Peace Beyond All Understanding

When your life is said and done, it won’t matter anymore what the meaning of it was.

You lived it.

One day I will look back and say, if I am fortunate, I had a fine life, no regrets.

It was filled with wonders and doubt and fear and courage and love.

I spilled ink on the paper.

I left my blood in the dirt.

I made my mark.

Kindness and compassion are the best things in us.

Pray they do not die in thee.

For surely then, you are dead to love.

The worst tragedy a human being can experience.

When no one is looking, can you look at yourself in the mirror?

Did you hurt others?

Surely.

Did you make the best amends you could, hopefully.

Did you find your passion in life?

At the moment of your death, all the passions will be silenced.

No one will ever know when you hit your stride maybe, if you did.

Your life will flash before you.

May it not be an ugly sad ending to your story.

May you have learned, as Scrooge did, to give all the love you can while you can.

It is never too late to fall in love with life.

Don’t live with regret.

Don’t hurt those you love and love you.

Do better now.

I must say about life, it surprises me everyday.

The joy grows deeper now every moment.

As the world appears to be unraveling, it isn’t here.

Things just work out for the best.

There will be a moment, when it is your best time to die.

May that day be far from you.

Once you find love, you want it forever.

It bubbles over inside you sometimes at a mad boil.

Other times it just simmers on low.

It just doesn’t matter what’s happening out there.

Here, in the middle of life, one can find a peace that surpasses understanding.

If you are at the bottom, get up.

I was and did and I’m glad.

I look back on the birth of love within me.

I smile and I am thankful to have known life up and down, inside out.

As the loons rage against those they hate, one can experience peace beyond all understanding.

What a world!

What a life!

Life is inspiring and calls one up and out of their doubt and fear.

Sometimes you can see that hand from nowhere reaching out to you.

Take it.

Offer that hand to the other, and you will realize what love is.

Hold that hand offered to you long enough, until you are steady on your feet.

And then run!

Run like the wind 🌬

Run as far and as long as you can and don’t look back.

Don’t try to understand or explain, you can’t.

And then maybe at the end, nothing will be left to regret.

Peace to you Minerva, my sweet aunt.

You showed me kindness when my own mother couldn’t and wouldn’t.

Much respect ✊️ and love.

RIP

Embrace the Mystery

I am no theist or deist.

I embrace all religions, as Walt Whitman did.

Today if one rises and says 2 + 2 = 5 and repeats it enough, others will believe them and you have a new religion.

In a cosmos of mystery, anyone offering assurance, is raised up as a false god.

No other or thing can be your god.

This is what trump did.

I can offer you no assurance of anything.

I can’t even tell you what death is.

So how can I tell you what birth is?

We only have impressions.

If you can let your dogmas and beliefs go, you can read any book, sit in any church and appreciate the emotional expressions.

Epictetus said: “What is good enough for the universe, is good enough for me!”

I concur.

My church is all of this.

We do not have reasons or logic to explain things, we only have impressions, visions.

To have a clear mind is a great benefit in this wayward lost world humanity has created.

To be free of theories and suspicions and conspiracies allows one to live the best life they can.

To make calls to a savior or god or priest or portal or princess or president is dishonest and dastardly and stupid and wrong.

One should ignore fools spitting this or that truism or morality or theory or belief or god.

We all just have sense impressions.

Yours are no more or less valid than mine.

Your conclusions are, for I have none.

To claim some absolute truth is nonsense.

I only report my impressions of life.

That is all anyone can do.

There is no system, there simply is what is.

What we see is superior to what we reason about.

What establishes itself in the age and in the heart is the only real logic and the only real verification anyone has.

Do you accept the universe and all that is in it?

This is the most important question I feel.

We take it all in.

Some can see farther and deeper than others.

Listen maybe to these more than the logicians and reasoners.

They do not know.

They live apart from this.

But I am of this and I know myself and thus know this.

No one can claim or explain absolute beginnings or endings.

These are children and fools doing so.

They should know better than to draw such conclusions.

I do not disdain life, I love this and am optimistic about this, based on my experience of life.

Realizing only my mind made this world and life and death a hell was freedom.

Evolution no more clears up our beginnings and endings than any philosophy or religion does.

There is no demiurge or apocalypse in my mind.

There are no angels or demons tearing me apart.

Far from it.

These are the rantings of those lost in imagination.

There are no serpents or lizards or conspiracies against you.

Those are concepts that create a hell and tyranny in our minds.

Do not resist these concepts, simply let them pass through you.

People hurting others know no better.

They only hurt themselves.

And their punishment is felt in themselves, you know this from experience, just as kindness and virtue and character are their own reward.

You will not be rewarded in the sky by a god.

Or punished in a hell later for what you do now.

You punish or reward yourself through your actions.

Let all of this pass through you and notice what is happening.

It is foolish to deny the substance and feeling of life.

That is the ground of our being.

We have imagined so much that we have lost our way.

Come back

Come back

Come back

Mystery is not the denial of reason, but its honest confirmation.

Reason leads to mystery.

If you have not this sense of things, you are lost in your mind.

Come back

Come back

Come back

Mystery is not superstition.

Mystery and reality are two halves of the same sphere.

If you have lost the mystery of life, I am sorry for you.

You nor anyone alive knows Jesus or any from the past.

We are here now.

I can’t tell you who they were.

We only have manipulated stories.

Let fixed positions and stories and myths and facts pass through you.

Let prophecies pass through you.

Let dogmatism pass through you.

Let the lies pass through you.

Grab nothing.

Those who hate others, hate themselves most.

Let easy answers and conditioning pass through you.

Mystery is on the other side of this.

Wondrous mystery.

There you will find your joy.

There you will find your greatness and beauty.

Your fate is yours, as your will is yours.

I claim all as my religion, nothing need be excluded.

The universe is more than enough for me.

I need nothing more.

To shun others, is to shun yourself.

To silence others, is to silence yourself.

I am not irreligious or an infidel.

I am deeply connected to my being, or I couldn’t write like this.

It is all meaningful and all beautiful.

Hell exists in the imagined distance one maintains from this.

Most live in their own imagined hell.

You will never talk anyone out of their own hell.

You can only find your own way out of it.

I am not traditionally religious, no.

My religion is being a human being in the cosmos, a mystery.

I need add nothing nor take away anything from this.

There is no conflict here.

We end, where we began.

So enjoy the ride.

I have nothing to argue with anyone.

Their view is their own.

It is easy to beat a believer and prophet with the mystery of the present.

It is easy to beat a materialist and eschatologist.

I can beat them with a look.

I bend into shapes they could not imagine.

Let artificial positions and conclusions pass through you.

Nothing imagined can beat what is.

To know thyself is to know the mystery.

It is a koan, we can’t penetrate the mystery, but only acknowledge it exists.

The best words and actions cancel themselves out and simply leave what is right before you.

The best words show you, your identity is make believe.

There is no mine or yours.

There are no borders to defend.

I have no one name, all names are mine.

The cosmos = zero.

Sometimes you’re up, sometimes down.

But it all ends in zero.

Energy can’t be destroyed or created.

So what happens when you die?

Here is what I think, speaking for myself, which is no self really.

The self is the imagined problem.

That’s the whole problem with all of this, right there.

That word, self.

That is not a word, that is not right, that isn’t.

How did we forget this?

The body stops a cell at a time.

But the brain keeps firing those neurons.

We don’t really feel any of this.

We are too busy in the moment to remember.

Every atom in my body was forged in a star.

This matter and body is mostly just empty space.

This energy that appears as me is just energy vibrating very slowly.

There never was a me.

Electrons in my body mingle and dance with those in the ground and in the air around me.

We are no longer breathing when we die.

Then we remember there is no point where any of that ends and I begin.

This is dying before dying.

This is the only way to remember.

I remember I am energy, not memory or self.

Everything I feel I am, came after me.

I was before them and will be after.

Everything else are pictures that rose up in imaginary time.

We are knots of space-time.

We have a sword, a sharp one that one can cut through the knot when you are ready.

I am the lightening that ties all the pictures together.

I am returning home.

A drop falling back into the ocean.

All of this is one.

The cosmos and its infinite dreams.

We are the cosmos dreaming of itself, thinking we are selves.

Thinking and dreaming, the same.

We forget our dreams so easily.

But when I remember, there is no time or death, life is a wish made again and again.

I am that I am.

Good luck with your stories, and myths and conspiracies.

None of that will remain.

You and all of this is but a dream, here and gone.

Take solace in this.

Relax into this.

Then you will know real peace.

I AM a Human Being

Not that anyone asked or needs to know, but know who you are reading.

A human being.

“I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?”

—Seneca the Younger

I am no nihilist.

I am no atheist.

I am no agnostic.

I am no believer.

I am no mystic.

I am no Angel.

I am no spy.

I am no Demon.

I am a human being.

I move swiftly, like 💨 and 🔥

Seneca the Younger spoke against the folk religion of the common people. But he had a deep sense of the invisible mover of our Will, God. Choose your name. Let us call it the original human religion.

I do not deny the invisible hand in my life, truly, I credit it with creating my will and body. I do not preach about this god. I reflect on the beauty of it in my life. I cannot teach this god. I cannot reveal this god to you. I cannot name it, nor do I claim it. Nor do I feel myself more special than any other. But I know this as I know my breath. Both mysterious in a way and profoundly beautiful. I am not so arrogant to imagine myself god’s special creation. This is all special and wonderful and beautiful and the ugly is beautiful too in a way. God itself can correct me through my clear burning Will, but no human could.

To know your Will, is to know the face of God.

I practice the first and only true religion.

It has no prophecies.

It has no priests or priestesses.

Zeus himself showed me.

Being a Human Being.

Love the Children Anyway

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No need to attack the faults of others
no need to flaunt your own virtues
act when you’re acknowledged
retire when you’re ignored
rich rewards mean great trials
deep words meet superficial minds
think about what you hear
children must see for themselves

-Hanshan

Love Terrible

I know so little of Love, but I have awoken from my ignorance in the Heart of Love.

It is not a peaceful lake always. She is also a raging tempest, behold her power, it is terribly awesome!

All that dies in the flames is my ignorance.

Love has stalked me through my life, but I have run and hid from Love.

It wanted one thing and would not let me rest until it had it…my sadness.

My heart has broken open and this is good.

A bird stopped by and sang me Gibran’s song to Love…

“When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him.

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams

as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun.

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure.

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor.

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips”

the star falls

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

— Jorge Luis Borges

once upon a time there was an old star who had thought it had seen everything…

one day it spied with its timeless eye a small blue gem…

what is this new thing covered in blue water…

suddenly, without warning, the star began to fall…

faster and faster…smaller and smaller…until he could fit on the head of pin…

blackness…and then there was light…a bright wet light…

no memory of who he used to be and was still yet up there in the sky…

one day a bird was heard singing by the Hu-Man boy…

but that is another poem for another time…

many adventures await the Hu-Man…

fly you fools

The Last Pilgrimage

Raudiel Sanudo

Simplicity and Gratitude

After all my searching and seeking and finding. 

Things are very simple.

I have revived my Spirit by remembering my Self. 

Being thankful in all things is the only proper response I have concluded for life.

I have made my peace with things…I need nor want anything, but I have the Universe before and within me.

All you really need to do in the end is find and live your gratitude and peace.

I have nothing more to say you all, but I will share my gratitude as often as I can.

Peace and much Love.

Food For the Moon

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I just read a story about a man who was killed in an avalanche following his passions on Mt. Everest.  You never know when one of those is coming for you. He seemed driven by a deep need to connect with something. I understand that feeling of emptiness. He climbed the world’s highest peaks to fill it. I seek to climb those internal peaks men have dreamed of. Rest in peace Dan.

I want to share a summary of sorts of my experiences with The Tarot. It kind of just presented itself to me after 44 years without one passing thought about it in all that time. It was something gypsies ripped people off with I thought. Little did I know.

I will not go into it more now, but The Tarot is a mystical tool, like the coins of the I Ching, or bones of the medicine man. The cards make a web you can cast out into the Universe to get your current bearing in time and space.

The Tarot helped me attain self knowledge, it helped me learn why I did what I did and also hinted at what is possible for one to become. More than anything it showed me simply what I was. I found ways to let go of regret and desire and see myself honestly. I used the cards as a mirror and I looked at the pictures and felt the words at that given moment and time and sifted myself through the filter of the cards. It helped me grow rapidly using the cards spontaneously and creatively. It showed me the need for balance between the Sun and Moon, Anima and Animus. We live in between these polarities.

It led me to an experience with myself and embracing myself as a Shaman and Mystic. Who knew? The cards aligned so well with my personal esoteric studies and writing and synchronicity made it all real. I’m an experiencer and a gambler, but I learned there need be no gambling.

Life is a mystery and love is the way to understand it. The rest seems to work itself out naturally if you let it.

I found two causes for my suffering, or I should say the Tarot clarified these. It suggested I embrace my life in the world and pay attention. I came to it in deep mediation and wide open with few questions, factors I learned that can contribute to deep insights. These led me to self initiation into many things. Then long dead teachers began teaching me, they are not dead actually, alive in us.

I do not feel like being quiet or keeping secrets, that time is past. Time for a new way, a synthesis, which is the responsibility of every generation. It led me to the I Ching and then beyond Divination. Tarot is a great tool in individuation and I think it should be used by every Psychologist and I would go further to say, while the Tarot can lead one out of the maze of their mind, I think it can also lead one into madness. As with all things, intention I learned matters. Greed and the baser instincts seem to disqualify you from these insights. So, I think you get from Tarot, just like anything, what you put into it and ultimately into yourself. I learned what was holding me and all of us back from heights undreamed.

Fear and regret.

I am free to do what I like and I find I like higher things and my natural tilt is towards the light. I wish not to hurt others, but I like lowly dirty things too, such is what I am. Why do all of this anyway or ask these questions, because you know and feel in yourself many rungs on the ladder of awareness.

“I cannot grasp all that I am.” – St Augustine

Augustine could not grasp it all, but we can and I am and we should. We can grasp all that we are. A gift or curse, shrug, its fun to search for it. I thank the Gamemaster.

Perhaps we are food for the Moon, as some people have wondered, but that would be absurd, wouldn’t it 😉 Everything eats something in this Universe.

All this from some funny cards. The archetypes of our unconcious are strewn out across the numbers, images and formulas. They tell the inner journey of all people. The cards are meaningless though, the wisdom I found is already inside of us. The cards just help me remember myself and how I like to play and fool myself.

There are many ancient and new tools to use to explore yourself with. I say try them all. Live like you have no tomorrow,  you were born for this moment. Dance like a fool before the Gods.

God helps me.

Peace Profound

“Grandfathers, you behold me! Spirits of the World, you behold! What you have said to me, I am now performing!

Hear me and help me!”

– Black Elk

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