Dance like only little kids are watching
and you gotta make'em laugh ...
because, in fact, behind every pair of eyes
is a child waiting to laugh at you
or with you.

Express yourself, you silly-billy.

Return

If and when you feel yourself nervous or anxious,

and if these feelings are composed of thoughts of what needs to be done

in order to achieve a certain goal in life

and

if these feelings are stirred

by the compulsion to participate more

in the actualization of this achievement

or inadequacy,

take a moment to release this nervous, anxious energy into your energy field;

take a moment to acknowledge your energy field

and the fact that it's grandeur is not your inadequacy

but your reservoir for Being

and sometimes what needs to be actualized 

is Calm and Faith with Inaction

rather than Self and Progress with Action.

dilute your potent feelings in the microcosm of universe that surrounds your being and mass,

see them hanging there as not yours and not you,

thus can their energies be inverted (or converted) and

then used to your benefit

without disturbing your Calm.

The intelligence surrounding you

(your energy field and forces from which it is composed)

is more ancient than your own

and thus wiser,

at least in some ways (and with certain species of energy).

Think as much about what the universe can do for you

to help you achieve your goals

as you can do for yourself to achieve your goals.

Recall the hierarchy of your goals

and do not confuse this:

achieving the goal will not bring Peace

or anything other than a certain satisfaction.

Peace you possess now

and peace you should protect.

The actualization of your goal is your pleasure, your privilege,

your busy-ness, your expression of what it is to Live.

The capacity, desire, and determination to do so --

unhesitatingly, no matter what -- are your Gifts.
Discard these and you will create the paradoxical beast,
sufferer of misalignment, the Destructive Self,
who claims and acts as if he prefers The End over Tomorrow, any day;

so long as the Death is slow and feels good

(excessive smoke, drink, anything; dangerous highs;
sympathetic, enabling affection for his
deep and intellectual laments, perceptive enough to know
he is wrong but so in love with his perceptive abilities
that being wrong is his beautiful rebel doppelganger savant,
the fairest and most sincere He knows or is willing to be,
a bona fide higher self;
the most romantic, noble death a good heart can have, actually.
A stubborn martyr. Shivering with courage
in the freezing shadows of doubt...)

and doesn't actually snuff him.

But I've digressed; indeed, I know this sad,
doomed archetype too well.

Peace is not what you get when you get There

it is what you carry and hold dear along the way,

(it is what keeps Here always Here
just like Now is always Now,
even if it was a little while ago
or will be way later, the fact remains:

Here must always be Here).

along with Love

and Faith

and Forgiveness.

When you arrive There (The Here from which all Heres hail)

rich and successful and accomplished

they will not ask for a check

autograph, diploma, badge
or anything like that.

They will ask to see your Peace

your Love and your Forgiveness
and expect that, along with your Heart,
each is in better condition than the day you got them.

"That was the meaning of your Life,
were those who told you different so convincing?
You can always go back try again.
Go on back, then.  There are fresh new bodies
you can chose from.  I'm afraid you won't remember anything
in any one of them, but eventually you'll just get it... "

Handing these over to the Saint at the Gate,

or using them to build a bridge

over the Great Abyss between

Here and There ... however you see it,
the point is

it is with these precious

and natural resources

that We return to Purity.

Nothing else.

Seeing Beyond Either/Or

If an Either/Or scenario causes you stress

it may be because the scenario is not Either Or,

rather, that you are seeing only in Black and White

and feel the limits of your vision.

The feeling and intuition that one's own vision

is limited, incomplete, less than one would expect

can be the true cause of the stress, anxiety, or discomfort felt.

To offer a basic example:

"Or", is most commonly used as if it were mutually exclusive

when, in fact, it is not.  That is,

the question, "would you like the apple or the orange?" includes the responses,

"both, please" and, "neither, thank you" in addition to 

"the apple, please" or, "the orange, please".

Oscillating between scenario A and scenario B is not bad.

Both must be examined and assessed for their merits and demerits.

However, to stop there -- to perceive only A and B, or to use a better metaphor,

0 and 1 -- is to fail to see the infinite space between A and B,

the infinite numbers which are themselves possibilities, between 0 and 1.

The intellectual response to the perception of unfavorably limited options

is to squint the mind's eye and seek subtlety, nuance.  Sometimes this requires populating

the space between the clearly visible with the content of one's imagination:

imagine scenarios, however absurd, and see what comes of them; 

hypothesize and consider the results of your hypothesis as thoroughly as you can;

cast a premise into the unknown and watch it blossom there into who knows what

as you shower it with the attention of your mind and the light of your purpose;

and so forth.  In short, recruit your creativity to bend the rules, make unconventional connections

which themselves serve as the parameters and building blocks of new and very possible scenarios that were not so evident at the incipience, when only A and B appeared as options

to the mind's eye.

Not all possibilities produced by your imagination and premises and hypotheses

will be feasible, realistic, desirable solutions.  They may not even be solutions.

But the practice of Seeing with the richness of your own Wealth of Knowledge

(intellect + intelligence in all its modalities)

is worthwhile.  It will evolve.  You will become better and better at it

and you will become a masters at it.  And it is a skill that you can apply

to just about field of inquiry, life scenario (internal, external, or otherwise).  

Indeed, seeing The Truth as a composite of:

1) the External Truth known as Reality

and Physical laws interconnecting her parts;

2) the Intra-Truth, known in the West as the Self

and the Spiritual laws connecting the Self;

3) the Inter-Truth, connecting the complexes of External Truth

and Internal-Truth via the deeds of, specifically, Human Beings,

which possess the energies of intent, purpose, and so forth

which, themselves, unite features of the Extra- and Intra- Truths

resulting in Culture and possessing a direction (a purpose as Heidegger might put it).

Seeing The Truth thus should console us.  It is not all ours.  It lives on its own and I do not believe it has any designs on destroying anything that does not seek to destroy it (being that it is, or can be interpreted as, a Life Form or a higher order than the Human Being, em si.)

Vignette

There was something missing from my life, and as if a hole in my heart, chemicals rushed in like so many planets of solar-system-looking elements of our universe and, to my drowned sobriety, they tasted like the loneliness one packs way down deep in his bags before he goes to visit his ancestors so he can deliver it in one piece: a brew stronger that I expected; hoppy bitterness of a Belgian Ale yet dark and deep as the absence it fills.  This is my well of Longing.

Something is missing.  Laughter.  Yes, my second half, laughing, falling on me and on the table where I sit and write alone, wiping all these words away ... no, I take back the "other half" metaphor and put there "a whole and complete tavern lighting up Pope St. with a neon sign reading The Imperfect, which flashes an occasional apostrophe between the "I" and the "m" stumbling the logic a bit until the windows appear golden as the flecks found in happy eyes pouring out warmth."

Let's divide this drink, the sum of all the spells you could cast in one midnight, all the intent you could squeeze into the pin head puncturing flesh of a voodoo doll, the ink from the indelible word bedazzled by the seriousness of our feelings, drunk off the same the stuff, we step outside where it is dark to have a better view of our future, raising the height of any forest canopy within us like the hairs on our bodies, leaping like so many tongues speaking to the edges of me and you like an ocean might, in its own way, howl under a full moon, and lap up the sweat of a throbbing nape.

The Big Bang

About my aggression --
once a single, violent conflagration
desperate to illuminate
the Infinite Void
in which I thought myself trapped --
it has learned how to live
in such a place:

replacing frustration
and fury and all that energy
that'd been balled up into One --
that Singularity resisting
the fracture into Life --

that one fire that
would either consume All or Itself
is now Infinite Flames
tossed into the still, deceivingly quiet Abyss;
scattered, random,
chaos no less than ever before
only now,
navigable,
perfectly spaced
but not imprisoned.

Each star has a function,
each sees the other
and burns to the death

illuminating with all its might
and patience --

my cosmology,
celestial bodies working together
light is light is light
from Light
and Light from Energy,

the same Original Nature,
like nine hundred ninety nine billion
nine hundred ninety nine million
and so forth monks
sent to war, meditating on the front line
for Peace, reaching into the character Nemesis
to His Heart, which beats and bleeds for us All.

This Universe of ours
is nice.  A well-lit neighborhood,

a lovely place to meander
when you are ready
to forget what you thought was True

or, at least, realize that all truths
are as mortal as you --

Save Mystery,
she will outlast us all.

The Man Zero (preface)

The story of the man Zero is a short one, sad and tragic to some, darkly comedic to others.  It is a true story, but it is a story, nonetheless -- a record, if you will -- and this means that, for all the truths included in it, a far greater many were omitted so that the story could be told.  And so though it is true and complete, I pray you won't think me too philosophical when I add that it is, by the limiting nature of narrative forms, also untrue and incomplete.

It should also be part of this preface that no man after our protagonist ever dared match his achievement (if that is the appropriate word).  Ironically, every man before him dedicated his life, almost religiously, to attaining the benchmark of human spirit herein discussed.  It was supposed to be an impossible challenge, a legend, a myth, but man at full and vivacious form rarely believes in impossibilities.  Thus, all before him who believed in truth endeavored to find it, to know it, to be it.  But when the challenge was proven possible, the allure of its achievement evaporated and men began to estimate its value based on results.  As if fledgling scientists, laymen inquired and researched, asking, “How did the man Zero feel, how did he live, was he happier than I, richer?”  Certainly, measured by results, the man Zero was, if nothing else, a warning to his successors: find the truth and forget not why you ever pursued it.

Many desisted, preferring the clear and prepared paths to the deep unknown whose dark called to them like sirens, inviting them to greatness.

You probably have an idea of how his story goes, now.  Correctly, you have added up the evidence and concluded that this man's life was not so great since no one after him attempted to duplicate the historic feat.  You would be correct in the same way that the story is true and complete, for though he was far from rich, suffered an unjust proportion, and, over-all, did not lead a life preferable to any other, he did live in a way that invited the unseen into the common light, in a way that made it seem he was the cause and controller of the supernatural witnessed by his contemporaries. In short, he spoke with angels, performed miracles, diagnosed and offered remedies for societies’ ills. He made the blind see what is real-but-not-acknowledged and he showed them a way.

  

Here, I imagine, the non-believer folds the book and reaches for another that will reinforce what he already believes to be so.  Unfortunate; for here the true story begins.

Notes

1.a.
 The chain of events from which I've liberated myself was, indeed, rusted and tarnished; old as the concepts of which it was symbolic: slavery, oppression -- all that is the very antithesis of freedom, itself.

The reach of the chain was to the illusion of liberty, to the fruit for impatient men so hungry for the nutrition of Spirit and yet so fresh and new to the human flesh that, well, a man would know not where to look.  All he ever reached for was and is God and yet all he ever got was the drama of the Reaching Man.

Eventually it becomes clear, though, that the only purity in existence has no specific form, it is the indivisible (of which he is necessarily a part, knowingly or not).  He is never without it and so it is never out of reach nor does he need to reach, at all.  The state of being without IT (the Tao, one might call it, the Connection, the Liasson, or whatever) is, in truth, a state of Confusion, the cure for which is patience and meditation  -- inaction.

1.b.
During inaction, one permits the Universe to act, to do what it does, to precipitate what it will from the threatening clouds of obscurity and fertilize the soul with the Touch of Nature's enlightening, quenching response.

2.a.
Now is a living entity
Now is an organic system
Now is both finite and infinite
Now is space, time, material and consciousness.
Now is a consciousness unto itself -- nous.