I have a view of pristine forest and a vast oceanic expanse. The sunsets are red, marvelous, uplifting, Divine! The house is open air – no windows where the view is just wood to stand on and half a wall dividing the living room from the bedroom. Outside is a garden filled with little pineapple bushes (did you know pineapple grows on bushes?), bamboo, papaya trees and other herbs and plants. There is also a coconut opening station!

All this has proved to me once and for all that wherever you go, there you are! Can you believe I feel restless when I lay on the hammock? Can you believe that I walk around looking for something to distract myself from myself? Chocolate, watermelon, tobacco, Maya, TV, anything to not experience the noise, mental badgering and self dialog that is constantly on rampage inside.

It is similar to a silent retreat in that way. You get to really see what is going on inside. The actual answer to, ‘why am I not happy?’ At least at retreats there is structure. The mind likes structure. It knows what it is doing next and it’s at least quiet on that front. Here it is just me. Me and nothing. No direction, no need for anything, no chore to do. What is so scary about that anyway?!

 

So I decided to blog.

I am writing. I am writing to tell a story, but not a short one. Though it
will be told in short. I will tell a story about a market. The market is
closed but it is adorned with decorations meant for a celebration that will
never happen. The owner of the market is a great supporter of the current
nominee for mayor of this small town. They have been friends since they
were five years old when their town was a small fishing village without a
white person in sight. Today it is a haven for sex-tourism and the violence
and drugs that go with it.

His mother told him that after helping his father with picking hooks from
his nets he met another boy doing something similar. The families, though
living in the same small town for a long time, never connected. There was
distance due to some ancient feud nobody really knew or cared about. The
boys connected and the families very easily forgot about any inherited
distrust.

They chose different paths - business vs. politics. Of course one
necessarily involves knowing much about the other, especially when one is
successful. Their relationship and success complemented their friendship.
The market supported the nominee’s desire for change. The market wanted
freedom from power thieving paid off clerks and so did the candidate. They
all thought something could be changed.

John F. Kennedy said that when you don’t listen to words of protest you make
violent protest necessary. Violent protest was about to become something
seriously considered by the members of this community. Indeed considered by
members of many surrounding communities. This is how civil war begins. But
it hasn’t yet. There is still some hope and not enough despair. People have
things they care about and need to protect. Rebellion is born of despair and
knowing that what you can lose is so much smaller than what you could gain.

Just so in spiritual awakening. Awakening is more about rebellion than
anything. It is about overthrowing the burdenous lust of the mind and ego
into freedom. When you have tried everything polite society has to offer and
still you’ve been tricked and the election was rigged. When drug lords have
paid off the police in your head so that the hooker inside of you who is
needing her cocaine is willing to sell herself for a moment of safety and
some bread and water.

Celebration at the market was squashed. People were shot. Nominees and
owners alike fled. They told the people to be calm and stay at home. There
is a time to live and a time to fight oppression. In the world that is. The
Middle Path is not in the world. Peace is not created by a sense of
separation. Peace is created when people come together and learn and heal.
It is true that in the end it is not the fight that solves things. It is the
dialog, seeing into the mirror, dying in your opinion to merge with all
points of view. Love. Acting with love. Empires collapse when your actions
are from love. You might die. You may not be successful and you may not
overthrow anything but you will have learned something eternal. And in the
long run of human history you will have made more of an impact on people’s
souls.

We fight with love, our oppressor is our lover. Our oppressor is the one who
is separate from us. It is our pain.

A desire to churn

To embolden

The tired.

The dreading.

The timid.

 

Spending time with

admiration. Left me angle –

Small dark corner to

the cobwebs.

 

Living leavened bread

from desert springs

not for all. Who by fire?

Who by boiling water? Who

by mass of crumbling ash?

Who to starve?

 

There is nothing new

under The Sun. Night and day

inspiring life in a pinpoint

of light. Marking Transition.

Where the gap

begins, where

it ends.

 

Not Earth and Fire and Water.

Not Air not Mind. They will betray

you all. Before the curtains draw.

Before the hero comes,

and after triumph.

 

Naked you came.

Naked you depart. The road

of excess leads

to the palace

of wisdom. And to the liberation

of the heart!

 

What is

Love when it washes

away blood flesh

bones when

shedding is bursting

quiet like moles

 

What is

love when it suckles

light for space

The Gardener my mother

my twin enamored

with what I’ve come

from me

 

What is

love when it livens

rooting nourishes grounding

catalyzes becoming cauldron

grail life-full

fountaining breath

because…

 

What is

love when it sitting

beside dying transitions with

always there kissing never

lonely always one always

alone            ?

 

 

 

Talking again… ten days of silence and talking again seems quite natural. But I have gotten a little overwhelmed. Needed to just sit in the shade for a while at the beach taking pictures of crabs.

 

It is cliché to say that love is always there... waiting, abiding, hanging out without notice of what is actually going on. But it is true when you experience it in the deep silence of your soul. It is the essence of ‘just being’. Romantic love? Nothing but a concept - but not in a bad way. In a liberating way! No need to expect that something other than what is will happen. Be it joy in your companion, desire, annoyance… whatever… no fear. And that is true with anything I guess.

 

Yes, anything… everywhere… when you unlock the garden of mystery inside and give yourself time for the mind to quiet down, you can discover what a true meeting is. When to people who know who they are smile at each other it is like a thousand mountains laughing, and my heart is still reverberating that gem. I don’t think it will ever have the need to stop.

 

The ego has so many ‘buts’ – really it is all it knows. It has tried to convince me that the ineffable and boundless wellspring inside of me is boring. Nice try…

 

So anyway… here I am… nothing to do… nowhere to go… I guess I’ll just welcome what so ever comes across my path with my full and undivided love and attention. Lol!

 

Thank you Universe!

Shakti as

a clay statue is

staring her arms

meet her hands

form a circle

at the base

her torso

emphasizing power of

Goddess

 

Her eyes are closed.

There is a woman

sitting with one foot

on a table, her fist

supporting her

forehead she rests

now alone

 

I don’t know The Goddess

she, like me, might dwell

in a sand box playing

with trucks

or am I still

only a child?

A blue lizard

 

is now gazing at

the tree Shakti

has rested

her weary bones upon.

I was sitting a few nights ago. We sit in silence every night as a community for 45 minutes. All seeking stopped. It was simple and yet, there was no making sense out of it. I suppose desire was still there but I wasn’t longing. The pain of longing was saturated with the knowing that what I was sitting on was god. Sometimes when this happens I can feel myself fight it.‘No!” I exclaim “I want fireworks!” But there was only that deep peace that comes from being filled with the nectar of the gods. I guess the grass is always greener to the thinking brain! LOL!

There are no trumpets when you enter the present moment.There is no meaning in you. the biggest block to this moment is the fear of annihilation or meaninglessness that come before what is silent. When there is only chair… bed… cushion… bush… creak… grass…there is no OMG involved – silence and life need not proclaim themselves to themselves.

 

In what is silent there is no I and yet there is also I. But it is an I that is friends with the bush outside your window, recognizing that it is the same life within – different branches of the same tree. You and the stars, you and the volcanoes of Hawaii – simply branches of the same tree!

 

Don’t expect any trumpets when you arrive. Expect the personality to defend itself by feeling bored! Follow your bliss… sure… but also follow you boredom. Until it leads you to your quiet. And in your quiet there is nothing to do and the memory of I simply fades in to nothing until only living love remains.

 

It is thinking’s job to protect the self – an evolutionary mechanism if you will. It protects us from dying by conditioning us to fear or love certain things causing pleasure or pain. It is an important mechanism of survival for the unconscious human. There are many ways to move beyond thinking.All the spiritual techniques that have been invented are essentially tools for this. Thinking continues to adapt to them – true to its purpose of protecting the self. Sometimes a technique we try brings us to a source of peace. We then spend our lives attempting to recreate this experience when thinking has already adapted and it is preventing the very peace you are seeking by attempting to grasp it and contain it.

 

Whatever practice we do doesn’t matter. What matters is our ability to shift our awareness and rest in the unknown. This unknown burns like a fire. We need to keep tending the fire in order to produce heat. We do this with our awareness of the unspoken/unspeaking. In meditation this is to rest in the knowing of who you are. The thinking brain protects the self by distracting awareness with fears and desires. Our task is simple. Remain aware of who you are (the pre-verbal experience not a definition) no matter what you are doing and where your attention rests. Have it be like an intuitive voice inside even when your thinking is grasping at heat as if it could contain it – even when your thinking is attempting to define what it is knowing. You need do nothing else. And eventually there will be nobody to even do that once the burning has lit the way.

The yellowing pages turn

eerily standing

between the oak and

the holly

 

Glazing some leaves

with sunlight God

has chosen

to let others sleep

a while longer.

 

I turn another yellow

page my great

grandparents in shades

of gray stare at me

solemnly

in Victorian outfits.

 

Thank you

I whisper

with the gentle breeze

of early morning.

 

Thank you for the light

that has passed on

generation to generation

 

In response the leaves

around me ruffle sunlight

dances with my smile.

The yellowing pages tremor

in my hands

Last night we had a short and touching ceremony to open the tenth season of pachamama. Beautiful songs and gratitude to Pacha Mama. We are all together with family.

 

Ceremony

 

Fire evolving

ashes as creak

into nothing

is given

a grain of existence

offered metaphor

for my being.

My very being.

All my being.

All this as children

dance with flowers

and grown-ups listen -

the music

tears of love