Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Revelations in the Surf

On Plum Island, on its uninhabited beach 
at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge, 
I walk an abiding way along the shore 
while gazing at substantial waves arising 
from an outwardly serene Atlantic Ocean. 
They form a never-ending line of succession 
as ray upon ray ignite in flame and seafoam. 
I stop where weather-beaten sands had shifted 
fashioning a sandy cape from where I watch 
the waves both to my left and there before me. 
Witnessing the row of waves in profile, 
I feel as one arising with them, 
seeing myself as curl in an evolutionary crest 
as that enlightening crash dissolves 
the wave of all the universe—
we then return to sea. 

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Footnotes to an Ad Hoc Prayer

The way of silence is personal devotion to an absolute 
but the way of light is surrendering to the absolute’s intent. 
Enlightening intent to know itself comes into being. 
Universal being is evolving in complexities of mind. 
Deconstructing mind is seeing through its own complexities—
to be the silent seeing intent on seeing itself. 
Nothing in this process is unnecessary. 
Everything is moving at the speed of that enlightenment. 
Relatively speaking, the meaning of life is to know I Am That, 
although absolutely speaking, there is no meaning—
but the absolute is never absolutely speaking.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Ad Hoc Prayer

in a way of speaking, 
the meaning of life is 
helping god know itself—
by seeing through 
one’s conceptual illusions 
as, by, of a person 
and simply be…
thus seeing sees 
it is seeing 
itself, 
god, 
that

in the name of 
pure awareness, 
enlightening intent, 
universal being, 
and deconstructing mind—
I Am That

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Winter Follies

They were standing on the viewing platform 
with their focal acquisitions, long 
zoom cameras, spotting scopes, and carbon fiber 
tripods, looking for another bird 
to acquisition for their memories, while 

consulting with each other on the technical 
specs of their recently-acquired equipment, 
divulging stories of the special sightings 
they remembered like a snowy owl 
consuming innards of a meadow vole 

as twenty birders grabbed exclusive pictures. 
Their chatter was annoying me as I 
looked out upon a spacious empty winter 
marshland. What about my own attempt 
to acquisition all that precious silence?

Saturday, December 27, 2014

The Big Wave

Universal consciousness 
is like the sea and body-mind 
is like a wave and pure awareness 
is the sun reflecting in 
these waters after its intent 
to know itself unfolded into 
being as the sea evolving 
into wave upon wave upon wave 
until a single one of most 
particular complexity 
like Hokusai’s 'Great Wave' could see 
the sea and its reflection of 
itself, that precipice of sun, 
the one with no beginning and no end…

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Samāpatti Rocket Mechanism of Myself

Sitting silently while looking out the window, 
it came to me the trees were just extensions of my body 
and in time this intuition had extended to the stars, 
including ones one only sees through Hubble’s eye. 
Resting silent as this universe, 
I looked within and saw an energetic fire 
and knew this inspiration filling me 
and trees and all the universe is what I really am. 
Existent, suddenly I saw I wasn’t in that space—
my divination says I am that space 
and all this matter of an energetic knowingness 
is actually within my silent seeing. 
Now a flash of revelation shows 
that even silent seeing space is just reflecting 
my unknowable and infinite awareness.

Friday, December 19, 2014

The Waking Giant

I rest my feet 
upon the coffee table 
and superclusters 
untold years away 
support their weight. 
I scratch behind 
the ears of Pluto 
and Andromeda 
wags its tail. 
I place my arm 
around a maple tree 
whispering 
she’s a lovely 
friend and universe. 
Awakening, 
I rubbed my eyes 
this morning; stars 
emerged to clear 
an age of sleeping.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

This Sermon on This Life

Right now, I’m here alive. 
And when I die, 
this life will never know I’m dead. 
So why, as this vitality, 
should I concern myself with dying? 
The leaf will fall; 
the woods don’t mourn the summer 
while the trees prepare for spring. 
Am I the leaf, 
and if I am, 
I process light to know the light. 
Am I the tree, 
and if I am, 
I process light to know the light…

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Sermon on This Land That’s Your Land

I had always wanted to drive cross-country. Maybe it was Chris who forty years ago first put desire in my eyes to see this land as she discussed her trips back and forth from San Diego. Instead I studied all about its history and literature looking for the sights as others saw them.

Six years ago, my daughter was about to move to California, and being recently unemployed, I decided I should drive her there, and then I’d slowly circle myself home, visiting the natural wonders of America. And so it happened.

I wrote a poem while sitting on a great sequoia; took so many pictures in Yosemite they left me black and white; looked out upon Lake Tahoe’s mountain dark reflections; drove the lonesome road straight through the desert of Nevada; walked through sandstone Arches after crying at the marriage of the ground and sky in Canyonlands; looked out from Anasazi windows in the sacred vaults of Mesa Verde; never took a photo of an inexplicable white buffalo in Zuni; worshipped with the silent Acoma apparitions in Sky City; just missed a slow coyote on I-40 in New Mexico; touched the surface of the largest mass of turquoise ever while exploring Santa Fe; listened to the blessed myths of Taos Pueblo; found my way to Cripple Creek and finally the summit of Pike’s Peak from where I scouted over cornfields of Nebraska crossing Mississippi waters towards the east back home.

It was experience I cherish to this day. But still, it was the mere experience of a superficial world, infinite in its variety and wondrous in its manifest appearances, but nothing without the consciousness in which it’s seen.

This wordless Being is the only wonder of the universe. More to the point, it is the god in which that universe appears. It’s here and now, and everywhere I go, it is. Even nowhere. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus qui abundantia. This land is your land.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

The Sermon on My Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday, commemorating this appearance of myself in its continuing transformative performance—

as a universal entity not knowing nodes aren't separate networks. 

We know beneath the surface is an energetic field of sub-atomic spontaneity.

We know that it’s impossible to see the space between the mother and her child in which a separate consciousness is born.

We know that nothing is an island and the butterfly that flaps its wings becomes the eye of hurricanes.

It’s elementary education most of us received some years ago.

And yet we play this game of long division to the point of wondering why this world is so divided, full of suffering and violence.

Spontaneous, unborn, holistic, we pretend we’re something other.

Happy birthday to this grand illusion.

Friday, December 12, 2014

A Sermon on the Sunset

At last, the sun will set a minute later on this evening. 
It’s not the solstice yet, and daylight lessens still 
because the sunrise still is later too, 
but when the light is dim 
we tend to grab at what we can. 
Such is the way of the world. 

Unmindful of what we really are, 
yet subliminally aware of what we are beyond appearances 
and its precipitous diminishment within the mind, 
we blindly latch upon whatever object, 
physical or conceptually otherwise, 
that helps to fill the gap we intuitively know exists. 

It never works, of course, 
because the gap is both an infinite one 
and nonexistent on the very same occasion. 
Similarly, the sun is never really setting. 
Its light is ever-present, omnipotent and diamond bright. 
It’s just the world that’s in the way.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

A Canticle for The Experiential

If it’s not experiential, it’s a borrowed belief.
Beliefs may be borrowed for a limited time on faith.
If a belief is not confirmed by one’s experience, return it.
If a belief is confirmed by one’s experience, burn it.

There’s no scientific data supporting
the almost pre-Copernican-like belief
that consciousness is
an epiphenomenon of the brain.

Simple awareness sees
that the entire universe is,
including all scientific data,
in, of, and by consciousness.

Any belief indicating
consciousness is an epiphenomenon
need never have been borrowed—
at least the sun appears to circle the earth.

But the earth circles the sun.
And the sun appears in consciousness.
And consciousness is witnessed by
this reflection of awareness.


Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Hail Goddess

The flower doesn’t grow itself. 
It takes a seed to raise the stem. 
Without the sovereign ground, 
how would the root appear? 
Water, water, everywhere, 
and who will taste its truth? 
Sunshine is our superwoman, 
fear our only kryptonite. 
All history belongs to her 
despite a battle’s latest lie. 
She’ll always win the war 
because she never has to fight. 
Hail Mary! Hail Parvati! 
All are always hailing love! 
Every flower in the floral 
circle of this wondrous world 
is singing in her laurels.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Ouroboric Samadhi

The yin and yang of snow coats the crazy 
wisdom of ten thousand branches 
and I feel the trees are energetic 
natural appendages of myself. 
This is revelation of a native kind. 
Verily the universe is my body 
and I am the eye of the universe. 
These words are what I see. 

The sky is lit. 
The space around me is a waterfall. 
The ground is opening to unveil 
a fearless dragon swallowing its tail. 
Yes, I am the eye of all 
and all is my intent to see myself. 
Holy alchemy of realization, 
with this poem, all disappears.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Nursery Instructions

Welcome to Conditionland!
Take your face and state your view;
Rather let us form them for you.
Never try to understand;

Fill that void instead with other
Substitutes that give you pleasure,
Never using thought to measure
Thought itself as its own mother.

Always fight for your belief
Even though it isn’t yours.
Close your windows! Close your doors!
Truth is nothing but a thief.

What remains when it takes all?
Who is left to smart and die?
Never question who am I!
Always fall for our free fall.

Being born in thought is being
Dead to being, blind to seeing
That you’re only guaranteeing
Never freeing your own being.

Thoughts like these will stop your thinking;
Stop them now and start your drinking.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

I am the leafless river. 
I am the fountain on the brink. 
And when the wind is breathless 
and night has dropped the day 
and all its industry and play, 
I am the eagle eye reflecting 
deepness of the quiet moon. 
Awaken to this revelation! 
See its prophecy alight 
the water into soundless flames. 
Feel its photovoltaic inspiration 
wash against a thoughtless shore. 
And love the intuition of the trees 
dancing in the breeze of being 
all and nevermore.


Friday, December 5, 2014

School Time Images

I was shy at school and during recess stood alone, standing up against a chain link fence, while I watched the schoolyard buzzing with its games of tag or jumping rope or shouting, chanting, laughing, crying, talking. Inside I knew I didn’t have to be that way.

One day, weeks after classroom pictures had been taken, we received a captivating envelope. Inside, besides our five-by-sevens, eight-by-tens, and wallet sized individuals, there shone a wondrous sheet with all the separate photos of my classmates smiling through.

My mother cut the universal glossy into personal existent images and I played with them while sitting on the floor, pretending we were in that busy schoolyard and I was nothing but the center of attention, playing childhood games and being infinitely happy.

Although, there were those times just two of us, me and Joanne Kerry, secreted ourselves away and climbed the coffee table, hand-in-hand, or rather edge-to-edge, and rested by a plastic apple in an emerald crystal bowl, whispering chromatics of our love for love.

In that moment, I would disappear, both physically and descriptively. What remained is now transmitting clouded memories some fifty-four years later—as if I never aged. In truth I see that consciousness was never born, and life is just this lesson trying to be learned.

Resting in Haiku

see through thought
let That do
yeah! yeah! yeah!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

An Open Sonnet to the Perfect Future

The polar vortex visited last week. 
It downed three winter lagers while discussing 
consciousness with a Chinese atheist 
who worshipped at the feet of a perfect future. 
She shall have disbelieved her universe! 
Channeling deep sleep, the Weather Channel 
had woken us up to a constellation far 
below our tender surface. Her fame is unknown. 
I will have changed my name if I were her. 
All were grateful that Thanksgiving passes 
once a year. To see that science rests 
within the omnipotence of being is 
distressing to the system. Everything 
beclouded will have been always open sky.

Nisargadatta on Words

Questioner: As I listen to you I find that it is useless to ask you questions. Whatever the question, you invariably turn it upon itself and bring me to the basic fact that I am living in an illusion of my own making and that reality is inexpressible in words. Words merely add to the confusion and the only wise course is the silent search within.

Maharaj: After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind that gets free of it. Words may aggravate illusion, words may also help dispel it. There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again and again until it becomes reality. Mother's work is not over with the birth of the child. She feeds it day after day, year after year until it needs her no longer. People need hearing words, until facts speak to them louder than words.

Q: So we are children to be fed on words?

M: As long as you give importance to words, you are children.

Q: All right, then be our mother.

M: Where was the child before it was born? Was it not with the mother? Because it was already with the mother it could be born.

Q: Surely, the mother did not carry the child when she was a child herself.

M: Potentially, she was the mother. Go beyond the illusion of time.

Q: Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which strikes the same hours again and again.

M: It can not be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When l repeat: 'I am, I am', I merely assert and reassert an ever-present fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of words and of silence—both.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Turning to Be

The forms awareness deems to take 
appear to me in space and time 
but that’s a prevalent mistake, 
ridiculous, when my sublime 
nature is seen as here and now 
and all of me I disavow 

as immaterial to one 
spontaneous intent to know 
myself. It is as if the sun 
shone down upon itself to grow 
an oak which turns a leaf to see 
inside the sun it is to be.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Air

division is the air
the world inhales—

violence is the air
the world exhales—

the wisdom of love is the air
that leaves the world

breathless

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Baptism of Love

We weren’t religious.
But drinking downstairs all alone one Friday night,
I started thinking who am I to not baptize our daughter,
sleeping upstairs, two years old,
dreaming new identities she could be like Lego characters
assembled thought by thought until
the ever-present inimitable magic of one’s being is covered up
by something old and borrowed.
Every beer was turning me more blue.

And so I tip-toed up the staircase,
passing prints of Andrew Wyeth’s artless landscapes
opening around an empty house,
until I stood above her sleeping peaceful form,
and felt the consciousness we shared as breathtaking love.
Then I touched my finger to my tongue
and prayed she’d always know she is that light of being
that had come into our disillusioned lives
to teach us what we always are.

I placed that finger on her forehead
feeling fourteen billion years as building to this second.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Suffering Through

The world is like an incubator 
growing wisdom in its fervor 
slowly. Some will never see 
through confines of that world because—
there’s not an object to that final 
preposition. There’s no objective 
in the world at all. Such is 
its insight being seen outright. 
There’s only the absolute subjective.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Christine: an Appreciation


She drove that orange Volkswagen like freedom itself. No one would ever know where to find her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t quite striking when around, but only that she could disappear before you knew it.

And her style, beneath it all, was traditional. She had no misgivings about the American Dream other than it should exclude no one, especially women. So it was inevitable that we would slowly drift apart. She veered toward that dream, driven, and I was always swerving away from it, searching.

The only reason we lasted as long as we did was the initial nuclear fusion-like strength of our love those first years. In time, it took the form of our beautiful daughter, to whom she sacrificed much to be a loving mother. Not too long ago, I told her ours was an epic history. She questioned that, and I countered maybe it was more mythological: the marriage of Sea and Sky and the birth of Venus.

Chris passed away on Friday. Imagine the loss of an ocean. And the depth of its absence.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

unthinkable pseutra

today's art is tomorrow’s cliché, but truth is no time.

fear of transformation fuels the status quo. imagine what love does to it?

love isn't your all-time favorite default state? what are you thinking?

there's nothing when self-awareness isn't love. isn't That something?

i’m sorry it took me so long to see there’s never anything to forgive.

acting can never keep up with the play.

why, my dear, shall we dare to imagine following the truth. how lovely that would be!

the self intends countless ever-transforming perspectives on itself. should it be anything less?

if non-dual wisdom isn't the alien, what is?

set the alarm for now.

wake up. it's now.

one chooses one. it's only the choosing that appears duplicitous.

it's not rocket science. although it's also rocket science.

one never knows the extent of what the other gives in their relationship because one never knows the limits of what the other thinks it is.

relax. surrender. only the heart knows. and only the heart does.

in the self-awareness universe, it's all about the aperture.

what is an eye? who am i ? two sides of the headless coin.

how many facets in diamond awareness?

what is your original facet?

if an answer can't be seen as a question, it isn't an answer.

what is your relationship with the non-dual?

in other words, try thinking the unthinkable.

life isn't fair. it is and it isn't.

asking who i am is love without question.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Ballyhoo

Black lights above a psychedelic 
roller coaster returning to 
the sea of soy—beneath its rails 
the barker builds banana splits 
and on the midway middlemen 
delight in dukkering amusements. 
The carnival is burning down the town. 
Come see the doubleheader being 
played in three-dimensional 
illusion! Come hear the organ grinders! 
Smell the neon; feel its pain. 
And while you wait in a line to die for, 
taste the floss that’s spun from rain. 

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Genealogical Self-analysis

The fear of death 
is just the fear of that 
which one 
essentially has always been. 
My genealogy, 
if traced in truth, 
descends 
the evolutionary scale 
on earth, continuing 
to comets, stars, 
and all 
dark matter coming from that burst 
of light emerging from 
the great unknown. 
Unborn— 
that is my only family name.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Tempest in a Teapot

Imagine all the world is inside-out 
and what you thought was hard reality 
is pure imagination resting in 
a headless head. That picture window is 
an opening within this consciousness. 
Look, chickadees are feeding on themselves. 
Their cerebellum is this space of sky 
and eyes are everywhere it touches. Ground 
is just the edges of a deepest sleep 
from which the branches of some scientific 
playground spread until I see myself. 
My leaves are falling everywhere. My river 
runs through sure-footed galaxies. My ocean 
waves at countless years of soundless notions. 
None of this is what I really am.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

On the Reflexive Universe

The pure subjective doesn’t know 
itself—as there is no it 
to know. There is no Mars or Venus, 
no Earth or Moon or Sun, no Big Bang 
to speak about, no words at all. 
This universe of names exists 
within intent of that subjective 
self to know that self. That’s all. 
The light becomes material; 
material evolves to see 
it is the light. And what we call 
this world of suffering is just 
the last throes of an object in 
its education there’s no object. 
This is the point of space and time, 
all necessary for one rhyme.

Monday, November 17, 2014

I Am the Light

The shadow knows it doesn’t know
the light. The light is well aware
there is no shadow in the light—
and all is light. The light proclaims
I am the light of self-awareness!
There is no dark division in
my light; there are no violent nights
within a world of gloom and fear.
Without the shadow of a thought
there’s only light and not some knot
that needs to be untied in fright—
the light is one and all is light.

Proclamation of the Victorious Revolution

ordinary metaphors associate one concept with another: oh! — metaphorical pointers associate one concept with the non-conceptual: ah!

the u.s. constitution was created to establish a corporate structure for, by, and of the oligarchy—the bill of rights was just the sweetener

a strict constructionist is a defender of the oligarchy—anything else needs to work to amend the constitution. that's the way the u.s. works

true libertarians push the limits of the bill of rights

so the entire fdr-lbj-obama care system could be seen as the usurpation of the oligarchic corporate structure by a populist socialist cadre

thus it's not a civil war—it's revolution and counter-revolution

if you don't know there was a victorious revolution, you won't know there's something to proclaim

as deconstruction happens, the glory of emerging light proclaims itself

proclaim the light! that is all.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

The Emperor’s Regalia

In a world of thought, the one 
with singular belief is king. 
Monomaniacal, the force 
it brings is that of all its being— 
to the purpose it believes 
exists for being. What a work 
of razzle-dazzle this thought is! 
Even the rivers are dammed to follow. 

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Bridge to Now Here

They’re setting off explosions
in the morning. Waking
to repeated pops,
I wonder where I am
and what those distant bangs
foretell—or vice versa.
Then it dawns on me.
They must be coming from
the bridge site. Down by the pylons,
construction workers wrest
the old one down and raise
the latest engineering
testament to getting
to another place
on time. The river though,
which this old interstate
crosses without a token
given to a ferryman,
keeps on streaming on,
always in the mountains,
always at the sea,
always straight through me.

Friday, November 14, 2014

The Heart of the Matter

The one conditioner is two. 
At first, it’s necessary to 
reflect, and all the world is staged 
to be my mirror. Taking time, 
I learn to see the other as 
myself. It isn’t easy though. 
We call this practice suffering. 
It lasts until another slowly 
gets it in this head—I am 
not two. There is a shortcut though— 
to love the other as my self. 
This is the heart of my intent.
For I am That, the absolute
unknowable subjective self
dividing self to know my self.
This world has named that knowing love.
And as below, it is above.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Feedback

They told me one’s divided and 
they taught me all the names in this 
division. For example, tree: 
there’s the roots and trunk and branches, 
not to mention every leaf. 
It never stops! Example leaf: 
there’s cuticle and epidermis, 
mesophyll and chloroplast. 
The depth is almost infinite. 
In time you reach the quantum wave, 
where what you see is probable, 
determined by the one that sees. 
That’s universal consciousness, 
conditioned as its newest node 
within its network not to know 
all’s one, but one's separate in a world 
divided. Such a world is war, 
defending indefensible 
divisions. Even those professing 
peace and justice, equality 
for all, will fight the other for it. 
On the other hand, that one 
acclaiming one—its sound is love.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The Whole Way

I was frolicking in a gloomy pool
before I felt a need to quench my thirst.
And so I stopped to let the water settle.
Feeling the current, I followed its rush to an inlet.
That stream was strong and crystal clear; it tumbled
down a mountain slope electric white
water, vivid life-giving, straight from the source.
I rested in its course and flowed upstream,
although to other eyes it would appear
I stumbled over rounded boulders, sank
in sandy hollows, scrambled over treefall,
always in ascent. Between two slabs,
the unseen source is always finding me—
I am rushing from my whole to be.