Recent events in my life served the function of popping the vacuum sealed lid of a small glass jar of fear I had been carrying around in my coat pocket. I smacked dab into some real world events—moments of indeterminate outcome surrounded by a steadily gathering mob of foreboding consequences—and you could hear the audible inrush of air as the jar was pried open. Out spilled vestiges of a future I had sworn to abandon, […]
In the previous post I began an exploration of the theme of power, and in writing it, as so often happens, I discovered something. These discoveries can’t really be put into words, because I probably had once read the words I wrote in one form or another, could recite the words, but had yet to inhabit the words, or to fully embody the words. But I think it’s also important to note that in the […]
I work away in my castle of thought, jolly as a clam, surrounded by parchment stacks, withered ledgers, flat screen monitors speckled by looping video clips of the past- (for research purposes)- key chains full of memory sticks, key chains full of keys to foot lockers, desk drawers, leather-bound briefcases, bulkhead doors, bicycle locks, motor vehicles, and a big-wheeled red tractor that gurgles when it idles, plus there are reams of photographs, black and white, […]
The first step in accepting your True nature is to look up from what you are doing, to disengage from the volition that you have become, to take one step back from the thread of responsibility and longing to which you are responding, and consider that the space into which you have stepped is more real, more alive, and more “you” than any place you have previously occupied. There is no encounter or situation in […]
I wrote recently about thought systems, and then I got to thinking… There’s a prevalent concept in our still predominate worldview that goes like this, “Use it. Or Lose it.” Use the budget allocation your department has been given within the current fiscal year, or it will be taken away. Use your bicep to lift hunks of metal once or twice a week until your arm is burning like a sonuvagun, or it will atrophy. […]
We were born adrift, resilient beads of awareness shimmering on a high sea, buoyant. Sparkling. No land in sight. The residue of saturated space- meaning that cooling Emptiness could no longer hold in solution, dew drops from the Night’s sold out Vacancy, falling, caught – splat!- upon a blank canvas. No land in sight. We were all swaddling vulnerabilities, nascent and curious Futures-in-Training, fields of Potential whose every vector pointed away from a singular Discontinuity: the […]
Early on in A Course of Love, Jesus assures us that we are not alone in our experience of shock and dismay at what the world we see seems to offer. He says, “There is not a soul that walks this earth that does not weep at what it sees.” (CoL, 2.10) Recognizing that we might be reluctant to accept this sweeping statement at face value, he also says, “Think not that those who seem […]
There’s nothing quite like a good paradox to peel the shrink wrap off your inner life and release the beautiful flavors that you are, or to suggest the intersection of hidden dimensions with the particular version of Flatland we’ve been calling our own. Let’s try one. Consulting the book of Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks and John Moyne (The Essential Rumi), we find the following lyrical paradox poised atop the 105th page, like a […]
In the seamless life, Loving and everything else are indissolubly joined. We are not splintered, or fragmented- not from our selves, not from one another, not from what is. We do not endure stretches of mundane, obligatory experiences in order to earn the right to partake of transitory, joyous interludes. There are no gaps between the dreams we share and the world we inhabit. No sacrifices are asked of us. No compromises demanded. We are […]
Unsure of how to proceed, the fabric of my inner experience the tattered banner of yet another failed self-concept, snapping and flapping in the rushing wind, I was washing dishes. One by one. Soak, scrub, wash, rinse, dry. Repeat. There was the hope that performing this activity manually, with ritual focus, would result in my being permeated by a bygone purity, one that would cool my smoldering core. The dishwasher was a pace or two […]
Embracing Forever 