On the Way

A final afternoon in Burque reminds me how relatively easy things are down here. There is less drama, more anonymity (for me at least), a tad more oxygen. But I think this may not be the time for prioritizing ease.

I will now be living in a yurt, and occasional tent, in the hills. There is a month or so for my friend and I to get power, water, and heat squared away for the autumn, which comes early at 8000 feet. It is nearly half an hour on rough roads to work, where we do twice the volume of the store I worked at down here. I currently have less than $200 in the bank.

Why? I am following the calling of Spirit as best I can. I am helping one of my closest friends, who has been ill for several years, to try and get a safe place to live, so he can begin to rebuild his strength. I am seeking to purify the channel between myself and Creator, and I have been impressed by the power of the land to support it offers my meditations.

In this regard, I have been vegetarian for nearly two months now, as well as free of alcohol and sexual activity. Because I was ready for them, these practices have not been particularly difficult. It also has helped that my focus is clear: I want to become the change I seek in the world. I long to be on a path of spiritual service, less concerned with fleeting satisfactions of the self, more invested in that which persists.

So these are some of the things I have chosen to that end. I don't know where I will be called or how the economics will manifest. I am trusting that by doing the things I am more immediately called to, a path unfolds.

-----

This week, I have added an intention to eliminate what have proven to be further distractions: coffee and pot. I expect this will be harder, as I work at the busiest retail environment in New Mexico, and as most of my closest friends are stoners. I have also, at times, just enjoyed using these substances. Shunning them, I will be sacrificing some of those endorphin-rich spaces people use for bonding.

It is no coincidence I am dealing with these together, as they share similarities in the experiences they promote. Both promise more. Users of either dismiss any concerns about their use. Pot expands awareness, and coffee generates greater performance in the world, right?

Well both are hindering the clarity of my chi now. Coffee drains the natural energy of the body, that which comes from sleeping deeply and waking up refreshed. And pot creates too much desire--spiritual desire included. There is too much chatter, perhaps too much enlightenment? Both generate a kind of drama I no longer need. Caffeinated heroic achievement of overworking for peanuts turns out to be self-defeating. Anandamide synapse-mediated weaving of vast abstractions becomes confusing to try to maintain or translate.

I want greater simplicity.

-----

I don't know if there is a monastery or community I will belong to. I don't know if I will farm or take up some particular form of service to others. I don't know if family needs will call.

Perhaps these will prove to be times of social collapse, and we will find ourselves exactly where we are, with just our deepest resources to find our way.

In all cases, I wish to be as ready as I can be to follow the callings that may arise, by following those callings I find now. On the way.

how it is

This sore throat night-sweat illness

while packing all my stuff out of the construction zone-yard to move to a place where there is no space for my stuff

before going to work on a night shift the day after a morning shift at the most manic retail biz in the southwestern united states

is about right as a metaphor for my life.

-----

I pay the price for my arrogance every day

Friday's dream had a cross on top of a church yell to me hey mike and then turning into a white knight accelerating toward me with long pike.

I moved out of the way to watch him land in a heap.

This made no sense to me until Saturday's dream in which I was at work at some nebulous job surreptitiously yet quite unselfconsciously downloading pornography.

I realized that the first dream was quite clearly an expression of my libido as superego, and the second dream, libido as id.

This is strange for I am not a Freudian and have not gathered much meaning from that spiritless worldview.

These dreams imply the question: where is the integration of the ego-self? In doing so, they pose a direct challenge to the no-self of my waking conscious zen and gnostic pursuits.

Yet that is how it is these days--

complicated.

-----

Sunday's dream was very vivid, even lucid in moments.

I was racing up a staircase on some spirit quest and arriving at a landing felt extreme vertigo.

I remembered in the past I had made a leap at that point, but the leap in front of me was much too far, so i turned to see the staircase rise in an unexpected direction

I then found myself facing my recently deceased friend, Mike Brown. He was in a typical (for him) relaxed posture on the stairs, and was very radiant. He was young, even younger than when I'd originally met him, perhaps 19, strong, with a full head of curly hair.

He was speaking already as I arrived, and said that he is "continuing to profit," which as a lifelong businessman was an appropriate thing for him to say. It arrived in my mind as an expression of his zen, that he was continuing to reap benefit to his soul's journey from the years of his spiritual practice.

He said I should go visiting on the 5th. I was lucid enough to ask if he meant I should attend the services coming up for him on the 4th. He said the 4th and 5th--it would be "money well spent." He also offered some other sage advice which was promptly forgotten upon awakening.

I then heard his voice in my mind saying, "I said be gentle with yourself. And take good care." The oddness of his voice coming into my head when I was already awake, with another message, was also very typical of the offbeat humor that colored Mike's life.

Sadly, there is almost no way I can get to those services, between getting time off, expenses, energy reserves, and organizing my current move to the chaos of the land.

Again it's just how my life is: Even honoring messages from close friends from the other side get deprioritized while I try to keep life and limb together in this wage-slave waking nightmare.

I will try to be gentle with myself.

god of exhausted amusements

My dark cloud morning was enhanced by the beauty I knew was all around me, but I could barely see.

With spirit shut down from overwork, there was little I could do to find anything beyond my own grouchiness. I wondered why each of my grand plans over the years turned into a brutally unfulfilling regime. Why do I imagine there will be any pleasure in working a fulltime job with midnight shifts, while moving stuff yet again, while hauling wood and arranging goat care in my time off?

I dragged my creaky posture up the trail on aching feet one more time, with one more box to put in the already overcrowded yurt. Screeching tree-bird barely catches my attention, but offers at least a moment of distraction, which is more than I can say for my morning attempts at the chanting. Was it re-reading Sensei's harsh appraisal of what it will take to save this civilization that got me in such a funk? It has been known to in the past.

Was it trying to go a day without coffee? Was it the email I sent to a Nicaraguan farmer, and the subsequent dread of getting stuck in some barely disguised labor camp in a foreign country? Who knows--just get to the now, somehow! Finally the last box is moved, and I sit in the car, grateful for a moment of rest in this life. Maybe that is all I get now, at 48 summers-passed. But it is enough, and my spirit begins to return.

Whose handwriting is that? On top of a box of journals is a list of notes from someone to me, apparently organizing my appointments. When did I ever have a personal assistant? And why do I need to keep these things? I tell the boxes this is the last time they will be moved. My twenty years of journals will be either be stored on this land, or they will be burned here. I will not move them again.

I imagine it is like everything else. We shlep around our stuff, this body, trying to get this or that done, and then it all gets burned in the end. And we hope some god is amused. I start to feel lighter, reconnecting to the nothingness of all this sturm-und-drang of the mind.

On the way into town, I notice the lush greenness that has taken over the hills overnight with the rains. I glance at the driveways where friends' homes are or were. My all-wheel-drive welcomes the mudslides that have temporarily reclaimed much of Old Santa Fe Trail.

Realistically, I will help out with land-based work as I can. The right amount of such physical work is deeply enjoyable. But look at this body: I am no ox. My calling is more to the monastery, where I can help revive the world with a different sort of effort. And to the social world, where I can serve the love that is our nature.

Arriving at the cafe, I receive an unexpected message on my phone. My young friend Alex reports he has two even-younger friends eager to help out with the hoop house, gardens, and otherwise working to set up the land.

I could almost laugh out loud.

third way

I want to remember: this is not forever.

On my second day back up in Santa Fe, I fall into the norms of its life rhythm. The spaciness of the additional 2000 feet of altitude is mitigated by caffeine. Work is more tolerable than expected, its frantic realness a welcome change from the robotic malaise of recent months. Beautiful women walk by all day long, amidst crowded aisles and a friendly crew.

Two years have passed since I worked here, yet there are many familiar faces on the crew. This strikes me over and over as odd, for I have lived several lives since then. I have lived in two other cities, fallen in and out of love, made dear friends a thousand miles away, quit my job, watched money run out, played music on the street, slept on a pier and lived in a van, had people in my life pass away. I have found out those things in life that matter.

That is why I want to remember this is not forever. It is not because I am suffering some difficult oppression. It is because then I can remember what is real: transformation, and the emptiness of form.

I am not sure what I will get done here. Getting anything done anywhere in these quickening times is a proposition perhaps bold, perhaps delusional. Getting stuff done in this thin air--who knows? Will I get to Lama Thursday as I planned? Will I get back to Burque and get some of my stuff moved? Will I even get up to the land this week? Or will it be embodydance class, marimba class drop-in, or the music party being planned by a friend, which already conflicts with the men's group I was supposed to be a part of starting up? What about those mountains?

Such community, you might think. But as anyone who has lived here knows, this is also a lonely place. I may get to none of the socializing, amidst the demands of work and self-maintenance. It is all okay either way, for my path is set apart from all these happenings, whether they be considered richness of opportunity or illusory distractions. And neither is my path drudgery.

These two opinions of life are quite pronounced up here. Neither are these paths of ecstasy and drudgery mutually exclusive. People indulge a great deal here in alcohol, meat consumption, sexual relations, and getting high. It can be confusing to be around suffering that does not recognize itself as such, as it depletes itself and negativity creeps in.


How long I can remain here, I am not sure. Already the great gift of immediate awareness of mortality feels lessened amidst all this color and personality. If I can maintain a 95% follow through on my commitments around these matters, I will feel good about it. I must keep my eyes on the prize. I am saving money for the communal leap, for the path of service, for putting my soul power to the karmic wheel.

For now, the yoga continues. Breathing, receiving vegetables, finding the calm focused chi, dying each moment into love. As perverse as it may seem, by meditating AMIDST all the stimulation, by somehow finding silence amidst all the noise, I can become stronger in the stretch. To fully drop into that zero point of my Source is easier said than done. Yet the work is always NOW.

I am on my way to remembering.

altitude

Yesterday I was able to get very quiet. Outside of work, I am more and more finding the space to just allow time to be a meditative flow. Thoughts move at a relaxing pace, one after another, without urgency to be anywhere other than where I am. Sometimes, I notice very little thought at all. In these moments, a strong and gentle celebration rises up in me. I am connected to an energy that is essential to life. There is gratitude and a quiet fulfillment.

I am certain the practice of vegetarianism over the last month or two is contributing to a smoother flow of chi. Temperance, or refraining from alcohol use, is helpful, although perhaps celibacy practice even more so. It has been a good couple of months, amidst health challenges and the arrival of mortality to my inner circle. These challenges have focused my attention on what is real and essential in life, and on letting go of the rest. What a gift.

The meditative and cleansing practices have allowed Spirit to come through with clearer guidance. Paths are unfolding without having to worry or figure too much out. I move with more grace, and offer to be of service, as I seek to support a more benevolent world. Christianity and zen have come into integration. Yoga--or the union of self with the Divine--has removed my shame at having conflicts in my life. They are grist for the mill of my evolution, as in physical yoga, where it is through the opposing push and pull of each pose that the deeply strengthening stretch is found.

Now, despite my inability to explain to coworkers why I would return to the crazy store, I return to Santa Fe. It is not only that Albuquerque no longer reflects reality to me, with its excess concrete, urban jadedness, and walls. Indeed, I am grateful to the town for the ease with which it receives me when I need a place to get a little bit underground. Now, I am coming out into the light again, at pondersosa altitude. It is a next step in the proactive manifestation of a joyful world.

sacred medicine

I am strangely reassured by an armadillo statue. It sits just outside the front door of a friend's place from which I am writing. It meets up with a strange sort of spiritual commitment I have long ago made.

Here I am now with three sore lymph nodes in my groin, about two inches proximal to a bug bite, that a reasonable guess would take to be a flea's. This itchy spot came on about the time I was traveling through Oklahoma some two weeks ago. It was where I encountered an armadillo.

It was 95 degrees or so, and staring at the top of the tent and sweating for two hours had gotten me approximately zero percent closer to sleep. Suddenly I heard a crashing sound. And knowing that I was the only camper in the entire lakeside park meant only one thing: I had left my car window open and the armadillo who had crunched her way out of the nearby foliage to introduce himself to me earlier was in my car, eating my food.

I was relieved at the tension this broke in my general suffering of the elements. I whacked tent poles on the ground as I move toward the car, and by the time I reached it, there was no one around, just an open window. And oats and cornflakes and odiously malty protein powder strewed throughout the passenger compartment.

I threw the tent and bag in the car and got a motel for a decent seven hours sleep. That was two weeks ago. The only questions that remain is: did s/he leave me a flea, and is it bubonically infectious. I respond to this by focusing on vibrating at a different frequency than that at which the trauma was created.

Maybe I'm like the idiotic fundamentalists who don't take kids with severe illnesses to get medical help. Or else I could be some energetic master who manifests dis-eases in order to overcome them. A paranoid hypochondriac. The common thread with all the interpretations of self is that I am committed.

Or soon will be.

What I am committed to has been known in many ways, often wordless. Zen, Tao, Tai Chi, God, Divinity, the Beloved, Source, Creator, Christ Consciousness, Holy Spirit. The experience is one of faith that comes from abiding within exactly that which is. From fully realizing this moment now. The yoga of tension--between the external demands of the world and the truth of that which persists--which calls forth my proactive becoming. In my proactive response, I choose to vibrate gratitude...or tune into beauty...love unconditionally...

Or one or more of the other myriad healing vibrational structures known as "needs" in the nonviolent communication model. Divine resource is a better description, the source of all abundance. Visually to me it is a field of diamond-like facets with emptiness at its core. Perhaps this is the 6th chakra aspect, at least, of that which is.

Love matters. And in this case, it is loving that armadillo, even if it means I am finished. Receiving the medicine, I realize I have done this before.

pay the cost

my vibration is very low today
i don't know exactly why

i think it has to do with too much time spent
in artificial environments

hard floors hurt my feet
skin not enjoying fluorescent lights
not enough touch
too much lifting

and the seeming presence of a bubble
over the entire operation screaming

you don't really exist

i know
don't tell me

it seems like such a nice place to work
yes it does

-----

everything i understand now is beyond words
i've tried for a week to talk to anyone
friend or stranger

about something significant
but its just stuff your face
and get moving now

in america

i visited a place eons ago
or was it a week

where pretty 3 BR houses
in nice small town neighborhoods
with spiritual community and land available

for 50K

the economic crash may bring things down
to my level soon

i'd pay 10K for a house
and have people over a lot

nvc group, men's group, zen group, freeform jam group

see how much time i waste in fantasy

-----

when mortality comes
nothing else matters

but real things like healing trauma

stepping into bliss now with this one moment
we have left

loving
finding out the true nature of things

conversing with trees
plants and the earth

i am close to despair
but i know the best times come

when it flips
it flips for good

transformations

I just drove 1500 miles to spend a week with my second family to try to help them reckon with the impending death of my friend, Mike, of 30 years. He is struggling mightily, and as his acupuncturist of many years, I offered some healing work. Amid the complexity of his condition and my lack of active practice, it was hard to know how much work to do, but it gave us space to connect in a healing way.

While I was in Indiana, I met the daughter of Pastor Phil who I stayed with in Indianapolis a few years ago, and who had since died suddenly in a car accident. I also saw my friend Viona who, along with her husband Ken, I stayed with for a couple months last time I lived there. Ken is Mike's uncle, and died of a sudden illness last year. It was the first time I'd seen Viona since, and was glad to hear her reassurance that Ken had come to acceptance around his death.

I then drove 1500 miles to spend two days with my sister, Martha, whose death is also impending. She has not been the same since her closest friend took her own life without warning several months ago. As my sister loses the last functions of her body, she is actively planning her own death. The kids will likely never see her again. While in NY, I took my niece to the beach, and had a frightening moment losing her under a wave. She is fine, but in that moment I changed.

I returned back to Indiana to play violin at the Sunday service on my way back. One of the church elders had died in a bizarre accident during the days I was gone, which heightened the significance of the closing piece I had chosen, I'll Fly Away. Some people cried.

Later, as I was preparing to leave Mike, I was sitting with his wife Judi, and daughter Ambrosia, admiring their strength. A friend of Mike's, the only man I know to have achieved awakening in his zen practice, came by to see Mike. Before he had left, another powerful presence arrived in Cliff Kindy, leader of Christian Peacemaker Teams for years in Iraq and Gaza, to see Mike as well. He asked Mike, "What do we need to do to help the world persist amidst all that is going on?" He answered, "It's just there."

Then I drove 1500 miles home.

time's up

i like wearing shades in public now

i'm moving to santa fe

and the veil bewteen the worlds

is very thin

enlightenment opportunities abound

the synchronicities are so ridiculous

the suffering so immense

i simply can not afford the delusion any longer

that of projection

-----

fortunately time's up

there is not much more to say or do

money has eaten everything

i choose the unwinding

holding the psychic capacity to think

and to meditate

the last and only freedom

i will ever have is my breath

soon i will be more in nature

that is all i know

4500 miles qualifies as getting out of dodge

now there's nothing left to say

i am here and there is nothing left in this town
except its ease

spiritual community matters
but here in the poor state

the concept just shines a spotlight
on the wretched underpinnings

comfort and security

-----

aztec dances and dusty organic farms
amidst wage slavery

people here are simply hardier than me
soon i will have enough money

to just go away again
smoke weed and busk perhaps

burrow deeper
in newly-generated hiding places

until the world finally consumes itself
completely

like a snake eating its own tail
the system will fall

will it be a nuclear conflagration
or a barbed-wire totalitarian trip

back in the day
there were no guns

and someday again there will be none
the question is whether

there will be humans

-----

every place is so different
in indiana there is no armageddon

enough land and community
that there is sanity

in past lives
it was just the threat of drudgery

needing to be kept at bay

here though
there is ever an urgency

so what i channel when i write
is the energy of those 2000

nuclear warheads buried
but a few miles away