The Primordial Prophecy of I Ching

Careful formulation of your first and foremost question and the asking of it clearly and directly is the answer.

Whose face is that I see? What color is the sky? Which one is best for me? In truth, just who am I? 

Any mindful, lucid, open question is in fact an inquiry pertaining only to oneself. Even asking "who am I" reveals I am the Absolute Unknown.

In other words, much like the great reflexive universe of evolutionary and enlightening Intent, I always know, I always am, the answer—

it's the question, or the universe, that I am formulating which is the most material event that will, in space and time, reveal it.

The Revelation of the Poet Basho Divine

In Japan, on Matsushima Bay, a peacock passed a dragon in the light of day, two ferry boats progressing in their opposite directions. We were on the peacock,

contemplating pine-enshrouded little islands that pervade the bay like earthly stars within a navy sky or cherry blossoms being blown into the wind and rain.

But none of these descriptions do that setting any justice. In his journey on the narrow road, the poet Basho wrote a haiku on each scene he saw except on this one. No inspiration could exceed its revelation.

Tao that can be named is not the Tao. But tradition has him writing just the name of Matsushima and an exclamation word or two. Three times. The one becomes the two becomes ten-thousand exclamations!

Holy Mother, this astounding universe is either unbelievable or overwhelming if approached with any small amount of true attention. Dragon or the peacock: either way, it's not your doing.

The Evolutionary Sādhanā of the Light

It is the Great Intent of That Unknown to know itself. This is labeled evolution by the scientific-minded or enlightenment by those of no-mind.

The point of all of this, my world, our universe, is knowing I am That, that I, the Great Unknown, must first forget myself within the known,

this vast molecular morass of my intentional star stuff, and slowly learn by doing, rise by suffering, create my own vast laboratory for an ultimate unknowing,

where I see that all of this is false except my nameless and ungraspable existence, and in knowing only this, That Great Unknown now knows itself,

and like the final scene in some finale of a situation comedy, turns off the lights—but until then, I follow my enlightening intent, my evolutionary energy, my bliss, my love, my That.

Carl Jung on Facebook

There are no natural laws but just statistical truths and every one is subject to exception. Carl Jung said that. The hero knows it's zero and plays one anyways. I said that. 

All of this is just a story that we tell while on the road to nowhere. Nothing must be something to discern itself. An irony is something physical suddenly realizing all is immaterial. I just said that on Facebook.

We're all just avatars the absolute unknown must use to see itself, but in the process it believes the avatar is me and I forget I'm not an avatar. The paradox goes on forever if we only think about it.

One will climb the height of consciousness to gain that lack of oxygen within the Everest of awareness and. Be. Still.

Meditation on Lunar Silence and Solar Power

New Moon and silence fills the sky—

what day are we ordained to die?

It doesn't matter what I do—

this is false but that is true.

Tonight the vernal equinox

will balance all accounts of clocks

and every egg will stand upright

while consciousness will re-ignite

awareness of its unknown power—

the earth stands still and lifts a flower.

The Shaman of Phenomenal Yosemite

I lost my hat once in Yosemite, on a trail around the village, after visiting the nearby waterfall. Yosemite Waterfall is three waterfalls in fact. As one becomes two becomes three becomes the ten thousand things,

I watched the water split apart like shards of crystal lightning. I was alone, leaning on a glacial boulder, somewhat away from all the people who were frolicking within its wonder.

My hat was turned around so that the visor wouldn't interfere with picture-taking, like the black-and-white zoom shot of the lip of Upper Falls kissing the void of the absolute unknown.

This was sometime after leaving Glacier Point where I'd become entranced by the shaman figure of Half Dome across the great abyss in its High Sierra shocking world of alabaster granite.

From that viewpoint it appears to be enshrouded in a sorcerer's cloak and Yosemite itself is its astonishing phenomenal creation. There's nothing one can do but tip your hat surrendering to its intent to silence—

and illuminate.

The Red Winged Perfection of Understanding

Spring happened in the Stop & Shop parking lot; after putting all the groceries away inside the trunk, I opened up the driver's door

and sat inside and slipped the key into ignition and as I was just about to close the door, I heard their trill, and realized it had been there

but I was busy being me and didn't hear the wonder of rebirth, the renaissance of northeast marshes, Michelangelo of bird call,

Zen of emptiness is form and form is wavelength of an ice-out on the Merrimack as red-winged blackbirds have returned from Tennessee

and self-awareness is arising from material phenomena in consciousness through evolutionary Intent like chevrons on their wings becoming red

as April will arrive in all its yang of spring, spring, spring beyond, spring altogether all beyond, O what a great awakening!

The Oracle of the Underground

Lost in thought, one advances toward the oracle. No red wings flutter in this land of winter. Swamps of passion sleep beneath the ice.

Volition is denial of the natural watercourse of love. Ten thousand concepts sparkle in the frozen wasteland of the mind. Which forgery should one select?

The prophet from the south realm answers none. Forget the dollars of the senses. Division is a fabrication of an elementary schooling. Concentrate on one.

The voice of orioles is immaterial but gold. A charm is plummeting into an unfathomable well. The splash is always in the spring of heart.

Satori in Canyon del Muerto

In the canyon, sitting on the desert ground by clear and rushing waters of a crystal stream that flows from mountains far beyond the high surrounding mesa, I look at Anasazi ruins built within a crack between the sun and moon.

A thousand years ago, people occupied this space and made their time like pottery and sacred images of Kokopelli breathing infinite designs of lightning on these sandstone walls created by a long-forgotten sea.

The water starts to talk to me. It is speaking in a language that I used to speak before this world was planted in a fertile consciousness. I could say it's timeless but it's more like time itself. It's as if the Big Bang is right now.

Those ancient Pueblo people walk past me. Dinosaurs are dying out. Purple darkness like the one original sea distills each and every drop of water in my blood. I drink its whirlwind we call being until it covers me in silence.

When the tour bus leaves, I climb aboard, unable to explain to her the scene I've seen, the sea I am. Instead, I speak of ruins in the stream. My lunch was good. I took a picture of my hiking boots. Two ravens soar above me in these thermal waves of turquoise sky.

The Enlightenment of Julius Caesar

The Ides of March arrive tomorrow. Don't be late. Nine days from now and forty-two years ago, my father died. In eleven days, my mother would be ninety-seven. And pi was just an hour ago.

Time is permeated with the absolute unknown and the Merrimack is still embraced by ice although in any minute water from the Whites will free itself when everything is seen as universal, causeless, empty, and impermanent.

But let me suffer as a person for this moment just to tell you I love watching situation comedies like 30 Rock and New Girl. Like napalm in the morning, they remind me of loving deconstruction.

Science really doesn't do it for me. "That I am" to "I am That" is all the evolutionary arc from Big Bang to Enlightenment you need to know. The rest is there for you to breathe. Et tu, ego?

Grandfather

I don't remember much about my grandfather. He smoked a pipe. He rapped his knuckles on a table in percussive and sequential ways which seemed magical to me. He pulled a quarter from behind my ear.

He had a little garden with a shed. I remember radishes and cucumbers. One time I saw him weaving his way home from drinking at a local bar and falling to the pavement. One year later, he had a stroke and died.

Behind his house in the woods flowed the Spicket River. I was sure a band of Indians encamped there on their way from the White Mountains to the sea. Later I was told he had an Indian guide which talked to him in spells.

I've hiked the high words of India and all their nonduality of That. I've even asked some questions of the I Ching lately. The fruit of light is always hanging from the tree. The wilderness of wisdom talked to him. It also talks to me.

That Space of Clarity

A bird just flew into the picture window. Is that the inspiration for the words I was waiting on while looking out at bare trees in the bright March sun?

Imagine its surprise when it crashed into hard clarity. It was a flash of revelation surrounded by the spraying feathers of confusion.

It registered within its birdbrain though. Correcting course without much hesitation, it flew away in opposite direction.

That's the way of nature, like the mountain stream that slams the boulder and in reversal forms the temporary whitewater.

What's missing from this picture is that bird and stream will both continue in their way around the objects of obstruction in a slightly rearranged intensity.

Although, in longer view of things, the boulder will be worn away and this building with its window razed and trucked away.

The only fact remaining is that space of clarity.

Noise Will Be Noise

And then there was lightning before there was then.

To be followed by thunder which then came to be.

Being aspires to know why it's being.

Nothing in thunder can answer—it's nothing.

Sound and the fury of this thunderous world is only the sound and the fury.

Appearances only, it's only appearances.

Noise is but noise.

Lightning is lightning.

Silence, silence.

Superstar

I dream that I am something, superstar of screen and space. On Earth, I walk the stage with dinosaurs and woolly mammoths. Comets write my name in lights.

I played a monkey once. Reviews were raving all about me in the darkest caves of France. I swam the English Channel and continue swimming seven oceans every single day.

Trees talk to me because I am a tree, oak-strong and aspen gold. I wear a beard and stroke it like the Milky Way. My womb gives birth to constellations which I name from heart.

Rivers are my bridges from the mountains to the sea. Bodies are my bridges from the sky to bone.

Love is just a bridge from eye of you to eye of me. Dreaming is the bridge from X to I, unknown.

The Apocalypse of Unknowing the Known

We are a suddenness away from the end of evolution.

We've become something in order to see we're not this.

One never knows the unknowable. So one unknows the known...to know the unknown.

I, the unknowable, in order to know myself, intend the knowable, and through the evolutionary unknowing of this known, know my unknown  self

Ultimately, detachment means unknowing the known, and not some mere renunciation of some thing or action. Not egoic. Heroic!

But not non-existent, nor non-intelligent, nor non-energetic. Satcitananda!

If it's not silence, it's revelation

Revelation filtered in descending order: apocalypse, prophecy, poetry, sometimes a great notion.

After the flash of this apocalypse is the next manifestation whether you unknow it or not.

Like thunder appearing after lightning, your world is a manifestation of spontaneous understanding, i.e. revelation. See through it. Next!

The true hero is neither warrior nor suicide; but one that unknows it all and lives to tell one all about it, aka Bodhisattva.

Neither Ahab nor Bartleby but Ishmael.

The fear and loathing of paranoia is like hearing thunder without realizing there is lightning, like thinking without being.

Like methinks and not i am.

Be aware of the maze of unknowing.

As long as you're still here, there's always further.

And if I'm anywhere in speaking distance, I'm still here.

Evolution is the current story of I-am; always remember one is unknowing.

Belief Story

When I was in the middle of this life, those early thirties in the years encircling 1984, I tried to re-believe in God. I'm talking of a personal relationship with that almighty and omnipresent creator god, a superstar of biblical proportions.

One night while sitting upstairs writing, praying, I felt a drumming in my ears and took it as a sign that God was telling me of his existence. If he existed, then, of course, it was my undertaking here on earth to worship him.

And so I did. And studied fundamentalist compendiums about the Father and the Son and saw salvation in the fact of my belief alone. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew such faith was king. 

One night I had a dream. And in that dream, this God of newfound faith was visiting me and asked me if his deep and mind-encompassing voice was really God. It really shook me.

It further asked did I believe because I wanted to believe in something which would answer all my existential doubt or was this voice beyond belief. The words were like electric shock and led me to a nervous breakdown doubting everything I took for granted. 

Little did I know that such a deconstruction of my social conditioning is the actual beginning of the way to truth and in the subsequent confusion float the momentary cinders of destruction

flying in a disappearing face before the clarity of being that original unknown—this energy, intelligence and experienced existence without a thought of any personal belief or clouding images of god or world or me.

Overlooking Awareness

One always tries to solve the x of me, but I am always undefined.
One day the me is sorrowful and tries to understand just why.
One day the me is happy and desires to know exactly how to stay that way.
After years of swinging to and fro, the me forgets stability of what it is,
entrapped within the back-and-forth, recapturing some pleasure or avoiding pain.
In time, this bipolarity appears to be the ordinary state of its existence.
Monkeys see and monkeys do. The jaguar has escaped from its own view.

Wisdom

Wisdom is always talking to itself.
It's the voice in the wilderness
that needs no audience—
knowing there is no other.

The known that knows
it is the unknown,
it's being is loving
and otherwise compassionate.

There's really nothing to it

There's a general misconception that in time no aspect of the universe will be unknown. That is to say 

that everything is knowable despite the boundless nature of this cosmic pie and what a microcosmic slice of it we taste. 

But that is not the half of it. First, experience is certainly subjective. Without the benefit of consciousness, there's nothing.

Furthermore, it's consciousness itself we sense or monitor. In fact, the deeper we investigate the closer we attain

the probability that what I see is what I want to see. It's kind of like the feedback loop of being.

Then there's that beyond the scope of consciousness. There's really nothing to it, literally.

Imagine what you're knowing in deep sleep. That is the great unknown, unthinkable, which only means it's what I am when I'm not thinking.

A Childlike Shaman Powwow

We were five or six years old when our Great Aunt Izzie came to visit. She was sitting in the rocking chair and I was playing with my cousin on the floor with Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys. The world we were creating was a cross between a science-fiction matinee and Gunsmoke.

My mother took Aunt Izzie’s empty teacup and started walking to the kitchen when it happened. First, the sound was just a whispering. My mother turned around and dropped the teacup to the carpet, as if she knew too well the melody and where it came from.

It seemed like nothing much to me. The teacup crashing into shards appeared more curious. I wondered how we could include their fragmentary shapes into our formless burgeoning contraption. Everything is just a game for our amusement at that age.

But the noise was turning into whoops. Aunt Izzie’s hand was drumming on her lips. She was turning Indian before our very eyes. My mother ran into the bathroom fast as I remember ever seeing her in action, slammed the door, and left my cousin and myself to witness Izzie’s transformation.

She must have been past eighty then and always seemed to be collapsing as if her bones were just unable to support the weight of years. But now she straightened proudly with the posture of a warrior and started dancing slowly on the edge as if the space our toys created was a camp fire burning in a cold Algonquian night.

Her shouts were getting louder and they moved her body up and down like popcorn as she continued circling there around our world as if she were the light of all the prehistoric summers that existed here before their death had been invented by the forked tongue words of white men.

She stopped to look at each of us and shined. We nestled in a world of toys and listened Fort Apache style to every secret word she said. She spoke of black holes in another constellation. She showed us light emerging from its winter cave. She tapped into a maple tree and fed us with its lovely harmonies of sweet intoxication.

In a quiet burning voice, she speaks to me alone and tells me what I am and asks me to forget each sound she makes to heal my heart, predicting every year that follows from this moment is a slow remembrance of exactly what I know right now—and what a cosmic trip it is from our first pow to each succeeding wow.