The banana yellow 1960 Impala convertible drifted to a stop about ten feet from my front porch. The top was down and Hafiz was perched behind the steering wheel, motionless as a statue, wearing an over-sized floral shirt, an Oakland Raiders ballcap turned backwards, and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Near as I could tell he was staring straight down the boulevard, waiting, as if I knew what the hell was going on and would […]
If you are on a spiritual path- a path to awakening, a path to acceptance of the Christ within you and within everyone else and within all that is, eventually you will have a high noon showdown with the following paradox. To be awake is to know that the ever-changing expressions of Love that collectively are Creation do not simply ‘happen to’ us. They are not foisted upon us by a wrathful Creator. Nor are […]
The other day a Messenger came to my home with a certified letter. I happened to be standing at the window of my apartment, roughly a hundred feet above street level, aimlessly observing the Saturday AM shuffle of humanity down below when he arrived. He glanced up from the street right at me, as if he knew exactly which unit I was in, and of course I had no idea his arrival had anything to […]
The mathematics of quantum physics is built upon the concept of a fixed space and time. Particles whiz around across this fixed backdrop, never touching it, unable to influence it or to be influenced by it. Their progress and evolution are measured against an immutable backdrop. In the mathematics of relativity, however, space and time are inseparable from any of the other forces or elements of matter in the universe. The movement and interaction of energy […]
I don’t know if you’ve ever imagined a state of complete and total nothingness- a field of emptiness without form or time, and most importantly, without any speck of awareness at all. It is hard enough to imagine being formless, but this is beyond formlessness. This is not being at all, which can be even harder to envision. This is picturing Nothing. This Nothing could go on forever, right? But I’m not that patient, so […]
In order to escape your prison, you will have to argue your case. No one can argue it for you. I’ve got a hearing coming up- Docket 249 in the Court of Self Appeals- and I’m getting antsy. I can tell you it’s no cake walk. I’m prowling around this cage like a tiger fresh off the jungle, drowning myself in images of freedom that induce feelings of freedom, that induce tears one instant, and […]
There is a desert inside of me where I wander, like a hermit, my vocabulary reduced to variations in the salinity of my tears and one Name that I give to everything. I found myself there again last night, sheltered against the wind by a robe of old rags, walking alone amidst an endless quilt of rolling dunes beneath the stars. I know I am not the Originator of this place, even though it is […]
Once when I was a boy I asked my father for a Rubik’s Cube. My wish was granted, and when I arrived home I took it out of the package and played around for a little while making small, easily recovered changes, frequently restoring the original hexi-color symmetry. I didn’t want to lose my way back to the original, “correct” state, so I made four or five moves to “scramble” the puzzle, then put it […]
In the Creation, God is a tea plant. She is a tea plant and also the soil in which the tea plant grows, and the air in which the tea plant breathes, and the rains in which the tea plant drinks, and the Light in which the tea plant Knows. We were a leaf on God’s tea plant, and the Life of the tea plant lived in us and through us. It was beautiful and […]
Perception is the only mode of awareness available to the separated mind. To say it another way, perception is a way of consciously viewing ourselves and the world that is based upon the a priori assumption- or belief- that separation is real. Once we have accepted this false premise- that we are truly separate from God and from one another, that the ‘I’ within ‘me’ is an island unto itself- then perception is the primary […]
Embracing Forever 