Autobiography Number Nine

The course that can be taught is not the course, of course. If the course being taught is about teaching, then dropping out of the school of education was my only course.

Absolute awareness. Choiceless awareness. Affectionate awareness. Self-awareness. There are 10,000 metaphors and modifiers but there’s only one verb. Not to be or not to be but being.

Look, if one cannot know that unknown, be that unknown. Being the known will only drive you crazy. I know. I tried it. My 19th nervous breakdown was a doozy.

three footnotes to autobiography number nine

dropping out of college was the greatest thing i learned in college. that and modern drama.

the real tragedy of hamlet is this unquestioned assumption there's a choice.

there's one conspiracy and one deep state. misty watercolor memories of the way we were.

Zing of Space

Feel the zing of space. That isn’t nothing. Nothing is as conceptual as something but this is more like feeling, a nonconceptual knowing, intuition. Being.

Self-awareness and awareness are not two but together make beautiful music. Like Zhuangzi's Great Clod.

Like the north rim from the south rim of Grand Canyon. Like Half Dome from Glacier Point over Yosemite Valley. Like Downeast Maine.

Call this reflexive universe the power of three. Denying, affirming, and reconciling. Material, spiritual, and nondual.

Getting Off at Bliss and Energy

Deconstructing samsara deconstructs nirvana too. Samsara deconstructs. The art of deconstruction is knowing when to leave the viewpoint of samsara.

One not trained in love, forgiveness, and compassion, will not know when to jump. This is why you need to pay your dues, grasshopper.

This is why the guru sends the secret seeker to the kitchen for thirteen years. I was a working class hero for thirty-five years myself.

I dedicate this prophecy to Kurt Cobain who didn’t want to double-track his voice until reminded of John Lennon doing so. Call it bliss or call it energy but get off here.

Using the sense of sight as a metaphorical background for consciousness is counterproductive. It’s more affect than effect. As energy is not an emotion but emotion is occluded energy.

Blissfulness is not happiness. Happiness is occluded blissfulness. But all communication is translation. Consciousness witnessing is more like loving than seeing.

Psychotropic materialism is the name of the latest crash site. But manifestation is the rationalization of love. Try treating disease with the ease of imagination, my love.

Satori in Franconia Notch

The mind is like murk in the lake of being. In crystal mountain water, the ground is all there is.

There’s a deep basin in the Pemi of the White Mountains that forms a pool called The Pool.

It’s forty feet deep and you can see the bottom as clear as the earth around it.

Cold Mountain writes: "this is such a still restful place; the sun is slant and shadows of trees

grow enhanced; I can see the bottom ground of mind—a lotus is emerging from the sediment."

At seven I saw it in the state park called The Flume. Like looking through the eye of nature!

On that day, I first became, in the language of New England transcendentalism, a transparent eyeball.

A 13th century Christian mystic said, “the eye with which I see god is the same with which god sees me.

My eye and god’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.”

But look silence says it best.

Code Name Trinity

There is no right or wrong including right or wrong and so on. There is no binary system in this holy trinity. Non-duality is not two. Three is not two too. Self-awareness is the power of three.

There’s the self. Then there’s the mirror. Let’s call it duality. Or body-mind. This royal dreamstate, these images on cave walls, this silver screen, this war and peace, this gita.

So there’s the self and there’s the mirror. Love is the hand that holds the mirror. Meet the Beatles, meet the self. Self-awareness, meet the universe. Cherry blossoms meet Grand Canyon.

The Greatest Commandment

You are, you know you are - this is the great Lord, the sudden, explosive effulgence. Surrender to it, and you will know all. ~Nisargadatta

I am is the lord thy god. Thou shalt have no other gods before this immaculate conception.

Since i-am is the primary concept, all other concepts are secondary gods at best.

Since i-am is the primary concept, no word, image, nor object can describe it. Thus, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

Since i-am is the primary concept, do not mistake it for the secondary concept of personal ego. Thus thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

I-am is witnessed only in interior silence. Thus remember this silence and keep it holy.

The preceding basically refers to what Jesus called the first and great commandment.

I-am is One, universal being, thou shalt love thy Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

Power Trio Ballad Sutra

I’m old enough to remember when air was free. I’m young enough to know belief is always paid in being.

“As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small, by giving you no time instead of it all.”

The empire needs you to believe. Religion is old-time politics. Politics is the new religion sold to materialists.

Mindfulness is the new word for talking to myself. Amfulness is my imaginary word for being myself.

I’m feeling like a power ballad by some famous power trio now. The first word is an art. Its repetition is a tragedy.

But third time is a powerful charm. Stairway to Heaven. Sunshine Of Your Love. Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate.