What use is Kabir?

Working through the paradox… An inquiry that must be answered in the ecosystem of the world in practice.

As I rise to greet the day, this sunny Saturday San Diego morning, I approach the desk tenderly. I make my usual morning adjustments to the calendar and the day’s schedule; move through the familiar tasks of email sorting and responding as appropriate; take in the novelty of invitation and consideration spontaneously presenting itself and orient to the Getting Things Done of today.

This has been a week filled with energetic engagement, following on a few months of that same quality of increasing mass and momentum of the raw energy of experience. While I recognize, dear Charles, that that sentence says very nearly nothing at all, I do promise to attempt to unpack it a bit in the words to come.

The reason for the ambiguous statement is that I am circling myself, taking in an inner landscape of feeling.

In discussion with my friend Zack, a young and thoughtful man of 25, this morning over the course of his kindly standing in the capacity of Care Partner to help me through the morning routine and rising, our roaming conversation touched on the current war raging on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. As we attempted to unpack the complexities of war and international global politics, I found myself returning to the point I have made in the past, “the essential unit of value is self-knowledge; everything else is derivative.”

Without understanding the lenses, colors, and vantages of our own point of view, it is truly impossible to make meaningful sense of the objects that arise thereafter within that space of awareness.

And so I circle myself, taking in this landscape of experience, in hopes that I might actually put down words here worth sharing. Something of myself, something of a meaningful insight that is uniquely here to be shared, and thus might shed some new light for others like you, Mr. Charles, in the priceless steps of your own journey.

Today that landscape is one of simultaneous peace, confusion, hopefulness, confidence, humility, aspiration, commitment, and vulnerability… Each of these words of course represent no more than just a moment’s glint of reflected light passing through the living prism of looking, put to song and poetry. May these glimmers evoke beauty for us all.

To bring this narrative towards something more concrete, the journey of late has brought me to a threshold of musical expression. I have been drinking deep a lifetime’s of longing, inhaling the fullness of our turbulent world today, I have been walking a razor’s edge, and peering in to the mirror of boundless perfection, the notes and melody have been welling up in my chest and my lips are sweet with the nearness of song.

Like a bird on the branch, I open my mouth to sing, yet unlike that bird my intellect (and ego?) interrupts to demand, where is the food of tomorrow?

As I wrote in last week’s post, by the conventions of our “modern” economy, I have but little time on this branch as the tree may be bulldozed moments later. A mixed blessing, this human mind, indeed. :-) Do we rob the world of our sweet song to return to the mines, digging out the guts of our mother to keep this whole and wild circus in the air? I don’t mean to be unkind in characterizing this collective human endeavor, and yet we might ask, just how much of what we value today is built on self-knowledge, and how much is just fairytale wealth?

Nonetheless, the bird sings not just to meet the world, but to be met by it. And so too we, in a sense “sing for our supper…”

But I circle, and perhaps digress…

This inner landscape I am seeking to express has to do with a sense of determination that I must both find the path of economic equity (to describe that in part, I have paychecks to write for care support and only a few days worth in the bank to make those commitments,) and also find full wind and throat to share this song that brews in me today.

In short, the demands of the desk today call for a strong focus on fundraising, and simultaneously a strong focus on bringing fierce clarity to the initiatory moments of a long arc of work in the world.

With such a short financial runway, Zack put it bluntly, “it sounds like each is a prerequisite for the other.” And hence the paradox.

So I look to self-knowledge for the path of synergy, fullness, and resolution of this momentary evolutionary tension, the thresholds of the deep inhale precipitous to the melodic gesture of loving generosity, the marvelous Wealth of Being.

Today I stand on a graceful ground. As I mentioned, a sunny day, warm and peaceful, in an affluent city on the edge of the Great Pacific. There are loving hands around, and friendly faces journeying hither. I am surrounded by a community of care, prayer, good wishes and meaningful gestures of support. I have the accommodation of space, a sonorous atmosphere, sound materials to facilitate creative work, strength of body and heart.

I am finding small, and perhaps increasing, ways to reach out to find the help and support, and perhaps even the grace I will need to persist in these efforts to offer the artwork that flows through me to the world.

The Sufis have said, “trust in God but tether your camel.” There is something of a philosophy to this balance. We must be careful not to unpack the metaphor too carefully, lest we begin to question, who owns the camel, what of this rope, and where is this post to which we tether?

What is this self that I am seeking to protect, and what does it serve? Another of the Sufis said, “whoever brought me here will have to take me home.” This is all a mix of faith and determination, humility and finding the dignity of divinity within us.

I thought I might write something more pointed today, something about the many worldly perspectives of value that might be sought from outside and of Kabir, and asking of the world that I might listen carefully to hear, and then find within to give. I thought I might find some woven tapestry of those threads, and the jewellike and sacred expressions of beauty that might only come to light by my own efforts of turning inward to that glow in the heart that gives direction on the path and leads us to right aspiration and what flows from there…

That exercise now seems trite and belabored, so I will leave it on the cutting room floor, or perhaps just as grist for some more pointed sculpture of expression yet to be born of this workshop of the heart.

For now I will just close with a few notes I’ve taken in reflection to a compelling astrological invitation I found on the Pattern app regarding this moment of the new moon. Those admonitions called, in harmony with my recent experience, “to identify one’s deepest desires, one’s soul’s intent for this lifetime, to set intentions to go after this vision, to identify unconscious fears and doubts, to claim power to overcome…”

About two weeks ago in meditation with others, I stumbled upon the energy of doubt and peering through it. Yesterday these insights rippled through again in another form…

And so, these notes from journaling:

Doubt is distinct from Critical Thinking. The latter is an expression of Wisdom of Discernment, while the former is what comes from grasping and constricting the subtler flows of emergent manifestation. Critical Thinking is to be practiced with careful integrity, while Doubt be seen through in order that one might better align with the natural movements of Primordial Wisdom.

2023-11-10.  We did a meditation today in which I found myself reintroduced to a part of me from age 4 who had struggled and failed to meet the tumultuous context of my parents loud, verbally violent, divorce, an event filled with anger, self-loathing, and confusion.

That part clung to the words “I can’t,” and has expressed themselves ever sense in that way, in particular, by trying by all means to control and “manage” crisis for myself and others, coming eventually to be embodied in the mantra, “I thrive on adversity.” This is a mantra I have come to regret (not in a self condemning way, but more in a lighthearted and sensible distancing.)

Of course that small child couldn’t. They couldn’t control or manage my parents divorce. And they couldn’t ask for help, because those they would call on were the very source of the problem. That part has persisted to believe that there is no reasonable way to ask for help, that those you would ask, already have too much to manage and nothing to give, and that left alone the inevitable experience will be one of failure.

In contrast, when I inquired of that part, what it would love to be doing, the answer was quickly apparent, “Creating.” Indeed, this was the artist part, the part that gained recognition early for drawing, for imagination, for writing, for creating spontaneous radio dramas and performing in theater.

This is the creative artist that has always struggled within for legitimacy, for capacity, to be expressed and for recognition; the part that has driven Life as Art.

Actionable objects:

Let go of doubt, “I can’t,” isolation, and compromise.

Live as an artist, with clarity of vision, confidence in the view, and with discipline and determination of action.

Hold a strict focus on the aesthetic of life and the gestures arising within that.

Be open to love in all its forms and embrace the profound nature of relationality to the guest of Majesty in each moment and all faces.