Living the Dream

We think we are awakening; our eyes are open, we perform motor functions but, there is more to us than body, mind, and emotions. As Eckhart says: “Not what you do, but HOW you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness. “(p294)

If we watch babies, we will see trust and action on intuition, free of judgment, feeling every emotion fully, unconditional love, and that drive that “does” out of a limitless potential. It is as we grow that we are changed by people and situations that have us doubt that innate freedom of nature. We learn to fear and learn not to trust. We gain our own reasons not to surrender and move into a outer-controlled life of control and manipulation where we are always trying to avoid real free life and Oneness. We forget that everything we do is a wonder and reason for applause and nurturing. We seek it and it becomes a need rather than a gift.

There comes a time when, if we do not reawaken to that pure state of awakened joy and wonder, we will become ‘blindered’ to the way things really are, who we really are. We will begin to believe we are our thoughts but we think the thoughts we do because someone else wants us to think them. We do what we do because we are programmed to do them. We lose ‘the spirit’ of living.

I have always loved the analogy of The Cave:

“Imagine prisoners who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their arms and legs unmovable because of chains; their heads are chained in one direction as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which puppets of various animals, plants, and other things are moved along. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. Behind this cave there is a well used road, upon this road people are walking and talking and generally making noise, the prisoners then, believe that these noises are coming directly from the shadows they are watching pass by on the cave wall.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game : naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of objects. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.

Suppose a prisoners chains break, he is able to get up and walk about, (a process which takes some time as he has never done it before), eventually he will be compelled to explore, he walks up and out of the cave whereby he is instantly blinded by the sun, he turns then to the shadows on the floor, in the lakes, slowly working his way out of his deluded mind, he is eventually able to glimpse the sun. Which, in time, he would learn to see as the object that provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free “his fellow bondsmen,” but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner’s eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. He might stumble Plato asserts, and the prisoners would conclude that his experience had ruined him. He would not be able to identify the shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey)

Oh wake up, wake up, let us not be bound by the chains of outer life. We are more than body…..we are more than our thoughts, we are more than our emotions…we are spirit.

Eckhart speaks of Three modalities of Awakening Doing: P p295 - 305): Acceptance, enjoyment, enthusiasm….each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. (p295)

To DO out of a place of spirit is what I seek. I wish to have body, mind, emotion and spirit be seamless so that I act from that central core of Oneness: that my outer doing truly ARE the inner doings.

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I.

her shoulders slumped

as if she had been a water-bearer,

in service of some army in the world

where water was scarce

that kind of heaviness

II.

air hanging hard on lines and limbs

just before a downpour

or a wild wind, or

sound of an owl, mourning doves,

everything else stunned silent but those

that kind of heaviness

III.

a woman , in China, seeing a five story building

bury her only allowed baby

a paraplegic, holding a crossbeam

off his frozen legs

his wife, holding a shivering spoon of gruel

to his lips for eleven days

that kind of heaviness

IV.

let us not be unconscious

of how heavy we are on this earth

or how our little bit of service,

compassion and care might be begged to be miraculous

when she sags under the weight of

that kind of heaviness

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That Kind Of Sorrow

I.

she was filled up, like a burlap sack waiting

for its puppies

that kind of sorrow

weight of wet cement when shoes fits perfectly,

and still, long enough to make walking away

impossible

bowed back of a packhorse, scaling shale

to take supplies to highest lakes

and cabins, shrugging in snow

windows and doors drifted in

and a cave-like life

where one doesn’t blink

that kind of sorrow

II.

bouquets sitting in a bowl

so long their petals fall off

she was a wooden doll

time has rotted her arms off

a weathering wind peeled paint

of lips ~ blue eyes look barky

and bulgy beneath hair that seems

to have gotten too close to a fire

so that it frizzled in curls

so tight her face puckered

that kind of sorrow

III.

a little snag on crescent of cuticle

just before nail

turning red, then green, then pale

and puffed out until it boils over

in the worst sludge

that kind of sorrow

IV.

pillows with stuffing pounded out of them,

doors slammed so hard

they swing both ways when they were meant

to only swing one

and spaghetti on the ceiling

holding high-flung shards of her best plates

like glue, like putty, like evidence

that kind of sorrow

V.

a metallic hinge, nut and bolt movements;

a screech of an ill-hung door on rusty hinges,

a doorknob coming off in your hand,

an engine that simply will not kick over,

a hammer head without its handle,

a stunned skunk lying in the road,

one dirty sock lying in the ditch

that kind of sorrow

VI.

don’t give her your pitiful look,

she’ll puke her guts out

trying to forget what makes her feel

like a wet cardboard box settling into a garbage dump

because you can not feel that kind of sorrow

no, feel your own, not hers

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I.

a dry flower, long after its prime,

holds the beauty of its summer

because of a beholding, a wish

to be captured in first blush

and so is robbed its old age

by silica senses that keep it

frozen in her lover’s eyes

that kind of Romance

II.

sitting by bleached bedcover shroud,

memories scrolling like flat line veins

on one hand that is left reaching

to hold another’s’ in hopes to hang on

to some kind of memory of their lust

that left them heaving for breath

in another way of drawing

that kind of Romance

III.

a note written on a bathroom mirror,

she’ll find when she showers

something as simple as her favorite chocolate bar

tucked in with the groceries

waking with sunshine smiling on his body

after a night of heavy discussion

forgetting her birthday but remembering

that she hasn’t heard from the kids for a week

and it worries him more than her

that kind of Romance

IV.

handing her a twenty when she’s broke

and expecting nothing in return

other than she have the kind of flowers

she chooses rather than his guess

that kind of Romance

V.

a pat in the night, he speaks her name

when he’s sound asleep

and no other calling of it

has the same reason to curl to

other than winter, and now its summer

and she still leans in to him

that kind of Romance

VI.

waiting has been long,

for greed and need to go

so she could enjoy little things

like coffee being made before she gets up

and for reason to know it for what it is

that kind of Romance

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I.

a garden ditch leading to a slow flood

over patient plants waiting for seep

and quench and the ability to lap

from the roots up:  this flood,

that kind of Peace

that causes a winter-struck rose

to shoot leaves and buds

in the basement

before it is even transplanted

that kind of Peace

II.

A child’s soft sigh in its favorite spot

on the floor, in the sunshine,

next to its puppy

who wriggles his back

against the warmth of her chest

that kind of Peace

III.

halt of gunfire at midnight

on Christmas Eve,

two spears crossing at Peace River

during territorial tribal traumas,

swift shimmy to highest crotch of a tree,

rising over crest of a mountain’s hard trail

to blue eye of a lake

that kind of Peace

IV.

brace of warm back on a cold night’s

loss of covers,

hand reaching out to catch a fall,

lips to breast that is hacked and hurt

that kind of Peace

V.

eagle circling the sun

above slow dance of wheat field,

fawn nestled in on return of its mother,

quiet after a safe passage of tornado,

high note held on tongue of a tenor

that kind of Peace

VI.

she can feel touch of Creation

while rocking in hammock’s hum

of summer’s shade

hears surge and settle of stream

in depths of off-road pool

tastes truth in language

of a simple penned poem

smells roses, long after death’s clutch

back to heaven

sees god in faces of newborns:

that kind of Peace

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