“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

-TS Eliot

Oneness exists whether i am aware of it or not.

We embark on our voyage.

Over there, the Buddhists are getting into their rowboat.

Over here, the Sufis paddling a canoe.

"Look at the pretty sails of the New Age schooner!"

And when we arrive Home, we scuttle the boat.

Oneness exists. The natural state is not something I can achieve.

And whatever ship takes me across the seas of selfish madness,

doesn't so much matter.

Someday perhaps we'll all meet again at a oneness celebration.

"Hey, weren't you a Buddhist, sitting on your ...... all day?

I remember you, whirling your self into peace.

And you with the bleeding heart, isn't that where Christ stabbed you, and left you to dissolve into eternal love?"

Someday, sitting around a nondenominational campfire of love,

singing songs of merriment, of love, and songs of grief,

and trying our hardest to remember,

"What was that thing we used to call oneness?"

 

I've waited a long time. And i've looked into my soul and seen darkness.

Little failings that seem magnified, by the urgency of our Mission.

We only want to save the world. We only want to share love and bliss until

all identities dissolve in holy water.

The jackals of selfishness yap wildly all around us,

the angels soothe us with songs of heavenly peace.

One flower child dancing in a field of flowers, mesmerized and delighted by the sight of God's beauty.

Two, three, four flower children become a cult, a movement, a religion.

All human endeavors are imperfect. All groups become political.

We thought this would be easy, to return to the belly of the beast,

put our hands on wounded hearts and heads, and let the bliss rain down.

No one has a copyright on love, and on the depths of Being.

Yet in this world of commerce and politics, we pretend it's ours to sell.

The light of love shines outward from our hands, and inward into our hearts.

We can't run. Love is stalking our imaginary identities,

and will catch us in our lies, in our falseness, and our imagined spiritual magnificence.

Only when no identity is left, and no Movement is needed,

will the final explosion of love and bliss descend.

We are the walking wounded, those who have agreed to feel the depths of sorrow,

dragging the past along with us, unable to see the Dawn, sometimes getting lost in the darkness.

Especially when we build an edifice of Oneness prematurely out of our imagination,

and believe in our Dream of Love.

 

Oneness exists whether  or not i am aware...

or not.

Love exists whether i feel it...

or not.

 

We embark on our voyage.

We arrive Home, and know it for the first time.

 

Orpheus returning from Hades.

Orpheus comes to the end.

He has killed Eurydice with his glance.

He has encountered the underworld and now is surfacing again.

What now?

What shall he do?

Can he find in himself another song, and what shall that be?

A song of mourning, of grief?

A song of love? (He has destroyed the object of his love, he has killed his partner.)

A song of hope? (What hope is there?)

A song of the shadows? (He has left the shadows in Hades, been there, done that.)

 

Enough of the self introspection.

Enough whining, and navel gazing.

There is no bottom to the pool of sorrow, no end to the

vastness of Hades.

When we die, we will die forever, unfathomably dissolved into the darkness or the light, as you wish.

Either way completely gone.

 

I hear the voice of my father, the voice of my grandfathers, and they urge me to action.

Not the confused action of Orpheus before the descent.

Not the search for meaning and love somewhere else,

the desire to be saved.

 

Chop wood, carry water, let the heart and it’s mourning dissolve in the daily work.

Tears and laughter coming and going,

cleaning mirrors, washing floors, making food for my daughter.

The journey to the underworld is necessary.

It’s also necessary to return.

 

It’s necessary for the worm to become a chrysalid.

And of necessity, become a butterfly.

A few days of flying free, and then

the darkness will engulf me once again.

 

 

There’s no need to worry that i’ll forget how to die.

walking down some dirt path, with nowhere really to go
barefoot, kicking the dust, and watching the sunset
paint a little glory before the night falls.
What happened to the Grand Dream and the
Very Important Agenda???

Simply, walking, meeting a friend, drinking a cup of tea
or sharing a glass of wine
as the sun sets
on another completely
unique day


What is sadness and joy, but the colors of the rainbow?

This used to be a fox....or maybe it still is a fox, only in another manifestation.
I used to be a spiritual person.
I used to know who i was.
I used to consider myself a failure at times.
And sometimes a wonderful caring man.
And sometimes a pitiful neurotic basket case.
Brilliant, intelligent, far seeing and wise.
Short sighted, lost in momentary pleasure.
I’ve been it all.
And a lot of it i’m not proud of.
Some of what i have been proud of seems about as solid as this fox.
I’m disintegrating.
I’d like it to happen before, i return to the earth,
fur and bones.

(I have written on this topic several times recently in my blog. But definitions change as i change....)

Success.
The concept requires that i step out of this moment, and away from my current situation, and compare one picture of success with another.
This is the very slippery nature of this concept. And i can pretend to be spiritual and beyond notions of success...

But i am not. I still want success. So what is it that i want?
And what if my life so far is a failure? By whose standards is it a success, and by whose standards is it a failure?

For the cockroaches, success is measured one way.
For a stockbroker, success is measured by money.
For a farmer, harvesting healthy vegetables and fruits.
For a lover, a kiss.
For the paratrooper, jumping invisibly behind enemy lines, without getting snarled up in the lines.
For a singer, a song that lifts the soul.

The root of success is to leave all notions of success behind.
And when one of my personalities craves success, to kindly humor it.
Success is leaving this mad talk inside the brain, and surrendering to the love that manifests
as squash and computers and cleaning floors and spider webs.
Loving lovers, and being alert on the highway.
Forgetting success, and remembering who we are,
moment by moment,

success is a fantasy, and which of us can speak of success
when we are living in a dream?

My soul knows this place.
It wants comfort. A hand, a caress, a kiss,
but i know that i too
did not come into this world to be comforted.
Work is at hand, floors to be cleaned,
old junk taken to the dump
dust bunnies swept from closets.

I am not the beautiful man i imagined myself to be.
Just ordinary, full of pain, neurotic and wounded
Yes, light has penetrated, and blessings have arrived,
for that i am eternally grateful.
And i am even grateful to see the places that have gone unloved
and the work that has gone undone.
The emerging Self is grateful to feel this writhing and moaning
worm make itself visible.

For how else can this old parasite
be convinced to leave for good.
If not for the Light, i could stay in the damp dark basement forever.
But the work that needs to be done, it is not for me
but for the children and the flowers,
this ancient Worm was not my creation
and the songs i sing are not mine.

Let this be done.
Enough tears have been shed, and enough whining and self pity.
It's nothing really, in a world of horrors, and children being bombed.
Nothing to speak of, when all hell is breaking loose
And the Light of the earth herself,
breaks through all of the basements of the world
And as the old structures give way, built as they are on foundations
of greed and selfish madness,
there is yet a moment where all seems possible
and the destruction of the world
a necessary sorrow
to allow the flowers of light
to shine in new meadows
where love and love only is worshipped
and each gesture to each other
is made from the purest of hearts
with no agenda, hidden or otherwise
other than to meet
my Self,
dancing in a World of Light.

Being enamored of my own self consciousness...thanks to my zen friend Seiju for that little nugget, when he said it, it just rang true. Observing this endless stream of commentary on what is actually happening, at times i forget that the Source is endlessly bubbling up, and showing up as different people in my life. Enjoying the relationship with life as it walks in the door of my consciousness, in whatever form it arises. What gets in the way is me...

My mother loved me and still loves me unconditionally. It is amazing to know that someone in the world cares about me in that way, for most love is conditional. She had a passion for the rights and well being of all those who are less fortunate. When i was young, living in a small town in Ohio (Woodville, population 1700), there was a divorced woman who lived by herself, and few people paid attention to her. My mother invited her to our house for Thanksgiving, although we kids frowned on it!
  My mother gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching when i was a teenager, even though she didn't understand it. She kept an open mind to the explorations of her chilldren, and supported whatever direction we wanted to go, as long as it was a path with heart.
  She was devoted to her Christian faith, and walked her talk, living a life of Christian service to people, treating others as if they mattered.
  I am very grateful in many ways to my mother. May the rest of her life on this planet, and her journey out of this body be free of suffering, and may she realize in her own heart, the gifts she has given to others.

(my note: I wrote this for my friends in the local oneness group)

So much is happening in the world, and so much is happening in my own heart and my own life.
What i want to share with you is my musing on success, and peace.

Success: What is success for you personally, and how would success show up worldwide?
What would success look like in the oneness movement?

We usually have a picture of success. In the political arena, it might be that our party wins the election.
I'm thinking that a President who honored people, plants, animals, and the whole planet: that would be a success.
Personally, I would have a deep, intimate partner in my life. And a successful music career.
The oneness movement would be sweeping all around the world, and people would be receiving the blessing
and having big parties of groovy loving energy.

I know that it is popular in the New Age to take these kind of dreams and make them into affirmations.
But affirming something that exists in some other time and place, can be a sure route to suffering.
The divine grace that has brought the Oneness Blessing into my life, has made no promises as to what my life
will look like, and no promises about whether i will achieve "my success". When i was in India, I asked Amma for a successful music career,
and she tapped me on the head, and said, "It is done!" But she didn't say what that success will look like...

Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Despite the seeming imperfections of my life, Grace has descended into this very moment, into this
slightly dysfunctional, living, breathing, mistake making human being.

Tying our happiness up to the Dream Making Machine, tying it up to whether or not we are successful,
it will drag us up and down. Today it is sunny and warm and calm, but tomorrow the winds may blow dust all over town.
Maybe my allergies will kick in, and my daughter will be grumpy.

Grace is alive in all of that, too...

It is not to say i don't want to be open for change, or have goals and projects. That is human, we have work to do,
and sometimes we have real fun...But don't wait for oneness, don't wait to be successful, don't wait for enlightenment,
or the New Age house on the hill. It may never come, and if we die tomorrow, would you want to say,

it was all a big mistake, i never got what i wanted!

Grace descends into everything right now, just as it is.

Peace is calling our name,
for we all come from nothing, and are returning to nothing all the time.
Grace, falling like a gentle rain, awakening the peace that is already in our hearts.
It was never anywhere else.

Until i have learned to bring the greatness out of myself, how can i truly bring greatness out in others?  So one way is to strive for greatness in my own life. To never settle for being in my own complacent bubble, but to continue to grow and expand. Modeling a way of being...
The other way is to pay attention to others, and listen to them. Each person's path is so unique, there must be a unique way to encourage others to their greatness. For one, it may be a hug, and encouraging words. For another, or at another time, a slap on the hands, and strong words might be the right remedy. The right action shows up when i am in the flow of the Way.