A Labor In the Dark

Here is how Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian, describes the compulsion of the mystic to capture the fleeting unity of consciousness:

YES IT IS TRUE; THE ECSTATIC [MYSTIC] CANNOT SAY THE UNSAYABLE. HE SAYS THE OTHER THING—IMAGES, DREAMS, VISIONS—NOT UNITY. HE SPEAKS, HE MUST SPEAK, BECAUSE THE WORD BURNS IN HIM. . . . HE DOES NOT LIE WHO SPEAKS OF UNITY IN IMAGES, DREAMS, VISIONS, WHO STAMMER OF UNITY.. . . HE SAYS THE FORMS AND SOUNDS AND NOTICES THAT HE IS NOT SAYING THE EXPERIENCE, NOT THE GROUND, NOT THE UNITY, AND WOULD LIKE TO STOP HIMSELF AND CANNOT, AND FEELS THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SAYING IT, LIKE A SEVEN-LOCKED GATE WHICH HE RATTLES, KNOWING THAT IT WILL NEVER OPEN, YET HE MUST GO ON RATTLING IT. FOR THE WORD BURNS IN HIM. ECSTASY IS DEAD, STABBED IN THE BACK BY TIME, WHICH CANNOT BE MOCKED; BUT, DYING, IT HAS FLUNG THE WORD INTO HIM, AND THE WORD BURNS IN HIM. AND HE SPEAKS, SPEAKS, HE CANNOT BE SILENT, THE FLAME IN THE WORD DRIVES HIM, HE KNOWS THAT HE CANNOT SAY IT, YET HE TRIES OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL HIS SOUL IS EXHAUSTED TO DEATH AND THE WORD LEAVES HIM. THIS IS THE EXALTATIO OF THE ONE WHO HAS RETURNED INTO THE COMMOTION AND CANNOT RESIGN HIMSELF TO IT; THIS IS HIS INSURRECTION, THE INSURRECTION OF A SPEAKER: RELATED TO THE INSURRECTION OF THE POET, SLIGHTER IN POSSESSION, MIGHTIER IN EXISTENCE, THAN HIS. THIS IS THE BENDING OF THE BOW FOR THE SAYING OF THE UNSAYABLE, AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK, A LABOR IN THE DARK. IT’S WORK, THE CONFESSION, BEARS ITS MARK. (9-10)

I would venture to say that we all know the burning of the Word. We know the work in the dark. And indeed, such confessional work bears its mark.

Like prophets, we go into our caves. We know the peace beyond the commotion of the every day, and we cannot entirely resign ourselves to this ordinary commotion. There is something deeper. Something below the surface, beyond the clatter. There are ways to transcend the commotion and seek an inspired insight that transforms human life.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

“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

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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.

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin

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Kristin Verby – Unity – Mitakuye Oyasin

I was led to this prayer. It is important to say aloud and acknowledge if you have the understanding. I acknowledge now out loud and for All Time my relation to All things and to the Great Spirit/Wakan Tanka that is and allows all things to be. I am thankful you have brought me these words and this spirit to bring into the world. In speaking these words as I write them, I add my spirit to the All spirit and sing my note to myself with All things. I call for you help in this wayward place to remember I am the Light and the Light is Us. I desire to live in love in this awareness when I move on.

This is a Lakota Sioux prayer of Oneness and thanks and acknowledges harmony with all forms of life. It acknowledges that we are related to All things. I acknowledge that now and forever. I desire to be a Real Human Being. The old things are new again. We need the guidance of the old ways now at the end before a new thing can be birthed. As a midwife. A birth practiced so many countless times awaited by countless generations.

Within our grasp now.

We were not ready to hear this from our relatives when it was spoken, we are now. Thank you to the Sioux nation. I have heard your words. They are fine good words. They are burned into my soul now…

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin/All My Relations

I will do what I can to be compassion in this backward place. Help me. To all others, I ask you to find the reverence for your ancestors and relatives in the world around you. Serve and love life. The increasing quality of our hearts and capacity to love is all creation seeks and desires.

To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.

To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience, I thank you.

To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you.

To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you.

To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages. I thank you.

To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.

You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.

Thank you for this Life.

Say and live this with me and we shall stand up together as One in our own Light.

Aho!

Aho!

Aho!

No Separation

There are many ways to the Truth.

As infinite as the number of human hearts

that have and will be. We are all conduits to it.

There is no separation between us.

None. Merge. Become. Be.

Infinite Love.

All special.

Every

One