Tuesday, August 30, 2005

So our heroine Chloe is well situated in Australia. Cairns actually. Hint: Look to the North/East quadrant.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/australasia/australia/australia.htm

Apparently the wild one has gone and died (oops that's dyed) her hair a mahogany color. Trying to get in touch with her Kali I surmise.

After a series of foiled attempts, I managed to get ahold of her on the phone. I thought I was super slick. I had found a Call Australia for 2.5 cents/minute deal. Turns out it only works on a landlines, not cell phones. Fiddle-sticks. My $10 deposit was gone in like 10 minutes. The rates for cell phone calls are in the 18-20 cents/minute range. Plus no computer for her, so no Skyping.

Worse there is that crappy voice delay, where you keep answering the other one's earlier question as they are waiting for you to answer the question they just asked. And Vice Versa. Then silence because no one knows when to talk. She made me laugh by adopting a trucker-dialogue tone: How are you parents, Over?

I love her to pieces. I would not advise following the CJ-Chloe model of relationship. It would be something like the following:

Live down the street from one another for the first 5 months of relationship. She would put the children (she was a nanny) to bed and then come over. We would eat or she would try to seduce me away from work (not hard incidentally), watch a film. It was a good test-run of the real thing.

Then lose your job (through no fault of your own), lose your ability to live in her country, and be shipped back to the USA. Spend a month in a monastery trying to get your head straight, fly back out there for a week visit, have a huge argument and for a short time put the relationship on hold. Have her bounce back, reunite (over the phone and email), have her come visit your family in July for a week, then she ships off to the Outback for a year.

You look for engagment rings in the meantime. I happen to like the following:
http://www.antiquejewelrymall.com/aqfilrinin141.html (Readers...all 3 of you: Any thoughts?)

Then plan to go see her in Thailand in April. Attempt to engineer a move to graduate in Toronto from Ohio, get a Student VISA, or otherwise begin the process of a Fiance Visa (called a K-1) wherein we would have 90 days to get married from the date of her entry into our great land.

Meanwhile, you don't have a job, are spending your days writing like mad, test-taking GRE prep, and sending out notes for applications to schools, reference letters, and scholarship opportunities.

Meanwhile you finally get interested in the whole I actually have someway to afford all of this--so you begin money visualizations, affirmations, and that whole scene. Why not, what the hell have I got to lose? You cork board is now peppered with such request for aid from the Great Beyond.

And then meanwhile she may get a job at a restaurant where she has to wear a short-fitting Catholic school girl outfit. I don't know which thought is worse: thinking of all those dudes drooling over her or how jealous I am that I won't be there for it. As a bona fide Catholic school boy I know the deep, archetypal resonance such clothing calls forth.

She's not the typical future clergyman's wife.

So the summary version: Stay together for 2 years, but only in the same city (hell country or even continent) for 6 months of it.

But wildness aside, or alongside, she is the sweetest being. She brings such light into the lives she touches. She knows how to say just the right thing--to annoy, calm, strengthen, heal, and intensify. She knows how to burst my egoic bubbles with the slightest bodily or tonal gesture.

The only thing I can say for the Chris-Chloe Model of Relationship: You get to fall in love over and over and over again. It's crazy. Each time its deeper. The Distance forces the couple to learn very early how to communicate. Or the enterprise is headed for doom.

At this point it isn't even a "she makes me feel so good" kinda Love--although that's true enough. It's a slow-burning, deeply passionate. It just radiates. When I hone in on it, I can actually feel my face start to emit heat. All of these distractions and difficulties of distance, time differences, schedules, global communication rackets, governmental statues, and the like, are a pain no doubt. But when we do manage to simply hear each other's voice, even for 5 minutes, it is the feeling of home. It's like there is so much to say, we don't really say anything at all. On one level there is so much to discuss, but on another there isn't a thing to say. We just look at each other, or hear the other's voice, and already know.

She is an amazing creature. The Good Lord, has nothing, if not a damn fine sense of humor.

I didn't know it was possible to connect with another human in this way. I hoped; I imagined what it might be like; I theorized. Funny too, all the imaginary scenes, the authentic ones anyway, actually are met--and more--just never in the way I expected them to.

I've got a good deal on my plate right now: the travel plans, the ring, applying to grad school, getting a job, finishing this book, the Yoga of Finance.

Since this partial awakening at the Dzogchen Retreat, I found the momentum with which I deal with these things is changing. Becoming a joyous and peaceful (not always fun) engagement. Simple. On its own terms. Just becoming clearer in what I want, what is a legitimate request, how to ask for help.

The great gift I've experienced over this year is to taste life--however partially--without the searching. Without searching for anything beyond. Without the immediate categorizations, models, charts, and going on mental auto-pilot: have assessed the situation, how can it be improved, what is missing. Then never following through.

Now I feel a greater simplicity. Coming to terms with deep unconscious issues around healthy power, healthy boundaries, confidence, self-esteem, and trusting there is an infinite intelligence to this whole creative experiment, and that in some small way, I am it. I am an expression of that intelligence and it has a purpose and knows how to achieve its purpose.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Fabrezing The Stink of Dzogchen

Eventually working up to Deodorizing, then Disinfecting.

For now the Fabrezing.

Lethargy (why meditate after...., it'll just come back when I need it to....); arrogance (the ego claiming ownership, reifying a non-experience, turning into a something); false humility ("I" can't talk about "it" at all, "they" won't understand "me" the final temptation the Buddha--note the re-bifurcation by not speaking out); no desire for the relative.

In the moments of Dzogchen, True Meditation, Capital M (Meditation without Seeking), there is indescribable joy and ecstasy, overflowing in love for all the universe. Perfect, as it always already is.

A desire to sit on a mountaintop, beaming love to all beings, to disappear from worldly circles, never be heard from again.

This body though, this vehicle--this body IS the Desire to Communicate, it is a hand, open, meant for touching and being touched.

Talked to Craig tonight. He's going through some similar challenges that I went through a few months back. The depression, life plans falling apart, moving back with the folks, anger, shame, Gnostic desire to give Relativity the Finger. Yet moments of humor, silliness, working with the salt of the earth, simply enjoying.

He, like me, is adopted. We come back around to the topic pretty regularly. The Primal Wound its called. The existential terror and a deep pre-conscious level when all security (represented by the mother) is stripped. In fact the childling has yet to separate himself from the mother, and there is much evidence to suggest as a result, adopted children never quite form a psyche in the same way. Interesting question in relation to transcendence--what does it mean to transcend such an ego?

The Wound is both a backdrop to all other development, and yet also can be a chain preventing further growth.

If the Father represents Heaven, mythologically, and Mother, the Earth, then it is clear why we both struggle with living in the world, feel safer in Heaven. The Mother, The Earth, Relativity rejected us. A deep ambiguity results. A sorta vortex or unnameable emptiness--not shunyata but nothingness. It is not even really nihilistic, at least when I think nihilistic I think something that was there and is deconstructed. This adopted-void, Primal Wound is like nothing ever even happened. I can't think of a metaphor. All the other metaphors that come to mind are things like fallow fields, abandoned ghost towns, those are more nihilistic. This is like the garden never took shape, the city never even came into existence, much less to at a later time be neglected and forgotten.

I have been graced with the loss of much searching. The joy of the Moments of Nondual bring at least that. The desire to sit on the mountaintop and beam are not Gnostic. There is no feeling of the Evilness of the World and sinister self-congratulating glee at having transcended its fallen state. It is inherently loving, caring, joyful.

But it is still on the mountaintop, in the moments of rest. Still issues around joyful engagment. Span, relativity, collecting some disowned pesos, focusing on the Right Hemisphere of the Brain.

I declare this The Year of Translation. Of communion, heterarchy, embrace, inclusion. Chakras #3 and 5.

ABSOLUTE RELATEDNESS..."Avoiding Relationship?" That is now the inquiry for me.

For me, it is about learning to love Process, the Process of anything--writing a book, including hours of boring editing, rewriting, crafting--without wanting to skip over that to get to the good part...i.e. The Context (The Big Picture) and Content (The Facts).

Process, process, process.

The Processes of: reading body language and nonverbal communication; understanding CDs, money market funds, IRAs, life insurance policies (term not variable life); plowing the garden time and time again in the hot humid sun; writing an active, effective, transitional phrase.

The Joy in Process. Joyfully carrying the Cross. Letting go of the exclusive identity as the Mourner, the Old Soul, who has chosen to be a sacrifical lamb for all manifestation. Or joyfully embracing that vision itself.

That is my greatest point of vulnerability to God, to Existence, to myself, to people--joy in the Process. That is why Chloe attracts me so, is my better half. She does joy in the Process, in the Flow like no one else I've ever met. And even more, she pulls me in, she wants nothing more than for me to be in this Flow with her.

She is my Greatest Teacher when it comes to Process-Centric, Joyful Living.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Ze Pengwans

Saw the March of the Penguins the other night. Well done film. Very Euro. Had that whole Life Acquatic, Jacques Costeau, 1970s classroom feel about it--a little grainy, like an old school film strip.

Anyway, it was interesting on many levels. It was so fascinating to watch the audience identify with the Emperors (are female Emperor Penguins Empress Penguins? Are the babies Prince and Princess Penguins?). The Seals become "evil" for eating the poor penguins. Mother Nature is Cruel for sending her death-dealing frozen winds.

Still, however imperfectly, it occured to me that the audience identification might be part of the larger movement towards innate recognition and existence as The World Soul. The Penguins were so clearly endowed with s0-called "human" traits--e.g. love, misery, vengeance, arrogance and so forth. Better to see that humans are the Universe aware of itself thinking. Humans are, too, I gathered from the film, the Universe aware of itself Feeling, Emoting. Clearly the link is so obvious watching such a record of their exploits. It is just with us with are aware, self-reflexively so, of those thoughts and emotions. We can and do verbalize them, chew on them, analyze them (sometimes far too much).

One thing that is beautiful about nature is its simplicity. There is no tortured self-paralysis as with the human. The antelope simply rolls its eyes back as the lion's teeth tears through its flesh. There is a quiet dignity to the daily toll of life and death.

Or so it seems perhaps at first glance. Chimpanzees kill for fun. Kill their own. There is what Howard Bloom calls The Lucifer Principle--Thanatos, a Death-Instinct inherent in the Evolutionary Process. I've seen a mouse shake in death-gripped panic, sitting in the cage, waiting for the snake to strike.

They are all there, in degrees, from the bottom up.

Nevertheless, I observed a subtle shift in presence about societally. Documetaries are doing better and better, while the typical summer blockbuster fare grows more and more pathetic (I'm mean was Speilberg even trying with War of the Worlds?)

V.S. Naipul says the novel is effectively dead: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/books/review/07DONADIO.html

Then he wrote a couple more. That aside, point is the novel is/was a product, the symbol of the modern phenomenological move. The inner world of the inner self--who lives in an inner "private" room, with "private property", who records his/her thoughts in a "Private" Journal.

The postmodern "novel" or postmodern lit has been effectively suckass. Hollywood is losing its ability to craft stories (except for Hustle and Flow, well done). Rappas can't rap anymore. Except in Colombia. How many more old TV shows from the 50s and 60s can be cinemized? Or worse old movies re-hashed.

How would a piece of literature--call it a novel--quadarticize, depict the relative world of manifestation. Would the story be told from multiple perspectives of each character. How would those characters perspectives within the confines of the art form acknowledge and/or reinforce that those perspectives already come enmeshed in others. I mean how private can that world be, if the words in your private head are from a language you didn't invent?

Those forms must be transcended and included, otherwise they will continue to decline.

How to play and manipulate time and space with dead letters/sounds on a frozen canvas?

Mind drips,
While the hum of thought patterns
and ideation
gallop.

Emotional RPGs
and hand-helds,
Road side bombs of the psyche,
Left by the jihadist insurgency of the shadow.

The urge gurgling up,
All abroad
The "Express"-
Shun the rest.

Melting words,
Liquid world-
Spaces of the Inner Journey.

Supersymmetric they are,
Life and death

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Another day, another infinity.

Perspectives qua projections. Persjections.

Colon cancer screenings from the woman at church.
The Economics of Scarcity from relatives.
Lingering inherent suspicion of any other-ness (from anywhere in Middle America).

Perspectives of the Hes and Shes Who Must Not Be Named, Potters, and Dumbledores.

Good natured, visionary and realistic perspectives.

Rebels fighting Techne, The System, Oppression. Perspectives of radical social, political, material, psychological liberation.

Full sentences require subjects, verbs, objects--separated in time and space, only re-establishing the separate "I" sense.

How would communicate look, feel if it was Like THIS?

But that is too-One Sided. The One over the Many. Not Unity-in-and precisely AS The Diversity.

The body, this body, is nothing but the desire, my desire to communicate (Note: specificity, agency, ownership, and completeness the grammatical sentence).

A desire to lie with lovers, cry with the mourning, play with the cheerful, engage with the codebreakers, stabilize with the tradition keepers, harmonize with the peacemakers.

Room enough in this infinite Heart, both its frontal and rear spaces. The feeling of Love in the back of the Heart, peering through the Chest, a depth unimaginable before its awakening. a 360 degree heart.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Reb G

Listened to Marc Gafni last night on WIE Unbound (www.wie.org/unbound).

He explored the problem of evil, so-called. He was at his best when he related that the problem of evil was a self-justifying cry, the cry of the soul Awakened to its/his/hers/our evolutionary construct. To evolve Divinity--or Spirit insofar as Evolution is Spirit-in-Action. Spirit on the Manifest side of the Street.

His Kabbalistic renditions of Moses and Abraham were intense. He reaches his zenith when he compares two of Moses' meetings with God--at the Burning Bush and then later after his first failure at the court of Pharoah.

In the Burning Bush scene, God appoints Moses a task, which he declines, then is told he must do, and accepts. In the post-failure scene, Moses appoints God a task, which the Divine declines, and to which Moses gives no succor, to which God "must" accede.

It is this, reads the Zohar (the great work of Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism), that spells nonduality.

"Show me your ways" says Moses. Or Abraham questioning God as "he" seeks to destroy the city of sinners. Will you not do justice even if only 50 are righteous? 45?40?30?15? Even 10, say 5, 2 O Lord?

Gafni throws an interesting charge over to the Eastern crowd. He says, here (Moses questioning God) is the height of nonduality, and it's not "OMMM."

It's not quietistic in other words.

The so-called Western (better Abrahamic) religions [i.e. Judaism, Christianity, Islam...ask yourself how Western Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed were] have developed better technologies of the subtle, soul level.

The Eastern religions have better absorbed the Wisdom of Spirit, the Unmanifest both High Causal and Nondual.

The two strains have come back together to awaken Bhava Samadhi. Sahaj samadhi (traditional nonduality) plus the Soul. The Soul, Psychic Being, Authentic Self, call it whatever you want. The deepest part of our personhood, but after having realized The Transpersonal.

The Soul on the way up, as it were, is still constricted. On the Way Down it is the force of Co-Creative Evolution. The "We space", understanding the world of relativity, Desire to Participate in this Stream, but all from a Place of the Natural Great Perfection.

This is Wilber's great insight. There are those who have not realized the Emptiness and Groundless Ground of It all, who talk only of the Becoming, Authenticity, Evolutionary End of Things, showing their contraction, their un-freedom. On the opposite (Eastern and those influenced by exclusively Eastern practices except Bhakti Yoga) end, those who have deeply drunk of the Absolute Self, but no great movement in the realm of Becoming, Manifestation. More than the simple understanding of the Boddhisattva Vow to liberate all beings (from an Absolute Point of View).

The Nondual are marginalized within their own traditions--even in the East, though not as strongly as in the Abrahamic faiths. Either the Ascenders or Descenders triumph. Then even within the Nondual "Camp", the marginilization of the Evolutionary, Post-Metaphysical Nondual. Then even the further marginalization of those who accept, understand those formulations plus the Future of the Body, Siddhi, Ornamention/Charismata.

Discussed as mainly hypothetical in most of the traditions--the Glorification of the Flesh in Christianity, The Rainbow Body in Tibetan Buddhism, The (Full) 7th Stage of Life in Da, The Descent of Supermind in Aurobindo.

By any other name it smells of Bhava Samadhi. A new luminosity, not that of the Subtle. A new Luminosity, a new Fire, like Pentecost, burning down in the world of Beocming as Descent.

Like Fr. Bede's Vision--The Crucified Christ and the Black Madonna.

The Crucified Christ representing traditional nonduality (sahaj samadhi). "Being dead" to the world. N0 separate self, bodymind dropped. The Black Madonna. Burning, Black, Descent, Feminine Divine. While BEING CRUCIFIED. While Dead, on a mere personal level, to the Whole Fiery Process.

Not disappearing like the Sahaj mystic, into the ordinary-ness of the marketplace, in humility, ease, and simplicity. Even more radical--disappearing as you burn. In Bhava Samadhi. In the unnamed Samadhi. "Out-shining the world" as Da says.

All as a Sacrifice to the Evolving Limbs of The Supermind of the Mystical Body of Christ. Or The Evolving Limbs of Samantabhadra, the Blue Buddha of Perfection.

A vision alone. It is hard enough holding a "regular" life in this world as Subtle, Causal, or Sahaj-Nondual. Bhava--Jesus, who knows.

But the feeling to return to the goal. So much to do, on so many levels, simlutaneously.

Humility and a sense of humor. We are a long, long, long way away from that. All of Us.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

A morning spent pulling weeds. Later today some tilling. I've got no money for a gym membership, so I've been lifting concrete blocks as a means to keep my upper-body in shape.

An afternnon spent reading some Suze Orman. No you are not hallucinating, I did just write that. And I have to say, glitz and cheese-ballness aside, she's damn good. At least for a financial austropalithecus like myself.

Just facing into life issues. Thoughts of marriage. Bringing on thoughts of life insurance, my own mortality, where to send the kids to school, living in Canda vis a vis living in the US (in relation to the Prime Directive), communication skills, retirement, 401Ks, CDs/IRAs, school debts, house payments.

Priesthood--group dynamics, balancing family & calling, opennes to mission with expression of my (legitimate) needs. Listening skills. Listening skills. Listening skills. Pastoral care.

Scholar--cutting intellect with love, departmental meetings, academia in-speak, the power of words and ideas.

Plus the book. Editing. Grammatical usage. Audience relation. Things horizontal, not always my strongest suit.

Just people, things, events. No more Witness. No more aching beauty nor profound sadness--in the same way I mean. There just's just. It's indescribable. The change is semi-permanent, or at least accessible, recognizably so, at any moment. Maybe 7-10 yrs. before this really stabilizes. This which is not the opposite of that.

The bodymind drops,
Like an apple from the Tree
Of Eternal Life.

Plop.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Stuff Stuffing

I don't know what to do or say anymore. Except chuckle, be as loving as I can, Rest, be grateful, try to help.

Why has all the juice gone out of these words at the moment I am experiencing the deepest peace and joy ever?

What is there to say about THIS, about WHAT IS?

Maybe some more ecstatic langugage, flow-etry of sorts: a different tact.

A Bird Sung in this Space,
As a Cruise Ship Liner floated by,
Along the Hudson River of my MIND

No birds, no ships, no captains, wings,
No birdwatcher, no boat observer,
Sounds only
Images flashing

Like perspiration on the skin,
From whence has it come,
And to where does it go?

Unknown. A mere glistening moment,
Not perspiration
But perspiratio-genesis,
What an awful word
For a God-awful-Wonderful phenomena

Evaporated before conceptualized.

A smile, a laugh but no joke.

Heart Essence pouring out in all directions,
Wounded, open, crucified, resurrected.
Ascended, even at moments
Pentecostal
In its downward thrust of Radiant Fire.

Burning the skin black, like Our Lady.
------

Oh well, not very good, I guess. That's just fine. I'm not much the poet, artist, writer. Not the outdoorsmen, the life of the party, the man in the know, a primal force, an urban denizen, or much else really.

A dude. With nothing to say, nothing to be. Nothing himself ultimately. Just Wakeful. Free.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Major Tom to GROUNDLESS GROUND Control

These words are nothing,
Echoes of echoes.

Like when a Christian asked a Buddhist about nirvana. The Buddhist said it was emptiness, nothingness, cessation, the candle going out. The Christian asked, what it was like, The Buddhist smiled and said "Amazing."

There is No Witness. No more (localized) Bodily Location of Happiness. No more states. These are now all gone. I work now to untangle, to live. Enough searching.

The Wall of Consciousness in the back of my Head--from whence he came and to whence has he gone. No understanding. But go he did.

Its like Willy Wonka and Charlie [Gene Wilder Version]. Charlie comes to Willy to gain something. He follows him around. He's at times funny, disturbed, eccentric, bored. But Charlie goes ahead drinking in the ups and downs. He makes a slight booboo, drinking the Lifting Fizz, but no biggie really. He comes to the end of Tour, thinking there is a nice reward.

When Wonka tells him, "You get nothing." You GET NOTHING.

And here is Charlie's genius. No righteous anger like Uncle Joe. He simply gives up the Ever-Lasting Gobbstobber, abides by the wishes of the Master, AND/BUT stills is grateful for the trip nonetheless.

That is the miracle. When he has given away the gobbestobber, the only thing he got from the experience, he was given all. Became Lord of the Chocolate Factory.

This AWARENESS is Wonka. Give It the Ever-Lasting Gobbestobber of your Ego, your thought of enlightenment, surrender the only thing you have ever gained--fame, sex, spiritual states, intellect, connections, money, artistic genius, physical prowess. Stop holding it. But do it with a smile.

Give up without quitting.

And all is YOURS.

There is no Ever-Lasting Gobbstopper except Samsara, which never existed anyway. It is all refuse, an Immortality Project of Magical Candy. The Chocolate Factory is already yours silly. Its Within your Mind-Heart. Your Wonka-nized SELF.

If you give away the piece, with a pure heart, Charlie, I will give you the Factory. You can be responsible for the Wise-Little OompaLoompas, the poor, lonely, broken ones of our world. I can then retire, and fade into non-existence from whence I came. I was never exactly suited for all this anyway.