Moon Poem

From Sesame Street

Diversity and the Machine

I've been thinking recently regarding how diversity and abundance arise spontaneously in the universe and the existence of an opposing force which exists for the sake of control and manageability. I'm thinking of the apparent duality that is seen in the world between these two forces.

On one side there is quality (Think Amish quilts) and the other quantity (Think McDonalds).

On one side there is concrete reality here and present. You can touch it, feel it, be in it and be it. There is nothing outside it. It's as real as it gets.

On the other side are to-do-lists, the countless "hurry ups", "Can't stop now, I got this deadline you see.", "What were you thinking?.", etc etc.

When we get so caught up in the franticness of maximizing whatever it is we're maximizing, where are the moments that we actually bask in the abundance that is already there. How often can we look at another person and instead of seeing a human resource, project, wife, or student, we see an angel?

Well, I'm going to go back to trying my darndest to be internally silent and present. Here is a youtube post by bbbleaver I just ran across which seemed to resonate with these thoughts.

Make Art not War

Artwork by Shepard Fairey

I recently found this manifesto by Mary Anne Davis here.

The current differentiation between art, architecture, craft, and design is false, it is a false schism promoted by the art world. This unnatural taxonomy has crippled the artists and turned those who participate or attempt to participate into victims of fashion. Walter Gropius said in his manifesto of the Bauhaus, “There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsperson. The artist is an exalted craftsperson.” (sic)

The conscious cooperation and collaboration of artists and craftspeople must be reintroduced to rise above the current constriction and strangulation extant in the art world.

This artistic differentiation and intolerance, based on prejudice and fear of commerce, must stop. We must take matters back into our own hands and return to the idealism of our youth. Art schools filled us with impossible dreams and gave us no concrete way of supporting ourselves except through teaching, working at odd or related jobs
or that most coveted and jealously desired possibility, hitting it big.

It is time to take back the power inherent in our decision to become artists and to work at a grass roots level to create objects for use and contemplation that uplift the spirit. Participate in craft fairs. Make Xerox art. Sell art cheaply. Explore unexpected venues. Embrace commerce. The most important artists throughout history were
adroit business people.

When Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, he wanted to explain it so that a school child could understand it. Let our work become that clear. Our ideas can be challenged and clarified by a direct experience with the public.

Make useful, beautiful, interesting, and or challenging objects. Use your talent and intelligence to educate an inquisitive public. Make a living doing what you love to do. Be irreverent. Get up. Get going.

There is a revolution going on in science, math, economics, sociology and psychology that is recognizing the parallel experiences of all the disciplines. Conciliance. Synthesis. Invite the public. Make art. Not war.

Love

---

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; 6 rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; 7 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part: 10 but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I have been known. 13 But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Going quiet shhhh..

I read this in "The Wisdom of Solomon" this morning. I hope it wasn't meant to be taken literally. It's pretty lame if it was. Taken metaphorically it had an impact on me.

11: For whoso despiseth wisdom and nurture, he is miserable, and their hope is vain, their labours unfruitful, and their works unprofitable:
12: Their wives are foolish, and their children wicked:
13: Their offspring is cursed. Wherefore blessed is the barren that is undefiled, which hath not known the sinful bed: she shall have fruit in the visitation of souls.
14: And blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity, nor imagined wicked things against God: for unto him shall be given the special gift of faith, and an inheritance in the temple of the Lord more acceptable to his mind.
15: For glorious is the fruit of good labours: and the root of wisdom shall never fall away.
16: As for the children of adulterers, they shall not come to their perfection, and the seed of an unrighteous bed shall be rooted out.
17: For though they live long, yet shall they be nothing regarded: and their last age shall be without honour.

All of our works and the fruits of our efforts are like our children. This blog requires effort and energy on my part.

My last post and response to my friend Joel, has really bothered me for awhile. I'm often in a rush to push my opinion out there because I think that I have so many important things to say. And sometimes I think I'm really really clever in the way I say things. I think, at least hope that everyone else knows better.

But even when I'm quiet (because I'm not a good conversationalist - usually a conversation killer), I sometimes think the poor other is so lost, so I'll just sit here and feel badly for them. Sometimes also my envious feelings keep me outwardly quiet too. But inside my little calculating engine is always and tirelessly cranking away from dawn to dusk throwing out it's agenda net onto the world. And it's so noisy too. Lately the wind has been blowing the net back and I'm getting tangled in it.

I wonder how often instead I just sit and listen to a friend, wife or one of my kids and just be with them. Everyone I love that I share my life with so deserves the best things from me. To do this I have to let go of all sorts of things I can't see clearly that seem to be me. In short, I have to let go of who-I-think-I-am.

Life has a way of filling up with all the trite things that seem so urgent at the time and pushing out the really important yet unassuming parts - you know - the raindrops on roses and puppy dog tails kind of stuff; the only things that are really real.

Who-I-think-I-am requires a lot of energy to maintain, energy that I suspect would flow beautifully and in the most divine ways if it weren't diverted thusly. That's why I started this spiritual quest in the first place. Because in a few precious and beautiful moments in life, a scent like an incense wafted or sometimes pushed through and past who-I-think-I-am and I turned my head for just a second. Gradually I became hooked.

Like the time I was caught off guard when my three year old son said "Look at my shit, my shit is new. Do you like it?". He couldn't pronounce his 'r' sound and was referring to his shirt. I thought it was precious to tears.

There was the time my first daughter was born and the doctor put this wet slick babyish thing in my arms saying "Here's your daughter", and I was overwhelmed beyond words to the complete helplessness of that moment.

This was just raw life, the most ordinary thing really. Everyone experiences this kind of stuff.

Spiritual practices have the effect of accelerating these kind of moments. That is, the moments aren't really being accelerated so much as I'm waking up to more and more of them more often. The truth is there is no deficiency of these moments at any time - they're always there, at least that what the great teachers say. My experience seems to be confirming this so far.

And each of these moments have a wounding effect on who-I-think-I-am. And it's sometimes painful and sometimes unbearable. And yet there is a also sweetness in this wounding. Gradually I have the sense of falling in love. Each time who-I-think-I-am is wounded I become more helpless in love.

Who or what is the object of this love? I've learned to call her Sophia. I even named my last child in her honor because to me she is life itself, although hidden most the time.

I don't think who-I-think-I-am knows anything about her yet. He's pretty busy falling apart these days and trying to pick up the pieces. Pretty morbid actually. It's an internally messy affair that gets into everything I do including writing these words and posting.

My understanding is this process is called Agon or sometimes referred to as the dark nights.

There is a small handful of people who actually read this blog. Yeah I figured out how to track that - pretty cool actually. It is for you and me that I'm going to shut up for awhile till I get through this. It could be several years. Who knows.

I don't want to mislead anyone who is looking for spiritual direction and there is a lot of us really. I have a tough enough time sorting through other peoples spiritual trash and taking all the wrong things to heart. I know I shouldn't be contributing to anyone else's confusion.

I don't think I can write this blog till I have more clarity myself. I need to refocus on my own spiritual practices for awhile until a time comes (and hopefully it does) that I can say "Yeah, I think I have something useful to say or do that might be of help" - the day when all (or most) of what I have to offer is free of who-I-think-I-am.

Until then I may post an occasional poem, quote or something artistic. Nothing much really.

Shared thoughts with an old friend

Today I shared some thoughts with an old friend. We were discussing conspiracy theories and after stating that these theories for the most part didn't have merit he wrote:

My premise that people try to make sense of their experience of life, and that they will believe what they need to believe, when they need to believe it still stands.

My response:

I think conspiracies happen but most you hear about aren't true. Those that have a basis in truth are never all powerful. Your final analysis that we're all creating our own personal manufactured conspiracies sounds right to me although sad. Very sad.

You, I and every other human male comes from a long line of risk-taking warriors. I mean, every one of our fathers all the way back grew up and successfully found a mate for at least one shag. Considering the survival rate per generation in primitive man with all the shit they had going against them, our lineages are full of success stories. I think we are designed to have something to fight against, to push up against. We're risk takers at heart.

Today we have all this extra wealth. I mean even though I'm broke, I still live like a king. Not bad of itself, but we haven't evolved to figure out what to do with ourselves and our excesses.

So there's this perceived lack, like a key inside that should have been opened, you know like what happens when you fall in love for the first time. It's said somewhere that the girl we loved in some way was already inside us before we met. She just woke THAT up inside ourselves when we laid eyes on her. And there's a lot more of THAT that isn't waking up because our environment has changed. But evolution's not that fast. Our mind has out-evolved the rest of us.

So what does a mind do when the soul is lost?

Back in the day, living was hard work enough without sitting around inventing self-delusional bullshit. Because there's all this relative wealth and time, there's all this new space that has opened up. Nature abhors a vacuum and the powers are at work making inroads. There are whole systems of bullshit being spawned in the minds of man and man is taking his place inside his own bullshit worlds like a termite building himself into its own mound. The termites children will never know what daddy knew.

But what's natural for termites is not for man.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

-Thomas Merton

The Assumption of the Holy Sophia

Today is the feast of the assumption of the Holy and Blessed Sophia. This day is a celebration of the turning about of Sophia from her captors and unfaithful lovers after crying out in despair.

There are various versions of this story. A version that is striking in its imagery and sense of cosmic drama and heroism is from the book Pistis Sophia.

It starts here (G.R.S. Mead translation) with the Christ being Sophia's counterpart and bridegroom being sent by the First Father to rescue Sophia.

"It came to pass, therefore, that the power which had come out of the Height, that is I, in that my Father sent me to save Pistis Sophia out of the chaos, [that] I, therefore, and also the power which did go from me, and the soul which I had received from Sabaōth, the Good,--they drew towards one another and become a single light-stream, which shone very exceedingly. I called down Gabriēl and Michaēl out of the æons, at the command of my Father, the First Mystery which looketh within, and I gave unto them the light-stream and let them go down into the chaos to help Pistis Sophia and to take the light-powers, which the emanations of Self-willed had taken from her, from them and give them to Pistis Sophia.

Later

"It came to pass then, when the light-stream had ingathered into Pistis Sophia all her light-powers, which it had taken from the emanations of Self-willed, that she became shining throughout; and the light-powers also in Pistis Sophia, which the emanations of Self-willed had not taken, became joyful again and filled themselves with light. And the lights which were poured into Pistis Sophia, quickened the body of her matter, in which no light was present, and which was on the point of perishing or perished. And they raised up all her powers which were on the point of being dissolved. And they took unto themselves a light-power and became again as they were before, and they increased again in their sense of the Light. And all the light-powers of Sophia knew themselves mutually through my light-stream and were saved through the light of that stream. And my light-stream, when. it had taken away the lights from the emanations of Self-willed, which they had taken away from Pistis Sophia, poured them into Pistis Sophia, and turned itself about and went up out of the chaos."

The imagery with its "light powers" and cosmic archangels calls to remembrance a universal drama that is in some way a map or mirror of our own journey here and back out of each of our own personal edge-points on the rim of chaos.

This day then is a celebration also of our own turning about when we've come as low as we can and we begin the slow and halting ascent back to our true home in the Pleroma. It marks the point where our individuation begins.

The Tarot

I'm relatively new to the Tarot and have recently began studying. It is promoted as great tool for contemplation and meditation that many use to get in touch with their sub-conscious. Some gnostics use it in this manner as a tool for praxis. A lot of the symbols come from the Golden Dawn and the Kabbalah. The Golden Dawn derived much of their symbols from earlier alchemical knowledge.

Each of the 22 major arcana have been mapped to the 22 paths between the sephiroth on the Tree of Life and as such they can be seent to represent the "movement" between the various realms between heaven and earth. The language of the conscious mind is through language where words mean very specific things. Conversely the sub-conscious mind seems to work well with symbols. In the west most of us have developed our left analytical mind at the expense of our sub-conscious mind.

It is the working with symbols that are designed to stimulate and interact with a part of ourselves that we aren't usually directly aware of that the Tarot is used for.

I have found these books pretty informative in the use of Tarot in a contemplative fashion:
The Kabbalah Experience and The Watkins Tarot Handbook both by Naomi Ozaniec

It should be clear that the sacred images of the Tarot serve a spiritual purpose. In common with the vast variety of worldwide spiritual icons, the sacred images of the Tarot serve to feed the contemplative and reflective instincts and as such have rightfully earned a place within the spiritual traditions of the west. The sacred icons of the Tarot form a key aspect of a Mystery School curriculum as doorways leading into the realm of ageless Wisdom. This is the deeper gift of the Tarot.

-from the foreward of The Watkins Tarot Handbook

Peace

The Eternal Feminine

I am the crown of manifold births and deaths:
I am the interpreter of mysteries and the enlightener of souls.
In the elements of the body is love imprisoned: lying asleep in the caves of Iacchos;
in the crib of the oxen of Demeter.
But when the day-star of the soul ariseth over the earth, then is the epiphany of love.
Therefore until the labor of the third day be fulfilled, the light of love is unmanifest.
Then I shall unlock the gates of dawn;
and the glory of God shall ascend before the eyes of men.

- Anna Kingsford

Holy Mary of Magdala

The Gospel According to Mary

Chapter 5

3 Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things.

4 He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?

5 Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?

6 Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered.

7 Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries.

8 But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.

9 That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.

10 And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.

Gospel of Thomas

The Fool

silly † naive † fortune cookies † La La La † unabashed † kitten † yawn † tripping clumsy † no-thought † late riser † impetuous † curious † conversation killer † bulldoze † impulsive † spontaneous † playful † surfacey † shallow † pretty lights † sparkly † dazed † glazed with sprinkles on top † drunk † thoughtless † treading † right to the edge † daring † jokester † sprawled out † ice cream licker † sharing lollipops † bare feet † no worries † ignorant † innocent † unknowing † happy † trusting † unwitting sacrifice † sleepy eyes † clever


Did I forget anything?

Dark Night

Stanzas Of The Soul

1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.


3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.


4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.


5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.


6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.


7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.


8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

-St John of the Cross

I'm not sure what it all means, but it's beautiful.

Becoming the Crocodile

If you stand only on the safety of the banks spearing fish, how can you know the depths of the river? Can you fathom the darkness under a ledge of rock or understand the life of the fish writhing on your spear? You mistake the teeth of the crocodile as the edge of the abyss, but the chasm is more terrible than teeth, and certain.

I fulfill the law and the law demands your blood. I am Sebek the crocodile, the catastrophe, the devourer, the necessity. Impaled on my teeth, you shall be blessed for you will glimpse truth. I am only the secrets of your own dark heart, your lust, your greed, your anger, your flesh, to tear the darkness from your heart. I am the living power of water, the cry that catches in the throat, the sob that shatters stone.

On my teeth you smell the stink of flesh. To you I seem a living horror. But I tell you in truth, I am your own soul and it is with great sorrow that I crush the life you have made. I weep with the loss, but you do not believe. Such destruction is madness you say. You do not understand. Is it madness to cut the wheat so that bread can be made? When you were born into this bright land, did you not weep for the lost dark of the womb? Whether or not you understand the law, you exist because of it.

When you've reached the lips of the great devourer, you are staring into the jaws of creation.


- translation by Normandi Ellis
From The Egyptian Book of the Dead