The Country of Consciousness

Consciousness is this before thought and in the world of afterthought is like the unconditional love a mother shows to her newborn butterfly.

But to be conditioned to believe this love is for another and not my very nature, and this consciousness is a product of the brain

and not that amplification of awareness reflected in consciousness, is to be expected in a world of memory.


I was talking consciousness before being detoured by the mind—love is what I am as now is when I am as here is where I am

as consciousness is who I am if I am That. For consciousness is not expanding as much as thought is shrinking but it feels that way.

Listen, if the world is love being filtered by a world of thought, does the fire come from wood or that within the wood?

Mirror Country

One intuits this universal tale rising in body toward the crown of mind opening swallowing all in self-awareness

and the universe emerges from the same black hole which in evolutionary space-time comes to swallow it

for I'm the ouroboros of absolute awareness being self-aware. Somewhere around the age of two years old as I was told the age I am,

the body of the world emerged from out of nowhere.

And this world is populated by a wealth of mirrors in which I see my own projection but don't know it—

not my true reflection but the shadows cast by thought caught in the headlights of one love.

Oh the turn is not my doing but instead of looking at the world of mirrors for a slight illumination, I look within and see the light.

On the Nondual One

The concept of nonduality points only to this: the total manifestation, or universal consciousness, and the absolute unknown, or pure awareness, are not two.

Nonduality does not imply there is no one, but only that the one and none aren't two.

And before the one may know it's none in that divinity of self-awareness, the one shall recollect it's not divided.


As the mirror is spontaneously standing, mind is deconstructing, consciousness is loving, and omnipresent awareness is being self-aware.

I'm not crazy, mind you, consciousness is talking to consciousness.

Leaves breathe out what I breathe in. Summer is to green what winter is to gray. After lilacs rise the mountain laurel. When June be June.






On a Nondual June?

In other words, love and wisdom are not separate,

like love deconstructs, wisdom unites,

and all math results in unreal numbers.

In other words, deconstruction, love, and self-awareness are the holy trinity of ghost, child, and parent,

and I only pray when I'm talking to myself—

if universal manifested consciousness and absolutely unknown pure awareness are not two, why are you not being June?
 

Medical Consciousness

Consciousness appears to arise from the body brain so-called material reality because social conditioning.

But it doesn't matter to consciousness what someone thinks about consciousness. No thought survives that great leviathan of sea.

Such is the dirty secret of any meditation from whatever house. Moby Dick always wins.

So meditate the way you want, be it old school, new sutra of no thought, kali yuga tantra overflowing, paradoxical fracturing, devotional sublimation, consciousness is always stalking consciousness.

But here’s a particularly I am secret. The west may not be spiritual and the west may wrongly believe that consciousness is a secondary product of the primal brain and its materially energetic world—

but there's no confusing consciousness for some religious concept here. Except for Christian Scientists, even the most fundamental Christians believe in the science of the body.

Medically speaking, consciousness is consciousness. Oh the paradox, my local Mary Baker Eddy.

For as it is said, after consciousness talks to consciousness, no belief is worth the thought it's written on.
 

footnote 1. medical marijuana is medical because consciousness.
footnote 2. as if  i-am is the consciousness of death.
three. poor mad pip.
as contemplation is the whaleman's chapel
wu wei is on the loose
no six
7. belief in death is the greatest marketing achievement of western science.
the title came last i love it. mary baker eddy lived in this town for a few months. consciousness is why medical marijuana is more than legal now.
given, consciousness is majesty until disproven. western science, god knows it wants all funding to continue, can't prove otherwise. for before the big bang is a big black hole. and it's scientifically-proven! i am that, grasshopper.

Dreaming Mountains and Revelations

If every concept is a dream and consciousness is the mother of all concepts, is the goddess dreaming me or am I dreaming goddess?

That goddess is dreaming the goddess is the end of material history and beginning of the buddhahood embodiment of self-awareness.

For believing dream and denying dream are two sides of the coin of empire, but the antidote to material conditioning is divine imagination.

First, there is belief in mountains. Then, there is denial of the mountains. Now, there's mountains dreaming mountains.

And revelations is the goddess reminding the goddess she is the goddess in her own words.

As lilacs last in Shiva dances, a butterfly is dream and deity and summer, love.

Listen, belief, even ego, aside, I've been socially conditioned to disbelieve I'm individually universal. I am.

featuring the buddha of self-awareness

individual identity is the natural instrument of universal consciousness. as an omnipotent feature of the absolute, the buddha of self-awareness needs to dream a self and i-am is this buddha, individually universal.

social conditioning is a disassociative state and only empire or not-empire wants to kill the taoist on the road, sal paradise. mythologically speaking, self-awareness is darwinian acme or real buddha.

there's eight billion people in the naked buddha says the prophecy. if politics is kali and cult is krishna, then zhuangzi is chuang tzu. like listen to rimbaud without a point of view.

listening to the golden notes of a summer-time evening oriole. division sucks and one is old-school but three is being rediscovered. for three is the new ten thousand.

in the name of creation, destruction, and butterfly. dying bird song, nautical sunset, electric midnight tao without a god. neither cross nor antichrist but transformation, may dream be my mythology.

Dreaming Boat

comme je descendais des fleuves impassibles


Love is silence speaking. Thought is just an echo. There’s metaphor, mythology, and the power of three. Like white lightning, thunderbirds, a feathered serpent swallowing its tail.

Love does and thought redux. Imagine string theory, chemistry experiments, magic crystals, organic homegrown DNA, individually universal Buddha.

Third love is not romantic but non-empirical. Neither is postmodern nihilistic as one is not two. Lilacs blossoming, the last of the spring peepers, electric pear tree.

The Well Sea

Denying the dream
and believing the dream
are the polar opposites
of the same duality.
But fathoming the dream
is seeing through the dream
all the way to ground.
For after outwardly treading
the watery wraith of world,
the ground is where one stands
in sudden self-awareness.
And all shall be going swimmingly.

The Absolute Look

Love moves the leaves that breathe in the light I am breathing out.
For pure awareness to be aware of awareness, the big bang is an echo,
a black hole is the mirror and psychobabble is my story.

I'm either in deep sleep or dreaming, never of a dream.
And samadhi is another name for the god of self-awareness—
religions love to idealize the absolute.

Look, you can't kill space-time and eat it too.
Consciousness is the source of all compassion and
compassion is always seeing sun behind the protoplasm—

beyond
love is always turning
but self-awareness is the lucid dreaming.
 

The Show

The mind is an unbelievable tool that wants to be used by love. And love is the hand of being. And being is the heart of intentional self-awareness. And self-awareness is an omnipresent feature of the absolute.

Features are like universes or buddhas, if one prefers. This feature playing on the silver screen is starring these three movie gods: mind, being, and intent. No, the absolute is not a god or feature but all is absolute.

Note 1: Mind is plot, dream, mythology, imagination, story. Note 2: Being is setting, spirit, presence, consciousness, now. Note 3: Intent is arc and evolution, both holistic and reflexive.

Notice mis-identifying with its body or itself, mind is always looking for the guiding hand of love in some other body like a lover, or some other thought like material belief or god, rather than within oneself.

Cherry Blossom Space-time

As preface, without a doubt of any thought, the nonduality of known and unknown is self-evident. As monotheism is to atheism as polytheism is to pantheism as nonduality is not a thought of any theism, no-mind is the mind without belief.

Thought is like the tool of self-awareness but attachment to a thought is like just waiting for some horrible industrial accident and the suffering which follows. Introducing mind-training—surrender isn't what it's really called for that's a very worldly word, love.

In dreaming, there's lucidity and conditioning of clouds. There's mirror and dust on the mirror. But I am not the mirror. I make the mirror of material forgetting and evolutionary self-remembering. For the universe is another name for the play of self-awareness.

Reflexive not reflective, my Narcissus, as is reflexive to reflective as is one to two as nonduality is to causeless goldfinches of Northern New England is beginning just north of the Merrimack. Right here, right now, cherry blossoms are blossoming—

cherry blossoms like this easter cross of tao in space-time, as the past and future, here and now, appearing, like this tall old cherry tree of salisbury point and its diminishing fireworks of early spring, cherry blossoms are perennial in consciousness but annual in thinking

Project Z

The universe is like amnesia and the mind is that first remembering I am. This process of self-awareness is another name for space-time. Getting lost in such a universe is

another name for personality disorder. But seeing through this virtual reality is understanding there's no process—only absolute omnipresent awareness being self-aware.

Look, it's all projection. Love is looking lovingly to find some way through material conditioning as the world is seeing all of that as undesirable desire.

Listen, do not hurt another is the golden rule simplified. If consciousness is all, and the absolute is unknown by the knowledge of the mind, then my third gravitational body is a butterfly.

Processing Mind

The mind is not an obstacle nor a dead end but identifying with that focal point of mind is like a long hard detour on the way. As if any part of the whole could be separate from the holy spirit of the ground.

In other words, one deconstructs what's in the mind and not the process of the mind itself. For the process of the mind is dreaming, as it reminds me every night.

There are as many gods within a shaman as are universes in the buddha as are thoughts in mind. That said, my mythology has always been self-awareness. The nineteenth koan is saying mind is mirror

and the world is like the dust of a dream. Every picture tells a story written in psychedelic ink. Early April and the window is open—winter doesn't kill but deconstructs, my loving satori of the wetlands.
 

On Best Translations of Hafiz—and a Controversy

Gray

Avery

Davis

Bell

note: Amazon no longer allow images but the link on the broken image still works.

From what I've determined, these are the best contemporary English translations of Hafiz to date: Peter Avery, Elizabeth Gray (my favorite selected), and Dick Davis. The 1892 translations of Gertrude Bell are still considered worthwhile although a little dated in style.

I'm currently reading the Peter Avery 30 poem selection which I am really really enjoying. He published a collected version of 400 poems but it seems to be out of print and the used copies start at like $90 so that one's on my wish list.

And here's what I'm wishing. First, Archetype should do a second printing of the Collected Lyrics of Hafiz. Second, there shall appear one used book seller not price-gouging such numinous words.

(jan 2021 update. avery's book is now available. paid $30 for a new copy.)

Meanwhile it appears Daniel Ladinsky is not a translator of Hafiz, nor even a transcreator, but offers his original poetry under the name of Hafiz, as if it were transmitted or guided correspondence. Unfortunately, many many many think this poetry is original Hafiz. Very not cool.

Here is Daniel Ladinsky's own defense published as a review of 'The Gift' on Amazon titled 'My Portrait of Hafiz:’ "based on my study of thousands of pages of stories and poems that are attributed to Hafiz...first offered to Penguin with the word VERSIONS on the cover rather than the word translations, for i have never claimed my work with Hafiz is a traditional -- scholarly -- translation"

As someone who has transcreated versions of Lal Ded and Han Shan based on others' translations, I understand his basic gist of trying to do justice to the poet's intent. Honestly, I feel Lalla and Cold Mountain both have not been completely understood by their translators.

This is not to say I necessarily do, but obviously I thought some nondual something was missing in the translations. Still, to take one's own writing and pass it on as the poet's is going down a slippery slope. Such is not a version, but at best an inspired writing, and at worst, a fraud.

Gray

Avery

Davis

Bell

More on Hafiz and other Sufi poets here:

The Best Translations of Sufi Poetry

But let’s end on a positive note. Here’s a translation of Hafiz by Peter Avery:

VII

Again the garden has got the glitter of Spring:

The nightingale hears good news, for the rose is come.

Soft wind returning to the young plants of the meadow, Greet for us the rose, the cypress and the sweet basil.

They are spread for the wedding-feast of the wine-seller's son, And I'd sweep his floor with my eyelashes to win such grace.

For that amber-scented strand you draw across a moonlight brow

Has made a shuttlecock of my heart, and set it spinning.

I can't trust those who sneer at us drinking down to the lees: That is the kind of thing which gets a bad name for religion.

Let them learn to be friends with God's true friends; remember that Noah in his ark,

A speck of dust himself, cared not a drop for the deluge.

(a lowercase version of this review was first published spontaneously as tweets on @aumdada)

note: Amazon no longer allow images in the links, but the link on the broken image still works.

Grand Unified Mythology

Consciousness descends into the darkness of matter via subatomic, atomic, and molecular ways. And consciousness ascends into apocalyptic self-awareness through the holy trinity of gravity, identity, and relativity.

There are ten thousand omnipotent universes in the Buddha. This is the story of that one of self-awareness and its grand unified mythology of pure awareness being self-aware.

Thought is carbon-based material but belief is diamond-hard. Big bang is another name for western civilization or an eastern sunrise. April is the holy month of plants and pollen.

Death is all about appearances. My mother wasn't ever anywhere but here, god bless her. Dreaming is the paint and waking is the canvas. Deconstruct the bath water. Release the baby!

Fountain of Being, Fountain of Self-Awareness

Where consciousness appears to arise from the material body-mind is the fountain called I-Am. Be there and be lifted to the sea of self-awareness.

And it doesn't really matter if you think that consciousness grows from matter—one knows better. (Money doesn't grow on trees; neither do you.)

So it appears consciousness ascends from body-mind, but body-mind is where consciousness descended before its focusing resurrection.

And this is the genius of resting in consciousness—such natural knowledge informs the I in I-Am who the I really is.

For I is absolute, am is consciousness, and the universal dream of body-mind is the reflexive process of self-awareness.

But don’t believe these metaphysical words when you can rest there for yourself.

Ode to April Second

Being plus belief equals emotion and emotion is the thorn for that belief. For fear and sadness are emotions but so is happiness and desire. But joyous love is that without belief!

Likewise amplified consciousness appears to be a product of the body-mind. Call this, I Am. But resting there, the I is suddenly absolute.

Thus divine imagination is one-half mindfulness and one-half lucid dreaming and one-half meditation.

And as for so-called karma, it's just intentional. There is no individual doing in a universe but the universe. Simple mindfulness tells me so.

And lucid dreaming is to divine imagination as night to day. Further, meditation is returning to my absolute point of view and not something I can do.

O April is the holy trinity of memory, desire, and illusion. Like Cynthia Forsythia!

Experiential Myth

Awareness is the ground,
infinite and eternal, spaceless and timeless.
Consciousness is being,
evolutionary and intentional in space-time.
Self-awareness is sudden
and spontaneous, non-abiding or abiding, kensho to samadhi.

If awareness is omnipresent,
then awareness is unconditionally self-aware,
that self-awareness seeming to be
an intentional and evolutionary universe
to such evolving and intending dreaming in the universe
but it’s only self-awareness and I like it—
all is well.

The shamans song—
lightning of self-awareness thundering words,
this creator consciousness, this thunderbird!

Visions of Late Maya Almost April

Although the absolute is unknown to the mind, love knows. Love knows because love is. Love is because I am. I am because I'm causeless.

But the world is all about the big bang to black hole and nothing of this lightning or the silence.

Meanwhile empires talk about the rise and fall as my universal heart is singing love and death.

If awareness is the parent and self-awareness is the child, then being is this holy maya.

Holy ice-out, holy crocuses, holy red-winged blackbirds. Spring peepers! Holy forsythia, cherry blossoms, and lilacs yet to come.

Absolutely Sweet Creator

You've been conditioned to believe that breath is just another bodily function, material and economic.

But being breathes the body-mind like rings of smoke and ashes in a sea of self-awareness.

Almost everyone thinks consciousness is the body-mind's ultimate product but anyone resting in being soon sees paradoxically.

True mindfulness is dreaming from this absolute perspective. Call that creator consciousness. Earth, wind, fire, water are

my what but space-time is my being. The Milky Way may be three weeks old but I’m ten thousand springs.

As self-awareness is first lightning and the word, prime signs of thunder soon will be my fresh creation of pseudacris crucifer.