Ch-ch-changing with the seasons

We will start where the river begins. Up on a hill, between two tall oaks. Springing up from the rocks into a pool, and spilling over the lip of the pool where it makes its way steadily down. This is where it all begins. Not where I am now, not where you are. It begins up atop this hill. Everything begins here, beyond the forest of pines, beyond the brooding river slowly moving through the plains. Past the tall grass, past the shallows, past the low sun in a hazy sky. The hills begin at the edge of the plains and this hill sits among them. It is a stout hill moderately taller than its neighbors, cooler on its top. This is where the world begins. From a cold stone spring a top a hill. It is bare up there except for these twin oaks straddling the lip of the pool overlooking the slope of the hill where a river begins. Down in the bottom of the pool, the water issues up, between fissures in rock and earth. It is quiet here, it is still. Nothing is none of what happens when the water leaves the pool and makes its way down and across the earth. Here is simply a cold stone spring at the bottom of a pool. Birds gather here and remember this, their birth in the beginning of things. Not too many at a time, but enough that it is known that this is the beginning. Black birds above the pool on the limbs of the oaks. Some down below on large rocks. Standing quietly attuned to the spring within the pool and the cold stone from where it comes. They remember here. Here it is known and remembered where all things issue forth. Here it is quiet, here there is only the beginning. The beginning is cold stone in water. The beginning has no inkling of anything but this. It is always beginning here, no stories, no knowledge, no awareness. This place sits removed from time. It is untouched by the world because it is before the world. The world has no place here because this place is before the world and remains before the world. The world will never know this because this is before the world. It is before the beginning lost itself. Before it forgot itself. Before it forgot the beginning. Someday, the world will tire of spinning and a memory will press itself into its mind. This will cause the world to turn from the world. It will turn and turn and turn until it is no longer itself and it has remembered itself in the beginning. This will be the end of the world, when it becomes the beginning. It will remember that it never left the pool, the stone, and the spring. It never entered into the world. It never forgot itself. The world never began. The river does not exist, there is just a pool upon the top of a hill spilling into eternity. If there is a world, the world is the pool, the stone, and the spring. No place in it is otherwise. We cannot leave the pool, the world is the pool. All there is is the pool. Water spills forth from the spring. Water spills forth from the spring. 

Water spills forth from the spring and feeds the world. Water spills forth from the spring and becomes all things. Spirit empties itself into the world becoming the world. Emptying itself into the world, spirit becomes everything in the world. Every form, every particular thing. Spirit takes on a divided and manifold appearance which is the full expression or full emptying of itself into the world. It empties itself so thoroughly that it completely forgets itself. This is the bottom of the world, the space underneath the Earth, the womb of the Earth from which all life issues forth. All life is born from this darkness which is born from the downward arc or expression of Spirit, it is the last and final expression of Spirit. Spirit changes shape as it makes its way on this downward arc of self-emptying until it finally becomes a shapeless darkness. Here it has fully emptied itself of its potency so it rests as darkness, the womb of the Earth, where it gathers its strength so it may rise again unto its full form and its full power. Darkness is also still, but it's stillness is inactive. Spirit as spirit possesses a stillness that is active. Although Spirit's power is dormant in darkness, this darkness holds all its power as potential energy. From this potential energy life is born. Spirit is eternally exhausting itself in a downwards arc into darkness and darkness is eternally being born into life. Life eternally awakens on an upwards arc to Spirit where it gradually recaptures its full activity. Spirit never truly becomes inactive in darkness, this is just an appearance. Spirit always remains Spirit, fully active, fully present. It forgets itself for lack of better words in the downwards arc towards darkness. This emptying of itself is apart of the full expression of itself. 

I don't understand it any better than this. I truly don't see how this can be possible. This is the best way I can describe what is happening. Or second best, the first is that there is no Earth, no world, simply Spirit as Spirit, the spring at the bottom of the pool issuing from cold stone. At this point I can't talk about a world without losing myself in it and believing that it is other than Spirit. Spirit tells me that this is not true, that truly, everything always is Spirit as Spirit. If this world is truly Spirit, then full consciousness of this world is full consciousness of Spirit. Fully realizing Spirit is the same as fully realizing oneself in this world. I think the two appear to be different but are not. When I go into Spirit now, all I see is Spirit. The world disappears beyond memory. Everything I sense appears to be illusory, everything.. except transcendent Spirit. I don't know where this leads, but I am very curious. This goes beyond any feeling or identity as an individual or a human being. I come out of it and wonder if all of this is completely non-real. Like all of this. All identity. We don't realize how much of our identity is dependent on conceptions, imaginations. We don't comprehend how deep these imaginations go. We may say, well reality is all imagination so this isn't a problem for me. My counter is that the matrix of conditioned being is all imaginations, it is all unreal, and if this is all that we experience, we are not awake to what is real. So clinging to imaginations however deep and true they are is not enough. This Spirit that is the stone at the bottom of the well, that I see now is fully beyond everything that I call myself. I do not know if this is the end of the expansion of my perception here, but, what I see is valid and it appears to undermine all notions of an immortal self. I stress this because I feel that people don't realize how deep Spirit goes and it is this lack of comprehension that causes problems in human lives. I think because we don't see how insubstantial our individual identities are, we cling to the idea that we will live forever as a human being instead of waking up to our true nature which is beyond clinging and beyond the matrix of conditioned being. I think liberation can only arise when we deeply realize the nature of reality, which is the truth beyond clinging and beyond the veil of conditioned consciousness. If we cling to ourselves, we will disrupt the natural order of the universe and create all sorts of disease throughout the universe. Our individual lives including our body and our psychology is a mirror to the universe. What we create externally we create internally. Clinging is restriction, restriction is restriction of the flow of vitality and of the flow of energy up our spine and throughout our body. When we cling, we create disease within ourselves. I believe only when we clearly see the insubstantiality of the matrix of conditioned being, do we let go of clinging. Until then we are deceived by it and believe however subtly that clinging is profitable. I think clearly realizing the nature of clinging and thirst allows us to fully let go of individual being and fully realize Spirit as Spirit. I think only when we have fully let go of our individual being and equally fully realized Spirit as Spirit have we cleansed our individual being of clinging and restriction which cause disease and suffering. This is the only way for things to naturally flow in a healthy way. I think in other words, clinging is death. Yet we can not cling to this to have life, we must face our death to end clinging and to gain liberation in full realization. 

The trick is that everything is already Spirit as Spirit...

The more we realize this, the more we cease being ourselves and let go of an attempt to liberate ourselves. What remains is the gradual full organizing of our powers directed towards liberating our consciousness. I think our mind says one is true and one is false, I wonder if this distinction exists. What does it matter if Spirit is Spirit now?..It seems that it matters for who remains immersed in the world struggling to free themself. I think we remain immersed so long as we cling to ourselves. So if we are still here, this is likely why, we still have more to learn. This appears at least to be the great balance of our lives. 

We also have to allow ourselves to be mortal, to be immature, so that we may realize greater maturity and greater depths of being. I think this may be the most difficult part. We have to suffer life to learn and grow. It doesn't seem like there is a way around it, because we are here where we are because we don't know any better. We have to suffer this to gain wisdom. Then the question becomes? What is my standing now and what abilities do I have to improve it? What can I actually do here? Doing this while managing our human lives in our human environments that depend on specific tangible things that may or may not be accessible to differing degrees. You can say, what an endeavor! We each have our unique individual position and qualities that make these questions different for each of us. That make this personal. So many factors appear to be largely out of our control. What if we lived in Ukraine now? What if we were a Russian conscript? Think of how massive this system is we are individually apart of. This is probably why it takes perhaps hundreds of lifetimes to liberate ourselves. Yet even so, we are here now, and it appears that our choices make a difference in all of this. This is a hell of a lot of responsibility to ourselves. It's fucking overwhelming. 

Most people don't look at it this way. I do because I am studying this system so I can get out of it. Honestly. At least this is a lot of how I feel. I see a way out and I have a good idea of how to do it, so I am building on my knowledge so I can prepare myself to do it. People don't realize how much work this is. They don't realize the scope of this endeavor. They don't realize how committed one has to be to achieve this. This is not just opening the door to Truth, it is fully stepping through it,  fully marshaling oneself to do so. Perceiving this scope requires an incredible degree of both insight and reason. You have to be able to hold the system in your mind so you can work on it. Know all of the terrain from darkness to Spirit. I think maybe the best we can come to understanding this scope is if we can remember how we first reacted to ideas such as nirvana or yogis who devote themselves to yoga, fully merging with God. Where we are first impressed by the awesome lengths one would have to go to achieve thus, before our minds are filled with obscuring details about the path. Before we get on it, we are like, "That's some shit.." We have this beginner's mind sense of that particular path a human being can travel. I think we are really testing the water in a lot of our initial pursuits and gains in spirituality. I don't think most of us really devote ourselves to enlightenment. We think we really want it, but so much of us doesn't. We remain uncommitted because of many reasons, one being fully accepting the responsibility of the path. The reality of what it will take to turn ideas into reality. The effort to pull ourselves out of a comfortable chaos. I think it takes a great deal of reason to see that this chaos really isn't safe, and that doing this shit over and over again life after life may not be what we want to do. I mean fuck! When I really started waking up I got this real sense of the shit I was in. I was like damn, this is fucked. I am fucking trapped here in darkness. Lol. I got to sit with this shit for like years before I am woke enough to actually deal with this chaos effectively. To combat it directly. To really begin to distance myself from it. It's been 10 years...I feel like I saw the light before I had any experience whatsoever in dealing with it. Buddha had like 10 or 15 years doing all kinds of spiritual exercises, I was like oh shit! I am a fucking worm, God is a merciless titan!!! Kinda funny though honestly. I had a very clear yogic sense of my particular circumstances, I was like yup, I am definitely getting pulled back into darkness...See you in like a while...Fuck...

I think I can call this yogi-time, the time it takes to move inner mountain ranges. I feel like all this time I have been preparing myself to do yoga, I still have a lot of prep to do. I was a noob. Giving up your 20's for awakening. I am not getting back those years. At least not any time soon. That shit's tough. Fucking tough. It is who I am though, and I am thankful I have this opportunity to learn and free myself ignorance and suffering. I think it is really who I am and why I am here. I do really love this stuff. Even if no one is interested in hearing me talk about it. I think I really do want to be a yogi. 

What's weird is that orange reason is orange like prana orange...why? Why is conformist blue? Conformist blue seems like mental in a lot of ways, rules, practices. Procedures maybe...Conformist blue feels like mental processing. It seems to be heavily based on communication, yellow and blue. The place in the mind is like this regular blue color, blue calming impulses with thoughtfulness? Calm mental drive? It seems like blues are thoughtful and procedure oriented while oranges are...? It seems like they are nested in prana, but why? Reds are nested in survival and desire. I think reds are ruled by instinct and perhaps impulse. I think blue will be good for regiment and discipline. For being organized and regular. For balancing I think. I'm not sure how far this will go. It seems like my personality is streamlined here by social protocol. It seems like I am authentically here, but there seems to be a lot more going on psychologically. My feeling are much more complicated. I think here I can learn to deal with these more complicated feelings. It's so strange feeling so empowered by family and a sense of community of belongingness. It feels so good...It's really calming and nurturing. It makes me feel safe. Like I belong here, I am participating here and people respect me and the way I am doing things. I respect them as well. We are working together to coexist in a healthy way. It just feels good. It seems like out of the strength of belonging comes the strength to go off in your own way. That sounds distant to me now. But I can see myself doing it. I did it when I left Whitman. That took a lot. I am not sure how much of what I have growing into is an extension of that or building back up to that. I really feel like I am growing well into this dimension. When I left, did I move into orange reason? It seemed like I was free here to work on myself. Cultivate my own interests. I let go to figure out what I was actually interested in. I didn't know because my behavior was so conditioned. I knew enough of what I wanted to know that I wanted to know exactly what I wanted to do, not what society wanted me to do. Not what worked in society, but live my own way by my own rules. By my own standards. I have discovered a great deal since then. I have found a lot of authentic feeling. Authentic motivation and desire. This feels good. It seems like I went through my body first, finding authentic bodily impulses, getting in touch with my bodily energies and instinctual movements. Perhaps the bodies natural intelligence. From there it moved into cultivating will and desire. Which turned into a solid sense of ego based on desire and body sense. This has evolved into wanting to join society to expand my sense of self, to gain a structure that I can use to pursue my own interests. A platform. So basically now I am learning to navigate this system which is really the whole worlds mode of interaction, its structures and components of these structures, its really a language that we use to acquire what we want. Whether it is skills, resources, or experiences. The language is agreed upon and is in flux. We conform to access the resources that the system offers. The ego will take what it wants, the conformist will conform to get what it wants. Right now I want the security of the system, so I am playing along with the rules. I also want the resources that the system offers, and socialization/esteem. I think largely this is where my identity is. I am learning all of these things because it is developmentally where I am. I am cultivating my esteem, I am learning accepted social behaviors to use to acquire what one wants, I gain the security of participating in the system, I gain the community and sense of belonging. I do not know why it feel so good to belong to a greater community. To feel inter-dependent with others. It feels like we share the load and we are safer in numbers. It is also just a joy to share life with different people. It is more enriching than being alone. It feels fuller. I wonder if in a broader sense it is merely joining in the activity of ones environment. Which could be why blue feel likes a universal participation to me. At integral I could join into any group regardless if I belonged to that level of development or that cultural niche. I wonder if because I have awakened to Universal Being, this blue participation feels like join a universal procession of forms. We just may have a narrow understanding of the capacity of conformist blue. There is a universal society of lifeforms or simply forms. A universal order to things, universal law. I wonder if I am joining this too. Not sure... I could merely be embracing life as a whole as I have done before. This is interesting. Could be both. It feels like the blue order is in alignment with a universal order. I do feel like I am joining the universal law of things more than I have before. I feel like I am settling in to this grove that moves from structure to structure. This is also because of a greater insight into the nature of things and of the process of enlightenment. Conformist blue does feel like I am joining this as well. I think conformist blue is also just conscious choice to participate in the activity of ones environment which is possible because of a healthy level of self-esteem. I think this self-esteem is dependent on interdependent relationships that one has with their environment. One realizes that there must be mutual respect and coordination for things to move along smoothly. I think one with this healthy level of self-esteem conforms to their environment to secure their own healthy operation and development. I think I could do this at Bayview, but it wasn't as authentic as it is now. I was employing conformist operating systems because I wanted security and I wanted to use the system to get it. I did have some authentic desire to conform, but my center was egoic. The true blue is at the place where it is in their interest to learn to navigate and successfully navigate the system. They are secure enough personally to open themselves up to society and they are working on developing esteem, relationships and skills to gain further security in their environment and within themselves. Once they gain sufficient mastery of the system, they can then use it to directly pursue their own interests and to some degree gain independence from the system. So I guess the question is, "Is this really where I am now?" I think the answer is yes. I think in the past my broken ability to use this social language has been a huge obstacle to achieving my goals. I think my strategies haven't been grounded in how this world actually is because I was crippled on this level. Largely by my self esteem which leads to lack of participation, lack of know how or lack of direction. It has been like trying to fly with a broken wing. I am so insecure that I dreading reaching out as I am not. I don't feel comfortable extending myself thus. But this is the way and it is what I believe I need to do to move on. It will reach back because I am reaching out in the right way. I have to be careful, as careful as I can, but it will reward me as I continue to contribute to it. This seems like a straightforward way to gain the language and navigation skills I need to achieve what I want. 

I just kinda feel like I got this. I feel like this is it. Like there is nothing but this and Here I Am. I feel like I am all of this and there is nothing between me and anything else. Everything is who I am. I feel like I am anxious about some predator that doesn't exist. I am projecting in my mind when everything is love. Everything is Light. I just feel love here. I feel like I really don't need to cling to anything. I feel like it's ok. I don't need to do anything to be ok. I just am. I just am everything I want to be right now.  I don't need to do anything. I do not need to do anything at all. I think the whole world isn't what it appears to be. I don't think anything is as split up as it appears. I think everything is undivided. Everything is whole and One. I think there is just a Oneness here. A oneness that is all things. I think everything is One. Everything is True and everything is good. I think all of this is good. Ya, I think this is good. Everything. I think everything is Light and Love. I think this is who I am and perhaps why I am here. I am love. This is Love. I just want to live in love. I think everything is love. Life . Love. Being. I think this is who I am. Light as a feather. Blowing home across the wind. Coming to my self in all things, I return to where I began, this is my home, this is my place. I am already here. Already awake, already fulfilled, this is it. This is it right now. All there is is home. This is who I am. right here, right now.