I was seated on a tall aluminum stool, in the middle of a high school gymnasium, at three in the morning. I wore a silk beanie on my head from which there stood a single aplomado falcon feather, pointed straight up like an antenna. My eyes were closed in concentration. Hafiz was seated opposite me on a stack of encyclopedias he had built just outside of the circle at midcourt. In front of him stood […]
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 […]
This past week I was shaken by an acute pain in my heart-soul-being. Like a fever in the body, it began as a dull ache, but ramped up into a full blown grippe. It was an inner aching that shook me to the core. If you have felt this, you will know the attending symptoms- the way a ghostly pallor slides over the world like a sticky film, the way we withdraw ourselves into a […]
here’s the thing about That- (your heart’s lock). the Love inside You is the same Love that was inside Houdini. (do you see?) and fear… is a clumsy lock maker. his locks are rusty, ineffectual, and overdone hunks of metal, as functional and sophisticated as a cabal of mouse traps. sensing his own ineluctable incompetence, he applies them in copious quantities, disguising nothing at all as a vast and interwoven steel conspiracy. eschew this shammery. (those clodding forgeries […]
Last night the Beloved and I changed the Rules of Engagement: I agreed to stand quietly and listen. She agreed to do do the rest. She blindfolded me. She rolled me up in a sail that came with its own ocean. She hung me upside down from the ceiling- (you know, like a carcass)- and pulled the plug. The door latched behind her as She left the room. Click. My concepts took their cue and spilled […]
I think we should begin with a bit of Rumi. This is like stretching out briefly before we tear ass across a back yard still slick with a morning dew. It’s a best practice, and it just might prevent us from ripping ligaments or pulling hamstrings in the recklessness that follows. It’s a safe beginning. Sort of. “We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve into non-existence, but non-existence fears even more that it might be […]
Strange. Strangely familiar, I mean, this coming back. It’s a lurching free-fall and a hot cup of tea all at once. At first I don’t recall ever enrolling in this University of Unceasing Joys, but then my feelings and memories, even my very identity and my deepest sense of Self, snap back into their real shape, like that shape memory polymer when you heat it back up. I’m taking one of two required semesters of […]
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 […]
I went through a stage in this journey without distance in which I sought to find the ‘right path’ for myself. It was like I was evaluating a major purchase. I was given some good advice at the time, which basically went like this: “Pick one.” It was the best advice I could have received, because nothing really gets started without commitment. In fact, without commitment, it is impossible to learn to see what is […]
Embracing Forever 