shunted into trivialism

It was a Sunday. It was a Maureen Dowd column. It was a comment made. 

Camden, MaineJuly 15 

I’m continuously surprised how ineffective Congress, media, and populace are in the face of mental illness, egomania, and mortifyingly embarrassing words and behavior on the part of his excellency the president. 

I’d wager that by the end of his second term, in 2024, what we once knew as the United States of America will be a torn and shredded flag, burnt and smoldering, next to fallen citizen casualties of the second civil war fought defending the honor of the greatest president the world has ever seen. 

It is inevitable. Once law enforcement, justice department, the once free press, and anyone with a university education have been shunted aside — replaced by a 2nd amendment, big banker, and golf playing billionaire loving privileged minority — there will be a new type of rule in the US: Trivialism, wherein all things Trump are true, all things non-Trump are false. 

It’s a looming nightmare. I think I’ll have my warm glass of milk now.

What a curious delight to live in a country wherein such foolishness can be posted in The New York Times, however failed or failing it is said to be by the antagonist. 

god

is

not

yet...

coming

to be

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.

here

You are in our midst.

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.

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

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.

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

oh, that’s what he is saying

It’s in the spacing.

Breathing in 

I know 

I 

Am 

Breathing in 

Breathing out 

I know

I 

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

he’s not funny

It’s no longer funny — the crudity, bullying, lies and deceit, insane meetings with dictators and false outcomes.

Stop it.

Now.

return home to truth

Before enlightenment, men who lie.

On the day of his enlightenment, in front of the lecture hall, Tokusan burned to ashes his commentaries on the sutras. He said: “However abstruse the teachings are, in comparison with this enlightenment they are like a single hair to the great sky.  

However profound the complicated knowledge of the world, compared to this enlightenment it is like one drop of water to the great ocean.” Then he left the monastery.   -- The Gateless Gate (https://www.dailyzen.com/)

After enlightenment, men who lie.

Arjuna : 

Tell me of those who live in wisdom, Ever aware of the Self, O Krishna; How do they talk, how sit, how move about?    

Sri Krishna: 
They live in wisdom 
Who see themselves in all and all in them, 
Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed 
Every selfish desire and sense craving 
Tormenting the heart. Not agitated 
By grief or hankering after pleasure, 
They live free from lust and fear and anger. 
Fettered no more by selfish attachments, 
They are not elated by good fortune 
Nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers.  

Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, 
The wise can draw in their senses at will. 
Aspirants abstain from sense pleasures, 
But they still crave for them. These cravings all 
Disappear when they see the Lord of Love. 
For even of those who tread the path, 
The stormy senses can sweep off the mind. 
But they live in wisdom who subdue them 
And keep their minds ever absorbed in me
 https://www.bmcm.org/inspiration/passages/living-wisdom/

Those unwilling or incapable of finding true home in truth of non-separate interdependence and shared unity of love, choose the lie of the world — inequality, superiority, disdain for others, treating people, animals, themselves as objects to use and abuse.

Truth isn’t an option when convenient. It is the only thing real.

Abandon lies.

Return home to truth.

undermost

gone
gone

gone beyond
gone completely

beyond awakening —
no

one
going

on

adiutorium nostrum in nomine domini

Outside world
Chaotic

Inside world
Empty

Where God
Is

long view, a time will come

The current president of the United States is no longer interesting.

He will fade, whether by means of criminal liability or vamoosing out of town on a get-out-of-jail card.

America, though, will endure.

The corrections necessitated by his erroneous thinking and larcenous spirit will take place over time and after unnecessary pain inflicted on ordinary people.

But he, the man, will become a reference citation illustrating ineptitude and irrelevance as to forwarding the spirit of justice and proud citizenship in a once proud and authentically patriotic land become a wounded country.

His brand of posturing and pretentious puffery stuffed by pretend-patriotism will flush away.

He will be forgotten.

America will recover.

Independence Day, July 4th, will be celebrated again without his insincere and worrisome presence as celebrity-in-chief monopolizing the news and embarrassing those intent on living lovingly with others.

trees

Let’s not talk about abuses.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (—from, Declaration of Independence: A Transcription)

Nor worrisome individuals.

The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.(Preamble to the Bill of Rights)

Let’s not despair over lies and truculent showboating.

Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption! (6/28/18, @realDonaldTrump, Twitter)

Rather, consider poetry. A poem by Christian Wiman.

From A Window        

          (—poem by Christian Wiman)

Incurable and unbelieving

in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree

rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.

I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get

to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined

or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion

beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.

Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood

exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)

and though a man's mind might endow

even a tree with some excess

of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men. 
And that is where the joy came in. 

my contemplation will be this diet

Feast of Thomas.

St. Thomas, (born, probably Galilee—died 53 CE, Madras, India; Western feast day December 21, feast day in Roman and Syrian Catholic churches July 3, in the Greek church October 6), one of the Twelve Apostles. His name in Aramaic (Teʾoma) and Greek (Didymos) means “twin”; John 11:16 identifies him as “Thomas, called the Twin.” He is called Judas Thomas (i.e., Judas the Twin) by the Syrians.(--Encyclopaedia Britannica), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas

The Sayings presented by him are intriguing and koan-esque.

21 Mary said to Jesus, "What are your disciples like?" 

He said, They are like little children living in a field that is not theirs. when the owners of the field come, they will say, "Give us back our field." They take off their clothes in front of them in order to give it back to them, and they return their field to them. For this reason I say, if the owners of a house know that a thief is coming, they will be on guard before the thief arrives and will not let the thief break into their house (their domain) and steal their possessions. As for you, then, be on guard against the world. Prepare yourselves with great strength, so the robbers can't find a way to get to you, for the trouble you expect will come. Let there be among you a person who understands. When the crop ripened, he came quickly carrying a sickle and harvested it. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen! 

22 Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) domain." 

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) domain as babies?" 

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the (Father's) domain]." 

(--Frontline, From Jesus to Christ, Gospel of Thomas)    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/gthomas.html 

As I grow older and nearer cessation of present form, I suspect there will be a transformation into present emptiness. The enigmas and koans will no longer need the ego commentary of keepers of the mysteries or masters of the practice.

Rather, things will merely be themselves. Without commentary. Without exegesis. Without obeisance.  Without deference. Without miasma of celebrity. Without strut or swagger of being somebody.

As itself, what is will simply be itself.

As themselves, things will owe nothing to nobody, nor be owned by anybody.

The world has become far too occupied by inhospitality and instrumentality. The zombie-esque movement toward bland possession and cold pronouncement of self-promotion is confusing, especially at a time when anatta (the "no-soul or no-self doctrine" of Buddhism.) and kenosis (In Christian theology, kenosis (Greek: κένωσις, kénōsis, lit. [the act of emptying]) is the 'self-emptying' of Jesus' own will and becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will. The word ἐκένωσεν (ekénōsen) is used in Philippians 2:7, "[Jesus] made himself nothing ...") (--Wikipedia)  are inviting us desperately toward something more real, caring, engagingly mysterious, and meaningful.

I'll take my meditation here:

4 Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one." 

5 Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that won't be revealed." 

6 His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?" 

Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."   (--Ibid) 

 My contemplation will be this diet.

2 Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will rule over all." (--Thomas)

one other way

If the universe had no beginning, there is no creator.

If there is no creator, then no need for a god.

If no god, then creation itself is what we would have called god .

What do I think? I think god is creation.

One way or the other.

in with

if

God is love

what are you

in love with