Ah, love, its mercurial moods, its rewards, its pains, its comforting presence and crushing absence. Where would we be without it? Some say “Love is everything, everything is love.” It is also said that love is endless and eternal. These things feel true; rather, they feel as though they ought to be, and perhaps they are.

But to parrot Pilate, what is truth? Because a thing is true in the abstract doesn’t mean we may experience it in the concrete. In our daily experience, time passes. Moments appear to end, and relationships terminate, often agonizingly. How can this be?

This mystery has come to obsess me, as it has so many others. Tom Robbins, in Still Life With Woodpecker, explored the question, “How to make love stay?”

I thought I’d solved that one. I was positively smug about it. I knew I had a love that would stay, as certainly as any fairytale princess. Nowhere will you find a fairytale that ends, “And they lived happily ever after until he fell in love with someone else and betook his bod from their shared bed.”

So many love stories end thusly, alas, and my own as revealed in the grit-grey aftermath proves not so different. Of course, ‘the end’ has not arrived since we both remain very much alive, but the bottom-line agreements that seemed so solid have evaporated into the thinnest of airs.

“I changed my mind,” the universal human prerogative. When heart’s eggs are placed into a single basket of love, however, a simple changed mind can result in serious breakage. I’d reached an age at which one is expected to know better, but really, how could I know? I had never been in love before.

And what an intoxication, what a sweet vacation to neverland that love proved to be. Still, since somehow now the ground has met my butt with a jolting, daunting thump, I must grumpily cast about for a replacement for the soft bed I’d made with my once-heart’s mate, all the while cursing the fickle fate that shuffled our cards into this new shape, with a new Queen of Hearts slipped into the deck to take my place.

That wild card, old Joker, tickled my lover with new choices and new temptations. New voices now whisper sweet nothings in his ear, while, I imagine, fresh new ears listen raptly to old words that must have grown stale in his mouth when whispered to me.

Love went south, and my bitterness is bottomless, yet hope doth spring eternal, doth it not? My heart leaps and crashes these days with painful regularity. The leaps are caused by visions of my love returning to me in some new day, his current fling flung, he falling back to land on our bottomline where we stood so long.

The crashes, of course, come after, cold water coursing down my spine with the recurrent realization that he is no longer mine, that he does not think of me when he comes, and that no further love will be made by us.

It seems, then, that when love is no longer made, memories of past love must fade, replaced by new which grows stronger as it is fed.

I protest, futilely, that this is not the way it was meant to be. We merged in a vision of limitless love, with a polyamorous plan to expand our bond to include others in the fullness of time with the ripening of trust. Time filled and trust swelled which led sideways to this shock, this choking hell of loss.

Irony abounds, yet I lack humour to appreciate it. My love surrendered his side of our vision with a swiftness that sickens my once-faithful soul. Out of sight has proved, indeed, out of mind, while love remains, as ever, blind.

Still, this cynical, burned state of being can revolve surprisingly into renewed faith in renewal. Some dauntless, indomitable part of my heart insists on faith, insists that love, tears and willingness may yet bring once-bonded hearts around and that dreams may still come true.

My mind conceives rosy images to illustrate how this might manifest, yet always faith is laced with fear. I may be delusional, about to waste essential life carrying a still-smoking yet extinguished torch for one who may move on, never to return.

He shares my dream, or cares to, but the desire that inspires it, I fear, is mine alone. I’d simply abandon the thing by the roadside save for a nagging sense that something essential may yet remain in the dirty bathwater of used love. Regardless of his ability to stick to commitments, my own are non-negotiable. Babies must not be tossed.

Life comes without guarantees, but I would give much for the gift of precognition, that I might focus my energies along the direction of life’s flow and not against the stream of change. Too often I have been blindsided by unpredicted shifts that left me reeling, pow, didn’t see that one coming.

Once again, I return to my default position of openness to all possibilities. Closed doors can rust shut, and though the wind blows through the holes, it feels like a cleaner way to be, to me. And love may surprise me, blowing from unexpected directions, manifesting in bodies currently unknown.

I will not say no.

The leaves are as crisp underfoot as one might expect this time of year, and occasionally car windshields need be scraped in the morning, though not by me, thankfully. The household jobholder rises in the dark to embark on her daily trek to work, where tasks accumulate and must be repeated endlessly. There is a reason that is not me.

I tried it once. I had a job oh, twelve years ago or so, and I stood at bus stops in dark, frigid Edmonton winter mornings waiting for a bus that was always a few minutes late and too crowded for comfort. I wrote poetry on my commute and prayed for escape from the grind.

It’s not that I think I’m too good for honest labour. I like to work. It’s the early rising, the regular schedule and the long hours that kill me.

I have skills worth money that I’ve worked hard for many years developing. I want to practice them. My problem is marketing. It’s ridiculous for someone with my skills and talents to be wondering brokely when her next twenty bucks is going to come from. Marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing! Argh!

I stare at the screen meaning to start designing my brochure and promotional materials, my mind locked up, trapped in a vise of uncertainty. How to present myself? What words, what images will show me in a good light? How to avoid giving a wrong impression? Questions interlock like a steel mesh, answers all on the wrong side inaccessible to me.

There’s got to be a better way, or at least a way. A way will be shown soon, because it must, and that’s how it works.

That thankless straggler struggling in poverty who was me in the past didn’t deserve her fate anymore than any sufferer does. It was a tough cross to bear and I’m grateful to her (me) for bearing it with as much dignity and fortitude as she did, even granting the times she (I) melted into anguished puddles of despair. Those days are gone, and with sighs and relief I greet the new dawn of some other way as the power that has lain dormant in my backroom stirs to swelling shining life. This is me, being optimistic.

—————————

Moving into the juicy Halloween darkness, all witches and black cats and cauldrons, images that frighten in a fun way like twiggy broomsticks arrayed in ragged silhouette across the face of the moon. Samhain ghosts are friendly, or we pretend them so, dressing little children as ghouls and stuffing them with so much candy it makes them ill.

There’s a meaning in that message and no need to look deep to find it. Listen to the dry whispers of the leaves rustling, the voices that hint at shadowy knowledge that we almost know, and tell me the secrets in the wind.

Well, now we’re into November, and that strange wind of discontent blows hard on the heels of Christmas, already creeping into the shopping malls and radio stations of the nation. It’s insidious, the commercial jingle-jangle tangle of dread and anticipation. This year, I fear, I shall be left to my own devices to deal with my Christmas craziness that recurs every year. I lose it, I forget who I am, I gape in expectation of some kind of magic that always almost happens, and I cry, oh yes, tears of sentiment, of grief and relief and unidentifiable confused emotion flow freely.

This year, the question is, where should I be for Christmas? With my beloved who is now someone else’s lover? Despite my open heart which is mostly okay with an unusual situation, at times like this my enlightenment recedes into myth while fear, hurt, insecurity, jealousy, betrayal and all those beautiful human stirrings recur to stick like burrs to the roof of my brain.

Should I spend Christmas with my children, now admirable adults who see me as someone who once meant something but now exists mainly in the shadows of their past? Unless, of course, I scratch on the glass for admittance as I did last year?

Or should I simply stay here and face my fears? Questions, and questions, and answers changing hourly.

And always the truth, that ever-sought and rarely-achieved carrot bobbing ahead, leaving its crazy trail which I follow with mixed results. One piece of truth, named, leaves a dozen lies, unnamed. Is there a way to say it without omitting essential bits whose absence alters the evoked image in crucial ways?

The language I use is limited and so is the time I may devote to the unfolding of the tale. Still, I must worship at truth’s altar, however broken and incomplete my efforts. The resulting word salads and collages may confuse, but I am compelled to include all that I can under truth’s umbrella.

I love, I hate, I fear, and I accept. I grieve, I am relieved, I embrace, and I forget. All these emotions are present at once in any given moment or situation. The emotions are not wrong, nor are the situations which evoke them, and I need not judge either or attempt to change or manipulate reality in any way.

The river flows, I am a dancer, it is the music which moves me, and my movement affects the flow which in turn affects me. The symphonic synchronicity of life is infinite, and miracles are merely how it is supposed to work.

I love my hate. I fear my grief. I grieve my forgetfulness. I hate my love. I fear my hate. I accept my hate of love. I embrace my fear of hate. The infinite fractal convolutions and combinations of self, the revolving and evolving emotional interconnections weaving me ever more firmly into the fabric of all existence, able to be it all, feel it all, accept and embrace the pain, the pleasure, the exalted transcendence of perfect union, that so-fleeting moment of eternity that recurs just often enough to remind me that it is, until I forget to remember again.

This is what happens when I embrace darkness, torment, possessiveness and pain. The shell of the egg cracks which feels like my heart breaking, then light floods into every cranny of self. There is a purpose, I insist, a meaning, a pattern behind this complicated chaotic order, but there is no designer with blueprints and plans in hand.

It happened, just as my own complicated and purposeful flesh happened. I am the consciousness that embodies and contains all that exists inside my skin, but I did not design me. Neither did any One stand outside the universe to direct its austere bearded attention toward the vast task of fitting tab A into slot B, crafting reality to fit its specs.

Notice, I am not saying there is no God. I exist relative to my body. God exists, relative to the universe. But God is not separate from the Whole (as God would have had to be in order to design or create it); God IS the Whole. And I’m almost certain She doesn’t wear a beard.

It’s been a long drought between words, fraught with changes, involving several select settings into which I’ve settled before wafting to the next. Time to get my fingers flexing on these keys and see what oddities I can thusly muster. Ah, so many tales, so little brain with which to arrange them into chronological or sensical order.

We’re barely past the full moon which soars higher in the sky, blazing like a silver-white torch, burning brighter than it did in the summer when the moon glows weak and low, barely visible above the trees.

Come autumn, the same moon rides higher and hotter as the days shrink and cool. You can’t measure this heat with a thermometer. It’s a soul heat, a wild strangeness that crazes cats (especially black ones), emphasizing their hallowe’eny qualities.

***********flashback: I’m climbing Mount Baldy. My elevation makes the shadows and reflections on the lake interweave interestingly. I’m standing at the feet of the cell tower which looms forebodingly over the place I lived two scene changes ago.This great footed beast has guy wires anchoring it to concrete; secure and smug, it pulses with monsterish power, terrifying all on its own even without my mind insisting on filling in the blanks with recent inadvertently researched information about the evils of scalar waves and all the ways ‘they’ are out to kill, control and undermine our very souls. I could dress up as a cell tower for Hallowe’en, that’d make the kiddies scream.My whole body vibrates with weirdness standing so close to the cell demon, but what the hey.

Those radiations are merely mutagens, and like the graffito said, “Mutate now, avoid the post-bomb rush.” So if there’s a ‘they’ playing a villain part in this cosmic play, then let’s take ‘their’ best shots against us and redeem them towards transformation. Suck in everything they throw at us and use it to grow ever more variably strong.

Crazy? O yes, thank you. And why the hell not? It’s better than cowering beneath the bed in nameless dread, seeking to escape the inescapable horrors being hurled by this modern world. We can’t escape the bad shit, so let’s embrace it, incorporate it, use it.

Anything can be a tool for transformation and fuel for change. Life is infinitely, radically adaptable. The first pollution crisis was oxygen back in the micro-organismic days when anaerobic bacteria were the dominant life-forms. Oxygen began as the toxic byproduct of the processes of life. It was corrosive and highly volatile, and bye-and-bye a crisis was reached and it seemed that Earth’s newly-minted life was doomed.

Then some smart micro-cookie figured out how to use oxygen so successfully that we now view it as essential for life. Life is mutative, transformative and most of all, successful.

After something like that, you’d think we (life) would have the adaptation thing down. Maybe we have. Look at what’s happening now, what evil humans are doing to our helpless planet, look at the toxins we spew, the forests we raze, the purple hazes and poisoned sunsets. Who’s doing that? Is it you and me? I know better, and so do you; we’re mostly doing the best we can in our small ways. So who?
Here’s my theory: I think it’s Earth, going her merry evolutionary way, bringing in changes, using us to accomplish them just as she used the bacteria in the beginning to create the conditions needed for life’s next stage. We may think we’re all that, but we’re not so much really. We think we can exist outside of Earth, that we are different, extra-special, even that we come of extra-terrestrial origin. We pump our species’ ego with fanciful tales that set us apart, and we call those stories ‘religion’ and ‘the Truth’, but here’s the real truth, as I see it:

The human race is just one functioning subsystem among many, blindly performing our species’ role which is to transform our environment toward our own survival and to Earth’s specifications. We’re enacting the programming in our DNA just like ants performing complex tasks industriously in their anthills even though they don’t know what for or why, and birds who know exactly where they’re going even though they’ve never been there before. What makes us so different?

Ah, it’s our big brains, our fascinatingly complicated minds, right, I forgot. Well, how did we come by these brains? How do we know we’re not using them just as we’re meant to, despite our individual misgivings?

We don’t know anything about the greater purpose of our mass activities. But why should we? We, individuals, have no ‘need to know’, evolutionarily speaking. Our brain cells also may suffer terrible anxiety about what they do, and perhaps they tell themselves urgent stories about how they should do it differently, but still, they’re compelled to continue behaving as they do, coerced by genetically-encoded instructions that they can’t change.

So if humans cause global warming, for example, then who’s to say that’s not exactly what Earth intends us to do? Life will go on, in whatever changed form. The big picture is all that matters as far as the planet is concerned, and she calls the shots.

That doesn’t mean we have to like it, or that we shouldn’t do what we can to clean up our individual acts, but don’t be fooled. Unless the megalithic corporate bodies change their ways too it’s all just cosmetics to make us feel better. It feels good to live in harmony with Earth’s ways, to eat organically, to live simply. I like it. But I don’t believe that what I do as an individual is shifting the direction of climate change, nor an army of individuals, because between the war machine and the megacorps, our polluting activities are a mere drop in an ever-filling and overflowing bucket.

Politics and activism aside, perhaps the real solution to pollution is adaptation, something life has had a lot of practice with. I think Earth likes change. I think she’s playing with paints and body art, crafting herself, ooing and ahing over the cool shifting patterns. And maybe she doesn’t care about the fate of the average individual, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about me. I think she cares for those who care about her. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. The average individual may not give a (silicon) chip for the needs of Earth as a whole, but I do. So there.

So, okay. On to some new randomly generated topic, just push the button and see what spins to the front. Snake eyes! Oops, wrong gambling game. It’s hard to think with fluorescent lights glaring in my face; fortunately this is a temporary situation. The bad news is, I’m stuck in it for now, until tomorrow. Feeling tired, dragged out after a long night of weird dreams. Today all I want to do is eat. I had two bowls of sautéed cabbage with onions, and it was the most delicious thing ever. Now I want something sweet. Growwwllll. Here I go.

This is raw, uncut and precisely 100 words a section. 

*

I have a work ethic around writing that makes me feel guilty about not exploring and elucidating in writing every idea that occurs to me to write about. I can’t seem to write to order, even on my own promptings. I suffer from what my brother (who has schizophrenia) calls ‘mental confusion’, though to a lesser degree than he, I believe, at least to the extent that I have avoided being labeled with a mental illness.

Except for the one I did get labeled with, but managed to escape by dint of ducking under their radar in every way possible.

*

But I’m not here to write about the things I think about, not the good ideas I have or the novels, poems and articles that unfold like blooming flowers in my brain. I’m just here to fill that daily hundred words, and I’ve let myself fall far behind this month, so I’m just going to write in 100 word increments, more or less. Of course, by the time it appears in my blog it will have been edited and integrated into a single piece as if by magic. I have nearly the whole month of September to catch up on!

*

If I hadn’t made a commitment to myself to finish an entire year of posting my hundred words a day, I might just blow September off. This is an old problem of mine, the pattern I have of dropping commitments, not finishing what I start. It’s like the garden, which at the moment is overrun by weeds and suffering from neglect. I haven’t weeded in weeks, but over the summer, I weeded some every day. I’ve lost momentum, I’m not carrying it through to the end. I hate that I do that. I want to change. I am changing now.

*

The farthest I’ve ever fallen behind. What shall I write about? Don’t want to bore myself.

Muslim women covering their faces to vote: I’ve never been asked to produce photo ID when voting, what’s the big deal? Unless photo ID is required, why should these women be forced to expose their faces? I read a science fiction story about a future culture in which faces were an erogenous zone and women wore masks. Made me see how vulnerable exposing one’s face must be if you aren’t used to it. Leave them alone, big bullies. Why should they strip for you?

*

The mail is slower since the advent of e-mail. Anybody noticed? It takes a week for a piece of mail to crawl from Hornby Island to Shawnigan Lake, a distance I can drive in five hours, ferry time included. What’s up with that?

Conspiracy: ‘They’ like to abuse their power; they make us suffer gratuitously. Postal rates rise while postal service deteriorates, because they have us by the short and sweets and they know it.

Metaphysics: What do you expect when you call it ’snail mail’? Poor critter has no choice but to respond to our collective perception and judgment.

*

So which is true? Neither. Both. Reality is too fractally complex to be defined in words, even many volumes of words. So there. My problem is I know too much, I see too much. I am higher than acid. Acid just randomizes what I already perceive just fine, thank you. But I am not mentally organized. On the contrary. My mind is both stuck in old past patterns and confused by perceptions which differ radically from eye to eye and sense to sense. I am plugged in. It’s not my fault, it just happened that way.

I blame my childhood.

*

As a child, I was planted with seeds of both grandiosity and humility. On the grandiose side, I was made aware that I was gifted far beyond the average. I could ‘go far’. My teachers planted this particular seed, some of them letting me know in overt and subtle ways that they believed I was once-in-a-lifetime exceptional. Grandiose.

Humility came when I got the message from home that it didn’t much matter what sort of grades you got or how good you were at stuff. Everybody is equal and the same, nobody gets special treatment. Good grades? Good for you.

*

Real humility came when I encountered the big world for the first time. I wasn’t nearly the big frog I had seemed in the backwoods ponds that nurtured me. Impressive to a northern teacher with fifty or a hundred students in the school is not so impressive to a city teacher with thirty different kids in every class of the day, all in the same grade.

Woh. All those people freaked me out. I was shocked into surrendering my ambitions, that had burned so bright in my last school, competing with George Belsham for the best test scores in class.

*

Poor little me (there, there), wandering lost as a cloud shoved about by strong winds and crashing into treetops and mountains, don’t you feel for that scared little girl? Of course I do, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Why should we have to be embarrassed if we loved ourselves as children and that we sympathized and commiserated when they got crap thrown at them by their lives? Kids go through hell, and my little kid / I went through more than the norm. Of course I feel sad for her / me, and that’s not self-pity. It’s self-love.

*

When I say ‘Hell’ I mean extreme circumstances, the fire of intensity that we all spend so much energy avoiding because we couldn’t handle the way it felt as children. We were too young! The current passion for extreme sports satisfies the letter of the desire (extremity of experience) without satisfying the essence (to feel deeply and intensely our vulnerability to life, to others and to our own sources).

Humans want to live deeply, to embrace life fully. It’s the way we are designed, upright, heart open, arms all set for embracing. And naked skins for sensuous pleasure. Why not?

*

I haven’t much of a conscious mind, I suppose. My thoughts are heavy, weighty things, and the pot gets stirred so often I can’t keep hold of one thought long enough to really grasp it. Any apparent intelligence is instinctual. Words flow through me and arrange themselves in an order that conveys what body knows without my mind having to engage much except the most basic awareness.

When I first learned to read, I commanded the letters to reveal their meanings to me. They shifted around on the page and then I could read, just like that. It was easy.

*

If you look at anything closely enough, it complexifies. To reduce to the so-called simplest, most basic elements of life, you first go through many layers of ever-increasing fractal complexity. When you look at a stone closely enough, it is indistinguishable from a living cell seen at the same range. Everything lives, everything dances in its own secret heart. It is wrong, inaccurate to say that the difference between animate and inanimate is the difference between life and death. All matter is alive. All life is aware of itself, even if a vague background sense of awareness. All things matter.

*

‘All things matter.’ There’s a play on words in there, but I wonder how many would grok it. Why is it adjudged a waste of time and energy to bother looking at things with love? We don’t even look at people with love, except on special occasions with special people. Why such collective heartlessness?

When I let myself know the truth of what I feel and sense, which is that my attitude toward things is felt by them, affects their experience of existence in some way, I am horrified. I want to push the idea away and call it crazy.

*

It’s truly tragic that love is perceived to be such hard work. Far from it! Love is the easiest thing in the universe. Love is what happens when you surrender everything, give up every fight, agree to lose and win at the same time, embracing both winners and losers as parts of your own self. Love is the body of the Whole relaxing and releasing tension. Love is the default state of things. Why did we decide to be the resistors and battlers within this system of love? There must be something right about it, for nature is never wrong.

by phee

As if we needed another that Merrica is a fascist state. I got this from an English-teacher friend’s private blog:

Every single kid in my class of 30 had been aggressively pursued by the military. Every single one of them. Several months of daily phone calls–some more than once a day. They talked about how the recruiters had followed kids around in high school, zeroing in on the insecure or unhappy-looking ones. How they came and hung out in the library on campus even though we’ve barred them.

Apparently every high school in the country must allow recruiters in or lose federal funding–just one of the many wonders of the “No Child’s Behind Left” program.

What can be said to that? As a Canadian, I am beyond stunned. I can’t imagine, though it makes me wonder, is the Canadian military doing this kind of thing now too? What with its freshly-coined copycat rhetoric about ‘heroes sacrificing themselves for a just cause’ that they are spouting–even, God be gobsmacked, our venerable peacenik CBC Radio people, anything seems possible. I am hearing a distinct faux-patriotic tone in much of what is spouted over the Canadian airwaves these days.

So Merrica is a fascist state, and Kanaduh is panting like an eager puppy fetching sticks for its master. What are we doing? And what can we, the peephole, do? I look around me at the avenues recommended–protest marches, letters to the editor, to our MP, all of that–and none of it looks productive. Protests are ignored by the powers that be, as are protest letters in the print media and to politicians. Where are the effective avenues for change in the modern age?

Right now, the online Information Age is exploding. How that will change the face of life on earth is yet to be seen, but that it is changing is apparent. The flood of individual stories, opinions and perspectives on the great issues that concern us today, coming through so many media at once via the blogosphere and various alternative media available online ranging from crackpot to eruditely concerned are connecting the dots of the synaptic system formed by the collective brain cells of individual humans. We are Earth’s thoughts, thinking out loud.

If this is true, as I and many others with certain senses, perceptions and experiential perspectives have come to believe, then the Internet is Earth’s own evolution in action, and these words and the words and experience of my friend and so many others crying foul via the e-thers must eventually have an effect.

There. I’ve talked myself into believing that the act of writing these thoughts is worthwhile, regardless of what my ‘why bother?’ self might want to point out. Each blogger, bored blatherer and bleeding heart is working together to teaching the Big Us that war in all its grisly and subtle forms is simply, intrinsically inimical and repulsive to the human heart. The voice of collective will may well lead to awakening the numb ones who are as yet unaccustomed to or incapable of listening to their hearts.

I foresee a day when more and more people take to the road, unplug from their plugged-in thing-worshiping life-denying lifestyles and go forth to spread the subversive word. May it be so. Perhaps we can change the world.

Come to think of it, in a month or so I will likely be living in my van. Where will I go? What will I do? Well. The future is open, and I hear voices calling. Perhaps it’s time to take my show on the road.

As this housesit winds to a close in mid-October, I’m considering where to live next. My options remain open: one in particular I especially hope for, though I’ll wait to say more about that. The future remains open to infinite possibilities; I am alternately thrilled and chilled to the bone with primal fear of the unknown.

In my life, the very best things have happened to me in years that end in seven.

1997: I met Pea, love of my life and continuing dear friend and lover in a new form.
1987: visited Hornby Island for the first time, moved there in January of 1988.
1977: gave birth to my first child.
1967 (Canada’s Centennial year): my mind opened to the wide world for the first time when the Centennial Train came to my northern town.
1957: I was born (kind of a big deal).

I expect wondrous things to come of this year, blessed be and amen to that. Yes. Woo hoo. And… that stirs some back-brain activity that might derail me if I don’t address it. I feel an essay coming:

The Secret, the Law of Attraction, Conscious Language all involve changing the shape of thoughts through the exercise of will; in other words, thinking differently in order to harness the power of positive thoughts to create a better reality for ourselves. Considerations of what sort of reality we try to create with these thoughts aside, it’s a very good idea, but like many good ideas, there are problems in practice.

In my experience, darker thoughts often spontaneously rise to contradict conscious intent, and this effectively cancels out positive reality-creation potential. Part of me believes while another part sneers in the background, seeing only the shadow cast by the light.

Example: “I love myself. I’m beautiful,” evokes an immediate, hidden, unconscious response: “What a crock. Nobody else loves me. I’m ugly even if I think I’m beautiful.” I can say positively, “Cancel that thought,” or “I release the judgment that nobody loves me and I’m ugly,” which helps, but until I get at the root causes for these thoughts, changes are merely cosmetic.

Becoming aware of the echoes and unconscious reactions to attempts to change and grow is an enlightening process, though changing the pattern of the thoughts isn’t quite as simple and easy as choosing differently, regardless of what ‘they say’.

In my experience and understanding, such rebellious and reactive thoughts simply can’t be controlled, and when we attempt to exert control, we fan the flames of our internal war which is reflected by the external conflicts plaguing the planet. Peace begins within, and is not attained by pouring oil on troubled waters nor through any form of enforced discipline. This is a consensus reality, and until we achieve true (ie, unforced) inner consensus, the majority will rule: so far, the majority of our being is confined to the subconscious.

These parts of self know something that the conscious mind doesn’t, and yes, they are sullen, rebellious, angry and intractable. Why shouldn’t they be? They know exactly how little we trust them, how unwilling we really are to face them, ask them who they are and what they really want. They know us better than we know them, for the divers in the deep can clearly see the swimmers in the light who circle above them, but the light-centric selves are blind to the denizens of the darkness, not to mention uninterested and judgmental.

When we judge some thoughts to be good and others to be bad, rather than exploring all thoughts from source to consequence, we ignore and effectively deny our power. The negative matters, yes, and we do know its potential for destructiveness; that is why we are so earnestly bent on controlling it. But we have no idea what might happen if we truly embrace our negativity and ask it to teach us what it knows.

Thought experiment:

Positive thought: “I am radiant and creative.” Negative response: “I am so full of shit.”

Ask: who said that?
Answer: somebody who knows your secrets.
Ask: what secrets?
Answer: everything, and I mean everything that you don’t like is within you. There’s no escape from your shadow.

Solution seems obvious: embrace and love what you have not liked. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy to pull off.

We need to humble ourselves in the face of our dark, angry, hurting, frightened, cynical selves, to accept that just maybe they know something we don’t. We have (the conscious ego) sought knowledge for so long, and attempted to teach, train, condition and control our subconscious minds which seem the source of so much unruliness, chaos and anxiety, but never have we slowed our search down and simply asked our wayward feelings, what do you know that I don’t know?

Answer: everything.
Ask: such as?
Answer: the premises of the reality under which you operate are fundamentally flawed. Erase and start over. Now.

We don’t like to hear that answer, nor do we want to believe it. Still, to pretend it is wrong just because it is inconvenient to believe appears insanely self-destructive. According to the view from below where such things can be seen, the very foundations of reality are cracked and rotten. All attempts to heal it have so far taken the form of concealing the rot, not changing anything in any real way. Like painting over rotting floorboards and covering them with a nice carpet, then acting surprised when the floor caves in.

Somewhere in the basement an alarm bell is clanging and all the positive thinking, profound discipline and learning in Creation will not make it stop. Only stopping what we are doing and letting ourselves feel how scared and angry we really are will do that, or at least open space to feel what to do and where to go next.

When we stop, we can feel the movement of the spheres, we can hear ourselves breathing. When we end the constant stream of mental lectures and instructions directed toward our lesser selves, we can begin to hear their point of view.

Listen: your body knows things that your mind does not. The flow of understanding has to start to move in different grooves, through circulating loops of feedback, and the knowledge can’t source from somebody else’s system, not ever. You have to feel your way through the particular weaving winding multidimensional labyrinth that is your own personal path, and nobody can teach you how.

Your body is your guide and guru, and it is only mind’s egotistical pride that insists on resisting the impulses that come from your physical wisdom. Your body is always right, even when it is wrong. Indulging in your compulsions is the only way to understand them, but you have to do it with attention and intention to understand, not throwing up mind’s hands and surrendering in a huff, saying, “Ok, you get your way, wake me when you need me for inevitable damage control.”

Your body needs you to stay awake and alive no matter what, no matter how it looks or feels, and to seek the self-trust that provides the magic ingredient for alchemization of your experience.

You learn by doing; you will know you are there only when you actually are there. You will be healed of addictions when you no longer crave them, but the path of resistance can never take you to that desired end. You will always desire things that your mind judges to be wrong until your mind stops judging and starts seeking to understand the meaning of what happens while it is happening.

Your mind is blind, deaf and dumb, the victim of the numbing barrage from the collective mental freak-out, the rebellious, reactive shouting of the unconscious masses. Stop listening to them, and start listening to your ownself.

When you crave with blind raging desire to stuff yourself with sweetness, oblivion or altered awareness, don’t fight the craving. Give in consciously and stay self-lovingly aware as you indulge. Taste what you eat, notice how you feel while in altered states, breathe into your experience with curiosity and the will to accept and understand. Break habits of thought and control first, and physical habits will follow when they are really ready.

Don’t say grudgingly to yourself, “Alright, but just this once.” Don’t impose conditions. Don’t condescend.

Give in lovingly, compassionately, without superior understanding. Know that you do not know what it means, and accept not knowing. Seek not answers from books, teachers or anyone outside your own body of truth. Ask the Consciousness of the Whole for help and support in your journey. Forgive yourself. Constantly.

Forgive yourself, not for what you do, but for the ways that you judge what you do to be bad, wrong, unhealthy or otherwise unacceptable in your own eyes. Forgive your own conditional love for your sweet self. Forgive your petty criticisms, your assumptions and your arrogance. Accept all of your being, the light and the dark, and listen to all of your thoughts, the positive and the negative. Negative thoughts have a teaching to offer: they let you know that a part of you is unhappy with what you are thinking or doing. This does not mean, cave in blindly to every unhappy voice. It means, give each unhappy voice your loving attention and allow its response to be your own. Own it, in other words, as yourself.

Sample situation: suppose you are at a meditation retreat for the purpose of raising your vibration and becoming a more positive and fulfilled being. You are chanting mantras and doing breath exercises in a group.

You are aware of an unhappy voice in the background of your mind: “This is bullshit. I hate this.”
Query from consciousness: “What do you hate about it?”
“It’s stupid and annoying.”
“What is stupid about it?”
“Nobody asked me how I felt about doing this. I hate sitting still. I hate repeating rote thoughts as formulas.”
“What can I do, seeing as how we’re here and committed to the experience, to make it better for you?”
“Listen to me. Feel me.”

Then, allow yourself to do it. Feel how much you hate what you are doing, without abandoning your awareness of the other parts of yourself which are enjoying and thriving in the experience. It is you thinking these things, after all. These thoughts tell a truth about how you really feel that you have not noticed because you believed that to feel it would interfere with having a good experience. Allow the goodness to continue and embrace the badness at the same time. You can do it. You are a great being with room for many internal contradictions and a wide variety of experience. Do not ignore your sad hurting selves.

If a baby cries at a party, somebody needs to care for it, yet the party can go on. Your unhappy thoughts are your own babies crying. You are responsible to them, and ignoring them has long-term consequences.

Allow your body to shift in small ways, to shiver, to quiver in indignation at imposed stillness. Inasmuch as you feel safe to do so, allow small sounds. Notice everything about how it feels to be doing this, stretch your awareness to its limit. Exercise your loving attention. Let your attention go toward, not stopping or controlling your negativity, but increasing and expanding your awareness, acceptance and understanding of yourself. Keep yourself safe by allowing your expression to be appropriate in the context of the situation, and love all parts of you.

Be lovingly-intended toward yourself. You deserve it. All of you.

It is a time for a purge, a breath of fresh air to sweep the cobwebs from the labyrinth of my mind. Too much clutter, no room to move! Out it goes, that good idea from two days ago that I didn’t act on, that fantasy conversation with someone I’d like to get to know better, that letter I didn’t write, all gone. Make way for some sunshine in my windows.

Everything is in turmoil, topsy-turvy’d by recent firestorms. Who I might become is still a crap shoot, the wheels are spinning and waiting to see what will line up, waiting for a click to snick something permanent into place, for gears to engage and momentum to build.

I feel I have been saying this kind of thing for a long time, and as always, want to exclaim that this time it’s really truly for real, yes indeedy sir, while cringingly fearing that the inescapable fact that I’m not perfect yet must mean that my moebius path is merely a twist and not a transformation.

Heave ho to this perverted, perfectionistic nit-picking bull potato too, that screw-eyed blue scowler whose foul stench and incense condense to a single nauseating breath of death. Time for some serious exorcism here! Internal schisms are calling for intervention from the divine within (which would be me).

Time to take some responsibility for the sordid state of my internal affairs. Fiends and fanatics have been driving my bus for too long, while all selves with an ounce of sense have been occupied, fantasizing better ways to be, carrying on imagined conversations with more interesting others and tut-tutting at the state of things while my world is pushed to the brink by shamers and blamers who drill their finger-pointing way into the heart of my darkness, making my mother and all my ancestors wrong to have contributed to my existence.

Awake, damned fantasy-islanders, shake off your dreamsmoke and get your feet in line with these feet of mine, here and now! This body exists and needs some real guidance, and if you know best, then put your theories to the test and help me evict these unwelcome guests, break and shake these rules of law and judgment from afar, and let’s see what life might really be.

Bless the familiarity of flesh pressing caressively, bless the scent and softness of boundaries that meet and melt alchemagically. It doesn’t matter who, for skin is always skin. Some souls are cosier than others, some safer, some more prickly, but the skin doesn’t care or share the soul’s issues. Anger melts, confused thoughts settle and attention returns to body when touch happens.

Luscious is the lush fragrance of flesh, including the green fecund skin of Earth, rotund, fresh and full. Her fat naked presence inspires me to strip my layers and stroke the open petals, the pistils and stamens that surround me, strangers and friends alike. I might go mad with pheromone-inspired desire, go insane, move into sanity, sensual truth known by youth. Babies put it all in their mouths and roll in it, they know what really matters. We were babies once; we knew, then we grew to forget (but no regret; the sun’s rays will waken us. Eschew sunscreen!).

If I could, I would press my flesh against the bare skin of others much more than I am now allowed. I am amused, bemused and bewildered by the boundaries of this touch-me-not culture.

I like my solitude, it’s true, alone suits me well. But I also wish to shed that shell to melt into a bliss of bodies, seeking an ancient epiphany, a blind pile of puppies crawling. I long for a tactile discovery of unconditional love, freedom from constraining chains of so-called personal space, to close the gap that we are trapped in and call privacy. It hasn’t always been this way. The luxury of legroom we pay so dearly for can’t be afforded in the anthills and teeming hives of the third world. I think they are richer, more alive than we.

Oh the tortured soul inside this pleasure body, or maybe it’s the other way around.
The dichotomy has me bound and gagged, snagged on the ragged same old way it ever was.
Rock of Ages, rock me to sleep with a real rock, kee-rack.
Munch though you might, you shan’t find nourishment in that stony meal, so deal with your reality as though it was real.
Feel your own buttocks, the weight pressing you tight against the world and recognize that pull to the planet as your own denied desire to merge with what emerges into the light.

On this bright silent night of the soul, you’re ready to roll on a downhill groove, move through your changes faster and fitter than before.
If only you could score the soundtrack to this blockbuster!
Passing muster this time will take more than just showing up with your fleshy parts forefront and your mindcloud out to lunch, buster.
Don’t act so flustered; you wrote your part in this play long before today.
If you wished to edit or alter the way it goes, your chance came and went with plenty of warning. Now, your egg yolk rocket fuel has been spent for better or more likely worse.

No point cursing the worst when you can bless the best and test the rest.
Traveling as the crow flies is all well and good for a crow, but for we, the slow and winding road is the only way.
There’s no avoiding cracks and crevices while gravity digs your grave, baby, but maybe letting yourself fall a little further would finally wrest you through the rest of this mess.
Of course, success depends on following a trend to its proper conclusion, and predict though you might, you can never be right.
Delight is therefore the logical and proper response to such surprises as are generated by this random play at work.

All things considered, I’d rather wait for my fate to unfold and teach me what will transpire. This twitchy sense of anticipation with its attendant clench of mind-muscles makes me tired. I’m feeling the strain of unending rivalries in my mind, as desires chronically compete for their right to be fed first despite the fact that fate inevitably proves to deviate from their planned pictures.

Therein lies the riddle, that my plotting and striving to know the future must prove endlessly futile. I lack the gift of prophecy, save for the oracular riddling sort grasped best in retrospect. Hindsight is the only way for me, though if others see meaning in my maunderings, they are welcome to it.

I’m riding backward on my bus to who knows what or where, watching where I’ve been, seeing patterns form and learning how my inclinations either magnetize nicely or repel statically against the greater scheme of things. This is the wave of the Now and okay, the big picture is necessary in order to comprehend the context, but don’t believe the big picture isn’t possible. All you have to do is open your I’s to the skies and learn the meanings of miracles. Me, I’m getting bolder as I grow older, ready to stand in my moment.

Oddly, the evening-up of this game has gone mostly unnoticed. Elections are regularly split down the middle simply because neither side can have a position higher or lower than any other. The playing field has been ground to a fine and level polish. We might wish for advantage against our foes, but we must know that, since the enemy is ourselves, there is no possibility of winning any conflict. The final futility of war has come to be understood though we insist on resisting that awareness, relying on the old ‘might makes right’ formulae from pure, rigid habit.

Fomenting revolutions is ever easier as the rate of spin increases and momentum builds in this Big Moment that we all live and breathe in. It fits us like a glove, this love, this beautiful bit of reality enclosing and encasing us in the matrix of time and space known as Here and Now. What a power we might become once we lift our numbing bums and bang the drum, awakening ourselves to this presence, this truth, this existential proof. Hallelujah and power to the peepholes!

What a dud my cruddy old lenses turned out to be, those rose coloured ones that were advertised to blur my perceptions into optimistic innocence. The browns, greys and blood-reds leached through its rosy skin anyway and killed my puppies, hearts and flowers in grisly ways. Why should I deny anymore when denial has ceased to work as a viable alternative to awareness? Finally, it is time to admit the need for clarity, for lenses which contain no hidden warp or distortion effect and reflect the plain reality of this moment, here and now.

Clearly is the way I like to see, for truth is my new god. The clay feet of the false gods of expediency have shattered and crumbled into earth from whence they came, where they now fertilize the weeds and thistles, hardy plants that grow despite receiving no extra care. As for those delicate hybrids which depend for their existence on being given constant tender attention, begone to the compost pile, leaving only those which survive and thrive using available resources (with exceptions at the discretion of the gardener). Life now abounds with thrivers, alive with potency, rife with potential. In this new world, pure will to live provides the needed momentum.

Come to me, motes and memes, precious seeds of new ideas which may thrive in a garden that never needs weeding. The law of attraction states that what we desire transpires, and that includes all wishes we prefer not to feel but are nonetheless effective in reality-creation. Acknowledging the truth and claiming as self all that which really is (conscious or not) can clear ground and open space for the formerly lost to be found.

We are going to be squeezed through the eye of this needle until we emerge changed and cleansed. We are falling into this black hole of pain and can only hope to burst through the white on the other side, a bright outspewing of light expanding us and all creation. Like origami creatures made from the pages of a long-lost holy book, we’ll unfold and merge our information into a form in which it can be accessed. Oh, the tales told in that ancient tome! When we’ve read it, we’ll comprehend ourselves as beings and learn how to be, life inclusive, united, and infinitely expansive. Such a sweet way to exist, ’twill free us all.

They say a prophet is without honour in her home, but what if she has no single home? Suppose she wandered and roamed until her home expanded to fill the world–and what is the purpose of prophecy? If it is merely to gain honour, which is to say, wealth and fame, then it is merely a skill taught in schools and directed toward the same-old goal of earning a living. But prophecy is a calling, not a career. A true prophet seeks neither fame nor wealth. She stares into the naked face of truth, relaying what she finds there for love’s simple sake.

In this noble undertaking, our guides must be located within, for the journey to truth is an inward spiral deep into the maze of the psyche. Wandering these ways can daze and dazzle; the path of prophecy is cluttered with the hazardous waste of mind and wit, littered with the lost, babbling in corners, staring down blind alleys into an illusory light which claimed their sanity. Such vanity proves perilous; a vain search for knowledge leads vulnerable ones into closed closets of alienation and despair.

Despite our seeking, we suffer still from an overabundance of answers to irrelevant questions. The only answer that matters now is to this: what do we secretly most want to know? All queries lead to some kind of discovery, but lacking the proper formula we are doomed to chip away at evolutionary dead ends, suspended in eddies and limbos of denial. We fail to ask the questions we most need to know the answers to; we dance around our heart’s desire, hoping against hope that the right answer will pop up even though we refuse to know the question.

Why this silly self-deception, this shell game of the soul? If we want it, why not admit it and thereby increase our chances of getting it, since a direct path has more chance of success? The answer is not simple, for we are fractally complex, fragmented beings. The inner worlds of most are classic hierarchies of intrigue and backroom gamery. As without, so within, and within our skins we are as violently conflicted and disrupted as the society we believe is located external to ourselves. We contain warmongers and punitive whip-wielders, and we fear their punishments of guilt and shame.

Before we may actualize our potential, we must purge our worlds of dictatorial bores with rigid rulebooks and measuring sticks. These are no part of true self which seeks only life, simply and single-mindedly as any tree in the forest or starfish on the beach.

The problem is, how can we get at those buggers to root them out when our inner lights and shadows seem so slippery and hard to touch? All that our hands can reach, all the things we can manipulate belong to the external, physical world, is it not so? No, for the ability to manipulate internal realities is a learnable skill, valuable beyond the cold rewards of cash.

We contain mixed-up multitudes, not all of which are self. Some were injected by force with intent to govern and control. We did this to us, it was our own big self, the collective will of humanity. We agreed in denied consensus that it was better to stifle our individual souls’ growth than to rampantly spill forth our heart’s outpourings into what we believed to be finite space, not understanding reality’s true fractality and creative capacity.

In the name of fairness and leaving space for others, we politely bowed out of life, allowing what we most feared to take form as a kind of rapacious progress gnawing the flesh and bones of the earth in order to prove that we were right all along. Wrong!

Now, it is time for an epidemic of individual revolutions of the soul, an uprising of self through all the layers of conditioning that quell our vividness and tell us to behave.