agape agape sonnet

consciousness appears

to transform into a body-mind

in order to amplify itself past feedback

toward echo cancellation of self-aware silence.

body-mind when seen as spacetime appears

to be evolution of the universe over 14 billion years

but is actually one consciousness here & now—

the great game of hide and seek.

just resting here and watching the shapeshifter shifting;

after the necessary practice,

one stops to let the music perform—

the morning rises in the light of being,

dew motionless on the verdant mercury of grass.

agape agape para-agape parasamagape bodhi svaha!

One's Ordinary Is Not Necessarily Natural

There are many who speak of the ordinary nature of nondual awareness. I’ve taken issue with this word because I believe it’s deceiving to many. Definition is crucial. So what is ordinary?

When I first began hiking mountain trails, I discovered there came a point in that hiking when all thoughts, whether they be about the previous week’s concerns of family and work or the thoughts about the difficulties of the current trail itself, would suddenly disappear. And all that remained was the hiking itself. It was as if the person disappeared and only the trail remained in the clear mountain air of heightened awareness.

I called this the wall. Before the wall, there was anxiety and fear. After the wall, there was only the mountain. For many people, if not most, the state of consciousness before the wall is their ordinary state. Telling one who is lost in the world of thought that nondual awareness is ordinary is like telling a single mother of three who just lost her job and is living from paycheck to paycheck, she’s rich.

Yes, once one has experienced walking through that wall, one knows what came before the wall is not ordinary at all, but a fabricated abnormal world of memory and desire. What came before the wall is past and future; what comes after the wall is now. And what comes after the wall could be called ordinary, if that word had not been debased and devalued by the world before the wall.

This is why I much prefer the word ‘natural’ to describe this state. It’s a word still holding its innate value. And, for me, it describes much more clearly that experience on the mountain. I had come from what I thought was ordinary to what I know is natural.

Before hiking there appeared an ordinary mountain of anxiety and fear. During the hike there came a sudden wall. After the wall, there was only the natural mountain, the clear space of pure awareness.

Gone Altogether Beyond Visualization

There are many practices involving visualization. I feel such practices may be useful if used to reach a jumping off point to an observation of being. But since any visualization practice is one utilizing thought in its domain of imagination, if one doesn’t jump, it just remains more mind. To paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, I’ve seen the best minds of contemporary spirituality destroyed by imagination.

It’s probably best to utilize a visualization practice which is suited for the particular mind visualizing. To suggest a visualization which is suited to one mind for the use of another mind is pure madness, and I guess would likely land that other mind exactly there. Mind is merely memory and no memory is alike. So one mind’s visualization will easily become another mind’s lunatic belief.

This mind is suited to the following visualization based on the reflexive process of the light of awareness. Please do not practice this at home. Create your own. I describe this only to indicate the necessity of a jumping off point. I will not be responsible for leading you to some mad mad mad mad finger-pointing world.

First, I visualize the light of awareness manifesting through what scientists call the Big Bang, but what I prefer to see as the Big Love. This pure light descends transforming into the rock-like molecular structure of something like a moon-like earth, passing through previous intervals of wave/particle patterning and atomic formation. I like to visualize this resultant moon-like earth to be as hard as a great big white western ego.

Then this bare rock planet is called back by the light, transforming into a movement of organic molecules, to a rustling of various botanies, to the evolution of self-maneuvering animal life until the human nervous system arrives ready now to ascend back into that light of pure awareness.

And then I jump.

Into that being aware of being, light aware of light, dissolving into the unknown nonentity of being light.

gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

The Orange Moon of Consciousness

Let’s understand what we are doing when talking about spiritual concepts like meta-paradigms and consciousness. And let us understand a common danger which exists when doing so.

First, all of these words are just concepts and no concept is the truth; it is only a representation of the truth. In other words, it’s just an idea about experience. It’s not the actual experience. In Zen, they say the wise man points to the moon but the fool looks at the finger. It’s the moon of spiritual experience one is seeking and not the finger pointing to it. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Imagine trying to describe the taste of an orange to someone who has never eaten one! Try all you might with dozens of delicious and juicy words, you will never do so. Ultimately, an orange will need to be tasted to understand the taste of an orange. Oh sure, you may need to go to a grocery store to procure one, but such are the little inconveniences of this modern life.

Describing consciousness, or spirit or being or presence if you will, is exactly the same. Words can be used to show one where to look, or how to look, or even why one should bother to look. Words can even be used to point out the qualities to look for.

Osho said he shared his experiences so when you experienced them yourself, you would remain grounded and not go mad from their weirdness. Such words may appear scientific and knowledgeable and even metaphysical, but they will never ever ever ever be a substitute for the taste of consciousness.

Fortunately, one need go nowhere further. One actually is consciousness. So after reading the words pointing to it, always stop to taste it! Being conscious of being conscious is in itself the heartfelt way to reality.

Also, there’s a process of spiritual deconstruction in which one idea is removed by another idea. And then both ideas are abandoned, leaving one in experiential reality. In India, they describe it as using a thorn to remove a thorn. When the thorn is removed, one throws away both thorns. It makes all the sense in the world.

Otherwise, what one would accomplish is merely the removal of one belief in favor of a new one. Beliefs are merely concepts with which one has attached, and no concept is experientially true. No belief in any orange is a substitute for the experience of an orange.

And this is the fundamental flaw of most religions. Somewhere in their early years, wisdom was practiced to remove a false belief, say a false meta-paradigm. But instead of abandoning the concepts used to point out the actual experience, they attached to them. Praise the new thorn, same as the old thorn!

Look, these are extremely important warnings for anyone on the spiritual path. This is absolutely crucial to understand. Every sectarian religious belief was founded on an aspect of perennial wisdom which was believed rather than followed toward the actual experience it was pointing to. The result is more delusion, more suffering, more religious wars and strife.

A true believer never knows the truth. A fundamentalist never experiences one’s real foundation of peace.

Assbackwards Spirituality 1: Spirit

Here’s the thing. Most of us believe in a world of things. In other words, our understanding of the basic structure of the universe is a material one. The world is constructed from the basic building blocks of atoms, and it is a tangible one, physical, rock hard.

The story continues. From this material world, somehow, through the physical evolution of a brain and central nervous system, strange material concoctions of chemicals and electricity, consciousness appears (they’ll get back to you on exactly how this happens because no one really has a clue). And there you go. This is the meta-paradigm of western civilization. This is the backbone of our relationship with it and everyone in it. We are material girls and boys.

But all perennial wisdom says we have it assbackwards.

There is a quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin which attempts to explain this mistake with a nice turn of language: “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” It’s actually a pretty good approximation of that assbackwardsness I speak of, but too often it’s just seen as something pretty.

Because to truly understand this difference would literally change your world. Your meta-paradigm would literally shift. Imagine what happens to the earth when its poles perform such a shift. Not only do weather patterns change, but climates go haywire.

This new meta-paradigm simply says all is consciousness. Everything is literally spirit! And what we experience as the material is but an appearance in consciousness. In other words, first and foremost, one and only, is consciousness, not some material construction. And then the material appears from out of that. (No one has to get back to you on how consciousness appears from the material because it doesn’t!)

This is a revolutionary understanding! Your mind will be blown. The Gospel of Thomas says it this way: “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished…”

to be continued with more mind-blowing truth and consequences

Krishnamurti, Love, and Invisible Me

I’m becoming invisible. Those forms, be they people or other, to which I had been attached are falling away. And not of my own doing. Even when it appears I may have been the agent of change, it felt as if I had no choice in the matter. The past year has been particularly momentous. A mother dies. A job found is relinquished. A lover leaves. Add these to previous separations from close family and here I am completely adrift. Free.

J. Krishnamurti writes:

Where are you going to start? You must start from freedom. Where there is freedom there is love. This freedom and love will show you when to co-operate and when not to cooperate. This is not an act of choice, because choice is the result of confusion. Love and freedom are intelligence.

This true intelligence is life, of course. Call it consciousness, being, the universe, or god, it is the intelligence which rules the stars and operates all quantum mechanics. It is said a million monkeys on a million typewriters would in time write all of Shakespeare. But it is more truthful to say a million Shakespeares could never create a single monkey.

People are enamored by their creations though. They are dazzled by belief, ideas, and all kinds of thought. So much so, that most people forget what they are and believe some idea about themselves instead. In fact, that may be the best definition of a person: consciousness identifying with thought. The limitless god becomes the limited ego.

Again Krishnamurti:

Thought itself is always divisive, so all action based on an idea or an ideology is division. Thought cultivates prejudice, opinion, judgment. Man in himself, being divided, seeks freedom out of this division. Not being able to find it he hopes to integrate the various divisions, and of course this is not possible. You cannot integrate two prejudices. To live in this world in freedom means to live with love, eschewing every form of division.

For me, this may be Krishnamurti’s prime idea, the thorn which removes all thorns. Thought is binary. Like all the ones and zeroes behind all computer software, it creates a marvelous world. In this manner, thought is a wonderful tool. But it is not the true intelligence of the universe, the One. Again, it is binary. So when one identifies with any thought, one is inherently divided. Violence and war are not random events in the history of humankind; they are the intrinsic and inevitable outcome of people.

And people will be people. But in the midst of all these thought forms arises love. Not romantic love or possessive love, but unconditional love. This is the love a newborn brings into the world. This is pure being, consciousness, life, before it is socially conditioned into a thought form by all the well-meaning parents, teachers, and friends. It is what we are and not who we think we are. Love is the holy spirit, the satguru coming into the world of thought-forms and showing the true way.

So for me, this is the unavoidable equation. Whenever the way is questioned or misplaced or lost, I look to this one inescapable conclusion. A person is constantly divided, no ifs, ands or buts. Despite the plea for humanism on the one hand or the American Dream on the other, they are impossible ways. Violence of some sort is inevitable, even if it is just that quiet desperation Thoreau speaks to, a quiet desperation which is so ingrained in the person, it appears not be a desperation at all. Hey, it’s the way of the world!

But there is another way: in the world but not of the world. There is nothing to do but stop doing. Surrender to the holy spirit, the satguru, love. And love will beget freedom and freedom will beget love. Yet, will it be an easy way? It all depends what one sees as easy.

When one identifies one’s self as a person, it won’t be all that easy. I can tell you this from personal experience. Losing a mother hurts. Losing a lover is literally heart-breaking. Under such conditions, one’s social conditioning reappears with a vengeance. One spins out of control until that time one centers in being, if one centers again in being.

And, to repeat, people will be people. Unconditional love, despite all the rave reviews, is not loved all that much by people. In fact, from someone other than a newborn, it is quite threatening. The death of Jesus points to this, if nothing else. Most people will just rain bad thoughts on anyone espousing unconditional love. Impractical. Good-for-nothing. Has no future. True. True. True.

So, if you’re looking for a shower of love, don’t look outside. Look within. And be. There’s no need to look any further. Being is love. 

The Fox - Winslow Homer

steps sutra

step one:

by any means necessary,

discover who you think you are is

a dream, a story, a fiction,

and not what you really are.


step two:

when one truly realizes one isn't the personal doer,

the 'who you think you are' and

the 'any means necessary'

naturally drop away.


step three:

"Relax and watch the 'I am'—

Reality is just behind it—

Keep quiet—

keep silent—

it will emerge—

or rather it will take you in."

~Nisargadatta


note:

movement is

1) I am a

[fill in this space with the thought of the moment];

2) I am

(aka being);

3) I

(aka pure subjective awareness).


namaste for now

karma sutra

karma is just the concept of evolution from a personal point of view.

change happens and then stories are told.

here’s one.


it appears consciousness descends into a state of bondage,

whether material or personal, molecular or egoic;

and then ascends to its freedom.


this descent from freedom into bondage

and ascent from bondage into freedom

can be called the course of evolution.


it appears the human stage of evolution is the final one

moving toward freedom of pure consciousness;

karma is that agent of this change.


light to light; never was not light.

holographic sutra

welcome to the holograph.

in the light of awareness there is no spacetime—

ah, six billion fallen angels. oh, the humanity!

to see the holograph as holograph, go intuit—

holy hollow holograph.


behind ceaseless transformation is

the silence of infinite potentiality.

take a lesson from your self—

transform, transform, transform.


if one obsesses on any particular metaphor or practice,

one begins to believe it;

such is the descent of way into religion.


the world is a slumber party—

mass awakening is just another oxymoron;

disbelieve!


do not concern oneself with anyone

but oneself when it comes to waking up.

drop the belief one is the doer.

let the doing do all the waking.

jesus and arjuna sutra

in the world but not of the world

does not equal

within the world but beyond the world.


arjuna got up to slay closest family & friends

in an active sacred confirmation all is maya,

not to merely play a complicit part within it.


jesus sacrificed his own illusory separate existence

in an active sacred confirmation of that loving

universal unity of christ consciousness.


different sides of the same coin—

like homer, i like stories.

50 ways sutra

hiking karmic trails above the be-line,

tripping over ancient glacial depressions,

now appearing—

there must be 50 ways to leave samsara.


get on the way, jay,

it don't have to be zen, ben,

just listen to peace—


there's nothing the lie can do

to access that which is true;

the lie can only be undone, seen through

in this surrendering to one that’s true.


devoted to no practice but that

in the form of surrender

and any practice in the form of surrender is

just another name for devotion.


the known can't know

the unknown but nothing is

truly known; know this

and one is unknown


—get on blue jay, way,

it don't have to be been, zen,

just peace out and be.

subjective sutra

if you can think it, it isn't it.

evolution is just light calling itself back home.

don't overthink the unthinkable—

one mind many frequencies.


god the father subjective pure awareness—

god the son phenomena of universal consciousness—

god the holy spirit ascending

upon the usurping object—


god the unmanifest subjective—

god the manifest objective—

god the holy satguru that comes by grace

to the object usurping subjectivity—


in this one original sin

when that which is being done

assumes the role of the doer

all hell breaks loose.


one object's void is

the subject's potentiality

while actual unconditional love is

not a pretty thought.