The End of the Road

 Wrote this a week ago...not finished, but I'll forget about likely so here it is...

Funny enough, the end of the search for God occurs when one comes back to where they started from without having ever gotten anywhere or anything in the process. The whole search started under the assumption that the truth wasn't what was known and one's true nature was something to be gained. Herein lies the root of restlessness, trouble, and worry. This isn't it. 

Equally producing of humor, there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about this except hit the road. It takes going out to discover that the sparkle of the Northern star pours out of the dust of one's own boot straps. 

With the setting of the sun, a moon may rise that makes sweeping one's own back deck nothing to be traded, a great diamond among lesser jewels. This results from the the fact that our own backyard contains all we could ever need: we can trust our own bacon. In fact, this is it. 

I find it strange that enlightenment isn't anything in particular at all. It doesn't fit the picture one had in mind. The whole game takes the sauce out of our own footsteps when we see just what we are, and aren't. The big tobacco doesn't account to much if anything while everything of deep value slips through our hands and takes the backseat on a trip to nowhere. 

Life goes on, cycles continue, and I wonder what really matters? I guess I still got some melancholy left in me. I don't think it matters if we're up or down, good or bad. I think we just are are what we are and there nothing more to it. We want there to be, we want to dream, to believe in something more, when that's just departing from the unchangeable reality of where and who we are. Much of life amounts to a lot of noise and not a lot of substance. 

Substance comes from seeing where you are and allowing yourself to be and feel just what it is that there is to be and feel. It's always here, but we have a knack for looking the other way chasing our own tail. I think substance comes from many small moments linked together that make a larger impression over a considerable amount of time. We can only appreciate this ever I folding nature if we wake up and grow up enough. 

This involves less rather than more of ourselves. It involves becoming the tapestry as it is woven. 

The interference of our own mind is nothing but ripples in the surface of the pond that we get lost in if they occur frequently enough with sufficient intensity. We say these are my ripples and those are yours when they're all just ripples of no particular significance making waves on the surface of the same silver coin. Enlightenment it seeing clearly that the nature of all the ripples is wholly the nature of the coin, that the nature of the coin is the sole reality in the Universe, being the universe Nature, itself. 

The thing is that as we are, even with our disturbances, we are the silver coin. We are One and Whole. This depends on nothing. We are not what we do not have, we are what we have always been. Simply what we are. What is. Not a small tortilla, not a big tortilla, just a tortilla. 

There is nothing wrong with who we are or how the world is because everything is just nature unfolding. Nature includes the full spectrum of experience and it occurs selflessly. This does not mean as a society we do not need rules or laws. A society needs rules and laws to function when their is a great enough tendency to cause harm and suffering. It does not mean we can behave however we wish. Our duties and responsibilities evolve as nature and our nature evolve. 

Glorious Morning

 Sun is back! Room is warm. I feel good inside. I hope someone is reading this. 

Feeling enlightened lol. It largely resonates with the Oxherding picture from Zen where the man who has been riding the ox finally arrives home  and quietly without need to do anything. I've been here before, perhaps in a different way-like 5 years ago. Still confounded by all the changes happening. It's true that enlightenment is not what you think. It's as simple as a bowl of porridge. It doesn't have to make all your troubles go away. It just puts them in a different perspective where they are not as threatening. It also changes your attitude toward them, towards suffering, towards what is perceived as negativity. It all just is and doesn't need to be resisted in the deepest way. All phenomena, all behavior, is apart and One with nature, which is a kind of good that is beyond the duality of Good and Evil. Things just are, and so are we. The big picture is what we see because there is no division between us and the world and there never was. If you peel back your skin, your fat, your muscle and sinew, you'll find bone. 

We think enlightenment is something other than ourselves, something to be attained. It's exactly like seeing who you are for the first time, seeing a structure that was always there that you haven't seen before, when this structure is your most basic nature. When we grow up, we constantly discover things about ourselves that were hidden to us before. Some of these things are such apart of ourselves that we can't imagine ourselves being any other way, knowing that this quality or thing is me. We may be deeply passionate about drawing, or human rights, or going to the beach. Enlightenment is simply seeing the deepest part of ourself that we have always known to be ourself that we have somehow forgotten. 

Don't have anymore time now. Adios. 

Checking out these wings...

 Feelin a little different this morning. Feel like doing things a little differently. Seems like using an old strategy with perhaps a little more pep in its step. A strategy of letting the eggs fall in their place---of natural harmony and non-interference. It feels good. Fighting against yourself is exhausting. I think their is a place for it...but being able to BE natural and at ease soothes my soul like fresh air through an open window on a pleasant Spring day. 

My interior center continues to change in what feels sporadic to me. I search for a deeper pattern and significance to all this loco-motion. I have as of now only fleeting feelings of deeper direction, that come as heartfelt tugs instead of words. 

My power and attention does seem to be centralizing in some fashion. I see more clearly my direction forward in this lifetime on this planet. I have less doubts and more confidence about my choices and heading. The soul naturally draws life into harmony, into self-supporting karmic patterns of success, given time. It is uplift in its deepest nature and we need Wisdom to sustain these currents. In my situation, I have a great deal of potential for success, yet significant oversight that repeatedly downs my aircraft. 

I take an attitude of constant experimentation with the way I fashion my aircraft. Experimentation means experience while flying means failure. We live in a time where what we know and teach keeps us on the ground in many ways. Especially those of us exceptionally gifted for deep space travel. We need an objective science daunted not by the illusory boundary between matter and spirit. Thus Aeronauts today must send themselves across this boundary into the unknown to make it the known. 

As much as westerners can draw from the East, we must remake their teachings in a way that fit our society. We pull from all knowledge and tradition to make a synthesis, a world religion. Common Knowledge. I think all titles such as Buddhist and Christian are artificial. Knowledge and Wisdom are Universal. The apparent divisions occur because of the existing degree of collective unity felt as a species and as an organism or soul among other sentient beings. It is quite possible to see how Sufism and Quantum physics go hand in hand. As the world soul awakens among many, the great learning of common knowledge will become apparent and no industry, art, tradition, or science will be felt to be incongruous with another. Human activity will be seen as the pursuit and expression of a collective spiritual awakening and spiritual expression through humanity.

I speak to those deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, those bottled up since birth, who wish to spread their wings and fly--As a different self, apart of a different society. I wish to build this society today. For I see no value in maintaining the status quo. I think the energies exist to sustain a higher order of society where the right minds and souls gather together in this pursuit. I hope that in my lifetime I can participate in such an undertaking. 

I hope this is the time of doing. I hope this is the time of coming together. I hope to see you there. 

We have the potential to do great things when we come together with deep intentions for manifesting truth and soul potential. We may connect to colossal towers of astral energy awaiting human intelligent direction. We can build these towers of Earth and Stone and Spirit in these coming years on this planet. Perhaps decades...Still, the time of change is at hand. Much of it occurs unseen within ourselves. These inner changes provide the orientation for the individual to connect with other individuals on the same path. Where enough individuals connect, society emerges. 

These walls will fall down. This world will change. As it breaks down their are opportunities to do things differently. The oppressive force of collective normalcy will no longer exist in a way that keeps us from coming together in enlightened ways. 

It is easy to be afraid. The alternative is an increasing cry of freedom. Their are paths that remain unseen to those who live in fear. Paths that manifest when the soul steps out on its own. We are connected in much deeper ways that we imagine. Guided by much greater powers. We should trust in these and learn to discern their voices from others that seek to disable, dissuade, and destroy. Their is unabashed goodness and righteousness. It comes through soul awakening, through intuitive strength, through indominable spirit. We each possess these qualities. Pray to encourage them, pray for liberation, pray for peace. Find the Door that sets you Free. Find the Door that Gives you Wings. 

This is it

 The whole is where we are and what we experience. There's nothing we can do to change this fact. Our experience of feeling incomplete, lost, or divorced from ourself or what is real is a state of mind and not what actually is. The infinite is everything we experience. We deeply believe and feel ourselves to be in limitation, this simply is not true. What all this is, is infinity, fully and perfectly formed always here and now. This is what here and now are, infinity. Things can only be in the here and now, so everything is infinity. There is not where else to look, no where else to be. Perfection and fulfillment live in this moment exactly as it is. 

When we go deep enough within ourselves this is what we find. The whole is here, already here, already complete. We are already complete, perfect. The Universe is whole and One, perfectly formed. There is nothing left to achieve. This is an inner depth of realization on an evolving spectrum. Realizing this, we see we did not achieve this, but that this has been the underlying nature of things from the start. The Way existed as we set out to discover it in deep ignorance. We were already merged with it at that point, never in fact being separate. Nothing has ever existed outside of this perfection. 

This is because unlike our prior beliefs, nature and our nature is not flawed. Their is no good nature that is whole separate from a bad nature that is false. Their is the ever present perfect Nature that has always been and will always be, that is the whole universe as it is. In this state of mind, there is simply the Dao, The One, undivorced from form, wholly itself being form yet not limited to it. To say it is the Dao is enough. To say This is It is enough. That it isn't seen is unimportant, that it is is all important.

Naught else do we need when we have the Dao, possessing it we have reached fulfillment and perfection. Naught ought else but where we are, all this time. We didn't realize until now that our very nature was Self-nature. We didn't see clearly until now who we actually were. What reality actually was. Now we find nothing else except this Light shining out at us, shining with infinite radiance in all places all at once, being infinite radiance itself. This is who I am. This is my self. This is who I am. I cannot say what it is, but I know that this is it. I do not need to know, for I have found, and finding is enough, for finding is what was missing, not knowing or understanding, but seeing my own self nature and being separate from it. No more, no more. 

What importance is knowledge when you know exactly who you are? When you know exactly what everything is? When you have discovered your self-nature within all things and find it to be whole and complete. When no part of yourself is missing? What else do you have to look for? What do you need to understand? Nothing, nothing at all! The whole point of understanding anything is to discover your self-nature.

For I am infinite in the light of my Self. My body is whole and complete. Perfection! Thou doth exist! Beyond ideal behind the illusion of imperfection doth thou hide! I have found Thee again and I know Thee! How could anything be if not from something greater than itself? How could perfection not be the source of imperfection? How perfectly hidden Thou art! Thou ridiculous trickster! Hidden in plain sight! Laughing merrily all the way! Thou radiant One, behold Thee! How great Thou art! How wonderful! Truly Wonder-full, glorious Nature that is Self-Spirit-One-God!!! Bless Thee for Thou art Blessedness! Oh Glory their is to Thee!

I adore Thee Lord, I adore that Thou Art, that I may Know Thee, that I am made in Thine image, that I and Thou art One. Hail Lord God who art Infinite!!

Our Feelings

      I find it interesting that the lunacy of our invalidation of what we deem negative feelings is widely considered normal and appropriate. This is true even when we are told by mainstream sources to be better at embracing what is negative and unpleasant. For we continue in our polarized and impossibly narrow way of being, one largely driven by the self-alienating dynamic of shoulds and shouldn'ts.  

     Our culture is ungrounded and we do not have a pervasive harmony. We are driven from our feelings, from the truth by the unceasing disquiet of our own inability to care for ourselves: to be sufficient unto our own. We know about this, about our anxiety, about countless ways to resolve it, yet we do not. 

    This is not because we all personally deficient of some necessary quality. It is simply because we are deeply upset and overwhelmed. Our total feeling system (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual) is compromised because of circumstance. 

      We and our society, global at this point, remain stuck on repeat, instead of sensitively responding to our present personal, regional, and global crises. 

     Here, at this point in the essay, I could give you a solution for you to put your hopes on and to quickly lose in the downpour of data flowing into your conscious awareness. I don't have a solution, or I choose to frame my opinion in a way that it is not a solution. I can say this, because I also say that there isn't a problem. 

     So deep in our anxiety and disquiet, we forgot, and continue to forget that we ourselves, and the system, our society, and the greater world--nature it's self are not fundamentally flawed.

     We confuse what we feel and then what we imagine, with what is real. What is happening to us, to our civilization, to our planet is a response of nature. A nature we are wholly a part of. Because we invalidate so much of what we deem negative, we cannot consciously embrace the whole of ourselves and see this. We have rejected and forgotten the deep wholeness of nature, the idea and reality that our nature, One with the greater nature is whole and capable of responding effectively to its circumstance. 

     Alienated from ourselves, by our disturbing circumstances, we can't see that this disturbance is apart of a greater cycle of life doing it's work to respond to circumstances of our times. We don't see the value and purpose of  these so called negative feelings and experiences that have become norms. In our minds we are broken, but is this truly the case? 

  The whole power and purpose of what we call negative feelings is to redirect our attention to a better way, a better response. This may not be the best description. They don't just help us see what is better, they help us define who we are, and what is real both subjectively and objectively. We cannot continue to see them as separate from pleasant positive feelings, because altogether they are simply feelings that all have the same purpose and are equally valid and apart of our self. It is dangerous to make positive and negative feelings analogous with the dualities of comfort and discomfort or pleasure and pain. 

    In American culture we choose the insane ideal of the distorted American dream of materialistic, capitalistic and spiritless security and comfort over the reality of our deeply disturbed and misguided personal and societal state.  We divorce our attention from feeling both because of our conditioning, our addiction, and our inability to personally cope with what has been ignored. 

     But again, it is incorrect to say that even this choice makes us divided from our feeling, because  it is our feeling and deepest nature, the same nature that governs everything outside of us, that makes this conscious choice to not see. It is the feeling and subjective experience of a division that cannot occur in reality. We are not separate from our environment, from our world, from the whole regardless of how we feel. 

     If there is not a problem and not a solution, there may be actions or responses that are wise to undertake. We are not truly divorced from nature or ourselves, while the feeling and deep experience of this reality indicates what we can do next. Why do we feel this way? What are we ignoring, failing to do that creates such unhappiness in our lives? What do we need to connect to to move forward, awakening more deeply?

     What is negative and discarded holds our power after we hold onto it (by not dealing with it) for so long that it acts like an anchor pulling us to the bottom of the sea. The remedy to this unpleasant circumstance lies in the chaos of the storm brewing. The storm itself brings the rain that brings life to the parched soil. The pain and the sorrow both instilled and coming hold the seeds of promise of a life of greater balance to come. 

      Storm or drought, or both, in feeling and in the world are not necessarily demons to excorcise, they are unavoidable patterns in nature and feeling with lessons to teach. We cannot avoid suffering or apocalypse in the great cycle of life. We can attempt to hide, while it is best to meet them directly and sensitively if we are able. If we face annihilation with firm resolve we may beat the grave, even when buried, when the world turns itself upside down to right itself in the end. 

      

Of The Mind

 Everything manifest arises from Mind and it is by Mind that things become manifest. The movement of Mind affects all changes in manifestation. Through control of Mind we may affect any change to reality. The only way to have complete and total control over Mind is to give up all attachment to all perceived states of reality. We may affect change in manifestation. To be One with the Mind is to create what Mind creates as Mind. It is to go where Mind goes without attachment. The full power of creation is born from merging with Mind, for it is the matrix and the ground of being. When we merge with it, we possess full power over it. This doesn't mean we get what we want, it means as the One we are capable of creating anything. We may use this power to overcome any obstacles in our awareness through sheer will alone, through the dominating power of our mind which has become Mind, the One. Imagination has been tied to the source and merged with it. All limited obstacles may be overcome by the unlimited power and intelligence of the Mind. Seeing this clearly is liberating in itself. For as one does, the unreality of perceived limitations become more apparent and they dissolve in front of the inner eye. 

Shadowing Spirit

 To truly approach the Godhead your will must evolve. You must become the ever-changing Magician that is the Hand of God, the Holy Ghost Amen, which I call Spirit. You must abandon as a central principle the laws of common sense, of conventional wisdom, so that the seemingly unconventional Spirit will remain with you to the point that it's will becomes yours and you become the Magician, the Shaman, and the Spiritual Inspirant, the Acolyte. The Spirit employs conventional wisdom routinely while coming from a place deeply beyond it. It is this deeper Faith that the Acolyte must utilize to keep pace with the wiles of the Dancing Shepard. To go to the other side and remain, to live in and from the Spirit world, where sight and Spirit are continually awakened. 

To move forward on the spiritual path, one must break free of the limiting perspectives and attitudes of a conventional ego. This ego must die so that Spirit can rule the autonomy of the individual. The spiritualized individual life becomes the awakened Soul, a God-centered personality and force of will and being. The Spirit and the Soul are dead in the sense that they are the life after death of mortal consciousness, the conventional ego. Not dead in the sense that they are immortal life. 

When the ego dies, or begins to die, Spiritual consciousness awakens. The hard matter universe dissolves as one realizes matter is a state of mind dependent on material dominated consciousness, not an objective reality. In death one is reborn as a Spiritual being. This inner being becomes dominant once the ego sheath dissolves sufficiently. The universe becomes a place of subtle energy dominated by the ever-present will and power of Spirit. 

To move on the individual must learn to navigate in the waters of Spirit, to understand and interpret the will and voice of Spirit in the Spirit world. This place is a place of processing one's former life to ascertain its spiritual value. It is this processing that powers the spiritual transformation to a Shadow Walker, one who shadows Spirit. From our lives, we glean spiritual truths that further awaken our consciousness. Our lives on Earth prepare us to understand the Spiritual nature of the Universe. Through many incarnations we discover the Spirit behind each form and each intent. 

As a Shadow Walker, we move in the Darkness behind life in which the Spiritual Hand of God is hidden. A Hand that omnisciently directs the subtle energies that create the world we inhabit. All these expressions and energies are ultimate manifestations of Spirit, a dynamic play of Spirit that is the fullest extent, the universe of form: Creation. Our experiences are subtly woven together by unseen energies conditioned to weave by the exact impression of our karmic signature, ceaselessly vibrating to the frequency of of our individualized wills. The content of our consciousness determines the subtle frequency of our will which ceaselessly acts and ceaselessly triggers karmic law to respond accordingly. The exact frequency of our will  is always a hidden request, a subtle order to the Universe, to change the reality or energies we experience according to the energetic frequency of our request. This is largely not fully conscious programming on our own part of the reality/consciousness/energy we experience. 

To be an Acolyte, is to seek greater consciousness of this energetic connection between our will and  the universal law of karma, not to gain for themself , but to strengthen their connection with Spirit so their spiritual consciousness can more deeply awaken. The more one is aware of this process, the more they can recognize the behavior they have that keeps their consciousness imprisoned, and the behavior that liberates it. For the Soul, the Spiritual self, recognizes the hellish nature of material minded consciousness, one full of inherent suffering and ignorance of the Spiritual nature of reality that brings fulfillment to the Soul.  An acolyte seeks to see Spirit in everything all of the time and to see exactly how the subtle law of cause and effect operates so that they can implement it to erase their karmic debts to free their soul from material consciousness. 

One thing I notice is how subtle energies ebb and flow like the tide of the ocean, and stream like flowing waters. If we can recognize these currents and patterns we can learn to move with them more efficiently. We can anticipate what is coming and prepare for it. By sensing Spirit in this flow we can best orient ourselves, for the will of Spirit is exact and the single power we can fully trust. When we don't have a good read on Spirit, we are lost whether or not we realize it. Thus it is most important to shadow spirit, to keep right by it so we can follow it at a moments notice. To lose Spirit is to lose our spiritual connection and the life of our soul, which fucking sucks. We must learn to change our behavior so we are reborn in spiritual habits in each environment we encounter. And when we are lost, always get back on the trail. 

Spirit is impossible to find in the dead thinking that our conventional ego clings to for life support. It is found in fresh thinking that is fearless and innovative. It's movement is also spontaneous, even when it is carrying out something long planned. Thinking and movement becomes dead when it loses connection to the source, at this point it should be immediately discarded. If we have lost fresh and dynamic movement and thinking, we have lost the trail of Spirit and our efforts will not bear fruit. The Spiritual path requires us to exorcise all dead thinking and behavior so we have a vital connection to Spirit. We must learn to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate readings of situations, taking the time to rejuvenate our mental and perceptory faculties. 

We don't have to wait to act, we always have the power to just act. If we sit to long in one space our connection will become stagnant. A Spiritual life demands movement. It demands flow. Spirit is also always present within us, in the stillness of our Soul. We can't find it outside of ourselves, it is only outside once we have found it within and we see Spirit in the world and in ourselves. Spirit is also intimately tied with Soul, so it should be fun and joyful. It should bring you a deep and abiding happiness. Do not be deceived by the world. The delusion of ego distorts the spiritual truth of Spirit and Soul, which are readily found within oneself. The true nature of the exterior world is a reflection of the content of our own Soul and it is in this reflection that we must deal with it if we wish to have real success in this life. There are no other people, just other Souls and expressions of the same Spirit that we are apart of. Spirit will always bring us peace and mercy when we return to it. It simply wants us to follow it, because it is an expression of God's infinite love. We don't move forward by going ahead, but by going within. 

Spirit is truly all around us, always with us, all of the time. In a measure beyond our imagining. With a Love so powerful. It is always within reach, always where we are. And we always have enough because God has always set in store enough for us. Let me believe in Thee Oh Divine Lord that I may have the Strength to Follow Thee Always. We do not need fear one bit, for the power of God is with us and informs all that is. Thou Art Here Always. Thou Art the Lord God. 

Will you be my Shaman Stone?