Saturday, July 14, 2018

entirety

 The whole of something.
“Origin,” according to Georg Feuerstein, is “the ever-present reality . . . by nature divine and spiritual” out of which the different structurations of consciousness unfold in space-time. 5 It is atemporal and nonspatial, existing outside time and space—insofar as something nonspatial can be “outside.” The origin, for Gebser, is “before all time” and is the “entirety of the very beginning,” just as the present is “the entirety of everything temporal,” including “yesterday, today, tomorrow, and even the pre-temporal and timeless.” 6 It is “sheer presence,” a primal spiritual radiance whose luminosity is obscured by the lesser light of the consciousness structures that proceed from it. In this sense it is like the Pleroma mentioned earlier, which also exists outside of the created world, and is indeed the source and support of that world.
...
Gebser is saying something similar when he speaks of his consciousness structures “unfolding” out of origin. They are contained within it, in a state of “latency,” which Gebser calls the “demonstrable presence of the future,” a condition that is true of each of the consciousness structures that emerge: each exists in potential in the structure prior to it. For our lives as a whole this is a powerful insight: each of our tomorrows emerges from all of our todays. And, as a student of G. I. Gurdjieff once remarked, the whole point of “work on oneself” is to ensure that your tomorrow is not merely a repetition of today.
(—p.236, A Secret History of Consciousness, by Gary Lachman)
As in this room. A man sleeps. It is a room in a hospice house. Still, the entirety of him, his life, me, my life, is here unfolding out of origin.

Toward the end we sleep. Perhaps the body is tired. Or the spirit. Perhaps there’s not much more wanting to be seen. So we sleep.

Maybe the inner world is wanting to be seen. But how far into the darkness can we look? We close eyes. We leave our home, the one with closets, empty cans and containers, shirts on chairs wrinkling.

There’s a cap. The name of a country and a war that ended sixty five years ago. Camaflauge with gold lettering. There on the bed table beside white handled cup with cooled coffee.

Is it accurate to say that what is seen outside is what is available to be seen inside? Without metaphorical implication. But in the dark.

Origin as oneself?

As oneself, or, in itself. What we call the world — is it the temporary manifestation of invisible emptiness spurred by interested attentive care materializing to available consciousness?

All these things. Chairs and doors, lamps and floor, bird feeders squirrels cannot compromise.

We have no idea about God. Nor God, I surmise, any idea of us. Each a curiosity to the other.

It was a long time ago, he says a while ago. The hat like house cat doing that watching thing they do with diffident gaze.

Just one cup of coffee, just one sip, for the road.

Mourning dove outside patio door.

Friday, July 13, 2018

here

You are in our midst.

Thursday, July 12, 2018

what do you see

New translation for om mane padme hum: behold what is within without.

What we see outside is what we see inside.

The world is created every second — quick, what do you see?

If god is what is, and what is most real is what is within as source and energy, then, behold what is within, without.

The way we see the world is the way we see what is within us.

So Geraldine was right back in Flip Wilson’s day when she said “what you see is what you get.”

Inside is outside; outside is inside.

No inside, no outside.

Inside is inside outside; outside is outside inside.

Stop fracturing and fragmenting. 

Don’t try to fix what is not broken.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

nothing else to learn

In a hermitage there are two way of living: alone, or, alone with others.

I choose neither. I prefer leaving others alone.


Solitude means I am not you, nor you me. 


Each is itself.


If we understand this, there’s nothing else to learn

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

all things are impermanent, nothing endures

There's always Krishnamurti:
THIS MATTER OF CULTURE CHAPTER 17 
I DON'T KNOW IF on your walks you have noticed a long, narrow pool beside the river. Some fishermen must have dug it, and it is not connected with the river. The river is flowing steadily, deep and wide, but this pool is heavy with scum because it is not connected with the life of the river, and there are no fish in it. It is a stagnant pool, and the deep river, full of life and vitality, flows swiftly along. 
Now, don't you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool they stagnate, die; and this stagnation, this decay we call existence. That is, we all want a state of permanency; we want certain desires to last for ever, we want pleasures to have no end. We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, with our ambitions, our cultures, our fears, our gods, our various forms of worship, and there we die, letting life go by - that life which is impermanent, constantly changing, which is so swift, which has such enormous depths, such extraordinary vitality and beauty. 
Have you not noticed that if you sit quietly on the banks of the river you hear its song - the lapping of the water, the sound of the current going by? There is always a sense of movement, an extraordinary movement towards the wider and the deeper. But in the little pool there is no movement at all, its water is stagnant. And if you observe you will see that this is what most of us want: little stagnant pools of existence away from life. We say that our pool-existence is right, and we have invented a philosophy to justify it; we have developed social, political, economic and religious theories in support of it, and we don't want to be disturbed because, you see, what we are after is a sense of permanency. Do you know what it means to seek permanency? It means wanting the pleasurable to continue indefinitely and wanting that which is not pleasurable to end as quickly as possible. We want the name that we bear to be known and to continue through family through property. We want a sense of permanency in our relationships, in our activities, which means that we are seeking a lasting, continuous life in the stagnant pool; we don't want any real changes there, so we have built a society which guarantees us the permanency of property, of name, of fame. 
But you see, life is not like that at all; life is not permanent. Like the leaves that fall from a tree, all things are impermanent, nothing endures; there is always change and death. Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, how beautiful it is? All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness there is a poem, there is a song. Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring. When the spring comes it again fills the tree with the music of many leaves, which in due season fall and are blown away; and that is the way of life.
(--from, Think on These Things, by J. Krishnamurti)
http://jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1963-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-think-on-these-things-chapter-17 

on somebody’s acreage

When religion changed from pure faith to reasoned consideration angels went from apparition to intuitive feel.

I admit that there is more going on in the heavens and on earth than is contained in our philosophies.

What is it that is invisible? What about the inaudible? The unborn? What is it that resides in dimensions inaccessible to our sensory or rational capabilities?

Where are those who’ve died?
To know what you know 
And to know 
What you don’t know, 
That is real wisdom.                                                                                                                    
                      —Confucius 
 When the lawn (such as it is) is cut and the day is new we wake to the sounds of morning movements in trees, on roads, in air, along ground. There is something about the inchoate that feels full of resurrected heart.

Fear falls from facade into freedom. The world presents itself as fresh possibility. We awake to new rotation of cosmos.

In the news a name is proposed for Supreme Court. Who knows what might emerge? Political strategists predict this and that. But, really, who knows?

Yes it is July. I bow to mother’s recent birthday. She has been out of view for thirty seven years. What do I know? On wall images of man out of view for nearly two thousand years and woman two years ago. Saturday evening I sat with woman whose breath is making fewer and fewer visits to her body.

September

       By Joanne Kyger


              The grasses are light brown
              and the ocean comes in
              long shimmering lines
              under the fleet from last night
              which dozes now in the early morning

Here and there horses graze
              on somebody’s acreage

                               Strangely, it was not my desire

that bade me speak in church to be released
         but memory of the way it used to be in
careless and exotic play

               when characters were promises
      then recognitions.  The world of transformation
is real and not real but trusting.

                            Enough of these lessons?  I mean
didactic phrases to take you in and out of
love’s mysterious bonds?

                      Well I myself am not myself

           and which power of survival I speak
for is not made of houses.

          It is inner luxury, of golden figures
that breathe like mountains do
            and whose skin is made dusky by stars.

(--Joanne Kyger, “September” from About Now: Collected Poems)

Truth be told, I no longer believe I am where I am.

Nowhere seems more plausible.

Monday, July 09, 2018

seeing through presence into Presence.

It occurs that it is not ok not to know what is taking place in the world we live in. Not ok the intentional diffidence toward dangerous behavior is a viable method of self-protection. Not ok that transcendent consciousness trumps ordinary awareness of things as they are.

We read about some aspects of the hermetic tradition at practice last nite.

Someone must remain connected to the source, someone else must be connected to the reception of source material. It is the reciprocality of teacher and student that invites what is true to flow through and across the landscape of knowing beyond knowing.

The river. The river flows briskly. We step in it. And again. Different river, different foot. The never-static arrival and passing of what can be known only by not-knowing what is passing through us and by us with an uncalculating attentive presence.

America today is not merely anti-intellectual. It is intentionally obtuse. Intentionally expedient toward self-satisfaction.

What most call “self” is the gratifying accession of desire and opinion intent on clamping down on some mordant denial of reality inconvenient to self image or self aggrandizement, and holding it as gospel truth against any opposing conception. Perhaps this has relevance to the abortion debate. Holding as sacred what we conceive as true versus allowing the holy to pass through and move on.

It occurs we are less and less aware of what swims in this river of swift truth. Our tempo is slow and without method. We abjure Jazz.

We understand the sound of lawnmower.

Of tires rolling on roadway.

Jet roaring far above.

Anything that transports us between point A and ... point A.

There is no Z in out gazetteer.

No gaze, no travel.

Rooted. Fixed.

Unmoving.

While expedient hucksters sharpen knives to carve from bone the flesh we thought would protect us.

“Nice,” the woman said, “no longer applies.”

It is time to fashion fierce freedom from passive numbness and untoggle that which longs to accompany us tumbling tumultuously to depth of disappearance through what is not into that which (truly) is — through presence into Presence.

Imagine, Peter Kingsley seems to suggest, giving up being children and becoming true men and women! http://peterkingsley.org/wp-content/uploads/Knowing.pdf

Sunday, July 08, 2018

oh, that’s what he is saying

It’s in the spacing.

Breathing in 
I know 
Am 
Breathing in 

Breathing out 
I know
Am 
Breathing out 
               (after Thich Nhat Hanh Gatha)

It’s in the worded cor-respondence

as white and black cat walks in room

There’s a simplicity

Sitting with dying person —

Aphasiac presence

Nowhere no one else