The Most Subtle Direction

For the most part, we do not realize that our mind is made up of concentric rings, each ring consisting of thoughts and emotions from different parts of our lives. On the surface, on the outermost ring, are the thoughts of today and yesterday, current, flashing, ringing bells, as insistent to the attention as a television commercial. This ring vibrates with the energy made up of sense perceptions and instinctual reactions, of deep fears and long-held beliefs. Beneath this outer ring is a more subtle layer. It resonates with emotions, those of the moment and those of the past. The ring just underneath this one, the 3rd we'll call it, is the ring of whispers. These whispers are so quiet, so small to and so distant from our attention when it is in the excited, busy state, we cannot hear them. This causes our emotions to not make sense for it is by these whispers that emotions are created. This is getting to be common knowledge, so my intent today is to go a little deeper.

The beliefs that cause these whispers are in the body. Association with physical form has caused every one of them. I'm usually not so absolute, and I'm sure there's a contradiction to come, but I'm being taken on a ride here by my guides so let's listen and roll with it, shall we?

Association with physical form and laws, the beliefs in death, in endings and beginnings, in rules of social interaction long since having lost the connection to the love that spawned them, these associations kill the freedom of the heart. In that heart begins the truth that sets free. That heart because we have another heart of the mind, the assumed heart, the pseudo, artificial heart that beats like a real one, but has limited adaptability and is subject to weaknesses due to its synthetic approximation of life. That heart of the mind will sell itself to reason. Reason is a fine thing, but there is reason based on the assumptions of mind and that based in the wisdom of the heart. The wisdom and reason of the heart is alive, constantly interacting, pulsing with the life around it and ever-adapting. That of the mind is fragile due to its rigidity. It has served and serves a purpose in the physical world, but is further removed from the truth of what we are. We are souls, energy, living beings of will and power. The identity of a physical body with so very many limitations simply does not suit us any longer. It houses fear, fear for the destruction of the body and the mind built of it. When consumed by fear, that energy housed within the mind (your choice, your attention) is limited by it. You go from a powersource to a clogged drain instantly. We forget how so very much our primary perceptions of ourselves effect our capabilities. They define them.

They define the quality of every moment, of the energy we emit. So subtle... the subtle direction of your life is defined by the temple you have erected within your mind. Is the temple glowing with faith? With affirmations of the worth of yourself, of humanity, of the spirit that animates it? Is it clean or full of dust? There is a temple within us all, and the Love that built it in the first place still resides within it. To listen for it, to enter in and allow its resonance to rewrite the rings of your mind is to be freed by its wisdom. This Power is in you now, waiting to be embraced, waiting to rewrite the subtle avenues of mind that put you on the street rather than in the sky. Yours is to see the structure of mind and the resultant consciousness it gives you. Do not be a slave to beliefs now dead and dying; see the truth for yourself; it is your birthright. If you find yourself in a less than liberated state, sit and quieten, sit and listen for the cause of emotion. See the state sprouting like a flower, look at the petals, all the petals of all the constituent emotions of your state, follow it down the stem and observe the roots. Yank it up, knock the dirt off and look at the roots. Smell them, smell the dirt they attached to, the mind they enforced. Feel each tendril with your fingers and admit the communication that happens. Let the information flow into you like brail to the blind one, a flow of information, drinking in like wisdom, knowledge that makes sense of the entire Universe. Feel the roots until the truth is known. Yank flowers of emotional states out of the ground until you realize you are the observer of their petals... until you are the knower of their roots as well. You are not the emotional state, and this exercise will remind you of that. Be free in knowledge of Love.

Just what I needed to hear, hope it was good for you too ;)

Blindspots

I have to wonder sometimes how the final step is made. Spiritual teachings talk of a dissolving of all desire, a death of the flesh, a time when one Sun rises within and dismisses the darkness that veiled our yesterdays. At times this has step has been obvious, seemingly already made. Certain traditions would hold this as the greater truth, everything already enlightened and ours to somehow realize it. All this catching up to do leaves me weary at times, and I am forced into effort. But how to direct it?

"Just wiggle your ear and flare your nose a bit."

"But how do I do that?"

It seems there are many doors atop Olympus, many paths up the mountain and as many portals into the sanctuary. These paths are of philosophies and religions, of enchanted moments and epiphanies, of thoughts and actions. We have a ring of keys showing the doors we have mastered, yet upon entering the temple proper, we are placed in a crucible. The impurities boil to the surface and some are destroyed by the tincture of knowledge we gained in our voyage here, yet the others coalesce into a heavy blemish on the soul. The gods snap their fingers and we are struck with an amnesia, perhaps forgetting how we got there altogether. After several trips, however, the forgetting clarifies into wisdom. We remember the thoughts we thought to reach the doorway. We think them again but they are no use. We remember the feelings which seem closer than the thoughts, yet we cannot reclaim their purity. How are we this person again that feels lost and out of control, who is damned to know the bliss of heaven but is removed in some untouchable way. I'm convinced there are only so many doorways. Forgiveness, the love of acceptance, leaps of faith, steady perseverance, prayer... which for today? The mind can be such a house of mirrors.

To place our attention on the highest form we've known is useful. Upon some idea that elicits the closest emotion to elation and Virtue we've known. Soon the body picks up the pace and lightens, our lens cleared of dirt, the holy becomes easier to see. We become it. The lens drinks in the image and falls in love. Is this the perfect dream? I think so.

The launch from our old mind is like that from a planetary body. There is gravity. At the point of release, gravity begins to end and we become weightless. This is very unnerving and even nauseating. The ground? There is no ground as there once was, and suddenly the urge to fly becomes less important. We like the ground, stability, flatness. Yet this urge to fly... to break beyond. So we revisit the threshold where gravity loses its hold and go a little farther this time. The vacuum takes hold. We feel the skin being pulled from our muscle, the muscle from the bones... and the bones from the soul. There is the quiet promise that something will remain, but it will be utterly different from how it was before. Everything will change. The pantheon of gods will be as a house of puppets and a new Force is realized. We are a part of this new Force, we always were it, always dwelling beneath wrappings of matter. Our voice birthed up through a stack of clay, a shambling mound of moss and earth, yet stifled somehow.

Is it a rebirth we can choose? Is there some proclamation, inward, outward, a decision to end all doubt and fear? I must believe in this, else effort seems unbearable. How many times have I ran from this decision, however? How many times have I failed to give up the fears over others' opinions for pure devotion? So this possibility becomes a curse, knowing it ever possible yet being scared to do it. Attention then turns to the incapability, to dissect it, to solve whatever problem it is within me making me afraid, to rewrite this identity that is incapable of making the choice my cultivated mind desires... the one my spirit craves.

Ultimately the mind's rooms make themselves known. There is one where all knowing of human action and reaction is studied. It is the birthplace of our subjective science of how to be accepted, loved and admired. The entire American culture is a study in this effort. I suppose this aspect always exists in social culture and is perhaps defined by it. Food, clothing, shelter then social acceptance. Yet the goal of which we speak is somehow beyond it. The cause calls us, our own cause, that of a nation, a people or a planet. The old paradigms that served social acceptance, those old rooms of the mind, become obvious. The result of spending time in them becomes evident. We can make every other person happy, and are perhaps quite good at it, but something beyond value is lost. And the death of it we can tolerate no longer. It is the dilapidation and obsolescence of a once useful tool. The old one served a purpose, yet the world in which it was used has changed. As respect for that which is innately human grows and becomes the norm, there is no need to scrape and strive for it from every individual we deem necessary. The practice is outdated, yielding no results, the same as with animal sacrifice and worrying.

The new mind has no sense for fear in social situation. It is replaced with one for purpose. The slings and arrows of judgement are seen as blemish on the face of a personality, one sick with hate and anger. They are signs of a lesser mind, affects of a weaker human. These tendencies will soon show their total lack of worth and those who cling to them will realize their error. The face of humanity will change via the release of those emotions that once shaped it. The soul will remember its own texture and find the feel of God in it, the inescapable Good in it, and that which we need to survive as a planet, will be born.

I was at the coffee shop the other day and Charles pointed to the rosebush and said "that thing's tryin' to bloom out already." Those few days of warm weather had inspired it to flower and at its first chance, new growth had already sprouted. The cold to come will of course bite into the new shoots of green, baring them back to the thicker, tempered parts of the stem. How often have we thought "finally! this is it! I'm here, I have arrived" only to be snapped back by the cold, back to our thicker, weathered parts? It's almost enough to induce a winter within, our parts withdrawn for protection. Yet as the rose knows, spring will most certainly come and the beauty produced by that striving is a reward worth a thousand winters. Thoughts of previous seasons ends may stifle, the knowing that the cold will come again, yet every time we bloom it is an opportunity to recognize that we are the stem, the flower and the seed. We are the pollen that is picked up by spring breezes, spreading out in order to know life more fully. It's as if the heart were made of it, always willing to give up a part of itself to the wind in hopes of new, expansive knowing. Let us remember this when we next feel the urge to burst into bloom and fly into it with reckless abandon. There is the life all around us, and its song will fill us wholly.

I had a dream last night, the night of my birthday. There were two men, somewhat unsavory characters, obviously willing to thieve and not in it for everyone's best interest. They were trying to fix my family's house but mostly sat around talking about what should be done. My cats happened to wake me just as the dream ended, else I probably wouldn't have remembered it so well. I pondered the meaning this morning and realized the two men to be characters in my mind, one with good intentions, one in it for himself, for the idea he represented, ignorant to the rest of life. As I sat in the brisk, moist and sometimes biting wind, I knew these to be the ideas that sat on top of my heart, trying to handle the forces of existence with hands trained by experience. Yet too fearful he was and thus shut out anything that posed too much of an uncertainty. The extent to which this had muted my life became starkly obvious. It was like eating Indian food for the first time, realizing how many flavors I had been missing out on. The sun seemed brighter, all colors more vivid, all sounds more full. The defense of my heart was ignoring that it has a voice of its own, strong, resonant and supreme. It needs no keeper of mind and thought; the pair were like doormen of the house of a god, learned in the words She speaks yet oblivious to the reality of Her presence.

So I was left with a cleaner lense. So strong is the habit of the body, of yesterdays and fears saved. So quick our spirit is to wrap itself in the garments of mind, of cloaks once so useful yet so cumbersome and restrictive. The seed has its protective hull, but that hull must ultimately be shed so that the magnitude of the tree can grow forth, complete with protective skin and sturdy frame unto itself. We are the same. Let the spirit drop beneath the veils. No matter how thick the protective layers, in calm states they align and are seen to be transparent, workable by this power that sees, this choice that we are.

New Year's Winter in Shenandoah

"We've been here for 7 years now, and this is the worst weather we've ever had."

I didn't underestimate Josh's resolve to get back on the Appalachain Trail and to carry through as-planned, for his penchant for both are indominable. What wasn't expected was the myraid of lessons learned, which puts a pale pall on how they felt as they came. It comes readily apparent now how what we perceive becomes the world we live in. I'm reminded of an episode of Kung Fu where one of Cane (David Carradine)'s teachers talks of the old master who ultimately lept from a precipice and ended his life. "Why?" asked the young Cane. "Because when he looked over the valley, all he saw was the evil of man. Consumed by this vision he was overcome by grief, and so he ended his life." We overlook this subtle truth, taking our own perspective as the way things are. Of course there must be some measure of confidence in our perceptions, else our life is as fragile as a snowflake. However, we must also recognize that the edifices we've built our minds around are made from who we were yesterday, and in order for deep change and transformation to occur, these monoliths have to be seen for what they are. So the world is dreary? So you wish to feel more, be more? So the habitual, primary viewpoint must be challenged and rearranged.

We walked about 45 miles over new year's weekend, 10 of it through snow anywhere from 6 inches to 2 feet deep. My legs were bruised just above my ankles from the mid-top boots I wore. The constantly uneven terrain, be it half-frozen, half-trodden snow pressed into ridges or the banked thoroughfare we were forced to take, was pressing the rim of the boots into my muscle and bone. Pain. The soreness was horrendous. Being a hiker of medium experience, I still hadn't the feel for just how important it is to keep the weight of your pack down. I was carrying about 50 lbs. above my body weight up, over and down mountain ridges into valleys and back up again. We easily rose and fell a mile just in elevation changes. My body began to force me to use different muscle groups, and I could feel my stomach begin to lift my thighs with the help of my hips so to ease my calfs. I realized that how we walk is completely linked to how we think. We have muscle memory, and that memory is tied to our mind, totally. The discomfort of the endeavour demanded I use more of myself in ways I had yet considered. Burned in the crucible of effort were the wooden fences once marking the edge of typical operation. I felt the questions of "do I look funny walking this way" surface and fall away with the pain and relief from my new gait. My hips were rotating almost in perfect circles, their momentum lifting my feet in a responding arc, and I was half bent over so the weight from my pack was no longer on my shoulders. I'm sure I did look rather funny, but I absolutely, positively did not care.

Into sharp review came the short trips of my mind. It would drift into the minds of my companions, considering how I looked to them, what they were thinking as I bounded in my steps when an exhillarating song would come over my MP3. I felt my energy deplete instantly as I considered these things, half of my reserves on the ready to act the part of cool, to play the fool for the smile or pat on the back, for the awe or admiration. At this, my body celebrated. I found new energy as I centered my attention back to the task at hand, back to the edifice of my will and highest beliefs, to the altar of thoughts built with meditation, contemplation, prayer and purified observation. Suddenly what I perceived myself to be became palpable, and I caught a hint of the power the near-naked, snow-melting monks possess. There is a point where we decide what we are, and if that is not compromised by listening for what we are in the minds of others, our life becomes stable. I can preach this to you consistantly, and it can make total sense and I hope that is enough to sway you. In my own experience, we must become somehow fed up with the strife and anger and pain this process causes us in order to break away from it.

Food never tasted so good. It's as though our minds operate on a frequency, and by this I mean it samples reality a certain number of times per second. Our eyes can only see so many frames per second, can only see a small spectrum of light. Our ears are the same and so is our mind. The trick is, our world of technology and comfort has altered our perception. Only the strongest tastes are registered, because we have the luxury of many flavors of food. Only the newest, most entertaining media is appealing because we are exposed to so much of it. I do not judge this as good or bad, yet it must be seen that our taste in things, which fill the catalogue of our wants, direct our lives to a huge degree. Having our perceptions stretched so far in these intense directions creates a sense of boredom for time spent at the baseline. If things are plodding along normally, such things only get so much of our attention. It takes an even bigger explosion to seize our attention because the one we saw last week was the largest ever, hence, we walk along kicking rocks until the next eye-widening event. What rocks are we kicking?

I don't think it is realized the depth of the effect of movies and television on our mind. It is a mirror. As our mind waits for the next big event, the stuff of commercials and storylines become the stuff of idle thought. The frequency of mind is tuned to this, and so there is this pervading sense of boredom, thrill-seeking and restlessness for action. Simple pleasures are non-existent because they happen much too slowly to be attractive. While walking on the trail, the minds of others quite far away, my mind took on a fundamental interest in everything. The natural world began to soak into my eyes and body. The music I began to listen to at the end of the 2nd day of walking sounded like music once did, when I was a teen-ager and music was my life. I was swept up in the energy of it, and every note was carried by the emoting of the singer, the inaudible ring in the instruments put there by the musicians themselves. Life became a symphony again. The alfredo noodles made with just water and a foil pack of chicken was absolute delicacy. It wasn't creamy, there was no milk or butter involved; it was watery and I'm sure on another day I would've scoffed at the idea of eating such drivel. But it remains even now and will remain one of the best meals I've ever had.

I have in the past bitched silently about how long it takes to reverse old habits and become the person I want to be, blah blah blah, but I don't think I can do that anymore. Life is out there waiting to be drank in like the gods' ambrosia, for that is what it is... the ever-changing, ever-new, ever-lasting nectar of reality.

White Christmas

My father and I had opened our presents and were standing in the kitchen as I was preparing to go play with my toys and then travel to my grandpa's house for dinner. I looked out the window and said "is that drizzle or snow?" "I don't think it's quite cold enough for that," my dad said with a chuckle. I think I actually heard his jaw drop as he walked to the window.

It's Christmas and it's snowing...

There's something about this sort of blessing, an untouchable magic that seems able only to be felt by all the senses in unison.

There's a quiet in snowfall, plapable. It's as though our soul reaches out and feels the landscape as itself, breathing as the wind, thoughts flying through the sky from beyond reckoning and melting on the ground into nothing. True sight.

I stood watching my cat, elated that I left the door open so he could run in and out freely. The same perfect oddity of it all consumed me as well, and so I stayed with him as the snowflakes collected on our fur. A memory of last night came to me then, one where I was petting my little friend...

This memory reached yet further into my past, to the time I first got him. Recently divorced, my heart was a tattered mess. I had been without a cat for two years, the first time since I was born. Ehm was certainly a godsend. He would ride on my shoulders, draped over my neck like a fur on the long commute from school to home. White with a raccoon's tail, he was the most loving cat I had (and have) ever known. I poured the love I had stirred for my wife into him. To love is an action in part, an activity complete with a muscle group. I had learned what it was to trust absolutely; only with complete faith can we love totally. By this I mean a release of all thoughts of how something can go wrong. This is pure dedication, to resolve to entertain no notion of life going askew. Dangerous? Quite. Rationality is abandoned for hope and relentless faith. There is no stopping to assess; there is only the stalwart walk to the driving, beating drums within. Our voice becomes the Valkyrie's song and our strength becomes that of the army of heaven. I have gone from personal love to spiritual, but I assure you they are one and the same. To learn to fully love a person is to do the same for Love itself, for God, for devotion. The most blissful space for lovers is the air between them, and to reach it, each lover must let go of her self, of her body, of her mind, and in this know heaven on earth. It is the same with God.

So petting my cat last night I remembered the love I once poured into him, my heart wide open though bleeding. I didn't have a care if he understood my love for him, I just poured because it was all I could do. I realized last night that I have become more reserved, cautious, and silently hoping with a small voice in my heart that he understood my love for him. How did this fear enter? Is this fear not spoken with my love as it comes, does it not become the very hesitancy and misunderstanding that it feared to be in the first place! I see that it does, and in this my love is reinforced by my logic. Today the only thing that makes sense is love, unbridled, supremely vibrant and unstoppably intelligent. I heard a voice as the snow fell on my face... "today you are born unto me."

It just started snowing again. I have one last thought. As I stood in the soft falling crystals, I sensed my father in the house next door. I felt him crying, crying wholesome tears over the letter I wrote him for Christmas. I told him how much he means to me, how much I appreciated everything, how I acknowledge his dreams for me and have found a truth between his own values and mine. There is a land that each of us share in the space between our bodies, and somewhere there is a center, the sum of all hearts and minds, and there we find purpose; there we find meaning, and there we find Love.

Merry Christmas

Self Forgiveness

I was sitting on my porch, smoking, talking with God. Many times, it's a speech of surreal emotion, like the feeling you get when the faint blue hue of the stars soaks into your chest and elevates your mind. I then had the thought "and I do this with a cigarette in my hand." It was a self-beratement and my head hung in defeat as the ethereal feeling faded. And in this came the message...

Such thoughts of condemnation are like sitting in a glass temple, looking out the pinnacled roof, admiring the sky and myriad prisms and suddenly deciding to kick the cat. Suddenly the mind is consumed and the heavenly vision lost. We forget we're even in a temple, and kicking the cat never has a good outcome. Then we feel guilty for kicking the cat and a complex ensues. Quickly does that first glimpse away from heaven come, and even quicker the second, and deeper into darkness we go. Subtle are the thoughts that draw us away, and those of self-beratement tear us away from the knowledge that will keep us in harmony within. The Song of Angels, the Rhythm of the Tao, the Breath of Brahman is always there, and we can hear it, sense it when we aren't looking at the floor in remorse for our cat kicking.

Forgiveness can in an instant dismiss all shadow from the mind. Social constructs enforce a certain style of judgment, yet our culture is not known for its widespread love and well-being. As a country, we rank quite low on our self-reported happiness, so it is absolutely rediculous to base our own worth on a sad man's concepts. Take on such a man's philosophy, and rest assured you will take on his outlook. We create eating disorders and social anxiety, so it's time to take a drink from another fountain.

The world outside is wondrous. If nothing else, a silent time of enclave is as an oasis in a hellish desert. Love is born in such ways, and this can be a source of life-giving water for all. Worthy is the time spent in contemplation and realization, in prayer and solitude. Give time for setting name-calling aside. Let the ruckus within fade into the forest, and drink in the blue light of night. Our hearts are calling.

It occurs to me that the house in which we live our lives is made up of the thoughts we think each day. They frame the windows we stare from and the yard in which we play. They form the substance of what we remember and color every breath and deed. We rarely remodel. We may move furniture or occasionally paint, but very slowly does the herd of thoughts transform. They are mostly the same as yesterday, again, again, again. What is the resultant life? Happy? Inspired? Sad? Addicted?

Contemplate the source of the tree rather than the same leaves and branches. Follow its lifeblood from the sun to the water to the earth. Feel photosynthesis going on within you. Synthesis. Breathe the free air and smell the subtle smells. See the green color, letting your eyes relax a second time to draw in its depths...

This sort of looking inspires a different kind of thought, does it not? While there may be a house in your mind at current, there can be a temple. Glass walls cut into prisms at every join, bending light into brilliant luminance and awakening our perception when we enter. Spinning chimes take breezes and sunbeams, synesthesia of touch, light and sound. Flowers bloom, vines roll, birds sing. It is obvious the source of things here. Light, earth, wind, water, everything pointing your senses back to something pure.

The house of the mind gets cluttered with trinkets and dirty clothes, dust and grime. Within are idols to cultural ideals, trends, what it takes to get a mate or whatever is desired from other people. This is a worthwhile endeavor, but know that there are people whose mind and life are focused on these sources of things, and their life grows from them. Clear become the motives of people to one who sees these sources, and quickly does the tolerance for impure intention fade. Into sharp focus become our own intentions as well, and quickly also do we see the result of a mind built with beams of wood and social etiquette rather than beams of light and self-awareness.

To know thyself is to know all others.

To then forgive is to dry the kindling for love.

Love is clear excitement and joy for the life you live.

Love is to be accepting of all on their path, wherever it may be.