Personal Depth Appreciation
Thinking out loud through the lens of reflection on my own personal perspectival strata…
At essence, these tingling quantum fields vibrating into existence, pulsating generosity and love into cyclical orbits of full feeling and a peaceful receptive stillness that welcomes all.
A deep Ah-Om bringing forth the fabric of being, itself a resonant instrument arising to be played into the celebration of all things.
Emerging as one, awakened expression of divine selfhood opens senses of all nature, drinking in the fullness of a boundless and luminous scape of majesty. Color and form and sound and feeling, the senses go out and the scent of wholeness weaves itself into laughter, smiling, a joyful delight fills a universe of psalm.
Texture emerges in the music of self, resonance and dissonance dance and twirl, attractions develop, repulsions as well. Polarities emerge, giving rise to new and more subtle shapes, qualities, and nuance. Grasping and letting go, inhale and exhale, discernment and desire, wisdom and skill begins to create, the actor is born.
What is this great and faithful power? This inquiry will reverberate, enduring in ebbs and flows, building melody and continuity in the song of the soul.
I said to the wanting creature inside me: What is this river you want to cross? There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road. Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting? There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman. There is no towrope either, and no one to pull it. There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford! And there is no body, and no mind! Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty? In that great absence you will find nothing. Be strong then, and enter into your own body; There you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don’t go off somewhere else! Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, And stand firm in that which you are. — the poet Kabir (1398 -- 1518)
I dance between wanting and gratitude.
Gratitude and peace for the resplendence of being. A heart beating, reveling in the sensation of love flowing outward, and the privilege of giving, meeting that self in the face of others and listening, yearning, caring as action, insight and creativity. I am this fleeting, sparkling moment, a continuity of lives, momentary arcs of light and shadow through dimensions of space-time, one perfection echoing forth to resolve again in the ocean of natural timeless and boundless freedom.
The wanting is a hunger of love to meet its mirrored other. Love without an object is love, and yet.
When my friend is away from me, I am depressed; nothing in the daylight delights me, sleep at night gives no rest, who can I tell about this? The night is dark, and long hours go by… because I am alone, I sit up suddenly, fear goes through me… Kabir says: Listen, my friend: There is one thing in the world that satisfies, And that is a meeting with the Guest. — the poet Kabir (1398 -- 1518)
Longing flashes through me in fits and sparks. My beloved is this life; this whole ecstatic world, the cosmos unfurling into, upon, and through itself in the endless dance of psalm. The longing pulses deep and through me, desperate not to waste a moment of being in blind craving and distraction.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, There is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. When the beloved (divine) is being longed for, it is the intensity of the longing that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity. — Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi جلالالدین محمد رومی
The body, broken, yearns still to dance into action, meeting the calls of unresolved tension in catalytic ecstasy to break the stale bonds and weave new connections, pathways along which to flow beauty, love, and wisdom.
Joyful, blissful creativity, delight in the artful construction of intelligent forms, fountains of love that channel luminous perfection into spectral displays of celebration.
Silence in the song of the universe, space between the notes, emptiness between the inhale and exhale, I and thou, the tension of perfect distance, mystery leaps into being, a word whispered, waiting for some echo of reply. This texture, so alluring suggesting organic shapes of rule and truth, yet elusive in any final definition of form.
What is this great and faithful power? What sense of self emerges moment to moment, and what context does that define, always in motion, spectacular, tremendous, what ecstasy of making love from birth to death?
But there is good and bad, right and wrong, ethic and morality, a path to walk. Some may say, “a razors edge.” All of this majesty takes shape, a mandala of being with a place for everything, orderly steps that honor each sacred instance with the integrity of its life between birth and death, it’s arising and passing away.
The song I honor to keep in step arises within me; intuition, soles [soul’s] guidance, guidance of the hands and heart as well. Still, this is a moment of dissonance in our chorus. Our human family caught against itself, head from heart, neighbor from neighbor, body from Earth, past and future, and now from a deep well-being. I, searching this moment for the song of truth, knowing within that my lost wailing is not but perfection in the cosmic song.
In moments I remember my place, here at home in the depths of my heart. And yet “outside” I feel my sense of home so close to lost. This note wavers long, orbiting wide, like so many others, with just a few harmonies within range. I long to reunite with the wholeness of this earth, our peoples to include those that walk on two legs, those that walk on more and less those that swim and fly, still others who root deep and crawl and reach, I long that we come home to ourselves; and in that longing, I feel far afield from home.
With expert precision, I often imagine a clear path forward, one aligned in excellence with truth, harmony, and beauty. In my innocence and humility I often miss innumerable vital connections and the path falters. But I can do better, and I do.
Remembering my roots deep in the heart of life, creativity pulses through and I renew that sense of confidence and certainty of insight. These feelings, these thoughts, these ideas – not yet perfect – but on their way. I need others with whom to search and refine and grow. I have the capacities to lead, but not alone, as says our beloved Alain1, ‘it is for evolutionary co-leadership that we must aspire.’ And I do.
What timeless growth is this that lives in me? What path is this unfolding beneath my feet? These apparitious thoughts of manifest opus draw my hands ever back to the work, intending to serve the magnificence of world, I craft and hone and hold up to the light, checking for true, and refining.
Again, I know perfection lingers close and yet these stumbling moments of missing persists. Is this some hamartia or something more innocent; and yet something tells me that these “errors” must also be the path. There is a coarseness to this human being that I feel, these steps of confident uncertainty, like a stone to polish the razor’s edge of virtuous being. I wonder.
Context matters. This cacophony of view, this confusion within, these many voices that guide me back and forth along this path, these voices are my own, but they are also the voices of the world. Virtue, after all demands a full accounting for our darkness and our light. I am, as you are. We are as are all things. The care we take for that love, harmony, and beauty within, is the care we take for the world and so is it so for the care we take for one another.
There is a field of lovingkindness. Omnidirectional care awareness encourages and invites us to share what we have, that all may flourish most fully. In the words of another beloved, “We build the road and the road builds us.”
Calling out to others, I seek to reflect their highest nobility, their greatest beauty, and in them, I find my own. We gather, opening our hearts, the candles of our light build together and shine a greater luminance revealing more that has been left behind in our accounting, and casting clarity on paths forward in complex times.
As these connections build, many mirrors of grandeur, casting the loving glow of recognition, reveal me to myself, insight, vision, complex intelligence, wisdom, love, connection, and capacities for action indigenous, unique, and timely stand naked and unmissable. I am not alone in this. These qualities of goodness laid bare as raw nutrient become evident, abundant, though often unintended, in the world of living beings everywhere.
From a systems view, I have seen the world as complex and fragile in its state of evolutionary tension. Peering beneath the surface, the composting of the modern catastrophe reveals the potential of dark and fecund soil cooking below. I begin to see again myself, my family, all my relations held readily in loving embrace, in this form, or the next, to be wrought together by an unseen mystery. There is a sacred primordial wisdom, sacred because it is the source of this life, primordial because it transcends my fleeting gifts, and wisdom because whether we fight like fussy children, or love like seasoned elders, it continues the cosmic flow of beauty on scales beneath, throughout, and beyond the scope of my little eyes.
What does it mean to strategize, to craft and create together in such a context?
What is the difference Between your experience of Existence And that of a saint? The saint knows That the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just made such a Fantastic Move That the saint is now continually Tripping over Joy And bursting out in Laughter And saying, "I surrender!" Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves. — Hafiz (14th century mystic)
I begin to surrender to something that brought me here. Something that will take me away, the very thing that made the beauty that stirs my heart. I strategize, I will, to listen deeply, I intend that my heart, mind, and soul open wide enough to let this great love through. From there, and together, my hands are in the hands of intuition and the well-being of this earth, such as it may be, and may it flourish evermore
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