon out of it...what exactly is it made of?...obviously, chain equals god/no god, reality/nonreality. Some people grow tired and despairing enough of the damn thing to hang themselves. Some count the links, backward and forward, until they can at last escape the counting. Some do all of the above.
A few of us, having landed for the first or hundredth time like a cartoon dog in the dust, open our eyes to the sky, and find ourselves beholding...ourselves. There is an astonishment. Standing up, looking around at this precious place, there is no chain, anywhere!
It's worth a laugh or two...maybe even a lifetime of laughing. And there is some initial sadness, because so many obvious things were missed...like the heartbeat of Everything. But it can no longer be overlooked or underseen. Because every iota of being is your face, in your face. The only unceasing, immeasurable thing. The only inseparable, incomparable fact. It becomes obvious that, whether you happen to be standing in a cellar full of rats or in the middle of a wide green field under the brightest sun, awe is the most authentic response, an emotion that simply can't be weighed.
Out of this pure subjectivity grows a love that can't be shaken, that has no opposite. The universe stretches and settles into actuality. Failure arises as a story, like success. The story takes its place as one of the myriad beautiful myths we weave to our satisfaction, for our secret delight, in a blatant timelessness...from which the stability and clear health of our Origin in all its motion can be understood.
There is only one response...
By not exercising this spacious temporal vision, we become myopic and lost within the maze of our own tiny and temporary measuring devices...we crash into the edges of our mental maps.
We spend our time measuring out our lives through various entrancing concepts, large and small. It is a powerful gift! The measurement--the defining--can be done through something as huge as the idea of species or culture, or as small as a word in the back of the mind. We measure in an attempt to "succeed" at our lives. Grades, intelligence quotients, incomes; religious, political or other social movements; waistlines, biceps, gray hairs, approving people, how many nights we haven't slept, how many dreams have not come true, how many scary things we manage to avoid. We measure everything against some ideal self, relationship, society or world, which we hope will bring more security, a better sensation, greater power. And when the numbers and words, or systemic promises collapse back into themselves, as they inevitably do, we call this "failure".
Meanwhile, an underlying support system breathes. A perfectly adapted human body carries on with its dying/healing. A multidimensional universe whispers, points, invites.
It does this in great part through that natural and regular cessation--"failure". The end of a method, a season, an idea, a habitual way. The end of the road, the end of the chain, when the suspicion that we are fooling ourselves morphs into a full-blown certainty. Now what?
What do you do when you find that the idea, word, number, marriage, career, diet, nation, belief, escape, intention, emotion, goal, or whatever it is you lived by is not the thing? Most people, having hit the end of the chain, spend several minutes (or years) flat on the back staring sightlessly at the sky, recovering the wind which was mysteriously knocked out of them. Eventually, being naturally resilient and generally optimistic, they stand back up and attempt to determine the source of the problem. Ah, yes...the chain. I was running clockwise around the stake, when I should have been running counterclockwise! Of course!
Some people manage to yank the stake out of the ground, and spend their lives dragging the chain behind them or wrapping it around themselves (I am a chain survivor). Some people take the chain apart in an attempt to determine whether it is necessary or not to survival...how to make a weapon out of it...what exactly is it made of?...obviously, chain equals god/no god, reality/nonreality. Some people grow tired and despairing enough of the damn thing to hang themselves. Some count the links, backward and forward, until they can at last escape the counting. Some do all of the above.
A few of us, having landed for the first or hundredth time like a cartoon dog in the dust, open our eyes to the sky, and find ourselves beholding...ourselves. There is an astonishment. Standing up, looking around at this precious place, there is no chain, anywhere!
It's worth a laugh or two...maybe even a lifetime of laughing. And there is some initial sadness, because so many obvious things were missed...like the heartbeat of Everything. But it can no longer be overlooked or underseen. Because every iota of being is your face, in your face. The only unceasing, immeasurable thing. The only inseparable, incomparable fact. It becomes obvious that, whether you happen to be standing in a cellar full of rats or in the middle of a wide green field under the brightest sun, awe is the most authentic response, an emotion that simply can't be weighed.
Out of this pure subjectivity grows a love that can't be shaken, that has no opposite. The universe stretches and settles into actuality. Failure arises as a story, like success. The story takes its place as one of the myriad beautiful myths we weave to our satisfaction, for our secret delight, in a blatant timelessness...from which the stability and clear health of our Origin in all its motion can be understood.
There is only one response...
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