Are you us?

I'm happy just to sit here, wait for the bite of the fog outside to be excised as the door closes and the people mover whisks us on its way.

Happy to scan a few pages before el soporifico hits like a pacific front. Warm, unrelenting; washes over me and blankets me in a soft sheath of stupor, taking me to

..eh

what's that?

Odd conversation happening next to me.

I drift nonetheless

To the sweet spot, glassed between two layers of consciousness, almost dreaming but with the slightest of grips on the top pane of glass and then

plunk

there.

Plates above and below have fogged in, but there's light coming through, suggests not a very long trip down here and I must be hungry because it's all about ribs.

This is isn't id here, this is the little brain talking. GI juices must be rumbling back on the other side of the glass because all I can think about is

..how long to boil these puppies. And the juxtapositions begin. Geometry of dreams; shapes and shadows overlapping and contraindicating and challenging and diffusing together. And there, being pushed out of the wall in a perfect wife-size profile she comes and now we're

talking

How long again? Wouldn't it be easier to braise these in the oven or even barbecue them...boiling seems so Dahmner like and the smell. I love meat dear, you know that, but sometimes the smell can

But dreams have geometry, they also have their own linguistics so it comes out something like

thought word thought thought word

and ultimately comes out as something like "purple", which somehow captures the meaning, intent, undercurrents and fluorescence of the whole dialogue

Which now segues without a pause to the new family member. How long should we keep her separate in her room ("red"); is she eating enough "yokel" wonder if she has had her shots (thought).

Dreams are at once unilateral and non-hierarchical, another paradox for another day. But it comes to bear in THIS dream as it our relationship transferred to the subtle realm, so there's collaboration and back and forth but utlimately I pull the shots here - nobody else can except maybe for that lady looking down from the glass plate she has a cord she's somehow dangled through, odd, solid through solid, but this is sopor land and the next things blur into continuity, the subtle realm and the gross realm destroying opposites as they couple and twist as I pull the chord and

eyes are opening. Nice train. Warm train. fog gone. But she is still talking to her other half, who sounds a lot like mine, given the context of the conversation. She's finishing up with their new pet now, about to say cloistered goodbye without a lot of vociferous love-yous, a lot like me, pointing me again the to ultimate impersonal nature of most of our very human transactions.

Cohen, for all the edges I can't seem to get over, does have that one NAILED. Fear, anger, depression, love, they're the same between all of us - just different degrees of intensity.

And with that thought threading and wrapping around the mists her conversation wound around me, I'm off to nappy land again

shuka.

Islands in the Stream

So, in my kosmic geography (small k, Mr. Wilber, as it's everything in MY existence, which is clearly just a part of the great K Kosmic. Ultimately, there's no separation so there shouldn't be an issue), we have this stream:

(Underattachment in childhood -> search for meaning -> overattachment in first love relationship -> relationship breakdown -> existentialist drowning -> Getstalt dialogue-> Witness!)

Problem is, the endpoint of the stream is a state that comes and goes. When grace reveals it, I can identify with awareness and witness. But then contraction comes like a thief in the night, covers grace like a dark blanket, and I continue on in spite of mySelf.

The Integral Framework provides a map for navigating this topography. I will have states (witness) intersecting with stages in my life. And that stage is somewhere between postmodern and integral. Reaching for 2nd tier, at times touching some of its border lands, but not Realizing enough of what I've tasted to actually move into the new geography and say goodbye to the old for good.

It comes out so clean on paper - just do what it takes to move to a higher stage, continue the practices that will bring true realization of the states, and yowsah, you're there.

But it takes so little to come apart into a deconstructed mess.

Let's listen in, shall we, to the other stream, River Ego, exploring old canyons and inventing new ones in the internal eosystem.

pretty straight forward, all you have to do is take a quadrant approach, balance it through regular practice. simple! booya! Or is it, because the associative path to that is a stream towards needing a community to practice in, that should be a part of the quadrant approach should it not? Sangha? Community? And then you have Cohen and company, who at one glance seem credible and cutting edge, connected with Wilber for Gawd's sake - but on the other hand, just don't sit right at some level. He's violent with his student's egos - and on one hand it's needed but on the other hand, seems to lack compassion. And then what about just meditating and exercising, isn't that enough of the quadrant life to keep me moving, well, that would be without a teacher, and that doesn't seem right, or maybe the teacher is my group of teachers and readings throughout the years.

And through it all, failure. I've tried for permanent changes so many times, and always they have fallen short. Maybe this too has to be accepted, unconditionally.

So many books I've bought and haven't finished that I should finish. Any one of them could be the answer

Maybe that's the thing, maybe they are ALL the answer

But if they were, why would I still be searching and looking for the answer, for my purpose.

Maybe, mayhap, because I have discovered truth but not REALIZED it.

My ass hurts.