Today I’m feeling such wonderful joy and such deep sadness. Where they meet on the field of doubt, hope is born.
Tears are flowing down my face from deep down, from the place my soul was born from.
Strange tears, with a sweet bitter taste. There is a saltiness in them that reminds me of the oceans before mankind stepped into Eden.
That was a pure time of creation, full of hope and potential. A time of eternal beauty, imagine it if you can.
We so much desire to be known and loved by this place and time that has birthed us. But we often feel like orphans, mistakes, the refuse of a time before.
Real life is not about being loved, truly it is about finding love for yourself, for all things as yourself.
To know yourself is not to destroy yourself, to know yourself is true love.
To be alive can be so overwhelming. How we can hurt one another like we do. We are capable of such hatred and rage…such darkness…
but but but
There can be such amazing dazzling firefly like beauty. Sparks of eternity you can taste and feel, balls of light bursting on your tongue and in the back of your mind.
What a glorious gift!
Maybe life is but a dream, but it feels…it feels…I don’t have the words. It feels more than real, more than true, more than all the words ever spoken or written.
I will remember this place for eternity as I sail past these temporary sorrows.
Eternity is found in this very moment, right now.
If you want to know god, look to your right and to your left. Look at that poor soul drinking themselves to an early death on the side of the road.
Look at your children.
Look at your friends and enemies.
Look at what you love and hate.
Forgive yourself for what you have done, forgive others for what they have done to you.
I know my Mother’s desire to be loved. I am her, but with something more. I know her pain to my marrow. I know how she desires union with God and fears the enemy of love.
God did come to her, through her children. She may never know it, but it’s more than true.
I imagine her saying to me, rejoice my son, you have found your heart! You are here living, this is no small accomplishment…
rejoice rejoice rejoice!
Here I am talking to myself on a lazy Saturday as tears stream down my face. We are always running and pushing for that next breath, that next experience, but look around you. Take a deep breath, blink, enjoy the view maybe.
These are my Mother’s tears, mixed with mine, an elixir that has revealed the face of God.
You will only be here for a very short time, the shortest blink. Pay attention, mean what you do, take responsibility for all of it.
You have arrived here now!
Billions of years awaited your arrival.
Welcome.
Look at your love, feel your hatred. Let them join together in that field beyond good and evil.
“He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise”
Mel Brooks said as long as the earth is spinning, we are going to be dizzy and make mistakes, we are unrehearsed.
😂
Whether we like it or not, life will give us an education of the heart.
Some are good students and others not so much.
Nothing in life is worth a damn without love ❤️
It doesn’t matter what you believe, like, at all.
It matters what you do locally, to those who need and love you and to the stranger too.
Actions have consequences.
How much love is in your life?
It’s all that matters to you.
And by you I mean me.
There is no happy ending here, but there is a whole lotta love ❤️
“If you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy and colorful and lively.
..
Look, I don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death.
My secret beloved Send me a secret message Give me your soul Give me your life
Wander like a drifter Now on a journey
Walk into this fire embrace Be like a salamander Come into a source of flame Fire transmutes to a rosebud
Don’t you know that my thought Is better than the queen of roses? Don’t you know my heresy Is the essence of spirituality?
Then surrender your spirt Surrender your life For God I know That darkness is better than a cage!
Walk into this fire embrace Be like a salamander Come into a source of flame Fire transmutes to a rosebud
Don’t you know that my thought Is better than the queen of roses? Don’t you know my heresy Is the essence of spirituality?
Then surrender your spirt Surrender your life For God I know That darkness is better than a cage!
I know a palace is better than a ruin And the owl in this world Loves to live In the ruins of love
I am always learning how to read better between the lines of language and life. Words are just representations. Of what, is the mystery. They are magick in a way. Evoking and caging sometimes something in us. I’ve practiced Zen now for a bit, this is the essence of Zen, to know our true nature where we are, nothing more, nothing less.
I know a palace is better than a ruin And the owl in this world Loves to live In the ruins of love
I studied these lyrics a bit years ago and meditated deeply on what is said and not said. I looked into the Sufi path and what they meant by flame and the beloved. I am not trying to be clever here, but I have felt all the deities are within us, drawn to the light/flame, as we are a shadow, a portal to the nameless faceless. The owl, in this world, loves to live in the ruin of love. I choose not to name or make distinctions. The deity is the one who I point at, when I point back at myself. This is cutting to the root. This is going headless. This is directly perceiving beyond words.
I love Rumi, but I really know Shams, who was behind Rumi. Somehow I feel Shams is close to me and represents my secret beloved. He showed me to let the distinctions go.
“A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, eastern or western…divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”
–Shams Of Tabriz
“The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”
That’s a koan.
When I listened to this song first, I felt the flame inside me leap. Yearning for freedom. I felt it. I felt like crying and laughing at the same time. Fire loves water.
Rumi said sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment, that’s got to be one of my favorite written poetic lines.
I think the lyrics point to the freeing of the flame within us, which is always free. This awareness transmutes us, by realizing our lives are not cages, that we are already free. This is the real Alchemy. This returns us to Eden. The world of matter is a ruin in away, a compromise, in between chaos and light.
Somehow it can know itself better in the ruin, but this world is a sham. It is not that the flame needs escape, but that it simply is uncovered.
The water is all around us, love is not the flame, it is the water, which the flame is attracted to. We would think flame fears water, and perhaps it does for awhile, then it seeks to dowse itself in love. When fire loves water, the universe turns differently.
If the bird can get just a glimpse of what is around it and within it, instantly it is transmuted and free. So the body is the cage.
This awareness does not make me want to fly away, it deepens my connection, Aslan, there is no where else to go, here we are. Allah is clothed by rational thought, occulted by matter, but known through awareness. The lion. In Hebrew,
Aslan means ‘satan‘ which means ‘lucifer/first light in the morning’ which means ‘daybreak’. The circle is closed around the point, the central sun. Everything is contained within the circle.
I could not always see with my real eyes I was in a cage. But I embraced the prison and it opened to Eden through my heart, to the point, naked singularity. I can’t show anyone, I can’t really tell anyone, but like knows like. We can point to it. We can sing about it. We can dance around it. Flame joins with And we embrace water seemingly a crazy thing for a flame to do, and then the universe turns differently for us.I was withering in my life 10 years ago, dying. But a great wind blew through me. It lifted me high into the air and brought me face to face with the Our source, itself only a representation. Like words, all form is just a representation.
What appeared to trap me, turned to dust and I flew for the first time.
But I returned, and now I rest here, in the center of it all. I rest in the chaos, in the center of my life. I feel the heat, which is behind all form and I love it, for this is loving and knowing myself. I saw what was behind all esoteric and what was occulted, what was behind all religious and secular symbols.
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna hide from love?
The morning light dawned inside me.
I don’t cry anymore. I’m smiling and laughing with joy. I feel Aslan within me, laying on the savannah, roaring within. This is the true path to god/love, an ever present connection, it ends where it began, full circle. I drink deeply now from this ocean, I could hardly believe it was real. I was dying because I was thirsting for this love, but terrified of it. This never dies. Anywhere this light breaks into the world, matter forms around it, cults form, religions are born. The matter longs to connect with it or naturally is attracted to it. So we have the planets rotating around the outer sun, as what is inside us rotates around the inner sun.
Bound by gravity.
Bound together by love.
Sometimes I do cry because it is too damn beautiful to contain.
I weep blood into the dirt through my cries and words.
The birds are returning.
All deity reflects love.
All deity seeks to free us.
We are only held back through this egoic force.
In Rumi’s allegories, amongst the free birds, the Owl and the Falcon represent the two primary options once one is freed from the cage. The Owl lives in the dark, far from civilization, only relating with its own kind, whereas the Falcon rests upon the arm of the king, staying close to the power source and maintaining his relations and connection with any and all who venture to the court. The Falcon holds a pure, open vision, flying during the day and returning to his master’s arm at night, while the Owl lives in seclusion, coming out in the dark, lost without the guidance of a master. The Falcon represents a follower who has fallen off track, one who has insight but has pointed it in a skewed direction. Falcon as an exemplary option working in contrast with the Owl who has lost his way after enlightenment.
For Rumi, the last and most powerful bird is the Phoenix, a bird so exquisite it nearly plays the role of God himself. The Phoenix is rare, and when sighted acts as an omen, serving the purpose of reminding humans to stay in awe of God’s power. The Phoenix reminds one to soak up moments with the divine because they may be fleeting and far between. The Phoenix is quite likely an unreal creature and therefore its existence can only rely on faith. The Phoenix reminds us to have faith even when we cannot see it, to hold God close and be open to any help He may have to offer us because He is always there.
The pagan and the religious and secular all experience life differently perhaps but rotate around the same source, are of the same stuff.
The fire is the force, the purpose, the will, that pushes us through life.
The bird knows the way back.
I can’t judge the paths others take in life, but I can see the intensity of the within them. I call out to it in others. Tempt them to let it break free, as they tempt me. Passion reminds us of this contact with the unseen, it celebrates it in whatever form it burns.
All words can provide guidance, but no answers ultimately. I feel that we all must search for the things that we love and feel passionately about and then follow them until death do us part.
Last night had the craziest dream about a gravitational anomaly eating a hole through the earth.
It was depressing and scary.
I kept trying to get further away from the anomaly but the water kept coming and then I was in this giant whirlpool that was spitting the earth into space.
So damn real.
My fear woke me up, I wanted out of that fucking dream.
I heard the ocean waves on my sound machine when I woke up and the central heater was running and I felt like there might be an ocean outside the window.
Sounded like it.
It turned out a military project triggered the event in my dream.
The mind is just amazing.
Since I stopped smoking pot I can remember my dreams incredibly vivid now.
I never thought I’d stop smoking pot, but I stopped drinking and smoking a bit ago and I can tell a big positive difference.
Switched to a vegan diet, started exercising more.
Feeling good, clear.
Got my shovel out and started shoveling the shit, put my back into it.
I was letting my body go.
But my heart and body brought me back.
I’m going to volunteer at hospice I think.
I have a knack helping people let go of their fear.
Maybe I can be of a little service to some before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
I’m 50 now and feel like I’ve lived four different lives.
Maybe I’ll read them poetry and shit like that.
Been working on my writing, can’t say it’s getting much better, but I’m keeping at it.
For I have found the best in life is incommunicable.
How bout that?!
Been writing about the folks I’ve come to know and love through their art, but want to know them deeper.
I want to know their pain and joy. Ralph Waldo Emerson has some good shit to say about that. He says know that all in history thought and felt as you did.
I’ve been digging deeper everywhere and have to say I’ve never felt more alive, focused, productive, calm, in love.
Had a surreal day on Saturday.
Very existential, was just accepting of the whole damn mess of this beautiful life.
Had some serenity I guess.
It was nice.
Had some fun and not so fun interactions with some folks on Reddit and FB.
Peeps are angry.
They don’t like their lives.
Downright miserable.
I like to swim out into the deep water with people.
Can’t say I’m very patient with misery.
Fuck that shit.
Recently even stopped fighting with my wife so much.
I love the girl, she’s crazy about my ole smelly 🐐 ass.
Been talking to my Brother more who I’ve never really talked much with
Been really nice to bond over our pedophile father and insanely religious family, haha.
What a fucked up family we got, let me tell you.
The brother of my sister’s husband killed himself.
Found out that fuck molested my niece years ago.
Found out my dad molested her too.
I hope it hurt when he died.
It’s tough not to wish my dad the pain he inflicted on others.
But I can’t judge anyone.
I never hurt a child, but I inflicted plenty of pain.
God only knows how many people my asshole Father hurt.
One reason my sister, mom and niece turned to Jesus.
The only man who wouldn’t hurt them they dream.
That is what makes them so mad at me.
Cause I turned my back on their savior.
I dared to kill my god.
But I tried to tell them, Jesus met me as a brother and friend, not god.
You can’t love your neighbor until you love the worst of you and the worst you find in life.
They can’t hear me at all.
I’m over their shit, I’ll tell ya.
Heartless bitches, but they are just in great pain.
Unbearable pain almost.
Almost killed my niece before she sobered up.
They hate me more than my puke dad.
How fucking ironic is that shit?!
My brother doesn’t understand it.
I kinda do.
I think I’m gonna write a bit more about my father and my old religion and those bitches.
I remember when he got his belt out and beat us the other day.
He must have hated himself.
He took it out on us.
Probably partially what made me such an angry asshole I guess.
It’s good when you know that fucking child disease is not in you.
My brother and I been going deep together.
We share these inner depth sounding experiences.
I feel like a big brother now.
I feel like a husband.
I feel like a friend.
Took me awhile to hit my stride, but I fucking did.
No, I’m not going to leave my marriage again like I did in the past.
I don’t quit shit anymore.
I follow through.
I won’t give up until I’m dead.
I wasted enough time in my life.
If I had known Plato and Socrates and Diogenes, I would have just had a beer with them and talked about the shit in life we all have to bear.
One thing I can say all us humans have in common, we feel this shit.
Deeply.
All these people in prison, destroyed children, terrified and hardened.
It hurts a lot.
One thing I have is some fucking deep emotions.
I’m very close to them now.
Not letting that pain twist us into monsters is the great work and art of living and dying.
Transmuting the shit of life into gold is godly I find.
Walt Whitman is a mystic poet, one of my favorites. One can be transported in the incredible words of Whitman in “Leaves of Grass” and the poem contained within, “Song of Myself.” One can see he was seeing the totality of life and is filled with a glowing Light and great power, as in Blake. Whitman saw everyone as an expression of the whole. Each a work of art. He tried to remind people how beautiful they were. A leaf among the grass.
1
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
…
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.”
Whitman and Blake experienced and saw amazing things in being and themselves as part of the whole. They suffered greatly in life and felt the suffering of others deeply. I could read them forever and barely see where they walked. It is as if the Sun filled them with Light, but also the Shadow clearly speaks through them. Each contains Legion voices. They captured I think what it is to be a Human Being captured between worlds. I am moved deeply by them both.
In “Walt Whitman Speaks,” Whitman says about Blake, “Blake began and ended in Blake.” I researched this and it turns out, Whitman was confounded by and then came to appreciate Blake. Harold Bloom, a great literary critic, felt the two were of the same cloth. The falling of America made Bloom miserable. He would despair about today’s world. I recommend a great book by Bloom who loved Whitman, “The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime.” This sublime aspect of Whitman’s time was a presage of our time. Whitman warned us about technology and the age of specialization. Like a hippie version of Ted Kaczynski. Where Ted used real bombs, Whitman used bombs of Love. I love Bloom’s YouTubes. He had a photographic memory and remembered everything he ever read. Amazing to listen to, poetic in his writing and speaking. I highly recommend Bloom.
“Bloom loves Emerson and Whitman but he doesn’t believe them: to him, belatedness is now a permanent condition of man, and there can be no overcoming it—no return, even in America, to an original fullness or freshness or purity of spirit.” —The New Yorker Profile on Bloom – The Prophet of Decline 9/22/02
About Blake, Bloom thought…”The true Romantic, as represented by Shelley and, above all, Blake, looked not to nature—a thing external to the self—to save him but to the world-altering power of his own imagination. Nature was material, and therefore fixed and limiting. Only by struggling to liberate itself from the world entirely—to fill itself with invented mythical forms rather than natural ones—could the imagination be free.” —The New Yorker Profile on Bloom – The Prophet of Decline 9/22/02
The genius of all three of these men drips off their pages and is seen in their art. There is a deep sadness in them all, Bloom the most. Whitman and Blake though saw through the sadness.
Blake invented a form of art combining images with texts, relief etching. The first comics? He had incredible visions. I have a large folio of his work and he strikes me like Jung’s art does in The Red Book. These men have walked through heaven and hell. Whitman wrote, like Blake painted. But Blake’s poetry! My god. Blake was mostly ignored in his time. He said he wrote for his audience in eternity. His visions he felt were real and removed all doubts. Perhaps it was this assurance Whitman didn’t initially like. Blake was a rebel and feared by the establishment. Unlike Swedenborg, Blake spent as much time in the hell of London as the heaven of his soul. For this he has earned my esteem and respect. Whitman felt him dark. But Whitman didn’t like Poe either at first, but in “Walt Whitman Speaks” Whitman comments about writers of his day and confesses he came to like Poe after reading him again and again. He and Blake were so alike, but very different, as Whitman himself wrote.
“Awake! Awake, O sleepers of the land of shadows, wake! expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine. I am not a God far off, I am a brother and friend; within your own bosoms I reside and you reside in me: Lo! we are one, forgiving all evil, not seeking recompense” (Blake-Jerusalem.,Chp.1,lns.6,18).
Whitman wrote privately after reading Algernon Swinburne’s “William Blake: A Critical Essay”, that while both he and Blake were mystics and “extatics“, the differences between them were vast. I admire Whitman very highly and see in his work a sweet pragmatism that inspires me. How these mystics loved. Whitman took care of civil war wounded and this grew a great compassion in him.
– The Northern California air is heavy with smoke today. It’s 82F with sun and haze. Today will be partly sunny, high of 100F, low of 64F. I’ve seen better days. But this one is fine.
In Smelly News…
– Northern California is burning
It is a cleansing fire. Dream homes have burned is all. Wood 🪵 fuel has burned is all. I burn, slow burn. Smell of smoke is in the air.
– There is more corruption popping up everywhere now in our fallen politics, out of our delusional fear. Corruption abounds. Yet, as all that is temporary falls away, what we are, remains. Castoffs, a mote in God’s eye. This process of living has altered consciousness.
– I work with electric self driving cars in the dream. I’m here to do the work and I’m doing it. I help train deep learning algorithms to recognize objects and respond. I move massive amounts of data around. Humans are very clever. My approach is a minimal one to support the work, just enough planning. What I am good it is making progress in chaos. Emotions overwhelm logic and reason. How would you program this? Do we want thinking machines with new emotions? If cars had emotion, would they be depressed? Kaizen, continuous improvement, is my way through this. Improve anything I touch and I do. I have a team now I have been building over last 4 months. This has been a new chapter in my own small life and I give joyfully and freely to my team and they respond with their best. AI needs conditioning and training. As do people. It takes practice to be good. To be great? It takes heart. Show me the algorithm for this. I dare you. Ironic while the world burns, I am doing my best work.
“I know this because I just know, it is my purpose.” —The Keymaster
Today’s poetry…
“I dreamed a dream . . . but now that dream is gone from me.”
It’s coming up on a year anniversary for this blog. It was my first real blogging effort and it was an experiment. I wrote to my self. I began writing poetry. I didn’t set the world on fire, but I let some of the fire and Light in me out into the big wide world. That’s progress if you ask me. Progress towards what?
That is the continuing question.
I was driven and wrote everything spontaneously for the most part. I was exploring. I left breadcrumbs if others were curious to sample the things I tasted. It was hard to be so exposed and also the most freeing thing I have ever done. I was sparked into these acts of anarchy and self mutilation/liberation through things and by forces beyond myself I barely understand. I personally can not deny the leading caring hand of synchronicity in my life. I take little credit, other than learning to listen. I take a lot of comfort knowing there are things beyond myself that obviously want good for us and send us Love I feel in the form of Light. To me, this is Divinity. That’s another essay.
My spiritual journey is intense, erratic and eclectic. There is no jackpot at the end I’m angling for. In all my seeking and knowledge gained and tasted, the only Truth was found in the living of life artfully and creatively in the moment in Love. I can’t give you a map to joy, but I’m Joyful. I lost my fear of all but the One, my self. I tell myself the lies I want to believe. To sift through the lies about ourselves is hard work, but it must be done. You are the only one holding your self back from the Truth.
Based on my writings, you may want to stay far away from my thoughts and experience. I’m warning you, tangle with the depths of your heart and seek true reality in love and you will become ensnared, in the way you were meant to be, by your own heart.
An all consuming fire will ignite at your feet and you will BURN!
You will dissolve into something much bigger than yourself. You will become a creator and you will leave everything better than you found it. You will give more than you take and you will find limitless capacity within yourself and infinite beauty in all things. You will master your desires and mind.
I would take no one’s word about anything. I would turn over every rock and then consider what I found based on my experience. I was changed over this year, cracked open. Begin this journey immediately if you hear the song, go find the Truth about your Self. This is all just between you and your Self in the end I am finding.
It has been one hell of a year for me personally, not just creatively and spiritually. I found a love I never thought possible with my flame twin. I have struggled with my health more so this year than ever, but ironically found more balance inside than ever before. I have been greatly humbled. Recently, I was made aware that there was still this ‘Me’ trying to find the right side of the illusion, Maya, to live in. The Holy ‘Me’, the Sparatual ‘Me’, The Enightened One is still trying and striving. This is the time of the Hanged Man’s ascension. And there is only one way to go from here, up up up. I asked what was real and who was speaking to me in life? What was this new song I was hearing?
I began to see and learn what I was and what I was involved in. Is this enlightenment? Who knows or cares! I found a Way to hear and experience the Universe like never before.
I began to understand the interpersonal nature of reality underneath time and space. I experienced it. I was That. Walls evaporated. The signs of our evolution and fear are everywhere. The coming generations are more open than the former ones. The end of greed and profit at the expense of others one way or another is coming. I yielded to my right brain intuition for a year. Things turned out well, though not completely linear or predictable. From my view here I can offer you only the following to find your way.
When in doubt, go with the flow and act naturally!
Don’t waste energy throwing yourself against closed doors. Don’t wait. Do things now that need to be done with and for the ones with you. Live life in the moment and let the future unfold.
I’ll leave you with some meditations to challenge you to just chill. Remember things and people will take care of themselves. Just go with the flow and take responsibility and be mindful in every moment of your own actions and reactions. Don’t just consider your own needs, but the needs of all around you. Live your Truth radically and foolishly. Let everyone see what you are. Show your naughty hidden bits. Hide and hold nothing back.
You got this.
Adyashanti wrote: “Yes, we go to this timeless background of consciousness and awareness. Absolutely. Very liberating isn’t it? Very, very freeing; very profound and very beautiful.
And yet, if taken in and of itself, we’ve just switched sides of illusion. We’ve gone from form and time, to formlessness and timelessness, and we say: ‘Well, this one’s more true,’ because it’s more comfortable, it feels better, basically.
But the truth is only when these two collapse together – that this world of form IS the timeless, so what we call form is emptiness, it is consciousness, that’s what it is. Then, there’s no stance anymore, is there? There is no sense of ‘I have to remain as awareness’. We only have to remain as awareness if we don’t really know that this wall is awareness, that your car is awareness – once we know that, then we’re finally free, are we not?”
Aisha Salem wrote: “Taking responsibility comes down to that loyalty to listening, to actually dare to let that happen which is supposed to happen. That is not to say that everything is laid out, because in every moment we have the choice of love over fear, of truth over the lie. The moment that we choose truth, then walking strongly in that truth becomes our radicality.”
David Foster Wallace wrote: “The capital T-Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over…This is water…This is water. It is unimaginably hard to stay awake in the world today.”
inside me leap. Yearning for freedom. I felt it. I felt like crying and laughing at the same time. Fire loves water.
I was in a cage. But I embraced the prison and it opened to Eden through my heart, to the point, naked singularity. I can’t show anyone, I can’t really tell anyone, but like knows like. We can point to it. We can sing 
about it. We can dance 
around it. Flame 
seemingly a crazy thing for a flame to do, and then the universe turns differently for us.I was withering in my life 10 years ago, dying. But a great wind blew through me. It lifted me high into the air and brought me face to face with the 
Our source, itself only a representation. Like words, all form is just a representation.
and laughing with joy.
because it is too damn beautiful to contain. 
Quantum Heart 