Offering

To all of creation - 

to the love, 
flowing, 
with miraculous sentiency 
through every fiber 
of existence - 

I offer my self. 

Meaning-Makers

We're meaning-makers, 
mythologizers, and archetypians,
every one of us.

Readily writing scripts
which cast ourselves as the central character,
we dip our ladles of certainty
below the surface of form constantly.
Always some part of us seeking to understand,
very skilled at convincing itself it does.

Science is the same as religion - 
a pack of meaning-makers with high IQs,
less imagination,
and perhaps the most boring hubris of all:

"Our story is not a 'story.'
Our story is objective fact."

Devout Christians 
spot Jesus in their ricecakes
just as readily
as geophysicists observe chemical reactions,
each of them eagerly nodding to themselves:

"Yes, of course, I see it now...
this explains everything."

We're world-explainers
you silly fucks,
you miraculous improbabilities.
Confronted with the sheer absurdity 
of our own existence
we are driven to do the impossible:
to make sense.
Over and over again 
we explain the world to ourselves 
in an attempt to do just that.

And what's more, 
we argue with each other about it:

"I use Jesus to explain the world to myself."
"Well I use aliens."
"That's stupid. I'll pray for you."
"Whatever. Get probed."

Silly meaning-makers,
amateur mythologizers.
Often so insecure about our own conclusions
that we run around recruiting,
still operating under the assumption that
more-equals-right.

"Join my club, all those other clubs suck!"
"What do I get for joining?"
"We'll make you feel really guilty about having sex,
and you float in blissful eternal salvation when you die!"
"I'll pass, thanks."

Aaah, the fun of mythologizing - 
the sweet addiction of gathering evidence,
the contented camaraderie of those who agree.

We may never give it up,
this age-old habit of ours...
but how nice would it be for all of us
to be respectfully curious about each other's stories,
and to not take our own so seriously?

4 poems in quick succession

1)

Grief is not grief,
nor hatred hatred.
Love is not love,
joy is not joy,
fear is not fear.

2)

We trembling liquid-filled droplets
held together by surface tension...
we dance,
tumbling downwards
in prayerfull cascading surrender.

3)

The heart of the world is electric light,
pulsing the loving and the fucking
and the sinning and the living and the dying
of all seven billion plus.
Let it touch you.

4)

Beyond sense,
beyond borders of assumptions and sanity
dwell the ogres, the chieftains, the ghouls.

There live the sorcerers, goblins, naiads, faeries, 
nymphs and seraphim, nephilim and dryads, and common shades.

Crowded together in whatever dwindling spaces
of psyche we have which remain free of dollars, lists,
rights, lefts, or wrongs,
our darkest and our lightest sulk
as we slowly petrify into caricatures - 
hardening, day by day,
into a mechanistic people 
in a soulless universe -
all because of the tremendous effort we expend 
posting "NO TRESPASSING" signs at the edges 
of our understanding,
and feverishly dismissing 
our own dreams.

Writing Exercise 1

Taken from Stephen Harrod Buhner's "Ensouling Language."

The instructions were to pick five words which are the five most important things in your life, your five top values - the five things which matter most to you in all the world.

After choosing those five words, write five poems, each of which must contain all five of words.

Here are my five words:

1) Family 
2) Accountability 
3) Self-Inquiry 
4) Collaboration 
5) Faith

Here are my five poems:

1. My five shimmering values - 
Family. Accountability. Self-Inquiry. Collaboration. Faith.

Five hopeful threads my world is strung upon,
the five strongest constellations
in the nightsky I see in my dreams,
the five elders I call upon
as I wrestle through to the potential within me.

These five fingers make up the hand of fate
as I balance precariously on her palm,
and every time I trip towards the edge or try to run away
these five truth-totems curl together,
gripping me gently in the soft silence
of what matters most.

2. Family! Love boldly.
Have faith in your collaborations,
trust in the accountability of the grand design
which brought you together.

Self-inquiry will equip you 
with the tools you need 
to see it through.

3. Self-inquiry is an entire family of tactics - 
there is no single authority 
on how best to safari the inner jungle.

Often many are used simultaneously,
a collaboration of mindset, physical surroundings, 
conversation-with-self and conversation-with-other.
(Although sometimes the listening of this invisible other
is felt as a spacious silence,
and their presence must be taken on faith.)

Ideally, individual members of these tactic-families
demand accountability of each other,
keeping each other honest
in the reporting of the subtle
inner-jungle shadows encountered.

4. Occasionally mystified by my experience of family,
there are times when the value of collaboration 
must be taken on faith.

There are times
when my well-bucket of self-inquiry
keeps coming up empty,
times when even my hunger for accountability deserts me
and it seems there is nothing left to keep me honest.

In fact, there are times
when I stop partaking of the meaning of life entirely,
for it's taste has turned to bitter ash in my mouth
and I am poisoned by the pointlessness of it all.

5. A faithful family - 
collaboratively accountable for the self-inquiry
undertake by every individual.

Don't Believe Me? Good.

Cultivate rigorous uncertainty.

Be especially cautious with anything 
you want to be true -
are you aware of all the reasons 
why you want it to be true?

Can you notice as your mind 
leapfrogs to each new lilypad of evidence, 
accumulating justifications from only those sources 
it is inclined to agree with?

Do you feel the difference between 'truth' as it exists
in the rabbitwarren of your brain,
reflecting itself at skewed angles off mirrorlined tunnels
and skittishly startling in a new direction
at ever unexpected noise...
do you feel the difference between that so-called 'truth' 
and the truth of your own firsthand experience?

Be curious, most especially as you begin to poke and prod
at things like politics, economics, and 'history.'
The more you turn these things upside down and shake them,
the more different versions will come tumbling out.

A few tips - 

* Be wary of dualistic oversimplifications

* Be skeptical of anyone who makes their living 
peddling their version of the truth

* Be very skeptical of second, third, and fourth-hand accounts

* Pay attention to body language and tone of voice

* As much as possible, adopt a disinterested stance 
of contemplative curiosity

Above all, 
remember that peering below the surfacelevel of life
is best done with your own two eyes, 
within the context of your own individual experience.

Truth is there to be found,
though often it's not what we want it to be 
and usually we find it in unexpected places.

These kinds of truths are not math,
and are not as simple as 2 + 2 = 4.
The outcome depends on the relationship
between 2-1 and 2-2, which is, of course,
dynamic and everchanging.

Remember that authentic intuition 
rarely rockets enthusiastically in just one direction:
if you are quick to latch on to any one particular story
it's probably because you've wanted that to be true 
for a long time, 
and you've been waiting to hear it said
by someone other than you
so you could prove it to yourself.

Intuition can sometimes come in the form 
of a solid, gut-felt feeling: a clear "Yes" or "No."
...but it can also be gentle, vague, and dreamy -
soft stream currents 
unhurriedly drifting your boat first one way, then another.

Try to tune in to the most subtle movements
and do not let your overly-distractible mindrabbit
dash in all directions,
dragging your emotions along with him.

Cultivate a steady spaciousness,
be expansive and slow to come to a conclusion.

Question everything. 

Especially this.

Ours is a World...

Appearances are miraculous, 
and the hopeful thread the world is strung upon
slackens and tightens with every tensing and releasing
of our mental bodies.

This is a world of spirit, 
and it is also a world of flesh.
This is a world of intangible currents,
and it is also a world of sewage and muck.

Our task, my task, 
is perhaps to grow large enough to experience all of it
without becoming knotted up in that hopeful thread.

Ours is a world of fungus, of life - 
of screeching tires, shrieking children,
and incensed parents exchanging angry justifications
over the silent, sullen heads of their children's teammates.

Ours is a world of temperance,
of wise elders admonishing patience
and children happily enjoying the experience of generosity.

Ours is a world of inspiration,
soulbeacons held aloft by those bold humans with enough courage
to step into the truth of continuity:
your pain doesn't cease at the borders of you,
it flows out and into all the rest of us.

Ours is a world of nausea, and vertigo:
dizzying polarities demanding so much of us 
that many prefer to retreat 
into commercialbreaks and boozefests.

Ours is a world of idiocy. 
Complacent fools furiously churning 
their smallminded hamsterwheels of progress,
and blissful junkies happy to blind themselves 
in order to avoid growing pains.

Ours is a world of beauty.
Voracious truths channeled through crystalline distillations,
inspirations which pierce through every obfuscation 
to find their way inside.

Ours is a world of fantasy,
of drugged-up clerics 
spouting doctrines of superiority 
to congregations of sheep, 
rutting and "bahhing" in the aisles.

Ours is a world of ferocity.
Mothers of every breed mobilizing 
as their children are threatened,
undettered and unmoved 
no matter the odds against them.

Ours is a world of music - 
achingly sweet passages of noise
somehow meeting us 
in all the spaces of ourselves 
we have yet to find,
leading us inwards.

Ours is a world of silence.
Trembling echoes of age upon age encompass 
damp grass, bare feet, distant rain
and a sky full of stars.

Ours is a world of questions.
For some reason we apes insist on
demanding answers out of life,
and we'll foolishly fork over good money
to anyone who claims to have figured it out.

Ours is a world of pretending.
Our gurus, our politicians and our popstars
make a career out of actingasif
and because it's far less scary 
to trust some other idiot 
than it is to trust yourself,
we let them.

Ours is a world of truth.
Over and over again countless numbers of us
have taken the necessary heartbreaking steps
into the wilderness of authentic selfencounter.
Almost all of them have been unknown to the wider world,
yet those brave ones have ignited such hopeful fires
in the hearts of those around them
that their legacy will never, ever be extinguished.

Ours is a world of promise.
God doesn't make junk, 
contrary to the ongoing bullshit 
perpetuated by both the socalled powersthatbe
and plenty of everyday JoeSchmoes.
We are here for a reason.

Ours is a world of clarity.
No matter how many TV shows and BigMacs ingested,
sit any two friends down together long enough
and their sharing will gradually be illuminated 
with the souls true light.

Ours is a world of confusion.
What seems like contrast is perhaps not,
what seems like conflict
is perhaps something we don't understand.

Ours is a world of oversimplifications - 
big and small, light and dark, true and false.

Ours is a world of choice.
Whatever it is,
it's up to us.

Self-Inquiry & Collaboration, pt. 1

Dear God, Dear Angels, Dear Guides,

I am lonely. There is loneliness, there is me, and there is the relational space between. 

And there is you, and there is a strange peace, a deep and settled stillness emerging from within this loneliness. It is an ultimate platform on which to rest, somehow - the space from which I will gaze out onto the world.

I have found a kind of patience with myself, for I know I am capable. I know I am able which, much to my dismay, means I know that 'I' am.

I as an entity, as a being unto myself, distinct.

And yet... not. Writing here, alone and indoors while outside the sun cooks down, (the knob of the Australian oven has been set to 'broil' today) the birds halfheartedly chirp and the wind seems nonplussed, blowing strongly as if to say "I'm wind, man... doesn't matter to me what temperature it is." ...writing alone and indoors now there is the tangible truth of isolation. My life is mine alone, and cannot be lived by anyone else. The innermost resonances of it cannot even be glimpsed by another, 'I' is a territory I alone am privy to. 

Sometimes I turn away, sometimes I avert my eyes and do my best to look everywhere but into this space because all I can see, for endless swaths of distance, is my own solitary figure stepping slowly out into the desert. 

There is a life for each of us to live, a life no one else can touch, smell, or even contemplate. It exists in a space beyond imaginings where the darkest and the lightest of you come together in sacred curiosity, a space that comes online whenever you begin to explore yourself with full presence. No one but you will meet you there. I feel that strongly now as I write this, and the truth of it grips me with a strange and gentle menacing exhilaration.

But that's not the whole story. In solitude I sit now, and in solitude will I get up from this place to meet others as they arrive into shared bits of space/time and we exchange whatever it is we exchange. But there's more to it than that. 

There's the necessity, the inevitability of the other... the many ways in which I do not become real until I am seen. Or, to be more precise, until I see that I am seen. 

You walk in, you meet me, we say hello, you sit down across from me and ask me how I am and I begin to speak about the pulses within me at that moment. You listen. (For the sake of this exposition, let's assume you listen.   ;-p   )

My life is enlivened and enriched as, as best I am able, I allow it to be reshaped in a shared space. As it is received by your being I relearn it - I see the difference between it's rather dampened, onedimensional expression in my private desert vs. the vibrant clarity it assumes as it is articulated and absorbed. 

Humility, I learn about humility. And gratitude. And a wide variety of other truths which are inaccessible from the truth of isolation. It is these other truths, these relational vibrations, which colorfully saturate my story as it is birthed into any shared space, no matter the language of the birthing. (Dance is nice... silent eyecontact is good too.)

My life is brought to life - sung to life, danced to life, laughed and cried to life. 

So am I alone? Yes. And no.

The saturating colors of the relational space themselves would not be the whole story either, because without the original substance there would be no alchemical reaction - without lead there is nothing to turn into gold. Neither of these truths is the whole story.

I am alone, and my isolation is what affords me the joy of union. I have an 'I,' I have a life of my own with which to bridge the gap between us and meet you.

Without the desert of solitude, I would have nothing to offer the goddess of lovemagic. My isolation is my sacrifice - the more intensely brittle I allow the the truth of my separation to be, the more brilliant the inexorable constellation of communion becomes. It never ceases to astound me, how powerful the action of surrendering to love is.

We lay ourselves down when we surrender to love, we give ourselves over to a total dissolving. The more pure our journey into the desert of self-inquiry has been, the more transformational the dissolution of true collaboration will be. 

I explore myself so that I may relinquish myself. I investigate the truth of my singularity over and over again so that someday I may emerge from my desert with something truly worth laying down on altar of love.

No one else can do it for me, and I cannot do it alone. 

The Balance of Beachdwelling and Wavelistening

Soft crashes of symbols etch meaning into the papyrus paper of our heartscrolls.
Sign language. Choreography.

Is it worth being aware of what's below the surface and meditating on the sound of the surf,
depositing, eroding?

We're beachdwellers, and god's water washes our shores
in an omnipresent backdrop of sound,
sibilantly hissing in the language of the soul.
Uninterpretable. Mysterious.

Similar to a sunrise
or the sudden emptiness of a lifeless body,
it doesn't mean something in any of the ways we might think it does.
Beyond imagining.

Our lives are played out amidst this perpetual aural presence of truth,
a truth well beyond the most limber contortions of the most flexible minds.
Intelligent design.

It's a choosable thing, to what degree
we consciously contemplate incomprehensible compositions.
We can go about our lives without considering these vibrations,
trusting that whatever song the waves are singing
will carry us across the water when it's our time to go
or we can turn our attention towards these undecipherable divine orchestrations now,
amidst our busy beachdwelling lives.
Preference.

Those who choose to tune in need to learn how to listen,
most especially the many children who have come of age in cookiecutter classrooms,
disconnected from the wisdom of our ancestors.
Our foremothers knew how to not make sense of our womblike soundscape
but many of today's curriculums were designed by people with gargantuan, cube-shaped minds,
so most modern schools insist of making straight lines and sense out of everything.
Yesterday's people knew well what it's up to us to remember:
if you try to listen to love that way,
it will drive you mad.
Surrender.

Beyond archetypes, riddles, enigmas, and even poetry,
the voice of the blood spiraling through the veins of our universal body
speaks to us in no language.
Wonder. Curiosity.

A recollection of forgotten wisdom
will allow today's listeners to lean towards the waves once again.
Ancestral instincts will save our sanity
if we would strive to balance the roles of beachdweller and wavelistener,
if we would seek to hear the sirensong of those soft symbol crashes
without being swept away from those we love,
if we desire to simultaneously reside in that space beyond mind
yet still go to work and have a chat around the water-cooler.
Equilibrium. Moderation.

Were our ancestors still around,
an unbroken chain of tutelage would allow us to tap in and walk the delicate tightrope
but the tradition of sitting at the feet our our elders has,
for so many families,
been broken.
Forgetfulness.

Fortunately, the original source of inspiration still exists untarnished.
Pure.

Our task today is perhaps less simple than it was for those in ages past,
for while the whispers instructing us on how to listen to the sound of the surf
(whispers which (thankfully) are themselves intelligible)
have never stopped murmuring out their hushed instructions
the sounds of our communal life on the beach have gotten louder and louder,
practically drowning the whispers out.
Cacophonous. Deafening.


We still find ourselves surrounded by the sound of the surf,
for that is the soundscape in which we exist
and no amount of manmade noise, no matter how loud,
could ever overpower creation itself.
But with the loss of the voice of our ancestors
the whispers guiding us on how to listen
have become barely discernible,
so that many who might be inclined to become the wavelisteners of today
have no idea how to begin
and end up struggling to tune out
those wavesounds which seem to make no sense.
Deadening. Half/life.

So: a less simple task, given the escalating crescendo of our busy beachdwelling lives,
which means the well-earned reward
of rediscovering the whispers
which will teach us how to listen
will taste that much sweeter.
Attainable.

The original stream of inspiration from which our ancestors
drew cupfulls of wisdom and drank,
the calm stream whose source is the great
wavesinging surfsounding unintelligible ocean of god itself,
the peaceful stream whose clean waters were taken in by the bodies
of those who gave birth to those who gave birth to those who gave birth to us,
the stream which has given rise to the wisdom
which has guided generation after generation
as they learned to walk in two worlds,
the stream which has the power to teach humanity
how to be both beachdwellers and wavelisteners...
this stream still flows in the same place it always has.
Within us.