Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Time and Distance in Relationships
What is looking out of these eyes does not feel old; it feels as if it's getting younger, although in reality it's never changing.
It's what is looking at the body as the wrinkles appear and the belly-over-belt gets larger and the aches and pains of middle-age creep up.
It's what sees the world without contraction, because it is the world.
It's what notices the contractions as they appear:
As I pull back from intimacy
how could I? this would suggest two, and it is all not-two
As intimacy pulls back from me
there is no me. How can something pull back from what does not exist?
Still, let's assume that the contraction exists, that the relative playground is real, the place I have to live and work and connect and ...
As I contract into the relative world, I become identified with the
thoughts
feelings
But this identification with is a mistaken perception. For in the amnesia of contraction I forget that I am *not* the thoughts and the feelings but that which is aware of them.
I feel like I am the flurry of electricity under the sternum. From clear seeing, this is true. I am that which is aware of the flurry; there is no separation between the flurry and that which is aware of it. But from contraction's myopia, I simply am the flurry, a contained, separate, freefloating existentialist nightmare. A ball in the universe, forever frozen and alienated from everything around me.
When I'm there, the connection with friends is tight and regimented. I feel the pain of separation and want to salve it, which leads me to what I *could* do outside of the now. This makes the separation more pronounced, eye contact stutters, and I contract more.
I tangle in on the lines coming from the heart; confused, manic, trying to connect to the friend, to the other.
And with each meeting of each friend the problem compounds and the separation is more intense.
What then, of the option?
Soak in the uncertainty and purity of living, timeless awareness.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Like: With 'Timeline' feature, Facebook goes eternal (or at least tries to) - CNN.com http://ping.fm/dhpSO
Courage: Diana Nyad may still qualify for record books in her Cuba to Florida swim - CNN.com http://ping.fm/FA3Pi
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Paradox's Progeny
Paradox is a wonderful traveling companion, if you don't let her get too surly and dogmatic. Careful hands and open heart are needed to unravel her gifts skillfully.
It used to be the her decadent children that would tantalize me: free will versus determination; Schrodinger's cat; how a man could be 100% man and 100% divine, and so on. They would start at my feet in front of the fire and and climb onto my lap; then find a comfortable place behind the frontal lobes where they could play hide and seek with my intellect as they pleased.
When the mind took care of the mind (another paradox) and the children would settle down into the heart then simply dissolve so there was no distance between us, it was finished. Like my own private koan study.
"Answers" to paradoxes are like asking how long it will take my ice cream cone to learn to play the piano. Not just absurd; meaningless. This does not mean they do not teach; the lesson is just far more subtle than truth propositions imparted by syllogisms or other epistemological models.
So it was two days ago; a stranger madly dashing the wrong way up the escalator, muttering "I always do this". It was glorious absurdity on face value - why not just turn around? She was literally three steps from the bottom of the up escalator when she made her pronouncement. She kept going, and gifted me with an observation:
It is possible to go up and down at the same time. No need to parse it with a semantic or logical Ginsu knife set; this is about the gestalt; the place where paradox relaxes with a smoke, a drink, and a tip of the hat as you take off your shoes and let her know 'ya got it'.
I now understand, at some level, what Eckhart is talking about when he sees so many shining examples of apparent duality pointing direclty back to the Absolute.
One of them is paradox, and I am happy to have her and her kids along for the ride.
Namaste.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Half-Full of Complete Emptiness
Sometimes the words express that which is dappling me
And sometimes I am dappled by the words
Letters sliding off of the screen; out from the radio
Or around from your voice
Slippery symbols, stretching to join hands with their lexical siblings
Gravity and gravitas both fighting for supremacy
Over the slick veneer I threw on years ago
Their is no winner, of course
Both OG's and their homies end up in the same place
An oily something
That I track around all day, mucking up other people's floors
It's when the veneer is cracked, the heart center opened
That it all breaks loose
Dark flowers and strange sunrises
Oceans reeling with You (c)
That's when the questions start
Robed in the relative, does it all level out -
Is your pain any greater than mine?
My joy any greater than yours?
Or are the half-fulls / half empties simply transparent hucksters
Almost-empties, surrounded by mostly-empties
Held by the always empty
Of the Absolute?
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Back to the Market (moments of grace, opus 17b)
The mirror doesn't lie, but it does take certain liberties
Sometimes, there is suspicion when the shadows and angles don't align
With the interior picture
Of who I think I am
Other times, there is suspicion when the shadows and angles *do* align
With the interior picture
Of who I know I am
Today, as I approached the melted sand carefully mounted at eye level
My pupils became moons; then butterflies
This small center of the house became a centerless circle, and I watched
The butterfiles rode the incense to the ceiling, and cascaded like batik down the walls and around my feet
Up the tub and toilet and over the sink
My muse had been toying with me all day;
The joy and creativity felt like it was coming out of my pores on the way home:
I had wished for a bucket, but knew that there *was* no bucket to hold the ineffable
No writing, so it simply waited for a point of vulnerability and pounced
Painting the reality that was at no-space from that which watched the world
With equal detachment.
I wapped myself in the batik like a robe
And became 7 stars
which, when recognized from awareness
were really one
one star, which overwhelmed with the underwhelming,
drained the tub
cleaned the sink
And headed back to the market.
Sometimes, there is suspicion when the shadows and angles don't align
With the interior picture
Of who I think I am
Other times, there is suspicion when the shadows and angles *do* align
With the interior picture
Of who I know I am
Today, as I approached the melted sand carefully mounted at eye level
My pupils became moons; then butterflies
This small center of the house became a centerless circle, and I watched
The butterfiles rode the incense to the ceiling, and cascaded like batik down the walls and around my feet
Up the tub and toilet and over the sink
My muse had been toying with me all day;
The joy and creativity felt like it was coming out of my pores on the way home:
I had wished for a bucket, but knew that there *was* no bucket to hold the ineffable
No writing, so it simply waited for a point of vulnerability and pounced
Painting the reality that was at no-space from that which watched the world
With equal detachment.
I wapped myself in the batik like a robe
And became 7 stars
which, when recognized from awareness
were really one
one star, which overwhelmed with the underwhelming,
drained the tub
cleaned the sink
And headed back to the market.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Who Not to Wear
The conference room lectured me when I walked in.
"Not good enough"
"Not smart enough"
"Not well dressed enough"
I was fine with the first two; I've lived with my neuroses long enough to know that a quick 'glass of milk and cookie and off to bed with you' was enough to sate their endless need for attention. The last one though, *that* pissed me off.
Who are *they* to judge how I dress. Who am *I* to judge how I dress. And they told two friends, and they told two friends and so on, and so on.
Party time. Little, fragile, non-existent ego got on its high horse and went for a gallop. One hand stayed on the reigns, and the other draped everything in duality.
Their Versace versus my verisimilitude.
Their black and white view of reality versus my superior, color-visioned, extra-spiritual-value-added wonder perspective. (Patented)
Grace again.
The mundane took shape over the next eight hours, and wobbled around the room, occasionally poking me in the ribs for reaction, but mostly happy to let me float in and out of detachment. The last trip down the rabbit hole, like a good productive cough, produced the needed results. But it started like this:
Who Not to Wear?
Take all the roles, projections, actors, stooges, non-integrated pieces, shadow-selves, id-bits, psychological backwash - in short, everything that apparently made 'me' me, and put them back on the rack. (This was clearly *off* the rack stuff).
FatherPoetMysticMusicianRunnerProjectManagerHusbandFriendLoverRegrettorBrotherSonEmbarrasment
GloriousLightSoporificoBlissJealousSlackAssCulturalCreative
NobodySomebodyBothSomebodyandNobody
And the carpet lit up like a giant Tibetan Mandela;
Altar at the far end - see?
And I stood looking at the rack, flipping through the 'choices', and realized that there were some additions: all the roles I was putting on the others in the room.
And it was clear: there was no separation on the rack; the ego's masquerade ball was all clothed with this off-the-rack-shit. 'Their roles', 'my' roles, all melded into one big curtain...
And I, the wizard, stood on this side of it, waiting for it to be pulled back so the room could see me in all my glory.
So:
Queue music, pull the curtain back, and Witness the ultimate Know-joke:
What can you hear before hearing; see before seeing; feel before feeling, and know before knowing?
Nothing.
Get it?
No thing.
Just This.
This, with no-one to wear.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Hurry Up and Wait
"The problem is, I see beauty everywhere" - Me, a couple of days ago.
I am of course, speaking from the both the absolute and the relative point of view.
From the absolute, boundaries are naught; objects ploink from and return to awareness in uncomprehending simplicity. And every now and again the light-without-shadow, the vibration-without-movement puts up its hand in a maestro's gesture, and This-change takes place.
Then This change.
Then this Change.
And without interruption, ladies and germs, I'm on the boardwalk of the relative, with barkers of every shape and variety crying for attention. There - an addict. There, a waterfall of ivy over brick. There - a robed, iv'd patient pacing in front of the hospital with a filterless cigarette and dulled eyes; there - an impossible mosaic of light bouncing off of water onto a polished marble entryway.
Camera is out at the ready of course, because with every step taken and corner turned there are a thousand new colours and lines and relationships on display; each one with its own story practically birthing itself in front of me.
There - center stage - the good maestro's hand gesticulating wildly, and the sign "Prepare to Stop" for my viewing pleasure. This one can't even wait till I've hit the computer to pen it down - it's birthed fully formed and simply waits for its entrance cue.
"Prepare to stop" - "hurry up and wait", opposites whose cry for cessation of movement move people to action even as they stop.
This simple sign is infinity: see it yet?
Base elements forged from the stars, abstracted as ideas and dropped via oil-based-paint on an enginerring-approved diamond. Three words, in a dialectical embrace: Prepare to Stop.
Those without the I's to see to walk up regularly, spot the apparent duality and grab one sign for each foot. And from there it's a mad, duality powered ride through the city; paradox-powered uber-footwear that propels them through coffee shops, inboxes, lunch dates and action items.
Until the maestro signals again:
"Over here"
"This"
And the signs and the feet and the dialectics and language itself dissolve and there is just This without boundaries.
Maybe the quote would be better served:
"The problem Is. I see beauty everywhere."
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
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