I couldn’t sleep and the Lion told me to offer myself as a lamb to itself. It said it is all that is moving. It told me love kills. To take my small flame I have cultivated and merge it with the only real 🔥
And I wrote this with some help from my friends…
“Love is like the lion’s tooth.” —W.B. Yeats
I’ll tell you a secret about love Life is love and love is life A riddle and plainly known
I’ll tell you a secret about love You can cultivate your little flame But love will kill you when you come close
I’ll tell you a secret about love Though love may slay you as a lamb You shall be raised up a lion
—smelly goat
“You that come to birth and bring the mysteries, your voice-thunder makes us very happy. Roar, lion of the heart, and tear me open!” – Rumi
Only now do I realize I have prepared myself as an offering to the Lion.
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 don’t make many waves anymore But lately I been feelin this itch I can’t explain it It feels like summer It feels like winter It feels like fall It feels like…springtime Funny thoughts rise up Words come Feelings groove along They flow and taste bubbly red with sparkles Sometimes I feel salty tears Leaking from my eyes I feel laughter erupting from my lungs I feel and hear my heart beating I feel so alive Something whispers… This is what a human being is Don’t forget But you are not just a human being it whispers You are an ocean of stars And all those stars are connected Each finds their place I found something it seems In all this chaos that made it real I found a love I am not worthy of I found a golden eyed girl who loves me She makes me feel like the sky is kissing me She loved me when I didn’t love myself Her smile makes me feel stars Before I found love I left my head on the road I left this nation behind I left my faith on the road I let my name go I forgot my face I lost my family They turned away from me They cast out their sweet son and brother I had a huge wipeout and then two Then three then the Tao I felt the force behind the waves I found this rhythm inside me Something wonderful Something so filled with light All else faded into black All my doubts just flew away Like bluebirds I almost faded into black too But as my mind was dissolving And I got all wobbly and such And began to dissapear A hand from nowhere reached out And it steadied me Then it pointed to this mountain And I heard on the wind
Go there Go there Go there
But there was no path or road So I made a path But I got lost so quick And then I came upon a forest So dark and deep It felt like the bluest blue And like the darkest night And it seemed like monsters were everywhere And they were going to eat me Then something called to me on the wind again
This way This way This way
Before I knew it I was out of the blue woods Heading toward a snowy topped mountain The past feels forever ago now I made friends along the way I let them see through me No apologies Most turned away But some came close So close we could almost See into each other’s hearts I love to see people become I really do I love to see them find their groove I really do I was lost once too Like all the rest But now wherever I am I’m never lost But all those years ago I was a fool living for nothing But I found something I found…no one is true or right There is no set path I found…within myself Deep mystery Now I have no creed Now I have no name But I am a citizen now of a golden city All of humanity lives there I don’t remember how I got here The wind reminds me This is where all human beings live Those who were and are and will be A city my ancestors built Something sees me now Where I felt alone before Now something is here with me Something lets me know This journey to the big mountain is worth it Somehow I know this Something lets me know You will not fail again And I won’t I won’t quit I won’t stop What does it all mean I wish I could tell you I wish I could take away All the pain and doubt I wish I could make the way clear But how would that help anyone I am someone worthy I found I am someone who will not steal from you I am someone who will not stab you in the back I may even show you my flowers I have not found the mountain yet But I won’t ever stop trying to get there I see it a good ways off in the distance still Let me get back to it I got some walking to do
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
—William Butler Yeats – The Second Coming
—- No, no one can or wants to take over the world.
Be free knowing there is no end.
Just an uncovering.
That is joyful!
The sky is singing about it.
The earth is groaning for it.
We only destroy the things we want by our grip or live in peace with what we have.
All of creation wants this technological monster to stop devouring the earth.
Creation wants man to cease to be termites to the earth.
The Native Americans say their god has no rules.
Only ceremonies to know it better.
That is the true source.
The true nameless faceless source knows us through the imagination and our emotions and our thoughts.
In fact, your thoughts are its thought.
In fact, you are one of its thoughts.
There are many cunning thieves who have given themselves to darkness devouring the weak hearted and minded.
They are playing their parts well.
To help wake us up.
They give into fear.
Fear not.
I ride on a pale horse.
I watch and listen and gather my strength.
For there is yet a great thing required of me by the highest.
And I shall gladly give my life so that life may become.
That is what god calls each of us to.
To be warriors of the sun and moon.
If you are quiet and you listen and you see with your real eyes it’s clear as day.
You can see as Emerson and Whitman and Epictetus.
You will feel the call on you when you let your grip on your life go.
The veil is thin.
If you are humble and listen, you can see through this false industrial monster we have created and that we all feed.
It lives on division and hatred and fear.
It probably has a divine purpose as all things light and dark do.
Whitman saw the rising of the monster in the civil war, he was a prophet of love.
He showed us how to build a boat of love to sail across the turbulent abyss.
Epictetus gave us a way to master our fear on earth.
Emerson found a way back to the sky.
In spite of all the turmoil on earth, there is a clear voice on the wind.
A call to love.
A call to reunite.
And if we be worthy, to walk the rainbow bridge back to the source of all being.
What are we to do?
Join our minds and hearts together and know ourselves, remember ourselves.
All of creation will rise up to help you.
Know that every word spoken or written or thought are inside you already.
Stop looking to others.
It ain’t in no book or ritual.
It is sleeping or alive and awake in each of us.
We only have to accept it and remember it.
That monster that slouches toward Bethlehem can’t hurt one who knows themselves.
The goddess sits next to the source, she is no whore.
There is no 1, 2 or 3, there is only One, and we all have a part of it.
Most live in duality, which is an illusion, nothing is separate.
If you fear, if you are divided, if you divide, you serve chaos, you are the katechon, you will be overcome.
That was your choice, one of the few you have.
I don’t believe there is one destiny per one person that is unchangeable.
Careful though how you approach the gods above, or they may turn you into a smelly goat.
Each god is just an aspect of this.
There are just great magnetic forces that draw certain elements to them.
But you can overcome them with the power of Will.
Maybe all of this is just a way to sort the wheat and the chaff.
To find thoughts that can navigate the darkness without being corrupted.
So what shall it be?
Fear or love?
For love knows no fear.
I will lead, I do not follow.
I stand and I care for any bird that shows up on my step.
I won’t go looking for a fight.
I’ll bide my time and strike when the beast is so close, I feel its hot breath on my neck.
And then I will drive my blade home, into its black heart.
I know then that light will break forth from it.
I have seen it.
That monster, is me.
You are that monster.
It is all our concentrated anger and fear.
That’s what is happening.
Aleister Crowley and all the great artists are beings of light, connected to their Will and filled with love.
They are stars and so are we, or have the chance to be.
Love is the law.
Love under Will.
They have brought us back from the brink of industrial annihilation.
I will help them.
The great secret chiefs are alive in us.
We shall meet them in the sky and we will laugh, and will cry no more.
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.
Some quotes from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” that remind me to endure the 🥵 in life. He lived through the Holocaust. Many on the right want us to forget our ugly history.
No, I won’t forget. I will remember man’s cruelty and hatred towards man. I will not let anger take root in my ❤️ I will vigilantly pull that anger out of myself anytime it sprouts.
I gladly yield to love.
Love is the way, this is beneath that which is occulted, behind and binding everything.
To receive and give love is hardest for those who have suffered most.
They have something to show us about what it is to be a Human Being.
—
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.
No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.
Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
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.
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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 