For the Searchers

According to the Navajo, the gods had walked this land we now call Monument Valley and their karma has been left behind in storied rock.

I saw it first on film. It starred John Wayne and was directed by John Ford. And there were several titles but the plot was always beauty within the valley of the rocks.

But as we drove onto the set that mid-March morning, its simple actuality diminished every technicolor, panascope, and universal film school trope.

It always is that truth of truths. Experience is always greater than the sum of your beliefs. Now is never then, and then was never.

We take a tour. I scramble up a sandstone bluff and crawl into an Ancient Pueblo space and peer through eyes that look like windows.

O one that walks with beauty! there is no separation between nature and self, desert and thunder, sky and source, this land and who I am.

The tour guide answers every question. Even global warming is the great intent of evolution while good shepherds feed their sheep.

I find myself cross-legged on the desert floor surrounded by the acts of gods. Unlike the Hopi, Navajo take pictures. Here I am, truly a butte.

Northerners Advancing toward Sedona

Driving out of Phoenix gaining elevation and suddenly the traffic slows as cars are parking on the far-left breakdown lane

and people gathering within the median and playing in the newly-fallen desert snow. It was like a moment from that song

'Snow in San Anselmo,' as if they hadn't seen it snow in more than their existent years. But we had and so continue on.

Miles later, we are exiting the interstate and heading for Sedona, our first long-anticipated southwestern destination.

And it isn't long before we see our first iconic sandstone monolith shaped to some whatever vision in the moment we are dreaming.

And it seems as if we never saw a setting such as that, red rock arising from the desert like solid smoke emerging from the kiln of earth.

And then, just like the visitation of an angel, it descends and tells us of our virgin birth and immortality. 

Awakening Grand Canyon

It was just before the dawn and I was standing on the south rim of Grand Canyon waiting for the sun to rise. I wasn't sure just what there was to see but whatever it might be I thought to see the sunrise at Grand Canyon was a worthy thing to see.

I was fifty-three and for more than forty years I had dreamed of visiting this wonder of the world. It had even grown to an important status in my life involving some potential anti-suicide attempt. In other words, I had promised to myself if ever such an impulse were to dawn on me with fever pitch, I would make my way to this exact mind-blowing vista and let it talk me down from such a limited point of view. 

And here I was, at the second destination in our great southwestern whirlwind tour, awaiting what it had to tell me just for the sake of listening. One by one, the buttes and mesas lit afire, depending on their height or westerly direction, and I was lit as well with such an obvious understanding, but something never felt in such a raw experiential way.

The sun doesn't ever really rise. But like awareness, for example, it's always there, right here, right now, and I am nothing but its cosmic earthly unbelievably magnificent manifestation. As if I were a thing to be extinguished! I watched and laughed in universal joy.

Hey Jack Kerouac! It's Canyon de Chelly.

preface

This body's like an amplifier and my love is like the music of I am; this amplifier is like electricity and I am water falling; my lightning is like a mirror and my thunder is like this dream reflecting words.

introduction

Hiking in the Whites, I fell into a waterfall and turned into a river. I then remembered playing World War Two with plastic soldiers hiding in-between the ancient roots of Jesus trees.

chapter one

The next thing that I knew was tripping over Lucy in the sky with LSD. I was later interrupted for an all-expenses-paid vacation to a transformational experience.

finale

Ten years ago today in Canyon del Muerto before Ancient Pueblo cliffside ruins across a running canyon desert brook like lightning exiting a bottle,

the magic and the perfection and the glory!

afterword

As if this universal consciousness is kissing thee, my most beloved absolute, nearby an endless hidden summer pond so many thousand dreams ago.

A Walk Through Maudslay Park 160309

Hawks be with me…

Through the bent birch gate and into the wood. Young Blake carved his name on an old ash tree. As did Ra. Into the meadow walks the purple condor t-shirt.

The last slush of winter hiding in the swamp. New boots don't fail me now! Broken arrow, fallen trees. Summer Breeze On a Winter's Day. The last great hill before the Empire of the sea.

The new blue bridge is lurking in the distance. Teardrops of snow on the northern slope. Across the river, history is busy building new condominium construction.

The Abenaki still own this land because they never claimed its ownership. The Great White Pines of Eagle Territory. An old bridge wrapping around Flotsam Cove.

The real peak of this path are these bare rocks on the great open point of river…where the southwest wind is briskly shimmering in this glittering world.

Being the Revelator

Being is knowledge; being the unknown is truth; only the unknown is real; reality is... It's only a rabbit hole if you believe it. Otherwise, it's instant mythology.

Right thinking deconstructs belief but being sees the truth. Deconstruction without being is the tragic error of all postmodernist thinking. And Atheism is simply pre-postmodernism.

Nisargadatta's first teaching is 'I am,' as consciousness speaks to consciousness. Only being truly deconstructs. Thinking is the tool. This is sometimes called right thinking.

Faith in the satguru is transmission of being to being. Buying water by the river lifts the fog. Grace intends faith; lightning is birdsong. Everything is intention; nothing is desire.

Intent. Grace. Faith. Transmission. Wisdom. Truth. Reality. The seven states of sudden enlightenment! Like chain lightning. And true practice is as thunder remembering its default position and resetting there.

Ode to Self-awareness

O the wonder of this self-awareness!

the Unknown knowing it is that great Unknown,

like fourteen-billion years of what is named the known

disappearing into brilliant now.

O the happenstance of self-awareness!

in-between the absolute unknown

of a nominal unborn and an epithetic afterlife is

this being that unknown.

  

O the great illusion in this self-awareness!

in attempting to be known when nothing is sincerely known

befalling to the one disease affecting

psychological distress and suffering.

 

O this natural, innate, spontaneous, and fundamental self-awareness! unobstructed by the mists of thought and tempest of belief,

the splendid goddess knows herself

and such a knowing seems to be an evolutionary universe—

but is simply, purely, plainly, only Self-awareness.

The Voluminous Fantasia of Forgiveness

The poor girl thinks her heart is wicked but the rub is in the thinking.

Arthur Miller said to love the idiot but marry Marilyn Monroe.

John Keats said truth is beauty after he said beauty is truth; that is all.

  

Unconditional and absolute forgiveness, both of the other and oneself, is the bridge of gods.

Take two. Forgive the known and be the unknown. End scene.

Stephen Stills sang love the one you're with. It's an ancient Christian hymn. Like Hare Krishna.

  

Forgiveness is the bridge of gods. Forgiveness is the bridge of gods. Forgiveness is the bridge of gods. It's like a one hit wonder.

If it wasn't for misunderstanding, there is no understanding further.

After living the dream, be the myth. Long division is black magic; love and zero is the power and the glory.

  

It's a mirror until you see straight through it, and only light sees through the light.

Reality’s Ninth

All is as clear as desert air.

The streetcar is desire but all the streets are in the past.

The only difference between the gods and someone mortal is appearing in this universe of self-awareness.

Coyotes howl at the moon while daytrippers stare into the mirror of the sun.

Experience cannot be memorized. Intent knows no desire.

Transformation is apparently the answer to all questions.

The night is darkest before the dawn; the mirage seems brightest at high noon.

Look. Everything is perfect as it is. There is no real thing.

Comedy, tragedy, history. Imagine not knowing your self.

Stop action. Forget cameras. See through the light.

A Fantasia in Here and Now

No creation story needed. No apocalypse required.

No shoes, no mind, no effort.

The past is spotty; wear it lightly. Enjoy the perfect breeze.

Mythology and deconstruction are two sides of an empty coin.

Understanding and manifestation are synchronous. It is written.

A child of three sees through the terrible twos. She's like a rainbow.

The holy experiential matrix of here and now is the gospel. Truth.

Presence is the perfect meeting of sea and sky. Hallelujah!

Picture oneself as the god of the river with whitewater splash and rainbow trout.