Sunday, December 4, 2011

reflections on a visit to Zuccotti Park

At about 2 p.m. on Nomember 28, 2011, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, where construction of the Freedom Tower continues in earnest, I come upon a small barricaded and heavily guarded patch of concrete ironically decked with Christmas cheer. There number of cops is wildly disproportionate to the number of activists here, with a profusion of crowd monitoring and control devices no doubt poised to quickly detect and disperse any possible resurgence or flash mob. It is immediately clear to me that Zuccotti Park will never again be occupied, at least in the way it once was by Occupy Wall Street. The site is now fully occupied by the rank and file cops, who seem utterly jaded, almost disinterested in their total domination of the scene. Nothing occurs here that is not within their purview, yet they too have no coherent message or demands, and offer no solutions to the sufferings and injustices of the day.  




I sense an air of desperation among the activists who congregate here daily and are evicted nightly. I hear hoarse, half-hearted, routinized voices at the mic check. The few folks holding signs at the barricade are full of strident invectives, but are largely ignored by passers-by. I feel that these remaining occupiers cling to an exhausted meme, one that the authorities at the site clearly have no intention of allowing to be rejuvenated. I am hopeful that they will soon let go of the occupation tactic in favor of advancing a larger strategy through the myriad creative ways that would otherwise be available to them.  


Simultaneously, I experience the activities of the activists as an irrepressible force of change, even if these activities are not dependent upon their holding ground at Zuccotti. I witness them continuing to bring into being the change they wish to see in the world through the comfort working group, free empathy, communal cigarettes, and persistent kindness. The group activities are nuclear (in the familial sense), inwardly nurturing, hunkered and, unfortunately due to cage-like barricades on all sides, insular. But they are also ultimately hopeful and triumphant, like a forgone conclusion.  


The thick crowds of people present on every other patch of public space in this bustling downtown area are ominously absent from Zuccotti, as if a pall had been cast over the plaza. Something momentous happened here. I can feel the historical rift, like what can be felt at North Bridge in Concord or at Auschwitz, or more positively, in old Firenze. I sense a distinctly uncomfortable field emanating from this rift at ground zero. It is driving a mass awakening to the slow-motion ecological and humanitarian catastrophe being wreaked by modern society, and to the bitter, stultifying, not-so-subtle overtones of an emerging militarized state. And in the midst of this damnation I see the germination of the kernel of the solution, striking the perfect balance. 


Meanwhile the sad and lonely Christmas tree pleads for a return to business as usual. But alas, awakening is permanent, irreversible. The arrow of time stubbornly continues to point toward the future, and the cosmos remain steadfastly indifferent.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

what's not dying?

Everything that could be apprehended with the senses would someday cease. Thoughts came forcefully and lazily went. That unshakable feeling of being, merged into its experience, like balancing on a neutron, choosing not between poles. Choosing not. And not choosing not to choose.

Time for a sandwich.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

lumps

What was wrong? There were no visions. Only blackness, a vague sense of puffiness and a constriction in the lower abdomen. The gathering storm was unpredicted, and perfect. With great effort I fought back the first one, breathing and swallowing into the soupy, tumultuous sky. When the second storm hit, the wolf howled and I was a goner.

Like blood from an open wound, love gushed up from the center, removing all obstacles. There was a tremendous ripping feeling as a rotten childlike festerous tumor was expelled. What remained there was awash in a scintillating light. And she was there winking and smiling with unfathomable intelligence, folding into the geodesic creases and effortlessly popping out again. "Thank you," I telepathed. And she responded with a wave of deliciousness.

Hours later as the dust settles, I take stock in what remains. The dank catacomb is open now and the glistening moldy black walls are screaming raw in the glaring sunlight. The child lays on the floor in the fetal position of total shame. "Things will be different now." I say. "You are free." His pale translucent face turns to look up at me, as the lumps of a deformed face capture the light of day for the first time since those first few innocent months following birth. The whole right side of his forehead and eye socket are caved in and puttied over with lumpy hairless skin.

"You won't want to hear what I have to say." he croaks in whisper.

"Nothing in the universe is unworthy of love. Your lumps are beautiful," I reply.

The child begins to cry. I offer my hand to help him up.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

stumbling to mastery

Once discovered, the mechanism of release at each stage is freely available and develops with every application of conscious attention. Like riding a bicycle, it takes a bit of balance and concentration at first. But thenceforth it takes only a brief "push off" to feel the expansive wind in the psychic hair. The wind moves upward to the next stage, where the next newfangled vehicle is parked, waiting to provide the skinned knees and frustrated lumps on the path to its mastery.

With each mastery comes the remembrance and recognition of the innate abilities of the stage. The effects of these emanate out noticeably into daily life, providing exactly what is needed, as would be expected in mastery. And the stumblings of the next stage are present too, emanating out as well, creating the messes from which to learn or to ride back down into ignorance, confusion and oblivion.

This could all be nondual'd into unimportance, but then there'd be nothing to talk about. And this blog is all about talking about unimportant things. So anyone reading should ignore the above.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

scripted


The following words cannot possibly be true.

There is the unshakable field of having wanted to come here, of having chosen a life as human being, as this multitude of human beings all self-aware and clawing their way back to Self. But stepping back from the grit of living, the thrall of striving, and even the non-experience of realized being, find this being human vibration appears like a script read before. Prior art.

So there is this knowing of the script, as predictable and familiar, and also a knowing that this was chosen. Not as a deliberation of the facts and the precedents but as an exhilarating moment of ecstatic creation. Stepping back to that space, see the snatches of remembering, not as memory but as truth, of that choice before time. Impulsively choosing to activate the full-on context of this reality, reflection knew, seeing the beginning and the end simultaneously, that it would be exactly like this, having known the script. But creation is ultimately irrepressible, and potentiality nothing until expressed. The excruciating stasis of pure consciousness is shattered by one tiny vibration. The tiny bing that produced the Big Bang. A geist, laughing and swirling and plunging in again, birthing another reality, another round of experience and imbalance. Off to vibrate in the beauty realm once again.

That which is peering through the lens of the human state drives even further than Self-realization into the primordial. The scripted persistence of this universe and human form, in apparent sequential time, is an intrigue. Experienced as a succession of days of searching the mystery for meaning and purpose, there seems always more mystery and no destination, with even Self-realization a scene in the script. So after getting over the shock of Self-realization, after the obsessive need to re-mind that attention is all there really is. Through the ineffable detachment. After, ugh, shudder, "enlightenment". There is still no stasis.

Seeing that all only apparently is, yes, fine, and is only transient fabrication, sure, okay, but further that the human experience is a modality, a vehicle for creation and for realization of being. And stepping back even further, see that there must be others, modalities that is, vehicles, that are possible. Back in stasis, any could be activated. The human one. Another one. Any way for being to realize and observe itself. Another frequency of primordial vibration explodes out of stasis to generate a reality completely different, far beyond the gasps of human imagination.

Nah, can't be. I'm going to go make a sandwich.

Monday, April 11, 2011

predicament

Hummm?  Huh?  What is that echo?  What a dumb monkey thought, coulda been anyone's, but here on this event horizon?  Unlook, nowhere! The elusive off switch!  And things only get interesting when it shuts off, dearly beloved brain.  Yes, that's when they, the Things, get interesting, but don't look too hard or it, the brain, comes back on, yes. Like a head-lolling sleep taking over awareness, monopolizing the stage, sucking dry every ounce of conscious awareness until.

Stop again.  Let it roll, rocking untouched across the unabridged abyss.

Can I get off this ride, stop knowing?  End performing?  This predicament is awry bread, a wheat bed, a treat dread.  Defying definition, and meaningless metaphors of hard places and rocks.

Click.

The moment. The longest illusory moment fades sublimely into the phased moon's refracted pulp fiction. Wow the view. I can see everything just so, but understand nothing, oh no, until the brain.  ReCollects. The past... aaaand the future.  And jumps back onto the world of monkey brains.  Whooping just for the THRILL man, Shit Yeah!

But you never forget the click.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

don't be yourself

Everything I've written before this has been shite.

"Be yourself" is the dumbest advice you've ever heard. It forces you to form tiny limited thoughts and conceptions of who you are. Which is all fine and well except that those will simply be tiny limited thoughts and conceptions. They won't be who You actually are.

Gurus and sages play a fun little trick here on those who tend toward limiting themselves in this way by prescribing further limitations that your behavior and self-concept must be such and such, usually tending toward purity and piety, if you are to attain the Truth of Who You Are. This technique quiets the mind, and removes objects of attention. Fair enough. But this has nothing to do with who You are.

You are your attention, whether it is on your beautiful spouse and children, a pile of vomit, a gorgeous sunset, a hard rockin' heavy metal dirge, a fabulous dream, the quiet blackness of unconsciousness, the syllable Om, or the singular fact of Being. Nothing can change that you are, currently, your attention. No object of attention can increase or diminish that.

Except perhaps death. But I wouldn't really know, 'cause I'm not dead. Yet. I'm in a live form, so of course I'll get to find out soon enough. Anyone reading this who's dead, please let me know whether attention has increased or diminished, okay?

But anyway, quit limiting who you are to your concept of yourself. You don't have to be NewAge-y. You don't have to be Hippie. You don't have to be Granola. You don't have to be Social. You don't have to be Hermetic. You don't have to, to be Yourself.

Quit limiting who you are to who you think your parents taught you to be. You don't have to be the Frightened Child. You don't have to be the Overachiever. You don't have to be the Loser. You don't have to be the Bad One. You don't have to, to be Yourself.

Quit limiting who you are to who you think the world forces you to be. You don't have to be Corporate Drone. You don't have to be Super Activist. You don't have to be Helpless Victim. You don't have to be  Misfit or Outcast. You don't have to, to be Yourself.

Quit being yourself. Quit trying so hard.

Be your attention, whatever objects upon which You choose to place it, until death do you part.

Everything I've written before this has been shite.