To Beat The Birds

To Beat The Birds

I wore a face that was not my face

The muscles tensed and gripped

In ways they were not designed for

Long hours of frowning in front of a computer

Too many times smiling when nothing was funny

Or the worst, curling the lips at the corners

To sign approval of an act I found despicable

These muscles were meant to express

Love

Hunger

Rage

Kindness

Hilarity

Grief
Wonder

The molds my face understands

And for far too long this face has slipped

Between the deep grooves of Being

And skated along the shallows of conformity

No more

For I no longer recognize the rudimentary lines

And weak boundaries I have been asked to force my face into

It takes too much energy to be nothing, to be subservient, to follow the program

For I am too strong to hold myself down

I give my face permission to act as it will, say what it wants

Take the forms it finds comfortable

And laugh to beat the birds

The Discarded University

The Discarded University

It is a human birthright to live in a state of connection and grace. We are born with an innate ability to communicate and receive messages from our Creator. Some call it the Great Spirit, God, Nature, Buddha-thought, Gaea, Pachamamma…this energy, this all knowing and all loving energy is called by many names but all cultures agree as to where this energy resides and this place is in nature, untouched by human hands. This is rather obvious. Prophets and sages and seekers do not go into the canyons of Manhattan to commune with their Maker, they go out to the wilds, the old places where canopies have overspread the plants beneath and provided the wisdom of shade for thousands of years. This is where a direct line of communication can be established, where messages can be received, if the instrument is ready and sensitive enough. Pachamamma communicates through Her children, through the other life forms we share this Earth with. She sends messages through the plants and whispers to us through the sighing of trees, through the wind in leaves. Those of us who live in cities have been almost entirely cut off from communicating with our Creator. She has no messengers to send. The imprint of the human mind is everywhere. Hard asphalt covers dirt, buildings made in the image of the human mind with all of its shortcomings and constraints, boxy, inelegant, wasteful, crowd upon the eye and fill it to brimming with half-truths and blatant lies. The city as designed for buying and selling, growing rampant with the fertilizer of ego and greed and dire misunderstanding. Pachamamma has been driven out by the hubris of the ego, the false state of the mind that mistakes creation for its own. There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t know there is something drastically wrong. Not one of us is free from the nagging feeling the world we live in is terribly and catastrophically out of balance. We don’t need to do most of what we are doing. We need alignment and healing, we need the loving song of our Mother to bring us back, to reawaken us to what we are. Sacred, holy creatures put here in the ocean of time to learn, to experience and take our place in the great construct that is the expression of the Creator, the web of life. We are here to learn a single lesson and this is all. And how are we to learn if we’ve discarded the university? We’ve surrounded ourselves with a leaded box and are cannibalizing one another with the nightmares we’ve come to believe are true. For many, nightmares have become their birthright. This is false. We need to go back to the old, powerful places, open our senses, let go our false desires and fears, generated by this one-sided construct of the mind and go back to the multifaceted and energetic construct which was made for us. Our home. Our true place. It fills me with a sadness too deep and too hurtful for words to think we can not receive the messages intended for us. There is much to be learned from the singing of birds and the harvesting of fruit. Our true text is the book of nature. Our cousins are the plants and in many ways our progenitors for without them there would be no oxygen to breathe. And what insanity that we cut the trees down for profit. Truly they are our lungs, we are utterly dependent upon them for breath…and we cut them down. What dangerous self-destruction. What is truly frightening is that the Creator, Pachamamma will not be put aside, will not lick Her wounds in the last untouched places, no, She will resort to other means of communication to get through to us. Disaster, flood, famine, pestilence, suffering and war…these are all the products of not being in alignment, of cutting ourselves off from our teacher and savior, cutting ourselves off from the energy that loves us absolutely and made us perfect.

On Suffering

On Suffering

Our problem and our psychosis is that we don’t suffer. For thousands and thousands of years humans have never had to worry about suffering. It was always present, free and available in sufficient quantities for everyone. It tempered the soul. It was the land we walked and the air we breathed. It was the launch pad of consciousness. The germinator of religion. The suffering we felt at the necessity of robbing an equal creature/an equal soul of life to sustain our own. This terrible selfishness. This Thou Shalt Not Kill. This commandment broken again and again, hands wet with blood, arms tired with brutal pummeling. Don’t be hoodwinked by your culture. During this time, this slow explosion of mind and matter, that would eventually sweep the planet – we did not see ourselves as any different from the life around us. Killing our brothers and sisters and eating their flesh – first was born ritual to grapple with the suffering this caused, this terrible guilt. The original sin. Who were we to decide life and death – to mete punishment first with our hands and then with the tools we made with our minds?

The suffering of the struggle to survive, the suffering of losing loved ones to the brutality of defense, accident, disease, predation…the suffering of how short the time was. Humanity has done its utmost to divorce itself from suffering and has largely succeeded in the more “developed” places. So minds become stunted. Hearts atrophied without the air of suffering to breathe. And when we do have the opportunity to suffer – to steep our souls in the cauldron of fire which made us – the fiery vessel of God – it is too bright, too warm and cruel for our distended souls, our shriveled hearts – so we turn away – we deal in repression/psychosis/depression – we stuff ourselves with Words, pad our minds with empty concepts – God/Faith/Nihilism/Fate/Greed/Gluttony/Alcohol/Drugs/Hatred/Jealousy/Anxiety/Depression/Insomnia…all that we supposedly abhor – we become – because we do not know how to suffer. Of course – who would choose to suffer? If given the choice – who would mantle themselves with this thorough garment of pain? So we sequester ourselves in our safe rooms of empty days and the collection of material and the easy subjugation of our brothers and sisters – we eat now without suffering – we eat empty promises and empty calories – and belch into the sky our stink at having been cooped up in our safe rooms without the benefit of the cleansing and purifying bath of suffering. We desperately need to suffer and each and every one of us knows this, each of us carries a seed planted deep within our consciousness…but not enough bloom…the seeds lie dormant, encased, ungerminated – spreading their invisible radiation to suffuse all aspects of life with the poison of non-being, non-belief…but – this will be taken care of – collectively. Without knowing it – we will manufacture our suffering – engineered in the dark places, unknown to us but it’s course as sure as an arrow, to burst forth in a glorious and hideous flood of suffering the likes of which will make WWII pale in comparison….to bring us back to our roots, to let us breathe good air and know ourselves.  So the question is – will enough people tend lovingly to this seed, give it the water of their tears and the nutrients of their active engagement with the world as it truly is – a construct of spirit and matter – the natural expression of which is suffering – to awaken the seed and have it grow and bear its fruit…and this fruit is called Human with a capital ‘H’, whole and enlightened consciousness, unfractured, selfless and paradoxically without suffering because the long journey we are all asked to make, simply by being born, has been trodden. The only way out is through.