Embracing Forever

Drawn to the New

July 7, 2013

by Michael

As of this morning, I’ve very nearly completed reading Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84, my first encounter with his work. Early on, say two hundred pages in, I happened to mention to a friend at work that I was reading the book, and they replied with the requisite question, “What’s it about?” I knew it was going to be a good read when my immediate reaction was a blank stare and a smidge of resentment for being put under that type of pressure. I stumbled through a plot summary, which is basically the same as trying to convey the essential qualities of your soul by describing how you spend your time. Something was happening- a shoot or two had broken through the soil, but who could say what type of flower would eventually be revealed? The book and I were just getting to know one another. Something was alive between us, something innocent and vulnerable, and I had to protect it.

Sometimes we know things without ever having consciously thought about them. When they lie dormant inside of us, and surface inadvertently in a moment of candid self-expression, it can be both beautiful and awkward. If this occurs in conversation, the exchange is transformed from a tennis match of sharing, one more or less under the parties’ control, into a moment of genuine intimacy. Mostly, however, we are not permitted our conclusions independent of supporting arguments or observations. This is part of our social contract. A person may mention walking out their back door onto the prairie and discovering a small meteor, but they will far less frequently- rarely to acquaintances and surely never to new clients or customers- mention walking out their back door onto the prairie and discovering a small meteor whose appearance produced an instant, clarion type knowing within them, an ineffable signal to their heart that subtly altered the trajectory of their life. We wouldn’t typically say to just anyone, for instance, “This morning I went out back and saw a small meteor in the ground, and I knew instantly that my daughter (the one who had died in the accident) is alright.”

And yet, this type of knowing is quite real. I knew Murakami’s book was going to be good- it simply tasted that way. It is the tastes that arise within my heart that I am learning to savor, and I’m discovering how to savor those tastes even in the absence of any meteors, to accept that a butterfly of knowing has alighted within my mind in the absence of any previous formulations or logos.

An interesting theme in 1Q84 is the overlay of two worlds. Several of the characters are aware that they seem to have somehow drifted into an alternate world that is very similar to the one they had always known, but with very particular differences. Although the characters do not necessarily realize this at first, their movement into this alternate world is related to deep connections between them, and in this new reality, there are developments that seem to defy the basic principles of the reality they have always known. Yet the two worlds are interwoven- people in both worlds share a common Tokyo. They wait in line behind one another at the train station. They bump into one another on the sidewalk. They live in the same apartment buildings.

When I read this I was reminded of my own nascent, exploratory experiences of subtle movements between worlds. A Course of Love describes the House of Illusion and the House of Truth. While these are not places per se, I have come to think of them as ways of being and experiencing oneself and one’s reality. In the House of Illusion, we perceive ourselves as images, and the world we perceive is an image as well. In the House of Truth, we know ourselves as living embodiments of Truth, and all that we see is the expression of Love. Occupants of both houses, however, could be standing in line to board the same aircraft, or shopping at the same grocery stores, or taking their cars to the same mechanic.

There is an irreconcilable gap between the fundamental meaning of these two worlds, a gulf as vast as the cosmos that cannot be bridged, but the two worlds intersect all around us. They are overlaid upon cereal boxes, subway stations, and baseball parks. We are living in the invisible plaid of their juxtaposition.

For me, the simplest difference between these two worlds is the tonal structure of the inner feelings on which their respective songs are carried. I bounce back and forth every day, skating across moments that seem to border these worlds, caught in moments that require decision- the decision to resist or accept, the decision to focus or to open wide, the decision to protect or to trust. The day does not always proceed as planned, and I am not always certain how to maintain the inner structure of the world I would choose, as the outer one pushes, prods, and confounds. For the time being, I am like one of Murakami’s central characters- adrift in an uncertain node of possibilities, searching for the fulfillment of something alive within myself. Like the cast of 1Q84, I feel myself drawn to new worlds through the power of connection.

It is my yearning for the face of Christ within myself, the orchestra of silent feeling that arises when I think of Jesus, that is pulling me into a new world. This presence wipes away my tears. This presence rearranges meanings without moving a single piece of furniture. A life is exploded from within, remade, illumined, but the body still rides the Number Six bus to the office each morning. This presence seems to be opening up a new world right around me, and I am finding the steps into this world are simple knowings, discoveries of inner contents that I did not design or build.

I have yet to read the final chapters, but I wonder if the two worlds will somehow clarify in Murakami’s characters, if their yearning will be fulfilled? I wonder if they will pass through the intersection of worlds, and solidify their presence in a new one? I wonder the same for us… will our hearts lead us to that world we can taste inside of us? How will we know it when we see it, if we are looking for a completely different picture?

Ecstatic Swimming Lessons

June 30, 2013

by Michael

comments 2

Christ / Course Ideas / Creative

I was sitting alone on a stone bench overlooking the harbor, sipping on a latte, as I took in the sights and sounds of a strange land- (I was on vacation)- when a young woman on a scooter whipped past and let fly a paper airplane. Judging from the sparkle, it was made from a laquer-faced card stock. This girl meant business. Her face bore an inscrutable expression, like the facade of an abandoned bank building that is now a cheap rehearsal space for a local theater troupe, and she struck with the precision of a bombardier lining up a target from five miles high in the atmosphere. She moved with a purpose that reverberated in the moment like day long gravity waves that caused my soul to bob to and fro in time with all the planets.

I immediately wanted to tell her my life story.

I wanted to discover the meaning she had dropped upon me, the meaning that had arrived instantaneously, as soon as she had entered my consciousness, of which the paper airplane was merely a playful, flying echo.

The origami craft swooped through the air in a gentle, banking turn, decelerating rapidly, and then settled into steady flight along a vector that tunneled straight through my forehead. Probable future paths can do that- e.g. pass through solid objects. ETA 2.9 seconds. I waited, thinking the wind would have something to say about this pending collision, but the craft seemed immune to the laws of physics. Instinctively, I ducked.

When I looked up, the young woman was gone.

I retrieved the airplane. I didn’t even have to unfold it to read the note: “Swimming lessons tomorrow. 2 PM. We’ll send for you.”

* * * * *

After I read the note it turned into a dove and flew off.

* * * * *

The next afternoon I was driven to a mountaintop retreat and led down a beautiful trail to a gazebo. Jesus was there. My heart opened up as soon as I saw Him, as if I had just opened the vacuum sealed container in which I keep the vapors of my purest feelings. The space inside of me expanded from a small, fenced-in yard to an endless prairie of rolling hills. I joined him at the railing, and together we looked out wordlessly over a sheer cliff that tumbled down to the sea.

I didn’t say much, for there was no need. We shared a communication that had an infinite bandwidth. Deep inside, all beings know this Communion. Our minds became like two fluids mingling- not just with one another, but with everything. My everyday thoughts felt like silly trinkets I had stored away in a box back home. They were distant and lifeless compared to this experience of complete immersion.

“I thought I was going to swimming lessons,” I said finally. I had on flip flops, swimming trunks, a tank top, and a towel wrapped around my neck.

“You are,” He said. Then He told me it was time to learn to swim in wordlessness, to become the bridge I sought between the world of perception and the world of Knowledge.

* * * * *

He stayed with me for a while, watching the waves crash into the rocks far below. Then He turned into a dove and flew off.

* * * * *

I stood alone at the railing and began. My first forays into wordlessness relied upon a simple mechanism: I used all the will power I could muster to bring my thoughts to a halt. I tried to pause the life of my mind. This was literally just like holding my breath, as within seconds the words of the inner narrator I have known my whole life began to push upon this bubble, the pressure steadily rising, until my concentration wavered- just one tiny flicker- and the oxygen of thought rushed into the void.

It didn’t take too many attempts for me to realize that my approach was deeply flawed. It was utterly mechanical, as if my mind were a sponge and I had used the entire force of my will to squeeze it so tightly no words or thoughts could enter. My entire being felt compressed down into this hardened pellet. It was a strain to produce and sustain this state, and all it did was reinforce the importance of my own mind. I knew this was not at all what Jesus had intended for me. When He was with me, my sense of self was as broad as the Universe, loosed of its boundaries, and freed of conflict.

I stepped back for a moment, and relaxed. I looked again to the sea, and an image appeared in my mind almost immediately. I saw a beautiful, glowing star sunk deep, deep beneath a thick mantle of cool water. The star was emitting a continous stream of soft white light. As the light rose towards the water above, it slowly cooled, until it became a gaseous cloud. The boundary between the star and the watery mantle above it was a thin, transparent film of perception. The cooling vapor from the star was changed- refined and shaped somehow- when it passed through the film. It cooled quickly then in the sea above, condensing first into solid matter, then contracting and cracking, until finally it broke into little pieces that floated up to the top and bobbed on the surface. They were words- the names of things, mostly. The water’s surface was covered with them, and I was up there in a boat, moving them around like the parts of a magnetic poetry kit, building stories and hunting for meaning.

I knew somehow, that Jesus was asking me to dive below that film, into a place where thought simply arose, unconditioned.

* * * * *

I dove into this inner sea and swam downwards. I had thought it would be easy now, but I realized that the deeper I swam, the more expansive I had to become. This wasn’t a matter of concentrating on the outcome, of putting in the effort, or focusing on the goal. I discovered I couldn’t simply will myself down to the depth of the membrane. I was in a strange sea whose power magnified with depth, coalescing into a realm of infinite density in which only the purely abstract- the perfectly weightless- could descend to its heart. Objects were like bubbles. Wherever mass appeared, it was squeezed out, expelled to the word-ridden surface. Concepts, too, drifted by, and whenever my attention attached itself to one of them, it rode it right to the surface.

Time after time I attached myself to something drifting by- an outcome I had to protect myself against, a beautiful future that caught my eye, the vision of a mistake I had made and never forgiven, a moment of personal recognition, a scene of the past in which I was wronged, something I had worked tirelessly to achieve that I simply could not leave behind, a disease I feared, the fame I craved, a relationship that made me special- and found myself ejected onto the surface. These were all the conditioned thoughts of the film I was steadily approaching- the boundary where pure Creation was tagged with meanings and reasons.

If they were just images, like movies, it would have been easy, but they came with intensely charged emotions. The ecstasy of a brilliant future. The bitterness of a past defeat. The sticky guilt of failure. The sweet fullness of a temporal love. These were my addictions. These were the sparkling lures in the water around which my wave function collapsed, all my weightlessness converging onto a single, finite point- a mass- that simply floated to the top of the water.

The surface mind is a boneyard of concepts.

* * * * *

Remember, now, this was only swim practice. Jesus came for me again late in the day, a dove alighting in my heart, and for an instant we plunged to a great depth. On the way down, however, I remembered I had a reservation for dinner that night. I remembered I was on a vacation. I was pinned by the sensation that something was incomplete inside of me, something I needed to take care of. Promising to return with Him as soon as I took care of things, I rode this feeling to the surface.

You might think this would be the toughest choice of all- to walk away from His presence and engage in my own unique medley of “life pursuits”, but I do it all the time. Crazy. I know.

* * * * *

One day soon, (together), we will accept Reality. We will turn into doves and fly off, and our swimming lessons will be complete.

Filling Your Self Up

June 25, 2013

by Michael

Heart Songs

June 22, 2013

by Michael

comments 3

Christ / Poetry

At dusk, a colorwheel sky.
It is yellow-green to the west.
Overhead, a dimming into blue.

The day’s earlier torrent of photons
has reduced to a trickle.
The last of them bounce through the atmosphere
and, without any pressure behind them, scatter.
Far away, the spigot has been shut–
eclipsed by the rim of a spinning world.
One by one, they are absorbed.
Heeded.
Listened to, like sacred whispers.
In some cases, become flesh.

The air glows softly in all directions
as if it has been electrified.
The sun, a massive cathode,
has sunken into the horizon-
plunged into the earth.
It’s electric tendrils flow like rivers through the soil,
tickling veins of metal far below,
illumining particles of iron and mica
that drift like pollen in a topsoil sky.

In the underworld, it is first light.
Above, the last colors have begun to fade,
as if the sky were an old picture tube,
switched off, slowly cooling.

For a moment, both worlds are joined.
For a moment, every place is the inside of every other.
For a moment, our questions are eclipsed by who we are.

The birds, done flying,
erupt into song.
The content of these Little Hearts
is enough to fill the glade.
It is the Moment for which they are meant.
It is so beautiful-
this dying,
this revealing,
this creating,
this blessing,
the way an honest, curling song
and Eternity lose themselves in one another.

When worlds join, every being involved
becomes a Holy Narrator to what lies inside,
a speechless singing,
an observing Participant.

We alight now, one by one,
as time draws to a close,
to perch in the branches of the tree of Christ.
We look to the west, where history fades,
and prepare ourselves to sing.
It is the Moment for which we are meant.

Is Love Enough?

June 18, 2013

by Michael

comments 2

Course Ideas

Faced with a world in which something has gone wrong, it is virtually impossible to encounter the madness and not attempt to envision a solution. I’m not saying solutions shouldn’t be envisioned, but I think that in A Course of Love Jesus is saying, “Hey, look, if you were a fish on dry land, and your gills were burning, and you were undergoing a total metabolic catastrophe, and you were given the choice between letting Love pick you up and set you back in the water, or (you’re a very clever and handy fish, by the way) continuing with your personal and very special plan to construct an apparatus suitable for the liquefaction of water vapor from the air, for its subsequent oxygenation, and for pouring the stuff over your gills, what would you choose?”

(Before you make up your mind, please note the ingeniousness of this device, which can not only pull water from the air, but simultaneously shade you from the hot sun as well.)

My answer, of course, is obvious. The liquefaction. The physics of such a technology are well understood, and, although the hurdles to cost-effectively constructing the device are not insignificant, the rate of technological progress suggests that a mass-produced unit will be well within the reach of over 90% of fish within the next decade. This is truly splendid progress. The proposed alternative, Love, has no mechanism, cannot be understood, controlled (or trusted), and in case you haven’t been watching, no one has exactly seen Love pick up a fish and throw it back in the water now, have they?

In A Course of Love, right at the beginning, Jesus describes the encounter(s) we have made, and will make again, at the threshold to Love’s perpetual embrace. We will stand upon this razor thin line, the one that divides time from eternity, separation from unity, suffering from joy, and, as we have done so many times in the past, we will turn back to the world we have known. True, we will be committed to making it better- to doing good things within it, to helping the other people we find there, to being a voice for transformation, but this turning back to the world we have known will not undo it. In A Course of Love, I think Jesus suggests that incremental nudges to a world suffused with suffering and the absence of all that Love offers us is not the outcome we really seek or desire, for ourselves or for others. We truly, underneath it all, seek freedom for everyone, but we don’t know how to effectively accomplish that feat.

Jesus says, “In your acceptance of doing good works and being a good person, you are accepting ministry to those in hell rather than choosing heaven. You accept what you view as possible and reject what you perceive as impossible.”

There are a few things I have thought about lately. For starters, why not just build up some courage and fling oneself over the line? Feel the fear and do it anyway. Get a running head start and wait a split second too long to think about the consequences. The answer is that it simply won’t work. We can’t cross the line with any fear in us. We can “man up” all we want, but it’s like trying to build a new type of flashlight that you carry around on sunny days that shines a diffuse cone of darkness wherever you point it. We can jump off the high dive with fear alive in every cell of our bodies, but we can’t swap a reality rooted in fear for a reality rooted in love, and bring fear with us. The math is pretty simple when you get right down to it. One does not equal zero. The relinquishing of every last trace of fear appears to be a little more beguiling than the math. That’s why we pick the liquefaction device almost every time. At least we understand it. Sort of.

This business of getting rid of every last fear is overwhelming, and that’s the understatement of the millennium. It’s like trying to eat all the meals you’ll consume in your entire life… in one sitting. We can’t even begin to fathom how to take our seat at the table with that task etched in our minds, nevermind actually do the deed. It’s not even worth trying. Put me down for two liquefaction units, a pack of Kool’s, and a time share in the Caribbean.

I’m beginning to think, however, that our disbelief in the potential of Love’s recognition to overhaul Everything we experience and see, distorts our perception of this choice we face. Maybe the vantage point of separation cleaves something exceedingly simple, like a razor thin line, into a flock of vast and seething conundrums. It’s as if something tiny and whole got unpacked, and sprung open, and now the DNA that was nicely coiled inside our cells is now strung in a decorative arc from here to the sun and back, and back again. How to get that back in there again? How to reassemble Humpty Dumpty? Was that the Big Bang? Unity, uncoiled?

I get the feeling that if we could ever see the Whole Thing, as the Whole Thing, just once, then it would be done. We would no longer be deceived by facets or attributes or particulars.

Were we devote ourselves to Love, at the expense of being in position- at least temporarily- to offer any intelligent opinions on what is happening to ourselves or to one another or to or on this planet, we’d (generally speaking) feel like fools or losers or lazy bums or uncaring blowhards or whatever. How hard is it to say, “I have no idea,” while also saying, “but I care a great deal.” Seriously, imagine when someone asks your opinion on how to shape this world up, and you say, “I haven’t a clue of what to do or say or be about it, but I trust in Love,” or “I have no idea and I cannot even come up with an opinion on that particular issue that is affecting millions of people, but right now, I feel completely full and I am so glad to be sharing this moment with you.”

Is Love enough? What else could it be, really?

We Are One Heart

June 12, 2013

by Michael

comments 3

Christ / Course Ideas

“Our heart is the light of the world.

We are one heart.

We are one mind. One creative force gathering the atoms, establishing the order, blessing the silence, gracing the cosmos, manifesting the light of the heart. Here we live as one body, experiencing communion, the soul’s delight, rather than otherness.” (CoL, 2^nd ed., page 180, 20.4-20.6)

This passage from A Course of Love always seems to reduce the vicissitudes of my life to a gentle present, like a rushing river that has escaped the narrow canyon walls and discovered the sea.

But…

I wake up in the morning and dedicate myself once again to the effort to be loving… when I am Love itself.

I enter the world in search for ways to be loved… when Love is all I have ever been given.

I strive to correct what could never be broken… and in this I toil.

How is it that I have failed to embrace the heart of this Moment, when I am surrounded by your beauty, by the wonder of who you are?

How is it that I have felt alone, when you are here beside me?

How is it that you were sent to me, Love’s perfect Answer, but I recognized you not?

There must be one thing I have valued more than all the rest, the one thing only I can give myself, in the darkened chamber of my private thoughts: the pride and glory of something only I have made. But you see, I thought I was doing something important in there, something sacred. I thought I could make you something special, and then come out and give it to you, something that would show you how good I really am. I thought I could fix all this, with what I made- by myself.

But where was I when I was building this case? Where was I when I was desperately amassing this evidence? I was nowhere. And you were waiting for my return.

You knew I would be back… For we are one heart. We… are all there ever was.

Something Else

June 8, 2013

by Michael

comments 3

Christ / Poetry

A darkening horizon at midday,
swelling thunderheads, a green tinge, and muffled light.
A question blown like sand over a cliff.
An equilibrium turning inside out.
A suspicion of trains, coal, and rust.
A nail, old, once surrounded by skin,
encompassed by pulsing blood and heat,
alive in the minds of men, an artifact of purpose,
now pitted and worn, clinging to creosote, earth, and wood.
A decaying uncertainty.

A man, miles away, brow knitted.
The crystallization of time.
An unconsciously squeezed fist.
The smell of ozone.
A distance measured in memories.

Two wooden doors atop a heart fly open.
A whoosh of air, a plume of dust,
and the sting of fresh oxygen.
The realization that everything matters.

The time for shelter, past.
A gentle breeze, tattered, scurrying for cover.

* * * * *

The engines of commerce slipping gears.
Polite sheets of paper that hollow out souls.
A heavy stock, bought in good times.
The great crack of a falling tree.
The hum and stench of the mill.
Windows, unwashed for a century,
sunk high in brick cliffs,
out of reach of the modern man.
A watermark visible only in sunlight.
The kitchen table vacant, but for this.
Two folds in the paper, an envelope, and a mass produced signature.
The ticking of a clock, slower than usual.
A question that cannot be answered.
A question too late to ask.

What is this place?

A splintered life.
Blame moot, like the atmosphere.
Countless epicenters of collapse.
Lives rung like bells.
Panic and silence and linoleum.
A swig of cold water.
A clot in time that won’t give way.

A door opens. Closes.
Footsteps crunch on frosted gravel.
Bettlegeuse twinkles orange and red
across the vast container of space.
Messages from another eon.
The forging of atoms.
A Knowing.
The painful rustling of a heart.
The acceptance of the tiniest feeling.
A full, deep breath.
The softening of angles.
A baby beak. A cracked shell.
An emergence, a daring, and a desire.
A heart containing a new question.

* * * * *

Something Else.
A reality that is not real.
A Love that needs no reasons.
The discovery of Invulnerability.
The expression of what we are.

And Nothing Else.

For My Beloved

June 6, 2013

by Michael

Air Travel Unlearning

June 1, 2013

by Michael

comments 2

Course Ideas

Last night I put on my air traveler temporarily delayed in a strange airport hat when one of those nebulous “mechanical problems” you hear about over the loudspeakers stymied the local maintenance crew for several hours. We all know what most likely transpired… A seatback got jammed slightly out of vertical, and despite the best efforts of three suddenly religious would-be body builders, the offending mechanism could not be convinced. When the crackerjack troubleshooters finally conceded that circumstances required something just beyond their means, the “situation” was upgraded to a “maintenance condition”. A numerical code was transmitted at light speed across seventeen states through a combination of glass fibers and copper wires, to which a reply code was dispatched by the airline company’s servers approximately thirteen milliseconds later.

Simultaneously, the airline company’s servers sent out three additional transmissions: the first, to the nearest seatback depot, twelve hundred miles away, where a shiny new shrink-wrapped seatback oscillated eerily in place for a moment, like a pack of cupcakes in a vending machine, before face-planting onto a rubber conveyor belt; the second, to the maintenance hangar located about three hundred yards from where I was seated, instructing the mechanics to locate a tiny, oddly hooked wrench whose singular reason for existing was to dismantle jammed seatbacks from their aluminum flotation device containing bases; and the third, to the gate attendant standing six feet away, conveying the message that the flight would be delayed approximately one half an hour for maintenance, and that all of our connecting flights looked good.

Very good.

In the information vacuum of an air travel delay, these types of stories spontaneously arise in our minds. We need to know what is happening, and if nobody can tell us, we make it up. At a minimum, we want to know what has gone wrong and what is being done about it, and in some urgent cases we also want to know who is to blame and what is being done about them, too.

Some people assume that a fleet of well-intentioned people, scattered around the country and hopelessly mired in a system whose logistics are understood only by helium-cooled computers located in deep underground bunkers, are doing the best they can and wrestling with the system’s daemons on our behalf. Others interpret the events to imply that the particular airline has deep-seated character flaws- as well as, by extension, everyone associated with it. Some roll with the punches. Others are ready to launch a frontal assault on the nearest customer service desk. Most people are simply bemused and frustrated.

If things get out of hand, we threaten vigilante justice: we unleash the one power we know we possess, the power to place the offending airline on our personal blacklist… We tell ourselves it’s the type of decision on which our economy depends. If nobody took a stand to “vote” against bad businesses, there’s no way things could improve. It’s our sacred duty to express our righteous indignation.

* * * * *

In the information vacuum of our lives, what do we tell ourselves is really happening in this world? What do we imagine is going on behind the scenes? Do we imagine a beneficent dynamic is at work? No dynamic at all? Do we trust that things are well and good in a way that we cannot quite personally fathom at the time? Or do we imagine we’re careening headlong for disaster? Do we imagine we are powerless to influence the course of events?

Is reality simply the reality we take a face value: a meaningless concatenation of events and circumstances? Are all of our interpretations, whether positive, negative or indifferent, just the inconsequential luxuries of an intellect that is vastly over-powered for the navigation of a world where what you see is what you get? Do our interpretations of events have any real connection with what is happening?

* * * * *

I think often about what I see as the promise offered by A Course of Miracles and A Course of Love- an effortless way of being that is immune to the experience of threat or loss. When our last resistance crumbles, we rediscover the truth that Love is Reality- the Reality of what is happening and the Reality of who we are. Both, at the same time. There are no scenes to see behind. We are behind the scenes. We are both behind the scenes and the scenes themselves. We are healed of this fundamental fracture in our apprehension of self and knowledge, of this tiny rift we can’t put outside of ourselves however we may try, that whispered once long ago, there is something outside of you, something you are not.

Ever since then, we’ve been on edge. Everything that happens is the potential influx of this dreaded something else into the lives we have fashioned and would defend. The stories, identities and meanings we have made to fill the limitless space in which we dwell are threatened, and- if we’re deeply honest- threaten-able. Until we reunite with Knowledge.

The Knowledge that there is no such thing as something else puts a massive kink in the notions we have accepted about this universe and our place within it. As both Courses assert, this Knowledge is not a belief. Knowing transcends beliefs and needs them not.

* * * * *

Until we accept this Knowledge, we are still trembling- perhaps very deep down, perhaps deeper than we wish to consciously pursue today- in fear of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we are not Real. And so long as we carry around this idea deep within ourselves that there could be something else, that maybe we are not Real, that is what we will find. If there really were something else, if there really were someone on the other side from us, some force or person or will with which or with whom we could ever be at odds, then what would it look like? What would it feel like?

It would look and feel like air travel. It would look and feel like grid-locked traffic in the sweltering heat. It would look and feel like powerful and destructive storms. It would look and feel like shattered relationships, like trade embargoes, like warring factions, like office politics, like class struggles, like generation gaps, like barriers we can’t cross, and… you know all the other words and examples that could be appended here.

This is how we teach ourselves- we who are both behind the scenes and the scenes themselves- of what it would be like to exist in a Reality where there is also something else. This is how we teach ourselves the implications of a choice to try and be something else.

And as we question whether or not things must necessarily be this way, we teach and are taught in a new way. We unlearn the answers we have so long supplied, and in which we have believed, to meaningless questions like: what if there were really something else?

The Heart’s Proximity

May 26, 2013

by Michael

comments 5

Christ / Creative

I can remember my Heart. It was not a blood-pumping battery of striated, biochemical filaments. It was a star. I can remember it was all I ever had- all I ever knew or needed. It was not the kind of star that you see in the heavens that burn so hot all forms dissolve in their embrace. It was the kind of star you could hold in the palm of your hand, and watch its cool white glow, and see the gentle pulsing of its breathing.

It was the kind of star that could take you anywhere.

I could enter my Heart and come out deep in the ocean, drifting alongside a pod of blue whales. I could enter my Heart and come out high in the limbs of a redwood tree, surrounded by cool breeze and the night calls of owls. I could enter my Heart and come out on the prairie, standing still in high grass, watching in the distance as a train crept along in a steady procession of blackened steel. I could enter my Heart and come out inside of you… as you could in me.

* * * * *

I think we have the same Heart.

I think It’s a portal system that connects everything together, that makes every distant point a hair’s width away, like the two sides of coin. When we step into our Heart, if you spin around and look behind you, and I spin around me and look behind me, we’d probably be seeing one another. I don’t see how anything could exist, or be alive, and not be connected to our Heart.

* * * * *

Something happened, anyway, and I have not gotten fully back inside our Heart for quite some time. It’s like we’re together, but we’re not. It’s like I went somewhere and I can’t quite find my way back to It, but at the same time I can never be without It. I know our Heart is out there, because I can still feel it, but I’m all full of effort now, and specifics, and ideas by which it won’t abide. I never had those things before. Lately I can’t shake ’em loose.

I followed the trail to this great forest, and I know our Heart is tucked away inside of it somewhere, waiting for me, and me it. We’re going to join back up with Everything. I think Everything that is, is waiting for me to get back to it, because I’ve been strangely absent. But I’ve been stuck in this forest for as long as I can remember.

The forest is strange. It’s full of weeds and thick branches, walls of thicket and vine. It’s hard to move around in it. Someone told me once what all those were. He said they were thoughts and feelings I had covered over my Heart- things I had tried to make true that weren’t, and so my Heart could’t hold ’em. He said I had made this forest by thinking and believing I was something I wasn’t.

* * * * *

At first I wanted to break that Man in half, but now I see it’s true. He’s a good Man. Today I asked Him to come back and help me see straight again. Straight through this crazy forest. He told me He would help anytime.

First thing He asked me to do was give Him my axe. I said we’d need it to get through the trees and vines. We couldn’t hardly walk ten feet without it. He just asked me to give Him that axe, and finally I did.

Then He asked for my map. I didn’t know how He knew I had a map, but anyway, that map had everything I ever learned stalking through this forest for the past umpty-ump years, and I was determined that it wasn’t going, too. I told Him that. He told me the map was wrong, and that it wasn’t my fault. He told me I couldn’t teach myself how to be a better self. He told me reflections can’t suddenly decide to be the source of their own light. He had a point, and so I gave Him the map.

I started off down the trail that leads out of camp, then, and He asked me where I was going. I told Him I had given everything up, everything I had, and now it was time to find my way back to our Heart.

He told me the trails had to go, too.

You can imagine my incredulity. While I was making up my mind, nothing was really happening. This went on for days, but He just waited while I stalked around camp like one of those bears that’s raised in captivity its whole life, and is uncertain whether or not to move through an open door when it is presented.

Finally, I agreed.

I thought when I gave up the trails I had made that the trees would fill right in or something, and turn the whole place into an impenetrable thicket, but instead the forest just opened up, like the whole thing was a garden. The trees were suddenly limbed-up, and flowers had burst into color where patches of light shone down through gaps in the canopy, and a person could walk just about anywhere with ease. I was astonished!

* * * * *

I started off again, nearly trotting along so filled was I with joy and anticipation, when He stopped me once more. He looked right into me, and then He pointed to the forest, and He told me I couldn’t cross that distance. I turned to look at it, and I saw the most beautiful forest I had ever seen, stretching as far as we could see. He told me I could walk forever if I wanted, but I would never cross it. Not by walking across it. But, He told me, I could give it up. I could give up that distance without ever crossing it.

I gulped mightily as you may imagine.

I walked around camp for quite some time. I asked Him to go away for a while and let me think. I got a deranged look in my eye and I grew a long beard. I lived on scraps I found that appeared from time to time in camp, and He came periodically to check on me, bringing warm coffee and rolls. We talked about simple things. I wore myself down to a nub debating the futility of walking into that forest, in search of our Heart, in search of the only Reality I had ever needed.

On one of His visits I happened to see something in His eyes, something like compassion and like an ocean, and I couldn’t resist any longer. I wanted to let go of all of it, every last thing I knew about this place and my reason for being in it. I reached for Him. His heart enveloped me, and that’s the last thing I remember.

* * * * *

This… here… in the palm of my hand. This is our Heart. It can take us anywhere.