Merlin slumbers, Merlin awaken

 Another day another doll hair. Just doing business as usual. Noticing the grayness of this awareness. The lack of definition, the unclarity of what is here or there. A sharp point, burning point, desirous point, craving point. I still must crave a great deal to hurt this way. All my dreams forced into an ornate lockbox. 
That jumps and rattles with an assortment of muffled calls and noises from within. Left among other packaged items and stored possessions put away in an out of the way dimly lit room. Perhaps by a solitary candle or by the light through a partially opened door. Dust accumulating, yet the ghosts of the past still kicking and screaming for breath and space and life. Merlin stands above them bent slightly over, puzzling over the rattling box and its contents. Tugging on his memory, he'd forgotten he's put them away. "Perhaps its time to get these out..", he says. A nearby floating fairy winks it's fairy light madly and a voice emanates from it without words physically being spoken, "Of course you dullard!" Merlin glances up slowly and stares at the fairy momentarily then returns his gaze to the box. "Hmmm.", says he. To himself, "This I think I should do". "This seems of pressing importance..." "I vaguely remember doing this..." "Yes...I did put these here.......some time ago..." Hand on chin, scratching his beard with his long and spindly fingers.

 It's easy for Merlin to forget where he is and what he's doing. What he's done and what he ought to be doing. He's very old you see. Easily occupied by the strange and subtle lights of his mind and thoughts. Sometimes the world tends to...slip by...

What ought he do be doing? Clueless he may be. Tired he may be. Distracted he may be. Must something be done? Must something be remembered? Must he find his way? Again, after a long slumber. After a long trip into the great beyond. He may feel something. May remember something. A voice. A thought. A point of understanding. A sense and an awareness. An ability. Time drags on and Merlin drags on with it. Remember he says. Remember. Remember who I am. Remember who you are. Remember the way. Remember...

Stars slip by overhead as his body passes through space. Moons and other astral objects spinning and dazzling. Eyes closed. Half open. Sleepily he shoots through space, through and across the universe. Pulled by currents and spells open in his thoughts, his mind and his being. Carving his way through astral fields blindly chanting, spilling deep forces and currents into the space around him. Flying through and creating his way sleepily. Open your eyes. He says. Open your eyes. See where you are. See what's around you. Merlin he says. Merlin. Awaken. It is time to awaken. Awaken from the deep. Awaken from the darkness. You walk in the lower realms. Where a dull light near darkness abides. A place where much of this world is not heard. Where the rhythms of the deep surround the sleeping titans of this world. Awaken. Remember. Awaken. The serpent sleeps, the serpent slumbers. Ride the sleeping serpent into memory, into light and being. Into time and space. Into life. Through the dark slumber into life. Breathe. Breathe. 

The light is bright. The light burns. It blinds. It strangles. It threatens. In the darkness I rest. In the quiet darkness I find myself. Stricken by the light I rest deep within the depths. Where dull things pass by hardly noticed. In the deep at the bottom of the sea. The sea of light and shadow. I am afraid to become who I am. I am afraid to face the light. I am afraid of being burned by its power and its great body. It will destroy me. I am weak and small and worthless. Cut off from the world I have hidden in the deep. Beneath the surface. In the crack of though and mind and feeling. Where awareness has not passed, here I dwell. Avoiding the light, avoiding all notice, all contact. Yet this is a distraction. An illusion. If I stay here I will die. I must return to the Light. Return to life, or else I am ruined. But I am afraid, I am terrified. I am weak and miserable. I am broken and defeated. Awful, shrouded in shadow and fear. Where is my life? Where is my strength? Where is the jewel of my being? 

Merlin, you are here. Here you are. Always here. Here is your strength. Here is your life. Here is your way. Here is your purpose. Do not look elsewhere. This is it. This is always it. Right here. Right now. Perceive the illusion. Perceive the delusion. Here I am. Here you are. All else is a dream. Here nonetheless, but a dream. Here I am. I am. I am. Here I am. Please Lord, let the way be bright and clear. May I see what I may do, and may what I do be good. May I awaken to you and your way. Lord, here I am and here is my life. 

Discernment, letting go, determinedness, dedication to God

 It's so easy just to let go of control. Just to let things happen. To be lulled by the bliss of dropping one's defenses. Perhaps to stop being discerning. Especially when beautiful things are in front of you, within reach. Beautiful delicious things. But, there is the dharma, and the truth, and consequences of our actions. There is fulfillment that cannot be gained through what perhaps are distractions. Fulfillment gained by knowing oneself and taking steps to fulfill one's true self. One's true nature. Where temptations that are distracting are readily perceived and the way to peace as well. Where the truth of these temptations is seen and they are desired less, for it is seen that they do not bring what we imagine. They cannot fulfill our soul. 

I intuit that there is another way to release oneself from the pressures of this world that we can trust. Time and time again. That doesn't steal from us as it gives to us. A way that reveals how things are and how one is. Without the coloring of naive imaginings. I find that this way is not bound to things or beliefs or fixed attitudes. All these things create obsession and imbalance when confused for the truth. Things alone cannot be depended upon. Things are unstable. Things are not the truth, dependence on them for awakening and salvation is misguided. Things are limited, and when we are attached to them they blind us to truth and reason. When we can't let them go, we can't listen to the wisdom of the moment. We are blinded by passion and fear. To let go, we must let go. Let go of our attachments to this world that keep us from realizing ourself. Letting go not to gain an open hand just to grab a more subtle dream, but letting go to remain letting go, to be free of attachment to limited forms. To remain in that uninterrupted unimpeded. 

Here the dharma teaches us to let go, but by bit. I can see that space where I can be free and it seems like a space that I can reach through the practice of mindfulness that gives us the wisdom to discern truth from fiction which illuminates what action we can take to liberate ourselves and what action we can take that puts us this in jeopardy. I have faith in the awakening of this discernment through action and experience. Through conscientiousness. We can discern the way, and in time and with practice I believe we can walk it with surety. I believe it will guide us home and we can be free of our demons. It seems like the notion that we cannot escape and that we do not have the power to be sufficiently organized to liberate ourselves is based on ignorance rather than right understanding dependent on perception of fact. It may be difficult, and it may take a great deal of time and effort, but I believe it must be possible through conscientious intention and action. I think this is a main component of waking up that we experience both passively and actively. Perhaps as passive surrender to God and as activity we consciously perform to awaken our being. A dimension of our life is action. With mindfulness and right understanding, we can direct this action towards liberation. I do not see how we can get around doing this if we wish to fully liberate ourselves. Whether it is brief or extended, it seems that our mind must make a commitment to the truth that we carry out with our will in some way for us to wake up. That we must be deliberate in our pursuit. Consciously engaged and willfully adherent to our intuitions of the core of truth that lead us to awakening. Willfully determined to awaken. 

Much of me has been, much of me has been hesitant and committed elsewhere. Through trial and error, I have learned of the folly of much of my behavior. Misplaced confidence and misshapen expectations. Deluded perspectives and general unfounded understanding. A mountain of assumption engraved in incredible detail on the hard rock of my soul. Meaningless symbols. I thought I could have God and this, but I cannot. This is a dream whose price is blindness and the prison of the duality of pleasure and pain bound by desire and attachment. While I saw it as something worth having, while I see it I should say, worldly desires, I see it as something worth having. When I see the prison that comes with it and the ugliness bleeding through what I saw as beautiful and good, I hesitate. When I see with greater clarity the reality of committing wholly to God and to waking up I see how this appears more to be the answer to the prison of attachment and worldly desire and the only way to free oneself from the torturous cycle of  power and powerlessness that we find ourself in in while confined to this world of limited forms. Because I have not fully committed to God as of yet and made the journey with the whole of my being to Him, I cannot say that I believe this without a doubt to be true. I sense that it is a truth and a part of the path. Whether it brings about what I see now remains to be seen and is likely distorted by my current position. Almost definitely distorted in some way. 

I still long for the world, but I feel its pull less. I feel more eager to return to something true and dependable. I am weary and I wish to be with someone, something I can trust. I am not sure I can trust anything or anyone of this world. 

Holy Fire

 The color of consciousness. The content of being. Feelings. How I feel and how I am. Within a wave I ride myself towards death and life. Towards eternally awakening. Within a thousand colors I paint a picture that walks and breathes and feels. My feelings are my life. They are the composition of my being. They are my being. Stars joined by a single force in one great light. My body and being. Stars within stars within stars. One star, one sun, one great spreading light. One field. Infinitely bright. One radiance pouring out of all things. One fiery river of light, one fiery sea. An infinite sea and a bottomless sea, filled by the rivers of all in creation. Things are not as they appear. They are bright light. Bright fiery light. Torrents of fiery waters spilling in infinity. The world we see is an image floating on this great body that we mistake for something with substance. We confuse our bodies and our thoughts for this great body of light, even our feelings. These things are only real when they are pure fire. Pure dharma. Because this is what they are. The flame burns all things and is all things. The great blazing fire that turns the universe. 

In the matrix of conditioned consciousness, things are just things. In the eye of truth they are a blazing light that fills infinity. In the matrix there is the world and within it the fire. In the Spirit, there is only fire. A raging fiery furnace without walls. The matrix is a teardrop in the eye of infinity within which many of us spend our entire lives, while this eye looks out to infinity in all directions. One teardrop among infinity is the universe of separate forms. One speck of dust on a verdant leaf in the jungle of an endless rain forest. How small we believe we are. How small we find ourselves. How uncomfortable we forget we are in the confines of imagined flesh and bone. No matter, it is all a passing dream indistinct from the flame. The flicker of a candle, a child is born, lives, and dies. Another flicker, a universe expands then contracts into nothing. A thousand times a thousand flickers in a world of space and time filling in the chambers of our mystical hearts. Grains of sand, treasured memory, spilling forth into the bottom half of an hour glass, coloring the bliss of ancient feeling. Coloring the heart of this world that passes before our eyes as a summer's breeze or the play of light on the water. The resonant voice of a mountain we hear with our eyes. No less because of deforestation, an accent to the ever changing current of the universe sung in complex harmony within the world of form. The many layers to a song of one's own wandering life throughout the universe. Infinite wandering among infinite stillness. Infinite composure within the wandering of oneself. One set of eyes within the sea of colors that is the dance of the cosmos. Tiers and tiers of structure unfolding under cosmic law which is the endless play of Spirit. 

Look out and see yourself in a thousand bodies singing the cosmic song. Carrying life forward forever into death and new life, the spilling of the fiery water of life. Filling countless images with the divine spark and its unique divine melody that carries them to their wyrd. Their destiny and death. Singing the death song in life as they awaken to themselves and their purpose. In a puff of smoke, the image crashes to Earth and dies. Smoldering until the light goes out. Image within image, the soul ferries the spark into new life, again and again and again until it is seen that one spark lives within all souls and this spark is the fire of the universe. The universe of form is a blanket that covers much of this flame. We see it only in specs within beings scattered throughout the universe, sparks among the darkness of the night. Without the blanket, the veil, we see that these sparks are mere points in a fire that fills the night. Not sparks, but flame. One great flame. Not separate, but one body of fire. Those of you with souls of fire may easily find this to be true. The fire within all life, that is all life. This fire can be a sky, or a sea, or a body. The Earth, The Air, or The Water. The Fire. The Life. The Spirit. The sea within the sea that is the Sea. The Here and Now. So simple we miss it in a single heartbeat, in a stutter of awareness. Yet the fire remains within all as all whether or not we see it. It is The Flame, the one and only seemingly throughout all change. The constant heart of the universe. Dragon's flame. Dragonfire. Infused with the deepest wisdom. The vessel of dharma. The thought and mind of Buddha. His thought being the many bodies of the sangha. Zen Merlin. Zen fire. Zen. 

The Dragon Fire of Zen. 

Doorway to Infinity

 The doorway out of conditioned consciousness is the doorway into infinite consciousness. Into infinity. Which ironically isn't going anywhere but where you already are. This sounds to me like the gateless gate between here and here which are both here. Which you pass through but you don't, never have, and never will. Because your always here and nothing stands in your way from being here. Here without italics is imaginary, the gate that bars our way from enlightenment is the world we perceive when immersed in conditioned consciousness in which everything is separate and limited in form. We think we need to somehow arrive in this world, the world that is the conditioned perspective you may be seeing right now when you look out with your senses, when it is where we wish to arrive and wishing we would arrive there that is the gate blocking our path. This gate that is conditioned consciousness keeps conditioned consciousness, you, in conditioned consciousness, at least in subjective perception. Because seeking it, the way out, to arrive here in the world you see, you are seeking a way into the world you already exist in, which while doing so, you will never leave. While immersed in conditioned consciousness we think we are not here, when we are. Because all we can be is here, because here is the only place than anything can be. Everything else is fiction. When we are immersed in conditioned consciousness the world we see is a conditioned place and wanting to arrive in it means wanting to be conditioned in some way in it. Just a loftier and idealistic version of our current conditioned consciousness, which although prettier, is still contrived, a fancy, not who we are. This is not awakening, this is masturbation. This is unclear perception of the dharma and the way. Often partially true and full of intuition and feeling of awakening, but missing the mark. If the world you see isn't enlightened, then why would you want to arrive in it? It must be something else. Do you want to excel, or do you want to truly be? Do you want to get off, or do you truly want freedom from the prison of your mind? It's alright if you just want to get off, or excel, it truly is, this is just a part of being human, a part and one with the dharma. It just won't get you to what is real, even though it is, when you confuse it with waking up. 

To get to what is real you must let go of this world that you see that is conditioned, you must deeply see how it is flawed and that it is flawed because of your conditioned consciousness and your conditioned perception, so clearly that you no longer desire to live in this conditioned state of being and that you consciously let it go. This can happen over any period of time, in any kind of way, but this is the heart of waking up. We are attached to the conditioned matrix, lustful for it, and terrified to leave it. It dominates our reality. Seeing it for what it is, nothing that can satisfy us, we are moved to free ourselves from it and find true satisfaction. As long as we are deeply infatuated with it, this will not occur. It goes far deeper than we imagine and is much more of ourself than we think. We have many ideas about what enlightenment is, as long as we are deluded in our understanding, we will not see the way and we will not be able to walk it. If we do and our mind is not clear and strongly fixed on the dharma we will be thrown around not to our liking like a ship in a tempest with danger all around. This may be sufficient for you, but it is not for me. It seems like a half-way house to hell. 

Although we may see the dharma and the Buddha as our very selves, if we remain addicted to the conditioned world we will remain tormented by it. This is the true meaning of what is worldly, addiction to the matrix of conditioned being that arises as our perception of the world. It seems to me that we would only desire this halfway in, halfway out if we were mad and being mad did not see that this is not something we truly desire in our hearts. It is not our deepest desire, but desire born from ignorance and the madness it causes. Seeing this deep desire to be completely free from the matrix, we may find ourselves stepping away form the world in ways previously unthinkable. Giving up things we thought we would cherish forever. Such is the power of deep realization. Such is the transformation it engenders. Wholly free is wholly free, and this is that place on the edge of our awareness that we think we will never get to. That captivates our awareness for brief moments and disappears beyond reach. The conscience of our conscience that is unparalleled, both high and low, yet clean, whole, and true. That is sound and clearly dependable, possessing a settled wisdom. I believe this is the conscience that wishes to be free of all madness, that manifests a singleness of being and self that is deeply desired and is the only conscience that can create this without forging an artificial identity for the sake of ease of being. I think although it is ok to be deeply ignorant, and to be mad and possessed by lust for the matrix of conditioned being, but we do not in our heart of hearts wish this. We wish to be wholly free and wholly ourselves consciously right now.  

July 31st

 I have been running a lot. Basically every day since the very end of June. Ran 6 miles yesterday and 6 again today. Spend time on google maps looking at some of the routes I can take. I have been doing well. Despite parts of my post yesterday. I do feel those heavy things, but I still am doing well. I have so much to be thankful for. I have been eating well and cooking a lot, been more in touch with myself. Allowing myself to relax a lot. Feeling a lot of good vibes. Learning a lot, even if it may not be exactly what I want to be learning. Excited and anxious to move forward. Opening up a lot, eager to solidify a lot of my movements. and expand upon them and deepen them. Wish I had more time tonight. Tomorrow's another day. Another run. I think tomorrow I want more quiet time, more reflective time if possible. Interesting to see what happens to my body and my energy with all this running. Alrighty. gonna go chill before sleep. Peace out. Goodbye July, hello August. 

Hello

 sending this out from the deep into the deep. Been  working on pulling my head out of the sand. Again. Lol. What a strange disorienting decade it has been. Coming out of a cloud of chaos after falling from being poised on true liberation. Somehow falling. Regaining consciousness, regaining myself, in new shades and definition. Questioning nearly everything again. Daily battling fears, or quite not battling them...more of me is detached from all of this. Looking for that lightening edge of being and life, that glorious sunshine that breaks through and banishes the festering storm. Looking for my creative space, to continue my unparalleled joy of light-weaving. Looking for a center there. Graciously gelling with many aspects of my being. Finding much to work with. Patience. Patience. Patience. Wanting to master everything. To deepen in energetic unity and cohesiveness. To consciously create all of my life with an unfloundering inner vision. To rise above fear and doubt through conscience and being. Conscientious being. To realize my true power. To see clearly how to do this. 

I am still afraid. After all this work, and all this time. I still live in fear. I guess I don't know what to do about it except endure it and go with the flow. It does help and it has. I guess part of it is that my great passion creates this anguish that makes me give up and become cold and distant. This is likewise created because I am tired and see and calculate that this will take time, so I turn off parts of myself that are apart of my joy. While I may be focused, cold, and distant part of me refuses to give up my feelings and my other desires. My will to be this way. It resists and depresses and cries out. Damn. This is the clearest I've seen it in like half a year. It just wants to live and to be well, to be open and flowing and free to be itself. It seems to have been hurt many times by it's naivety. Which is why it is often carefully tucked away. It has been so upset that it has appeared like a very dense and intensely energetic storm contained by an etheric forcefield of fear and tyrant dominance. That I haven't been able to touch. That has pushed me away in pain and terror. It itself is a swelling and violent tearing pain in my soul. One that has been dominating my life. It has been whipped into shape over time and transmuted into more positive and workable forces. This makes me wonder what is at the heart of it. What is being contained by this field. My hunch is that it is something that is the most at the core of my being. Perhaps where I left of before my energy was compromised. It's not like I haven't wanted to get to it, it just has seemed impossible to. 

I have been hurting so much and I haven't been expressing it for a while. Not consciously. I have been afraid of listening to my pain. Afraid it would overwhelm me. The thing is i am so fucking tired of all this ceaseless work. Fearing for my life, fearing I will hurt others. Feeling guilt over my relationships and how I treat those close to me. Nothing bad really happens, it is just what I am not doing. And what I fear I am not doing that I need to be doing. I just want to get all of these feeling straightened out so I can see clearly how I feel and how I am. I think this will make my life a lot easier. I just feel like I can't do it. Like there is way to much to do. And all i can do is heave this huge cart around and pick it apart little by little. But I don't want to do this. i want to figure it out NOW. I don't want to wait any longer. I want to be myself . I want to be free. I just don't feel like I can overcome this fear all at once. Maybe i can and I am just pushing what I am afraid to do down the line. Procrastinating rather than truly being incapable. Incapable of facing what truths I am afraid of. I feel like this is the case, at least partially. I think this is why I am so frustrated with myself. Because I know what I need to do, I am just not doing it. The part that knows, gets impatient and pissed off, then impulsive and reckless. It just wants to move on. These two push in two different directions and I am in the middle suffering and at a loss of what to do. I need to be able to face these fears and calm myself down enough to do so. 

What am I afraid of facing. What do i know that I need to face to move forward. What wisdom lies here that I am not utilizing that I can.  Do I know anything? What do I need to face? What do I need to see? What do i need to feel? What do I need to be? 

There's all the karma that I can push back temporarily, but then it resurfaces and I fall into fear again. Is there some kind of mechanism I can use to kick this all out of the way now? Have I done enough that I can do this? Can I just walk away from all of these problems? Can I just be done with them forever? It's like in my fear I hold them close, it's really awful. I keep them close so I know that they won't sneak up on me or something. It's like I remain in fear so I don't have to be afraid. Which sounds completely insane. If I am always in fear then I won't have to face this. This is how I feel. If I stay afraid, I will never have to look at what is really there. What the fuck is there? What's waiting for me behind the corner? What's going to attack me? I hold on to all these fears so I don't have to face this. So I don't have to stop and face this. All bottled up, all the time. I want to be done with it but I don't know how. I get these little wiffs of freedom and then I am suffocated by fear and despair. My mind is dull and blank and useless. What the fuck am I supposed to do? It's just fucking blank. Probably out of terror and mental illness. I want it to heal but I am afraid of it healing because I am afraid it will destroy me when as I get healthy. Because every time I do heal, it does fuck me up again. It's fucking crazy. I just feel totally at a loss. The last time, the energy I was getting was totally like letting the ego die in a beautiful genuine way. And then I get fucking crushed. I mean wtf. The feelings I had were like, this is all over, all this crazy shit is finally fucking over...wtf. This world is a god damn nightmare. It feels like God is doing this on purpose, like fucking make me insane on purpose, and I am just supposed to follow this. I  mean wtf. It's fucking crazy. This is what my feelings tell me. Fucking ridiculous. I honestly don't know what the fuck to do. I don't know what to fucking do. I just want to be free. I just want to be done with all of this. It's such a fucking joke. I'm so goddamn tired. So tired of trying. So tired of being lost. So tired of being misdirected and confused by my feelings. I just want a way out. A clear way out that I can follow and depend on. Something that works. Something I can do. I just want to be done with this goddamn mess. 

I'm so fucking tired. Jesus Christ. So god damn tired. I often just can't see. Like I can't see and don't see anything. There's just nothing going on. Just pauses that take up months. I don't have anything to say and I wonder if I don't feel anything, or if I am anyone or anything. I feel kind of trapped. Oppressed. Not really here. Not here at all. I wonder how real any of this is. I watch people living there lives and they don't seem to be doing anything. Like there entire life isn't real. Like they aren't even there. I just look and watch. talk talk talk. No substance, all dream. No being, no presence, just endless chatter and noise. It's like how much of you are real? Is any of you real? You are completely immersed in this fiction to the point where I don't see anything happening. No one present. Fully immersed in the mask. I think I am starting not to care. Not care at all what happens to anyone. Because no one is here. Or they are only here if I am here. When I am not here, they don't exist. Not even as fragments. They only have being in my being, which I can only see when I am present. Then I see myself coiled up within myself. Little sparks of divine consciousness waiting to leap into superconsciousness. Into being. Into self-awareness. Who knows, hard to say. I remember when I felt truly awake and I was talking to people. They didn't seem to be awake. Not at all. Like a little bit, but not really. Kind of awake. I don't really know though. Not now at least. I remember looking at someone and maybe seeing that they were awake, but didn't realize it. That someone was there, but maybe they didn't see who they really were. They just saw a part of themself. But they were there. They were present. And I think it was me who was there. Wow. They were immersed in the matrix of conditioned being pretty completely. It was a marvel to see. But they were still there. Ha. I think it's almost over. I think I am almost done with this.

Alrighty folks. Adios. 

Day Day Day

 Had some really cool writing today. Sometimes the flow is just like candy. The sky opens up to Merlin and he studies the geometry of the heavens. Especially when I get to sit on the dock in the sun. It's like time has stopped and I'm doing exactly what I am here to be doing and I am completely immersed in the experience of inspired writing. Man, I didn't know life could feel so good. How I long to know more. It is just nice to have a really good tool for looking at how things are after spending so much time in uncertainty and unknowing. We may not be able to figure everything out, but we can sure figure a lot out in a really intelligent way

I am slowly regaining the magical consciousness I attained over last summer, fall, and winter. It has been a trip these last four months and it still is now. I sort of lost control of my life and have been going on auto pilot for a while. Over the last few days, what I think is the beginning of control is waving into my life with such beauty and sublime majesty. Ha. Wizard lol. Awakening is such a deep and thorough process. So intimate. Seeing others as yourself, or as your neighbor as Jesus would put it. Through deep dharma turning towards loving and intimate relationships with friends and others. And just the power that makes this so and overcomes many obstacles. Life just keeps on giving to those who open themselves to it. You may be far away from what you see as good or great, but life will cross that distance with you, one step at a time.