Tag: joy

The Ruins of Love

Sufi Pt 1 Lyrics…

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.

I hope all can come to know this freedom.

The Hard Fucking Work of Living with the Pain and Fear of this Life

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.

I dunno, guess I worked my shit out.

But there is always more shit to shovel.

I’ll get back to it.

Walt Whitman and William Blake: Madmen, Artists, Mystics

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.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version

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.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35995/35995-h/35995-h.htm

If you are following the call of your deepest pain and love, one must spend time with Whitman and Blake, both truly sublime and profound.

8-28-21 Smelly News and Weather Report

“Life is not an accident.” —Morpheus 

Today’s Weather…

– 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.” 

—Daniel 2:3

Writing in Blood

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

—Ernest Hemingway

I’ll read anyone who leaves blood on the page.

The way of the individual is not a lonely path, it is an intimate experience with everything.

Grinning Goat

Sometimes

When no one is looking

I 😂 at the rolling clouds of love
 
 
Sometimes

When no one is looking

I 😭 at the joy of life
 
 
Mostly I just don’t know

Why things go the way they go

But I abide it all with a hard won grin

Laughing Joy

laughing-girl-Camel

Joy is not

out there

waiting

it comes

after

a good

laugh

Radical Foolishness

image
The Hanged Man – Thoth Tarot

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.”

Joy at Sudden Disappointment

iam

If anyone spends any time here, they will know my deep love for Rumi and Jesus. Many in the West are discovering Rumi, who for me channels love directly from the Source of all being. I want to share this amazing poem. It bridges two faiths. There is a lot being said and Rumi gives us hints at how to proceed forward in this most perilous time.

It is my belief that many ways of thinking and living must find bridges between one another if we are to move forward into a more balanced future peacefully. Yes, we must move beyond religion and science separated. We must learn to find our union in the now before we can share the future. We must learn to use our minds and spirits/consciousness together. This is what I live to demonstrate and proclaim now and forever. We all have a piece of something we are responsible for. 

To be embraced and kissed by God is something to experience. Love is the only bridge we need.

Whatever comes, comes from a need,
a sore distress, a hurting want.

Mary’s pain made the baby Jesus.
Her womb opened its lips
and spoke the Word.

Every part of you has a secret language.
Your hands and your feet say what you’ve done.

And every need brings in what’s needed.
Pain bears its cure like a child.

Having nothing produces provisions.
Ask a difficult question,
and the marvelous answer appears.

Build a ship, and there’ll be water
to float it. The tender-throated
infant cries and milk drips
from the mother’s breast.

Be thirsty for the ultimate water,
and then be ready for what will
come pouring from the spring.

A village woman once was walking by Muhammad.
She thought he was just an ordinary illiterate.
She didn’t believe that he was a prophet.

She was carrying a two-month-old baby.
As she came near Muhammad, the baby turned
and said, “Peace be with you, Messenger of God.”

The mother cried out, surprised and angry,
“What are you saying,
and how can you suddenly talk!”

The child replied, “God taught me first,
and then Gabriel.”
“Who is this Gabriel?
I don’t see anyone.”
“He is above your head, Mother. Turn around. He has been telling me many things.”
“Do you really see him?”
“Yes.
He is continually delivering me from this degraded state into sublimity.”

Muhammad then asked the child,
“What is your name?”

“Abdul Aziz, the servant of God, but this family
thinks I am concerned with world-energies.
I am as free of that as the truth of your prophecy is.”

So the little one spoke, and the mother
took in a fragrance that let her surrender
to that state.

When God gives this knowing,
inanimate stones, plants, animals, everything,
fills with unfolding significance.

The fish and the birds become protectors.
Remember the incident of Muhammad and the eagle.

It happened that as he was listening
to this inspired baby, he heard a voice
calling him to prayer. He asked for water
to perform ablutions. He washed his hands
and feet, and just as he reached for his boot,
an eagle snatched it away! The boot turned upsidedown
as it lifted, and a poisonous snake dropped out.

An eagle circled and brought the boot back,
saying, “My helpless reverence for you
made this necessary. Anyone who acts
this presumptuously for a legalistic reason
should be punished!”

Muhammad thanked the eagle,
and said, “What I thought was rudeness
was really love. You took away my grief,
and I was grieved! God has shown me everything,
but at that moment I was preoccupied within myself.”
The eagle, “But chosen one, any clarity I have
comes from you!”

This spreading radiance
of a True Human Being has great importance.

Look carefully around you and recognize
the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those
who draw you to that.

Learn from this eagle story
that when misfortune comes, you must quickly praise.

Others may be saying, Oh no, but you
will be opening out like a rose losing itself petal by petal.

Someone once asked a great sheikh
what sufism was.

“The feeling of joy when sudden disappointment comes.”

The eagle carries off Muhammad’s boot
and saves him from snakebite.

Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come.
Some things that don’t happen
keep disasters from happening.

 

There is no God and We are His Prophets

I titled my meditation today with some powerful words from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. These words were spoken by the lone hermit Ely to the man and his boy on the dark grey road to nowhere in a dead world. These words will wreck you as you let their meaning insinuate into your consciousness. If you are a student of yourself, you need to read The Road. The movie wasn’t bad either. It looked exactly as it felt to me in the book. If you have seen The Revenant, the movies are very similar in tone and esoteric meaning. I’m going to write more about the story behind The Revenant later. It is very personal and magickal for me.

Anyway, I have been reading Native American mythology recently so themes of Apocalypse, God, Spirit, Prophecy and Rebirth are swishing around in my head and heart in an alchemical mix at the moment. Why would someone read about Native American prophesies? There is a thread that led me there. It led me to some interesting folks waiting for an Eschaton to destroy the world, aliens of the grey kind, through my own experience with the Apocalypse through the Evangelical religion/cult of my Mother and finally it led me to my true self who I found laughing at me. All I can do now is go through the motions and write the burning words floating up from my soul, my confession I guess or last will and testament maybe. So, on with the confession.

My culture brought the Native American’s judgement and Apocalypse in a way. Our entire culture is built on the ashes of theirs. If any American feels that pride sticking in their throats, that’s why, whether they are aware of it or not. I came across these haunting words in my title today, There is no God and We are his Prophets, as I meditated on my own internal Apocalypse and Apotheosis I have been exploring recently. That is not an end of myself, but an uncovering to the ultimate awareness and expression of myself. That sounds mystical, well, it is. Also, The Apocalypse seems to be coming at me from every input channel these days. That’s what they call a synchronicity. You don’t ignore those. I don’t anyway, not anymore. In a way I am a child of the Apocalypse. Let me explain.

As long as I can remember someone was predicting the end of the world. It is amazing actually when I stopped and thought about it. I was born in 1972 and when I was a boy I remember Walter Cronkite on CBS News talking about the long gas lines and energy crisis every night it seemed or US hostages in Iran. We had acid rain, floods, eroding ozone layer, growth of terrorism into adolescence and the terrible liberals to fear. Reagan came and saved us. Oh and I can’t forget the nuclear bombs flying over our heads and waiting in the ground to unleash Armageddon. The world I grew up in helped to foster a bitter angst and skepticism in me I carried into young adulthood unaware. A ticking time bomb of doubt. I gather now that was more by design than accident. On top of all that my Mother went and got Saved and dragged us all with her. I’ll spare you the details, insert your own inauthentic religious forced experience -> here.

The Christian Apocalypse literalness, as presented to the common Evangelical today as infallible, is laughable. I laugh, ha! All you need to do is consider the source of this doom and gloom and their gold plated fruit, no more to say about it. The metaphorical Apocalypse of the true self and uncovering of our Divinity has been co-opted by a cult and dangerous fairytale! Those are fighting words, so I better back away. Any person who spends a day in this world knows the norm is change, in every Planck unit of time it is a new Universe. It is fear that seeks to build a hedge between yourself and an unknown future. Do not look for an absolute, for that is like putting your foot on shifting sand. There is no bedrock to put your foot on in this decaying material Universe.

Logically to me, the answer, if there was one I often thought, would be found beneath the myths that were presented. I didn’t have a map to that place though, so I was no better off than the rest of the dreaming world. But there was some voice inside of me, some force, that took this opening in my thinking and began to work on it slowly over 2 decades. It just always felt like the right way to look at these things to me. Intuition I have found becomes your greatest guide and friend the more you learn to hear and trust it. What is literal in a world of myth? And that was my only point ever to those around me sharing the delusion we were under, I always felt it was important to think about the things beneath these things in this old book and look beneath the ideas and see the archetypes. Who wrote them? Why? It was at the end of religion and recognition of common archetypes across all religions, myth and culture that led me to an esoteric occult secret about myself. One that I knew I would find.

One I was destined to find it seems.

So today, researching the recurring theme of Apocalypse in my life, I was thinking about the boy from The Road and how often I feel myself walking like him on in a gray dead world that does not know it is dead yet. I found an essay suggesting a correlation between the boy’s father in the book and Virgil from Dante’s Inferno. Virgil could take you through your past and illuminate purgatory, but only we can climb that fiery stairway to Heaven. As Elijah did in that old book. The boy in the story represents the last child God born from the ashes of the old world maybe. A Messiah? The boy asks if there are other people and his father says no. Not anywhere, the boy asks? Maybe somewhere else, the boy says. Does the father live only to keep the boy’s hope alive? Why keep walking? That is the question, isn’t it? I will not spoil it and I am not sure I have a satisfactory answer yet anyway why they still kept walking in that dead world. I think it was partially driven by that unspoken intuition that drives us as a Light in the darkest storm from deep within and because humans have that unique sense of the future and hope keeps you warm in the cold. Better to hope than have none maybe in the end, as many wise sages seem to have said.

That sounds very depressing and shady, doesn’t it? I’m sorry, right now, as I look out the window though, it is beautiful actually. The Diablo mountain range is covered in a fresh coat of pastoral California green against a clear blue sky. The rains have come and gone and left us many gifts. For me I only see unicorns and rainbows now when I think of the Apocalypse. All myth is being washed away from me layer by layer. When I let all the myth of all creeds go and ask myself about the future, I feel a real burning hope and joy. There is no reason for it or specific message. My hope is just a Light burning inside me. I have no use for any other person’s version of reality. I know myself, here, now. What else can I offer you, but my view from here? I found something in myself I could never have dreamed of. That was mystical. I am only beginning to plumb the depths of myself. I invite you to shed your myths and stories. Shed your illusions and dreams about yourself and see what is left.

There is a New Age at hand I believe and I chose to and will play an active hand in bringing it into being with my Light, however it chooses to shine in this world. It is beautiful to me that when I asked myself about what I AM I could only respond with poems and pictures.  The future must be one where we learn to live in balance, so we have to learn to do that today and now. It began and will continue with individuals learning to love themselves first. In this New Age suffering will be seen for the illusion it is, created by our own desire for ourselves. We will and can find Heaven here now. Is that a place of rest? Rest from what? Suffering? Whose? Work? For what did you work? If no one is here suffering or working, who needs to rest? Maybe Heaven is being fully connected in this life, now, because now is all we have. Can you live with now being enough for you? If you can, you will find balance.