Saturday, January 29, 2005

"True Choice"

So much pain, so much pain.

Breathing in the pain, trying somehow, believing against logical or idealistic hope, that the pain may be purified, the sin transformed and healed.

Creativity--retribution and rehabiliation/restoration. Justice AND Mercy. Mercy AND Justice.

Tonglen, petitionary prayer is unexplainable, yet instictively we all know it is right and true. Still I can't describe this immense aching, burning, sad-sweet love in my chest. For the hurt, the abused, the lost, abandoned, unloved, unfed, unsheltered, so-called "throwaways", gutter trash of our world.

Tonglen teaches that everything is so easy and that is why precisely why it is so damn difficult.
----------
Elect this above all else,
Elect this.
Choose, in the face of oppression and fear,
This.
Choose ME,
For I AM alone.
I alone AM.
The Great and Holy One among you,
The Absolutely Personal,
Closer to you than your heartbeat and breath,
The very essence of you, of All.
Out of Me, you have arisen--
Show me your gratitude by mutual affection.
Build me up, reveal me,
revel in me,
adore and worship Me.
In all three Realms,
In all possible manifestations.
I AM Sacrifice,
nothing will ever be complete on this side of the grave.
Release me to follow my course in this exile.
Make my burden lighter, whenever possible.
Succumb to my love vortex,
Let it swirl you in ecstatic mystery,
Until you are flushed,
Never to be heard from again.

Friday, January 28, 2005

The Shadow Knows

Common theme just realized between all the reading I did today--the shadow side of spiritual endeavor.

Reading Vows of Silence on The Catholic Church and the WhatEnlightenment blog on Andrew. When attention-energy are being pulled up there are bound to be some spots untransformed. Temporarily lose the journey upward, reinhbit with compassion those lower drives, agendas, and intergrate. Embrace the shadow. Neither institution-community seems able to do this. The lost members, are the shadow (Andrew even refers to his as a shadow sangha)--hold intelligence and creativity amidst the immaturity, self-servingness, etc.

Was really stuck in Vows by the rite of the healing by the Native Americans (First Peoples) in Canada. They want the offended party to reconcile with the abuser in person, face to face in the circle. Our "justice" system doesn't do that--even when it is right in its proceedings and does in fact help the powerless. Victim not becoming survivor, not becoming thriver, aide to others hurt. Stuck at victim. Remids me a little of something called restorative justice that I researched a bit when working at the jail.

Not to sound too intellectual, but would really help if people had a better view of humans, of development, of maldevelopment. Would we be so surprised, let down, shocked, hurt, taken advantage of if we knew better-or would our emotions still follow the same patterns of idealization and rejection?
--

Went to a birthday party tonight. Still sad for me to see such gross level seeking, such gross egotism. And not even in some condescending fashion; more how sad it is to see such beautiful creatures reduce themselves so frightfully. Who are so obviously scared and confused and lost, parading around talking loudly, incessantly. But even the ones not held in by the gross seeking. Wiser, kinder for sure. Still limits, and stil real "wrong" in many ways to try to open those horizons. There is really nothing for me to say, nothing to do in those situations. That is why I don't like, never have, why I don't stay long. Why I just want to show my love for whoever is there nnd depar. At least to go dancing is to go dancing and not put on airs. Much love nonetheless, not my birthday--just care for them.



From Da: Sat Chit Ananda
Self, Mind-Light, Energy
Transcendental, Source Matrix, Descending/Ascending Current
6th, 5th, 4th or Sages, Saint, Yogis respectively.
ego stepped down version of Self
mind " MIND-LIGHT
desire, motion=" " ENERGY

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Auschwitz

Working on this book, (reading Tillich's History of Christian Thought--Jesus that guy was a f'in genius), I realize where I could really be heading with this systematic stuff. The priesthood, theologian, and probably psychologist route (with a possible sub-interest in parapsychology, micro-transformative communities, and the like). Recapitulating the western paradigms of growth in one person. Didn't Foucault trace the origins of the couch to the confessional?

Or work in aid and development in some form or other. Maybe in the Muslim world. Population issues, ecology, economic and cultural, intellectual rights.

In Wilberian fashion, we back up to where they agree. I find two: 1. The Great Work (a non-Flatland yet still Liberal World), wherein the human and biological systems mutually enhance putting more emphasis to the former of course but justice and compassion for each 2. Reduction of suffering, Prime Directive, pushing consciousness just a tad.

Thing is I can never really know which will bring greater depth for greater span. Struggled with this all my life. I think deeper down I know the call is to the integralist academic-theologian-priest-psychologist route (not in order of importance per se). I've spent most of my life staying up on these other topics--biotech, ecological capitalism, ethics of population-sexuality, and all the rest. Perhaps if I stay within the 1st frame, I may find a way to bridge the gap to the second.

Of course neither 1 nor 2 is really 1 or 2. Both are the exterior manfiestations of the more inward and much more important realm--my spiritual development into union (God willing) and perhas beyond.

------------------
Amrita Nadi--Spiritual Anatomy. The organ par excellence of the Mystical Body, the Ubiquity of the Ascended, Cosmic (Kosmic) Christ. Just this.

I don't know if Da really was the first and only to ever introduce it. Doesn't matter. What is certain is that after him, all can feel it. The Current of Love-Bliss in my Causal, sacred Heart. (Always wish there was a middle case for that s/S). Nothing to avoid or seize. I must constantly re-cognize that the (non)issue about #1 or #2 doesnt' ultimately matter--doesn't matter in the deep sleep. Where can I express this love most greatly...energetics hard to "calculate" in the Moral (Non)Calculation.

Simply look into programs for psychology and the int'l work with a sense of experimentation--as unable to fail, not always constricted and locked into imperfection.

Plans, numbers to heal, things to fix and evolve, movements to shape, issues to overcome, problems to tackle. All fine and good. But not Amrita Nadi. Not the ground of such ventures. Not the essence of such actions.

Eat me O Black One. O Goddess of my Delight. You want me, this I know. As I once said, You are the grinder, I the meat. What heaven, what hell, what of it? Your love suffuses both. No interest in either. Just this, in whatever realm, in whatever form. What is this? What is that in me which always already knows? What is that in me which is always already joyful, blissful, ecstastic? AND why do I not focus on that--why do I focus on all else but that one of ultimately interesting concern? The only thing actually worth finding out about. All else is dead. I can feel it rise within me as I type, propelled by an ancient aching, to discover the secret of why we "involved" ourselves in all of this, why we prodigally departed from our homeland to this exile among the pigs of destruction, the slaves and servants of ignorance, the husks of violence, and the slop of hard day to day existence?

Rip me Donna-Ma, all is sacrifice, show me this dark, beautiful wisdom of yours. Show me no resistance, even more opening, to this divine onslaught? Leave me to die in this world and resurrect in no other; if you want it, it is enough for me. I am your child, your very self, your crismon-black heart. Awaken me to you, as you, for you. Burn us all, make us a holocaust to your name, sweet smelling on the altar of your numinous, horrific yet tantalizing altar. Show me love without bounds. Show me Absolute Love. Burn me in your Pentecostal Fire, outshine all conditions and barriers, all attention and energy, with this ABSOLUTE LOVE.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Painful Respite

Consciousness the only refuge. A strange sort of refuge--the sanctuary is itself more painful than the danger zone (unconsciousness, addiction to energy, samsara). Attention drawn in on itself, hard to focus on anything else. Can be done, just incredibe detachment in it. Feel the connection aspect.

Came across this line from Da last night:
--
You should not devote your life to the realization of Enlightenment. Devote your life to what you do when you are Enlightened.
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Energy_of_Consciousness.html

Whoa.

Nothing else really to discuss. Not true of course. Still like to investigate politics, int'l development/aid, issues of morality/justice/compasion, ecology, sustainability. Yet, none of that is THAT.

Not much interest in discussing my life or discussing the other aspects of m life that are not this practice OR especially "spiritual" dicussions in the abstract. See it all as service, as devotion.

Still very relative--subtle inner processes (identity, interpersonal communication, cognition, affect). Values perhaps still "integral." Or not in ways. No desire to foist "spiritual" discussion down another's throat, those whose attention is principally elsewhere.

I can only go unconscious. To be conscious is to be acutely aware of the contraction, of the self-infliced pinch, self-performed rejection of bliss.

But to feel the contraction is to be free of it, to cease to identify with it. This I know, cognitively, but emotionally it doesn't really register.

Every contraction I feel, I am responsible for. For surrendering to God. Attenion and energy blocked in the mind-psyche, the emotion, the breath, the body. I am responsible for every last centimeter of pnuematic insurgency.



Monday, January 24, 2005

I am an angel of light, but darkness is not always evil. There is a darkness within me, like deep crimson blood-red suffering. Whole body, love alone. I must unleash my Shiva, my Dark Lord of Love. My eyes are clear, moistened by tears for the suffering and beauty of frgaile being. Three hearts, like a mini-Trinity in my breast, open to the immensity, grateful for the shearing emotionality, peace, and ectasy of wounded bliss.

The wind blows and the flowers rustle,
as life ebbs slowly away
beating,
with a smile,
dying alone in aloneness.
Mind drifting to the clouds of eternal peace,
where I am...who is left for this?

All that matters is this of which I can not speak, and yet must never cease to sound. Gospel. Do not rage against the dying of the light, love it and surrender to the grace-drenched absurdity.

A compassionate saturation bombing from my heart that explodes my resistance into nothingness.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Always like to throw a little political commentary. Watched Bush's Brain, a video documentary based on the book of the same name. Follows the political life of Karl Rove--how he always win and how his opponent always faces a strange coincidentally negative set of circumstances during the campaign. Helped clarify quite a bit. Namely what Uncle Don said. That Bush, no matter what people think about him, is always in charge. And that he had no idea what flipped in him. Rove that's who (or what). It's Rove-Bush that are co-running the country not Rummy or even Cheney. Colin was always on the outside. Condi's nomination will be passed this week. She seems to be more a mouthpiece and fairly apolitical. I think she is going to be in for a real shock when she goes abroad. Her foreign counterparts are going to be pretty vicious I imagine. The Senate Confirmation Hearing and the 9/11 Panel both stunned her with hard-edge questioning. I wonder if she is just not up to speed or dangerously naive or touchy or what.

The neo-con agenda is clear--Neocons=Wolfowitz, Abrahms, Rumsfield, Cheney. It is to implement The New American Century Proposal drafted in the early 90s. The whole plan was predicated on needing a catastrophic attack on American soil to undertake the plan. And they got it. Some have used this to point towards a possible conspiracy around 9/11. I don't buy that. What I do think, is that the neocons got the right domino to fall. Richard Clarke's book is the link. Wolfowitz was thinking about Iraq since the 70s. Bush got what he wanted as well--to get back at the guy who tried to kill his dad. The Afghanistan expendition was a warm-up. We are not fighting the terrorists really. I'm not sure we ever really have been. Why else did they send insufficient number of troops late to the mountains when they had Osama in the sights? I think that the Administration feels the threat is no over after the post-9/11 Afghanistan mop up?

Why the rush for Iraq though? What was the hurry? Why get bogged down.

So I'm leaning more and more towards thinking that there is another agenda supra the neocon foreign policy one. And it is in the head of Rove and possibly Bush. No liberal has really brought this up. No one has really asked the question: what is Rove after? Even the movie didn't raise that issue strongly enough. What does he want? It's one thing to point out his tactics, but what is he after? He tells the neocons to stand down when necessary. The neocon is foreign imperialism....no domestic policy. Rove is a Texan Kingmaker, a Mark Henna with a serial attitude. He's not as concerned (or probably as knowledgable) on foreign issues.

Is it Bush's fundamentalist millenarian Christianity or is that a front too? Why is Tim LaHaye at the White House? The Republicans in The House and Senate have been shut out of the party in large measure. So Rove-Bush have allies: the neocons; Frist/Hastert/DeLay; Condi; corporations, particularly Murdock and the Media Conglomerates; and of course the Evangelical Block. I wonder if they are using them for their own (I still don't know what) agenda? Bush lets Rummy-Cheney rebuild the military along their vision. He lets The Speaker, Senate Majority Leader and Whip have their fun in Congress. He plays the moral card at election time. He gets off the hook for most of his blunders in the press. BUT FOR WHAT?

How does holding Taleban in Guatanamo Bay fight terrorism? The Taleban and al-Qaeda are vastly different. al-Qaeda is a high-tech organization plotting World Jihad; Bin Laden wants to be reinstate the Caliphate and have himself crowned the Successor to the Prophet for the 21st century. The Taleban are a tribal (red meme) group who employed a literalist, backwards, uneducated (nearly heretical) brand of Islam to control the mountains of Afghanistan. They had no idea of overthrowing the Americans. When we bombed them, of course they fought for their regime (they would call themselves freedom fighters, nationalists of a sort). al-Qaeda truly believes they can overthrow the Americans, worldwide, as they did with the Soviets. Afghanistan was for them only one battle in a much larger worldwide war.

Now in Iraq we are seeing what I believe might be a more dangerous trend. The insurgency lining up more strongly with al-Qaeda. Zarqawi calls his group al-Qaeda in Iraq. The US had no Sunni Plan. The Shias of course want elections (al Sistani can't get them quickly enough). They are the majority, they will win. The Kurds will get their de facto regional autonomy officially recognized. The Baathists are fighting to bring back The Baath Regime, minus Saddam. But they are probably cash strapped in a way al-Qaeda is not. So is the Iraqi situation, just basically a longer, bloodier version of Afghanistan? I.e. There are "nationalist" insurgents and al-Qaeda fighting together against a common enemy, even though their motives are generally separate, even at odds. Say the insurgency triumphs and the Americans depart, will the al-Qaeda operatives fight a renewed secular Baathist regime. (Remember bin Laden hated Saddam). Or are the two becoming more linked? Will al-Qaeda itself start to wane, but a more dispersed, threat emerge, possibly even more dangerous?

Is the terrorism thing really as simple as all of the hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis and Egyptians. Those are two regimes we prop up who are despised in large measure by their populaces. If they had elections, Mubarak, I'm guessing, would no longer hold power, dito for the Saudi Royal House.

The war has been so badly mismanged, no matter what one's views on whether it was a just-smart war or not in the first place. This is the bane of ideologes, so far as I can tell. They had this unspoken belief--we go in there and then boom everyone loves us and Iraq will be free and happy. It is the same sorta faith in supply-side economics. Magically, by the grace of the market, revenue appears, as if out of the sky.

I wonder if the administration had been reading more of people like Noah Feldman or maybe it was Sharansky vis a vis the repeated emphasis on freedom in the inaugural address. Is freedom a codeword for something?




Friday, January 14, 2005

Temporary Eternality

I have walked in a world of vapors,
Now I navigate in a dreamless wakefulness.
All thoughts and desires,
whether real or imagined,
are for this alone.
This that is neither thing nor nothing.
It is grace beyond telling--
for such clarity of heart and head.
To be granted a view of the sun,
on the conifer trees,
snow melting in the quiet woods.
We are indeed falling,
Loving in a world reigned death supreme.
All ends.
The constricting confusions and endless hatreds
The moments of reconciliation and joy.
All ends,
except for this.
Essence of a red rose blooming in the winter,
Nature of a warm slenderous, sensual female curve.
Source of the love sacrifice of my being.
You alone, O Holy One,
Are my inquiry and devotion,
My work, my breath--
all surrender.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

The One Thing Necessary

The contraction is my action. Not a contraction--out there--to be then overcome by another outside force. There was this episode of the Simpons--I know I won't get this quite right. First snakes overan Springfield. Then they brought in lizards to eat the snakes, then birds to eat the snakes, crocdiles to eat the birds, gorillas to eat the crocs. Finally someone asks (Skinner I think) what do we do to get rid of the apes? He says, "We'll just shoot 'em."

Not the best analogy, but so what. When will I just shoot it? Or better when I will just simply take my finger off the inna trigga? Otherwise it's snakes, lizards, birds and all the rest.

This current is bliss, is mysterious love-bliss.

There are all sorts of other questions, important.

But the final question: Why do I keep pinching myself?

I feel both the love bliss current behind my right heart and the action of my separative self--feelig related, anxious, pressured, unstill. Why the action? Why the no in the face of the infinite?

Why no joyous surrender to the current?

This block that holds back unending rivers of mercy, compassion, humor, presence. Laugh, do this no more, release to the current, and be fully free.

Other posts for other matters--Islamic democracy is on my mind at the current time.

All else merely serves this. Discipline and right-life: individually and communally. Integral thought and practice.

Feel into the presence of Christ in the midst of the clenched fist. Circulate the Spirit through this vehicle. The Way of the (Sacred) Heart. Bhava Samadhi--Pentecostal Fire lighting up the conditional realm. Amrita Nadi--the sacred anatomy of Incarnation.


When I fell
I knew none of this.
Bystanders, lonely ones on the bus
never having heard the liberating voice.
Their lives of great value,
Their faces so sad.
Unknowing they rush headlong
to unfulfilled life-death.
With many twists and turns.
Ones I can not gather,
by look alone.
The contours understood nevertheless.
All else, however complexified in construct,
Is but none of this. This is.
TH/IS.
This is...my body, my blood
my neighbor, my life, my death
my love, my child, my enemy
my yes/no, my being.

Friday, January 07, 2005

What a weird year. (I mean etymologically wird, having one's own thing, one's wird).

December 2003, meeting Marco at the restaurant, walking around aimlessly in the cold New York winter through the contemplative greens of Central Park. Then the months of Wilber mania, then leaving the Society. Then here--the excitement, the headiness (note the intended pun). I felt real excitement for the first time in a long while. Then her. For once feeling home, feeling like a regular guy. A sweatshirt wearing, snuggling with his girl on the couch Sat. afternoon kinda guy.

All that gone. The innocence, arrogance, ignorance of it all. Forever wiped away by the ever-pressing urges of Eros and attention. But Eros has jumped into a room in my psyche that feels alien and absent, like running from a crowded party at an unkonwn mansion into a completely empty, distinct-less parlor and not being somehow to find a way back to the party. Or maybe you don't want to go back anymore.

Losing Chloe, losing the job, the integralist agenda--actually I take that back. Those were the things I wanted, the things I desired, where I put my attention and I actually suceeded. I got the job, the girl, the house, the colleagues, and none of it (of course) brought any ultimate satisfaction.

It was suceeding and then having it all taken away that caused this transformation. It's all (or most anyways) object to me now. The academic ascesticism, the minsiterial call (I wonder what a post-metaphysical ministry looks like...hmm).

I am being pulled further and further back towards The Witness. Or maybe its just apathy. Whatever. Apathy still seems to be self-concerned: concerned about not-caring. I'm feel like I don't give enough attention to myself to be apathetic.

Artifacts, artifacts. This writing, the movies I watch, interviews, even the art. Where is the revelatory in our dreary, dense world?

All this is grace.

Up until this year I still had some "sign-i-ficant", slight perhaps but real enough, connection with most of my peers to articulate, however weakly and over-emotionally, my life choices, my values, my life-plan. That is no longer the case. I am unmoved, unspoken, like Christ befoer Pilate to this world wallowing in misery and partial moments of escape.

Never understood the pull towards the artistic until now. Until the True has dried up. Until the True became my weapon in my arsenal and not the embedded warrior ideal. It rests on my belt now.

Here is thsi empty canvass, this empty parlor. Let us create, let us converse, let us heal one another. Let us embody Source in our co-presence.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

BLH

Bodily Location of Happiness-A Summary

1. Locate where I am happy (always already)
--in the midst of psychological, physical, emtional turmoil or ecstasy
2. Practice that happiness
a. Relax from crown to tailbone
b. Extend from heart out to infinity
3. Practice Happiness Through:
--Meditation: Conscious Process: "Avoiding Relationship?"
--Conducitivity of Love-Bliss (Happiness Current)
--Physical Exercise
--Non-degenerative sex
--Service
--Diet
--Intellectual Study
4. 4 Capacities
Breath, Body, Emotion, Mind
--Devote all attention (in all 4) to Divine Satsang
--Perfect Practice=Transcending Attention in Divine Satsang
5. Two Things Only
*Locate Happiness
** Understand the Contraction, the Method of Unhappiness