for, with, as

In the beginning we do things for others. Our behavior is for an outcome. There's a purpose for our lives.

In the middle we do things with others. Our behavior is with others, in community, relationship, we are part of something.

Toward the now we do things as the things we do. Our behavior is as the other. A non-duality enters our movement which comprehends unity and non-differentiation.

For.

With.

As.

Psychologically and spiritually we move from fixed-other, through relationality, to non-dual intersubjectivity wherein each thing and action is Itself and you are not other than Itself.

One is the other. Everything is in everything. Loving neighbor as yourself is the beginning of wisdom.

In the beginning fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom.

In the middle correct relationship with Christ was the beginning of wisdom.

Now the moment and movement of realized convergent isomorphic union, beyond separative pairing, is the Holy Spirit or spirit of holiness, which is the beginning of wisdom.

Finally and ultimately -- All in one, One in all, As one as all.

she remains herself and infinite.

We don’t know who we are. We talk about it, sometimes, with therapist or confidant. We plumb the psychological corners of awareness. But we don’t know. And that is our sanity.

If we did know, nothing would come of it. And we are not prepared for nothing.

But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth: 

The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun. 

In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house 

The vanity of our shut mortal mind 

Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours; 

But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;  

Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie. 

In our hypnosis by one luminous point 

We see not what small figure of her we hold; 

We feel not her inspiring boundlessness, 

We share not her immortal liberty. 

Thus is it even with the seer and sage; 

For still the human limits the divine: 

Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight, 

Breathe her divine illimitable air, 

Her simple vast supremacy confess, 

Dare to surrender to her absolute. 

Then the Unmanifest reflects his form 

In the still mind as in a living glass; 

The timeless Ray descends into our hearts 

And we are rapt into eternity. 

For Truth is wider, greater than her forms. 

A thousand icons they have made of her 

And find her in the idols they adore; 

But she remains herself and infinite.  

(--End of Canto Eleven, Book Two, Savitria Legend and a Symbol, by Sri Aurobindo                                                          http://heartfull.life/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/10/33-34Savitri.pdf

Truth is nothing but itself.

Itself is nothing but what we have called ‘God.’

God is nothing but God.

And nothing else.

When we ’try to find ourselves’ we are on a quest that will (if we are lucky or graced) end up with nothing, maybe nothing special.

And if we are really fortunate we will drink c-boast orange juice mixed with blackberry juice from a Laurie Adams mug on a rainy morning in Maine after learning she died three weeks ago, a candle lighted for her in Wohnküche, with our prayers and our gratitude for her.

concession of no great value

Haiku 

    (for the drenched)

drip drip drip drip drip,

how do we handle these leaks --

after storm, sop up

neither seek nor avoid, take what comes

Someone brings Vivekananda's words visiting hermitage yesterday:

My Master used to say, "All is God; but tiger-God is to be shunned. All water is water; but we avoid dirty water for drinking. 

"The whole sky is the censer of God, and sun and moon are the lamps. What temple is needed? All eyes are Thine, yet Thou hast not an eye; all hands are Thine; yet Thou hast not a hand. 

Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing; do not merely endure, be unattached. Remember the story of the bull. A mosquito sat long on the horn of a certain bull. Then his conscience troubled him, and he said, "Mr. Bull, I have been sitting here a long time, perhaps I annoy you. I am sorry, I will go away." But the bull replied, "Oh no, not at all! Bring your whole family and live on my horn; what can you do to me?" https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_7/Inspired_Talks/Tuesday,_June_25

In olden journals brief stories in China and Japan of hermits visiting one another amid dusty recounting of insects and birds, clouds and tree branches. They leave poems. They carry walking sticks. They watch and gaze and contemplate and meditate their environment with jottings of sounds and appearances.

One such wanderer stops by hermitage yesterday to drop off books and walk the space between buildings, to converse and share what is being learned.

Amidst physics and Upanishads, mind and mythologies is where we travel. Some would want us to think the metaphors that guide us are money and power, gain and manipulation, grab and go.

I prefer the old metaphors. Monastics and mendicants, pilgrims and sadhus, mystics and poets, sunyassins and idiorhythmics -- these resonate the typology of visitor and visitee.

A few minutes spent in chapel/zendo frames the whole day. The final refrains of compline at bedtime surrounds the whole night.

We make salt covenants with each other. 

In Numbers 18:19 2 Chronicles 13:5, a "covenant of salt" is mentioned (compare Mark 9:49). This custom of pledging friendship or confirming a compact by eating food containing salt is still retained among Arabic-speaking people. The Arabic word for "salt" and for a "compact" or "treaty" is the same. Doughty in his travels in Arabia appealed more than once to the superstitious belief of the Arabs in the "salt covenant," to save his life. Once an Arab has received in his tent even his worst enemy and has eaten salt (food) with him, he is bound to protect his guest as long as he remains. http://bibleapps.com/s/salt.htm

We watch each other arrive and depart.

We are dulas and hospice attendees.

We are nascent metaphors awaiting pronouncing.

aspetta e vedrai!

Alive

We move forward

Into God-

Alone

Knows what

1Praise the Lord, my soul.

Lord my God, you are very great;

you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

2The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;

he stretches out the heavens like a tent

3and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.

He makes the clouds his chariot

and rides on the wings of the wind.

4He makes winds his messengers,^a

flames of fire his servants.

(--from Psalm 104)

wait and see! (aspetta e vedrai!)

cheerful proleptic engagement

In the dream I visit Franciscan community and seem to be reconnoitering an old connection with faces and names from 50+ years ago. Some thought I was returning. An exoteric explanation. It was a telling encounter with uncertain intent yielding cheerful narration and heartfelt association. There was a meaningful proleptic quality to the engagement.

I await cantor of nature's cloister to sound invitatory for matins.

At times reboot is rejuvenation. So it is this morning.

I am young man called to seraphic charism. Something deep within responds and like breeze -- ah there she is, mourning Dove, at 4:09am, as also wafts up the acrid smell of either skunk or skunked animal from dooryard. Perhaps the yearly perigrination of old and large mottled animal (is it porcupine or raccoon?) is orbiting through this quadrant of space with comet tail of every stench of accumulated encounter it has had attached.

Such are memories and such are proleptics!

Full choral antiphonal is afoot. Cat on alert vigil at yawning window assays perimeter for the interloping alien. She settles to at-ease haunching down on windowsill.

Patrol through downstairs with flashlight is back in room. Tracking systems go offline. Dawn gives shape to leaf and branch.

At Sunday Evening Practice we read from artist's talk from Connecticut State gallery about connection, integration, and astonishment. William Blake's words are read a few times:

Eternity  

           William Blake, 1757 - 1827 

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

Each beginning day is its own feast. Nature honors its own. We humans are only audience.

From mountain the yelping of several...what?... coyotes?  They could have been the passing poignancy. From trees through breeze straggling refrains and soloing song haphazard praise in ideorhythmy.

First car passes at 5:02am.

Let David have last word:

19He made the moon to mark the seasons,

and the sun knows when to go down.

20You bring darkness, it becomes night,

and all the beasts of the forest prowl.

21The lions roar for their prey

and seek their food from God.

22The sun rises, and they steal away;

they return and lie down in their dens.

23Then people go out to their work,

to their labor until evening.

(--from Psalm 104)

there is no dream to wake from

I come to understand the antipathy others held toward all things president 44 Obama. It arises with a similar antipathy toward 45, Obama's successor. The current president, every inch an anomalous and antipathetic outlier to traditional presidential expectations, represents, in a blatant manner, himself, his wealth, businesses, his familial nepotism, and characterologically disproportional solipsism.

One is reminded
Of every street bully
And arrogant narcissist
Privilege-dripping bore
Ever met in childhood city
Or in dark dreams

And I've come to understand that he is, actually, the president of these United States. No use in wishing it away.

There is anger.

There is fear.

There is disbelief.

There is governmental impotence. There are useless elected representatives. There is a right wing court emerging. There may likely be military on the streets should opposition find its feet. There is, many say, a very dark time coming under such dark leadership.

Fatigue Performance
       -by Noah Falck 

Tonight the wind is in your voice. 

And the gods are nervous 

about the drinking water. 

Someone hijacks the background 

with three simple dance moves. 

Or maybe the clouds 

paused on the television 

set during a ball game. 

The silence insidethe photograph 

of you eating alone 

in an old yearbook. 

This is going to be over 

before you know it. 

But not before your hands 

become small birdsin celebration 

of the present snow. 

An expressed panic 

attack of harmonics. 

It’s like listening to your heartbeat 

in a club, all the lights off, 

all by yourself. 

(2017 by Noah Falck. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 11, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.)

Suffering is a means to holiness (some say) when not made other, when held as intimate reminder that another's life is not separate from your life. 

This is a suffering time!