Where are the stars?
When the eternal Presence
So soon shows up as our thoughts,
Having only used three generations
Of element and matter forming stars,
And a few eons of breath exchange
Of rocks and animals and plants,
And when that ising combines
With the miracle of our societies,
With our interbeing and our trading,
To give us the words and emotions,
To probe so deep into what is,
That we see beyond appearances,
Then we can look up to the sky
And see the stars at any time,
And look at ourselves and each other
And see nothing but sunlight and stars
In this wrapper, this disguise,
That the Presence likes to wear.
Near experience
Some people, for no particular reason, have these near death experiences. Brushing shoulders with death, usually clinically dead for some minutes. And some of these people then come back totally unafraid of death, now living with a knowledge that things will be all right.
And some people, for no particular reason, have these near life experience. Seeing clearly the interconnectedness, the oneness, of all. And while these more-than-experiences will not increase their knowledge, or their emotional health, a number of them will come back with a wider definition of identity, no longer tied to individual thought streams, centers of consciousness or witnesses.
You can usually tell by the peace, the availability for anything, the freedom and the gratefulness these people live.
No language
On this cold, rainy morning,
Just after awareness birthes the thought stream,
While the birds are still undecided
About bringing a new day into existence,
The newly formed I pays a visit
To the side of the brain where touch replaces language
And knowing comes naturally
Out of a connection with all the is-ing
That cannot be qualified
By any of our constructs.
And it is there, in the land of pictures,
That the sun, in just raising,
Is a better witness to love and sacrifice
Than any preacher could hope to equal.
And it is now, that the clock
Celebrates another second.
And pairs with this breath
In a dance of birth and death.
And it is here too, in this land,
Where the birds forgot how to fly,
Where, when the city wakes,
This latest incarnation of the miracle
We call community or society
Starts again.
And pulls us in
To its written and unwritten rules
And relentlessly develops itself
With and through and by us.
And the birds finally sing,
And the rain gently falls,
And the typing ends,
And all is well.
May you ..
May you fall up endlessly,
Into this bottomless present
That knows no inside or outside,
That knows no future or past.
May you have trust enough
To let go and let God pull you.
And may you be wise enough
To relate kindly to the I and thou.
Helped are you
Helped are you,
If the inside and the outside
Stopped being of relevance
And you see yourself in every raindrop.
Helped are you,
If consciousness has married space,
And spirit and matter have lost their boundary,
And everyone you meet is just another you.
Helped are you,
If the stillness of eons,
Is present in this breath, in this action,
Celebrating God’s peace in gratitude.
Helped are your,
If you grapple with right or wrong,
Which long since stopped making sense,
In preference to the painful joy of relationship.
Helped are you,
If words give way to colour,
And the heart walks with the brain,
Into this sunrise of the everlasting present.
Helped are you,
If God is always already here,
Before birth and after death,
And at any moment between no poles.
Helped are you,
And it is yours to receive.
Now.
Past the thought
Just past the thoughstream
When reflexiveness ends
And the hall of mirrors
Is just another story,
There, just past the void of stillness,
Is an aliveness beyond birth and death,
That embodies the wisdom of matter,
Way beyond thoughts of subjects.
There, where no I or you can ever tread,
Where all love is unity beyond boundary
Where the timeless embraces all nows
And eternity is just that, has ever been,
There the you and me always meet,
Stunned that we did not celebrate
Every birdsong and every breath,
Every sunrise and drop of dew.
But knowing that what carries us,
And what we really are,
Is so breathtaking and so much closer
Than anything we could ever dream off.
And as what was once we
Make that reality our home
The unity and diversity of thought
Is held in humility and gratefulness.
And out of that peace action arises
With no self to reflect back to
And no want but to let the fullness
Manifest though what is no longer there.
Normal
When God becomes the normal,
And one stops talking about Christ
Because nothing is not that,
The new non perspective descends.
And what was once a longed for state
Is discovered as utterly ordinary.
And the concept of desirable
Is replaced by reckless fun.
The Wisdom of Age
As we age, our perspectives hopefully become wider.
We see more, and more in context.
We hold on to less and less.
And hopefully celebrate more and more.
Here is a video that shows that change through age brilliantly;
With a WOW aspect that is close enough to be uncomfortable.
One of the pre-requisites for transformation 
And you could have it all, my empire of dirt.
The Kingdom of God
If we truly understood what happens when we take a breath,
We would finally understand the kingdom of God.
We would see that this basic, automatic move contains the full miracle of life.
We would know that it needs no thought to sustain it
We would feel that this body is just a part in a air-liquid-solid system.
We would marvel at all these seemingly ‘other’ companions in this wholeness
Who drink the same breath and touch the same soil and
We would be stunned as we see how the one breath ripples through the many
And the many is the fullness of the one.
We would stand in awe of the photosynthesis which started to form
The breathable air, so many billions of years ago
And without a doubt we would know that the “starting to form”
Will still be going on, for different lungs in billions of years.
We would see that this God, stripped of all anthropomorphic attributes,
Is the ground of all being and will-less instigator of all becoming
We would love that this God, in incarnation, embraces humanity
And says “we too” are part of this whole.
We would know past language that “kingdom” is but a term
That only points to a completeness and totality
That offers a presence, a promise and a peace that
We could not help but accept, with no conditions.
And when we exhale we know that this too is part of the fullness
That nothing keeps life as fresh and as new as death.
Then we begin to sense above form into a glorious emptiness
That was never meant for human senses.
This kingdom of God is not just near and amongst us.
It is all that is. Ever has been. Ever will be.
In this breath and the next and past the last.
Bouncing at green
What seems to happen is that even in groups where the center of gravity on the individual level of development is ‘high’, i.e. second tier, the group interactions are pulled back to ‘green’, i.e. first tier conformist by the actions of individuals.
The picture that emerges is something like “the chain is only as strong as the weakest link”.
The challenge for second tier groups is that the network of relationships has to be more than the sum of the individual ones and that there is a strong, ongoing pull to a “why?” that is communal and trans-communal. Almost more like common surrender rather than common achievement.
Why do we bounce at green? Part of the answer is the individualism and self-sufficiency that we are conditioned to. It is only when we let go of these conditionings, that hurt feelings are no longer a terminal illness, instead they are just artifacts of love-not-acted-out.
So, to get post green, sacrifice must become part of the group behaviour. The kind of sacrifice we could never ask another for, the kind that can only be freely given.
