The Path In

Alright...

I won't just gripe about the state of non-union without a how-and-why session.

Why do I write here, and why do I talk about things which are directly unspeakable?

Well, joy. Not joy as an antidote to pain. No--more a holistic, perfectly self-generating potential that registers as a newborn feeling in the heart, in all senses, in the most common or sublime moment. Even the most painful moment, even in a state of "shock". Even when the conditions here are interpreted by the mind as being not optimal. A joy that doesn't need a reason; a joy that "I am".

I'm compelled to share this in almost the same way that a teenage girl in the throes of fascinated love starts every other sentence with "He"...is so beautiful, so perfect, so cool, so powerfully yielding...and I am so into him!! (I can tell, because although we may be talking about dirt or moldy cheese or biological warfare, somehow He always fits into the conversation.) The only difference is that the He/She is not someone "out there", but is, instead, the all-inclusive fact of being. I am in love with my imperfect life, in all its perfection.

How did I arrive in this love, this state-of-all-states?

In the most basic sense, I didn't, because "I" am nothing except a mental reference point. When I talk about any journey that Maria made, it is a tale chosen out of the grand alphabet soup that concurrently creates billions upon billions of other stories. I have to "ignore" the big picture in order to focus on a detail--"myself", in this case--which I am nonetheless aware is literally fashioned, sculpted, delineated by all the elements of Big Picture itself.

Still, on the level of the story, I can see strings of non-mechanistic cause-and-effect that seemed to unfold or open consciousness in such a way as to "reveal", ultimately, a kind of depth. I've called it the Can Opener of Life...but it is anything but a machine, or a mere tool of some cosmic other. I am both the container and the opener.

Someone recently asked about "paths"--the ways, means and education of arriving in realizations that actually change a person's worldview and manner of being--some kind of knowledge that trickles or blasts into the practical to make this existing business easier and less of a struggle, if not downright pleasurable.

I can repeat the obvious, which is to say that paths are as varied as people are, and that probably every well-traveled road is that way for a reason. I can also say that setting out on a path for the sake of "enlightenment" immediately delays it, because it is not a thing to be gained, like a hot date or a fat bank account or a chemical "high". Hard work, certain moral values and lofty ideals do not "produce" understanding. When the understanding dawns--that is, when we stop fighting it--one can "look back" at all the resonating points of contact and say with total confidence that it was fifteen years in the lotus position that brought about this state of love. It was also the strict adherence to/defiance of some kind of diet; prayers/silence entered; TV talk therapy or ayahuasca; a religious experience, a sexual experience, or both; something seen in a tele/microscope; a lucid dream; the raindrop falling from a fir into the Pacific Ocean.

Choose your story. Now choose what chooses.

There are some well-known energetic ley lines to follow, though I would advise an investigation out of pure curiosity, just to see what's around the next bend--as if you were nine or ten, barefoot on summer break, and those in charge just informed you that yes, you can explore the creek (take this cellphone, mind you!). And you have all day. No chores. Sure, the dog can go. Now, scoot while the sun shines!

These singing energetic pathways coincide with those of our bodies, hearts, minds, planet, galaxy, and so forth. In the beginning, the starting-point for exploration reflects the "temperament" of the explorer. For instance, some choose a physical path having to do with moving or manipulating the body. Some investigate the intellect, thinking and the imagination. Some prefer trials by fire. And some dive into dreams of past and future and their deep realms of hidden feeling.

No matter the initial starting point, there comes a day when one is standing in a place where all the lines converge--when one can no longer deny the physical, intellectual, destructive or loving forces that interact to dream us up. At that point, exploring the intellect will uncover the body, or vice-versa. Falling into feeling will reveal the healing of addiction. No matter what way is chosen, there is a sudden overlapping of all things, and a common denominator. You.

This is true for all of us...so what is that point of no return, the holy leaping-off place, the grove of Aha?

I am standing in, jumping off and absorbed into it right now. The liberation is in the following of any path all the way to its origin. You. Trace the intellect to its source. Trace the proddings or denial of the flesh to theirs. Follow the intensity of feeling all the way around to your own heart. Every experience you ever have, or wish you did or didn't, or have no knowledge of, is sourced in you. Reading these words, staring off into space, calculating the distance between you and a mountaintop, your girlfriend or your next meal is you seeing your own face, imagining your own span, relating to your own heart and your absolute longing and abundance.

No matter how many divisions you make or paths you dream up or stories I tell, there is no escape from such a vast freedom!

Tell me, how do you know you are loved?

Default World

Excuse me for a minute while I note the current schizophrenic appearance of human nature--the giant split, the huge sleep, the blank stares in front of the fifty-two inch screen of life. If there is any rebellious identity I enjoy, it is the one in which I am a nomad on the fringe, in secret contact with a whole bunch of other fringey, nomad-types. But it is just a story!

I am probably not alone in that, if I had a prayer of any kind for my species, it would be that each and every one of us was struck with a serious case of reality in all its incredible beauty--that some bodywide third eye would be startled open before the event of "death" to see our default life for what it is.

Every political, economic or religious system we live by is imaginary, supported negatively or positively by the belief of groups of people. Some espouse a structure or a program, some fight it, and some just react to it blindly. Almost everyone believes in the solidity of these institutions, and that is why they "exist".

If all of humanity suddenly failed to recognize a currency, it would revert to its worth in reality...maybe one could eat paper, although the nutritional value is questionable--or build a shelter with stacks of coins. Sometimes, people stop believing in a wall, and it goes down. Lines on a map get rearranged. Even gods come and go.

I understand that we organize in groups and herds, and that our brains operate within a seemingly innate dualistic "template" for survival. I am fully cognizant of the value of peaceful and cooperative society. I do not believe that having more means someone else has to have less, however; I am convinced there is always a win-win solution to every potential conflict. With a deep trust comes ethical behavior that is just as innate as defense.

But this overall peace and prosperity cannot come about until we mature, become responsive to what this is, and stop living by default. Getting to what this Is requires a collapse into the most basic state of personal relating--not to life, which is in no way separate from what we are in the moment--but as life. We can do this individually, in a voluntary awakening, or we can flounder around in what my son might call an "epic fail" and do it collectively. In case you haven't noticed, collective collapse is in the air. It's quite natural for anything extremely top-heavy to fall down.

When I was a child, I was presented with two basic systems of operation (when it became clear to my parents that I was a bit "right-brained", and would probably not go to church on a regular basis--and that I was stubborn--and dreamed too much). Either I could "keep my feet on the ground" and ensure my survival with hard work, straight lines and a conservative point of view, or I could do the unsafe thing, become an artist, and probably starve. This is so trite as to be laughable now, but the impact to an eight-year-old is pretty large.

My parents and schooling taught me (mostly by their actions) not to trust my own instincts, my own love, my own passion, and it took me years to be unafraid. They so convinced me of the "either/or" that I forgot a third alternative was standing there, soaking up or rejecting their belief systems. This Reality that I am does not "believe in" creating choices such as they proposed. It does not recognize lines in the sand. It does not seek power at the expense of anything. It does not believe in the "truth" of systems, of status quo, of failure, of the concept of no concepts. Yet, these stories are generated regularly within it--not necessarily as methods to follow, but perhaps also as definitions of what truth is not.

This does not mean that I completely disregard social law, order and tradition--it just means that I recognize what these things actually are in this collective dream, and therefore am free of the sickening fear, repression or delusion that their more extreme forms tend to encourage.

In spite of some labels I acquired over the last thirty-five years or so, I deeply understand that I am not weird or crazy or an anarchist. I might be chased into the woods, imprisoned or burned at the stake (or just shake my head occasionally in utter cynicism), depending upon which way the wind blows...or, I could live to see some prediction-defying social Utopia. It doesn't matter to what lies beneath and above all outcomes.

Living by default is something I can no longer pull off with a straight face. I've discovered that my personal preferences and longings are a perfect path when they are not based in fear or reaction or "herd mentality". They are original in the sense that they keep me in Origin. Sometimes I get physically lonely or hungry sitting at the place where being comes gushing out of nothing; but it's home, and I can't forget it, because it's with me wherever I go. I bring pain or fear there so that it may be washed clean and the stark beauty exposed. I bring joy there, believing it may flow into other human hearts. And although I must speak of it in dualistic terms, it is nothing other than this, right here, right now. It is so basic and intrinsic that the only thing left to do is admit it.

Can we admit it? Can we admit that we are not in control--that in spite of appearances, nothing and no one is actually is? Can we trust ourselves enough to listen to the barely-audible voice coming from the heart, urging us to take a hike, grow a plant, yank the kids from the horrible school, quit the soul-crushing job, find supportive and understanding humans--before it becomes a shriek? Can we admit that we will never be numb, that we are meant to be sensitive, that we are much stronger than we are told and capable of things currently thought to be impossible?

Can we please feel?
It's the only way out of the program...

Lover Earth

I have been working on a "creation" painting, recently, which invites me into a highly symbolic space each time I pick up the brush. It could be said to represent a coupling of the highest male and female energies, resulting in what we know as the manifest world. The imagery speaks loud and clear to the "sensual" within the contemplative...and like the nebula in which this mythical god and goddess are united, truth flies out cloaked in stars and planets, in cast shadows from a light so brilliant that it defies physical eyes.

You and I are this brilliance, with the cosmic dust of our common body of ideas condensed around our spinning cores. There appears a density, a gravity in which we come to believe we are somehow "trapped", and which we tend to fight in ways subtle and overt through most of our too-brief lives. But that dark gravitational pull is where we must go in order to taste freedom.

Always, in the midst of this struggle, there is a whisper (or a cry) of "God, this can't be all there is--can it?" It is the most painful grief and longing for love, for meaning and purpose. It is truly an awful sensation to think of oneself as being netted in a nightmare of some kind. And this grief, this longing is generally unexpressed, locked down in shame and fear. And when we look at it, off-guard because exhaustion drops some defenses, it appears as an ugly body, or bad news, a planet in turmoil, collapsing ways, mental or physical illness, or despair. On better days, it might be just a big, blank, unscaleable wall...the better to turn away from.

What we ignore or imprison tends to creep out (or explode) into destructive acts and deafness to the pleas of the heart and the wisdom of the body...as evidenced, perhaps, by our current belief in personal and social dilemmas.

Synchronously, the phrase "Lover Earth" has made its appearance a few times while I have been involved in this painting. Earth is indeed our mother, but in the course of maturity, she must morph into our lover, as well, if we are to stop being lost and selfish children. I am not speaking necessarily from an obviously "responsible", save-the-world point of view. I am talking about allowing a shift in our deepest personal (and by extension, universal) psyche, within and without our mental/emotional/physical bodies.

An interesting thing happens when this deep longing for love and truth is acknowledged and carried to term. "Carrying" means not feeding the longing with typical reactionary behavior or intellectual conclusion. "Term" is when truth is born, when you gaze in hopeless bliss upon a face that always sees and feels you, because it is your own.

The process is akin to being pregnant with oneself (as Earth always is). Dwelling in the womb of longing without an answer, what we reject is presented to us again and again until we understand that we are rejecting the very body, literally and figuratively, that brings us life. In psychological terms, our rejected aspects become "shadow selves" that haunt us, like lost pieces of soul. This understanding is more than a way to "claim wholeness" or experience "acceptance", however. It is something foundational, something felt in the bones, a steadiness that allows a standing, a balancing with our own ability to fall.

When rejection ceases...

...the "shadow" is clearly seen.

Imagine a dark light.
Imagine the absolute opposite of everything you experience, as if total voiding stood directly behind anything you can sense--your very consciousness.
Imagine the complete lack of surety, of solidity, and an utter immersion in a question that continually answers itself.
Imagine watching the universe slide into nothingness, which gives birth to you.

I say "imagine", though it isn't any resultant image that is the point or the feeling. It is rather the allowing of oneself to be in the position or stance of openness to something "impossible" that creates the blasts of energy which we call awareness.

Being aware this way, it is impossible not to fall in love, in the only love. It's a love that is beyond any fear of death, because it is backed by a complete mystery, nourished by the continuous dissolution of what appears. Still, there is this and that, word and silence, somehow emerging in a purity that I am continuously thankful I cannot injure!

I can paint it all day, write poetry to it all night, knowing this is nothing more than an endless throwing of myself into that which bursts me into being again, still. This is a woman, a planet, a life/death completely out of control. This is a soul undivided and free to multiply...

Poem by W. Szymborska

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

(A Large Number, trans. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)

Architecture of a Cloud

Many anonymous sensual contemplatives have said, in so many words: "If you can't figure it out, feel it out."

Naturally, I am in total agreement with this instruction, especially now--being alive seems so utterly complex, the plot so convoluted, that getting to the bottom of anything is like trying to stuff clouds in a box.

Clouds...tiny water particles forming where heat and cold meet. Freezing, melting, appearing and vanishing. Taking on the color of the world. Soft and fluffy as a lamb's tail or able to carry a death charge. Concealing, framing, revealing. Sort of like Being, no? Being human, being world, being universal.

The intelligence of clouds is such that they cannot be preserved or confined; holding them within something tends to transform them into a contented puddle somewhere, happy to evaporate or join some larger body. Our systems are catching on to this easy morphing in a crude and clumsy fashion (think "cloud computing")--and indeed, if we could view ourselves and our universe from the very edges of The Big Picture, we would see everything--from our local bodies and land to very nonlocal-seeming galaxies--as appearing and disappearing particles, gathering and dispersing, flashing the colors of a greater sun.

In case this view seems incredibly impractical or suited to poetry and romance rather than the "real" world of harsh edges, I might point out that intellect has not made it to the bottom (or the heights) of life or humanity. That particular journey is more the imperative of the heart, which (sometimes to our great frustration) does not seem to depend on the intellect and its narrow languages. Without some kind of feeling, mind starves and falls back on rote, on eating cardboard, on mechanical motion, like an angry anorexic in prison. Feeling seems to become the untouchable scenery outside the bars, the damn free birds flashing by, uncaring people who don't even spare a thought for the inmates just out of reach of daylight.

Too many years of this self-imposed sentence, and any release is just a binge and a crime-spree that lands the psyche right back in the familiar confines of walls, rules and routines--a punishing life. The reasons given for this are varied and suited to individual stories and levels of comfort. It's as if the prospect of full openness of feeling, of admitting responsibility to and for lambs and storms, is simply too frightening to such a person.

I think, if only--if only!--he or she would rest for a moment without the defining, rearranging, lockpicking tools of the mind, the walls would begin to evaporate as they do in the face of effortlessness. Sometimes we are so enchanted with our human ability to build, contain and reinforce thoughts of ourselves that we forget to feel.

But like clouds above, feeling goes on all the time underneath, a vast and often unused source of intelligence and vital, energetic "fluid". Feeling is not confined to the local, and is naturally shapeshifting and limitless. Feeling is immediately apparent in any pause in inner or outer language, and is so thoroughly evident to an open heart that it is understood as the medium for all expression and impression.

I am not speaking of "a feeling", as in a bracketed and named emotional response. Feeling is not just the content, images or words which arise in answer to a question, as a solution to a "problem" or a direction in which to travel. Feeling is also the context, and the very ability to feel, the very fact that we are as much heart as head.

Feeling has a "pure" form, before taking on any intent or movement away from itself; this is experienced and inadequately named Bliss or Love. Traces of this bliss remain, even in intense suffering.

Returning to the ruins of a former prison is perfectly alright, and can be quite an adventure. The willingness to become immersed in such intensity is a direct invitation to be "carried", expanded, uplifted. After that, one can never actually believe in imprisonment again. Period. So much sky, where there used to be ceiling...and what appeared as desperate graffiti before is now poetry, lying in heaps in the long grass.

Colors change with the reflections of yourself, you of permeable edges, open borders, shifting density...

Letting Go Of Safety

There is an old story about a monk who, finding himself stalked by a tiger, does what any unarmed human would do in similar circumstances--he runs for his life. His escape is halted abruptly when he comes to the edge of a ravine. He decides instantly to make the risky climb down.

Clinging to the steep wall, he realizes there is a second tiger waiting for him at the bottom of the ravine.

Tiger above, tiger below--certain death awaits our monk. What does he do?
He spies a strawberry growing in a crevice within his reach. He releases his grip to pluck the most perfect, sweet fruit he has ever tasted...

The story has multiple layers of meaning, although it generally points to the wisdom of living in the moment as it is presented. It has the feel of the ultimate Zen shrug...ah, well. Under the circumstances, one can panic and go out screaming in fear, or eat the Strawberry of Enlightenment. No regrets.

Unlike our best entertainment action flicks, this story has no happy ending (unless you are a tiger!). There is no real resolution. Death is not managed or escaped. But the quality of presence is noted.

Although lunging tigers are perhaps an extreme example of our greatest fears, we face them in one form or another all the time in our personal legends. I grew up with a regular and distinct sense of unease, anger and fear in both my household and society at large. Peace was found in the arms of an oak tree or under the stars in the desert; the "motivations" for violence in the natural world made sense to me, unlike the things people did to each other for no apparent reason. Rather than getting to the bottom of fear, people just seemed to cycle through endless expressions of frustration and a sort of hopelessness.

Even when times were relatively good and stable, and my mother was optimistic in her assertions that God would provide and things would work out, the subtle threat of loss was always communicated in her actions. I understand that this was not her fault and that she did the best she could with what she had; but insecurity was the default program for living. She called it "common sense". Varying degrees of fear, I grew to understand, are indeed a sense shared by most of us.

Being steeped in a culture of defensive thrift and idealistic history has its benefits, I suppose. I learned to actively scan my environment for resources like food, shelter and clothing, never assuming that what I had was permanent. I learned to believe that "something better" was always just around the corner (because things better had existed in the past, somewhere, for someone, often American). My job was just to work. Very. Hard. Tough things out. Get up and do it again. Cling to the face of the cliff.

I noticed strawberries early on in my practical career of eternal vigilance, and they were very tempting. But letting go was somehow equated with irresponsibility, hedonism, and luxury, if not downright stupidity or insanity. Letting go would make me some sort of deviant. I was already pushing it by insisting that I was an "artist".

Of course I let go. I got very tired of hanging on.

In the process of falling down through strawberry fields (yes, forever), I continue to learn. I am always surprised at the cellular depth of the "steepage" I underwent in my formative years, at the degree to which even my physiological self wants to cling to the handholds of the world. It is initially dismaying to watch the psychosomatic knots wanting to persist and the habitual tendencies to tie new ones, even while consciously paying attention.

But, onward into the depths...and the knots are seen as contractions toward an idea of security and safety, a place of eternal lack of loss. Gripping and letting go of myself, I see that I have no control of this process, and that the very sensation "I" is just another knot in the weave. Hanging on is one religion and letting go another, but reality is That which is doing both.

There is a perfect freedom in falling, a crystal clarity in which there are no absolute answers, but only appropriate questions. Would I do anything differently if physical, mental or emotional safety were not a concern? What am I afraid to lose, and what do I believe is to be gained? Is this a dance I am interested in, or can I step out? And who cares? Am I going after the strawberries because I love, or because some monk told me it would save my apparent life? Is fear another form of love? Am I even real?

All the questions are appropriate, because followed fully, they arrive back in the questioner and become a kind of strawberry that one doesn't have to leap through tigers for! The sweetness, it is discovered, arises with the tongue, the body, the capacity for fear and desire and asking. The sweetness is a self-fulfilling, timeless "event" we tend to refer to as This. Tigers are optional.

Even options are optional. :)

A Shocking Experience

Over the last few days, the concept of "shock" has appeared several times for me in various places--an economic article, and another the same day about Kundalini; in a book about PTSD; at the gym; on a TV medical program; and overheard in a grocery store: "Why do these stupid shocks always happen to me?"

It's enough to get me contemplating. I tend to pay deep attention when something like this comes up and grabs me by the eyes and ears...by now, I understand it's the larger dream talking to me (the busy, local end of the dream).

Physical shock in the event of an injury to the body involves the progressive slowdown of systems (circulatory, etc.) while the body absorbs the fact that injury has occurred, and begins to marshal the necessary defenses and healing processes. It will recover, or not; a similar process happens in the event of a shock to the psyche.

We call large shocks "trauma", and smaller or frequent ones things like "bad luck", "crummy weekend" or, with a more positive spin, "challenge". But describing an event as crisis or opportunity does not change the fact that a shock is basically a change--in perception, modality and function. By nature and in essence, a shock is a surprise, and involves an unlearned, instinctual response to an event...which, by the way, activates our deepest potential.

The old saying, "What doesn't kill you can only make you stronger!" has a ring of truth for a reason. But we are so good at defending and pretending, that our strength can take the form of a very hard shell, a calcification and rigidity which limits our range of motion and intelligence. Hanging on to fear can interrupt the real purpose and benefit of shock, which is a process of maturity and expansion. Enlightenment, if you will.

Life has shock built in. Falling on one's face is necessary in learning to walk. A creature free of any kind of change, stress or trauma does not exist. But there are humans who have become walking shock-absorbing, integrating and expressing events within the Great Event. Prying open the shell involves a conscious shock and a kind of death; but inside is a priceless range of colors, a matrix turned at last toward the sun.

Enlightenment, realization or maturity is just another fascinating and ongoing story. Chapter one is dealing with the shock of being human and mortal. Chapter two is about developing skills to handle the shocks thrown at us by life. Chapter three is figuring out how we shock ourselves. Chapter four...it is always ourselves. Chapter five might be about chasing a shockless way. Chapter six is a screeching halt to this activity. Chapter seven...hmmm, chapter seven!

It's all about experience, isn't it? Some of us are driven to retell, to point beyond the shell into the wide-open spaces. I don't know why.

One day, through intention, spontaneity and both, shock stops being the one-pointed, injury-causing mosquito bite, stubbed toe or blow to the skull that is an imaginary ego confronting a greater Self.

In that moment, the fiction of ego-versus-Self is dissolved as salt in the sea, and being becomes an everlasting shock, accompanied by a sort of awe. And no matter what stories are written or told, this total contact never stops. It accompanies every thought, every motion, every "choice", every change in such an intimate way that it feels like the world is my heart. I am terribly vulnerable to this life, and it is equally vulnerable to me, and we/It hangs in perfectly wordless balance.

People speak of the shock of a near-death experience, when everything is suspended and an apparent choice between life and death--to continue the story, or not--becomes a sudden option. Many come out of this experience fundamentally altered. They bring the lesson, the enhanced vision and sensitivity back into life with them. What is permanently changed and understood is that we are that choice, that fulcrum point between the known (life) and the unknown (death).

Integrating this paradox transforms being, which is suddenly not just a job, but an adventure--and exposes sacred vital organs to a new kind of air. Simply not resisting what is happening in each moment during any kind of change, welcome or not, teaches one to breathe, to be reborn in flexibility and innocence, somehow evolved beyond our assumed story, which defined us as a mere shelled animal. Eventually, we grow into our true identity, which is the entire, endless process of becoming priceless pearls--irritating grain of sand, to valued gem, to grain of sand--and all universes contained therein.

Feeling this is an ongoing, always unexpected kind of ecstasy. New "shocks" occur and deepen everything.

Why does this happen to...?
:)