Thinking About The Inner Sage Thinking About Me.

Early afternoon, gray skies with clouds in motion; it’s one of those changing lines in a hexagram days; for those of us with some understanding of the I Ching. Dr. Zhivago has just begun on the television (in German); interesting timing. I can hear it from the kitchen where I am making the rice for the Nori Rolls I will construct later. The smell of curry takes me to a number of places I have and have not been (yet).

It’s all fitting; the gray skies, the sense of change, Zhivago and the warm kitchen; I remember watching Zhivago in my forest-surround cabin in Lake Hill, outside Woodstock, as the snow fell with great intensity all through the day and night. I had nowhere to be, no one was coming over and there were all those movies and the pristine expanse of white fairy tale beyond.

This isn’t anything like that. There are other people here and it’s warm, despite the appearance and the wind that plays Hell with the fireplace, forcing the smoke into the living room occasionally. The wind is coming from another direction than usual. It must be rare or I suppose we would have been told.

I often wonder how I got here from there. It brings me round to that old conundrum of free will versus karma, kismet, fate... It’s connected somehow to the fact that it is impossible not to contradict ourselves and to the fact that it is impossible to communicate in words those things we most need to know and understand.

Several millenniums ago, no doubt, in one place or another, a man came to enlightenment as he came into the full awareness of the sage within; he felt all of the timeless posture and poses of the authentic self. The automatic mudras and the feel of the invisible reins of the mind in his hands became a more certain reality than anything he had ever encountered before.

Though he remained, however irrevocably changed, as a part of the process; the synthesis; the symbiotic ever after; whatever it is called. Still, whatever he had been before, was blown away, sucked out into notness and vanished with all of the false gods and temporary personalities he had entertained on his way to this moment. He was no longer all of these other things. He never had been any of these things. They were just the temporary dreams of something that got lost in search of a harbor.

The thing he has become had always been. It had been before there was any counterpart, environment, medium, sense of contrast or even the idea of any of these things. Had something preceded it? That question isn’t important except to those who cannot see the end of questioning.

Across the expanse of recorded history and before, different people have come to this same place and experienced the same thing. Deep in the essential core of them a tiny form vibrated into larger and larger outlines of itself. Think of a hologram with the projectors aperture widening ever so slightly by degrees. But think of a hologram more real than the person observing/experiencing it. As it grows it consumes everything it contacts. It burns it up or it changes it into itself. Either way it would be changed into itself, since it is essentially the heart, core and essence of all things.

To a stronger or weaker degree, this essential sage vibrates in every living thing. It would be heard quite distinctly were it not for the car horns, the televisions, the ipods; the curving electro-magnetic forms, reversed polarities in the male and female in passage; heat is surely generated. And then smoke is generated and you have; presto! ...That which obscures. And, always, you have that which lives in obscurity.

Sometimes you can find yourself in a big city at an intersection and it will get suddenly very quiet and then, from a distance far away all of the cacophonous sounds will weave together into a temporary symphony. It’s amazing. I’ve run into it a few times. It comes whirling up the street and then disappears behind you. I don’t know if it just falls away back into the backdrop, like a wave upon the ocean, or if it continues on forever, bringing a transient harmony to every place and moment through which it passes.

Through entire lifetimes the external drama will press down upon the presence of the inner sage. So that you won’t hear it, consciously. As you get nearer to the exit it becomes increasingly clear that you need more sounds and sights, at all times, to counter the awareness. Along the way, tragedy, disease, loss, you name it... comes knocking at the door wondering if you wouldn’t rather have it otherwise but...

And people can get quite rough about these things. These restless sleepers have a great capacity for harm. It’s not like things are kept from them but more that you have to look. You have to want to look. Oh sure, the machinery is designed to get your attention away. You are the oil that lubricates and the fuel that feeds the fires that turn the wheels of the great foundry of phenomena. The vibrating neon cornucopia is pumping at peak. If people were to take their attention away from the spectacle... well, that would be bad for business. So you learn to go your way. Some exhortation may be found on street corner and in desert waste; even from within, the water never stops running.

This inner sage is in the same location within the deepest integrity of the entire. It becomes itself as you cease to be other than. And it is always the same thing and it always knows itself wherever it finds itself, even when it doesn’t know it is being found. This is one thing that ensures the safety of the sage, though the very fact of its being more real is insurance enough. Imagine a villain on a movie screen being able to shoot and kill someone in the audience. You might keep this in mind when you think about what power evil might have. It’s a good meditation to think about the concept that evil always destroys itself; of course, defining evil isn’t always the easiest thing. For instance, if I were bad for business, would I be evil? If I were anti-fascist in a fascist state that presented itself as democratic would I be a traitor? Would I be evil?

If my loyalty were to humanity and not to the state and if working in the interests of humanity put one in opposition to the state; would one be a traitor? Would one be evil? What is the greater evil... being a traitor to your country, or a traitor to the human race?

Is it evil to support your country if the policies of your country support genocide abroad? If you chatter into your cell-phone while driving your Lexus SUV to church on Sunday and are thinking about what you’ll be doing later while going through the pro forma routine of worship are you... what are you?

If you have a pricey hair implant and every manner of costly garment and scent about you as you stomp across the stage in Lagos, Nigeria, telling the people bout Jesus and flash healing the jitterbugging en-frenzied to believe; wishin’ and hopin’ for a better life contingent and you... rake in the swag across the continent and you don’t heal anybody and you get your picture taken with starving children and you cry like a crocodile and wipe your face with your handkerchief and you get caught with an ugly hooker in black fishnet stockings in a New Orleans motel room because... well because you cried out for blood when another man, like yourself went down and so ‘they’ set you up... well, is that justice? Are you evil? Are you just lost? Are you really good and sacrificing yourself as an example for the improvement of the people in an almost Christ-like fashion?

The beauty of the inner sage is that everything you need to know is always known by simply ‘giving way’ into it. If you can get still for a moment you can actually feel the thing itself within you. It has a stationary facet and it has a will to action impulse; though it does not itself enter into the mix. With a little practice you can begin to anticipate the way you should go. It’s like dancing with an invisible partner. Close your fist and look at the swirl your hand makes. Out of a spiral it all comes. Think of the dervish. God is a serpent.

I can’t imagine anything being as exciting, as valuable or as important as this Inner Sage. Why drink bad sugar water when you can drink the ineffable waters of living truth? Why when you can transform rat burgers into moist, yielding nourishment that feeds in secret and floods with light would you opt for a rat burger? Maybe it is the embarrassment, the terrific shame felt by those who know they’re wrong but refuse to change, that makes them so mean.

I believe my rice should be done now and so I’m done as well.


Warm Regards....


In Search of Rest

the image of love in
the mirror
turns...
into a whirlpool of desire
we cannot maintain our balance
and so we fall

was it love?

we are the fuel
and when we are gone
there is no flame

i became brilliant beneath the light of your love
i was alive
and only then was i alive
woven into tapestries of color and sound

where have you gone?
i look for you in every face
but i do not fall in love

i remain apart

one wing in an empty sky

somewhere inside
a woman moves
and at night she often dances
in perfect breath with me
this is the woman with whom i am truly close
this is the only woman
mother of God
sound and fury
silence absolute
beautiful beyond description
terrifying in full approach

the mind dissolves

"be still my child
no harm will come to you
strong men i bring them down
and suck them dry
but my child may dwell in safety"

i looked too hard and too long
i found her and now i cannot return
there is no dream of life that can be believed
there is only the vastness of space
the appearance of time
and the differing weight...

sometimes heavy
like the sorrow of a long past
sometimes light as an angels hand upon your shoulder
steering a course through the stormy heavens
and planetary wars fought in human form
until the last day

she is everywhere
in unseen miniature multiplied
in the air
the earth
the dancing flesh
she takes me in my sleep
flying up the long corridor to my bright home

why is it difficult to leave the fields of play?
here among the doomed flowers
the gravity of bones
the brief exhalation of life

young girls press the pulse
and draw the essence forth
into the raging holocaust
of passion rampant
on a field of blood

"i will protect you my child
i will wash the worlds of form from your heart
i will remove the sword above your head
i will teach you to dance
but you will dance for me alone"

it is the greatest heartbreak
the destruction of the false self
dreamed by the self
and revealed to the self
at separations end

the terror of mortal pain
the agony of life’s constant march
unending loss of everything
unending loss of everything

it hurts to be free
freedom is too much to bear
too difficult to accept

the luminous door appears
and the mind cries out for darkness
it slithers under floorboards and rocks
to hide from immortality

"i will protect you my child
i will hold you as yourself
we are woven as one
eternity and time
forget
forget
forget

in a world where everything but truth dies
but which few see
in a world that begins and ends forever
that is the playground
for a mind magnetized by dust

in a world were everything is broken
no heart is safe

in a world of mostly water
for it is a world of mostly tears

in a world where love is crucified
no lie is safe

in a world of contrasts
and desperate flights
and measurelss descent
where everything is written on
or built out of sand
that flows to the bottom of an all forgiving sea

in a world of waiting
and hoping
where every dream comes true
eventually
and then loses its meaning and disappears

in a world of rumors
and dying swans who mate for life
we move to and fro
in search of rest

impelled by need
in search of rest

tormented by flies and furies
in search of rest

burning in the long night
in search of rest
in search of rest
in search of rest

"i will protect you my child
i have built a garden of delight
it hangs iridescent in the air
it gleams in a drop of water
it spins in the living breath"

a love serene
the emptiness of mind
the holding of one
the mirror of light
the bloom of begotten-
worlds sent forth

in search of rest
in search of rest
in search of rest