Our Little Corner of the Kosmos

Curtain's pulled round

But the light bleeds out through the thin spots
Savage primal angst
Wearing bedclothes, looking for an audience

But the audience is one:
It's you, your capacity open and yes,
Ministrating to _my_ needs tonite

So I can go back, not take it so seriously again
And stir up the color you so like
In our little corner
of the Kosmos.

Kosmos Exhales

Long slow hike through waist high bloodgrass. Weimerammer-grey sheen lighting everything up in the closest you can get to light-shadow; that is, shadow made up of light.

Sun is constantly at 1:00 pm, up and behind my head. Turning up and around to try to trick it into an ocular appearance is fruitless.

Shimmer in the air; clearly summer.

Yet as soon as I make the mental pronouncement, snow falls from the cloudless sky. And as soon as THAT observation is made, the sky is an object without boundaries; solid...but not solid and

shit, too much.

I stop labelling and simply look, and this psychic sudoku stabilizes enough to give me a couple of choices. Three, as it turns out - in the form of handles coming out of the ground - one straight ahead, one to the left, one to the right.

No thought; that's important here; as soon as I gain focus, the world loses its, handles become more of the weimerammer grey and all mists up, ready to collapse into...

First lever down.

Aha, this is interesting.

Scene is there, but the Boundaries are gone. Like a giant canvas, where everything is reachable by the observer, but the observer has somehow been pulled into the canvas itself. Without boundaries, there is no subject and object. Without subject and object, there is no here and there. Without here and there there is no distance, and without distance, there is no time.

Lever up. That was fucked up. Beautiful, but fucked up.

Second lever.

Scene is there, boundaries are gone, but I'm outside the scene. I can see the no-time, no-space, no-boundary paradox splashed oil on cloth, but I'm separate from it. The inhabitants are trying to lookup, but there is no up. They consider reaching out, but there is no out. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. No experience, just Is, and me.

Third lever.

One more mirror in the mirror, there's a transition ~ where the 'space' that contains I watching Is in the canvas shimmers and dissolves

nothing left to say or do. No experience, no I, no Is, no no.

Collapsed into a pointless center that is everywhere; not finite

whisper sigh

throughout the Kosmos.

Alpine Queen

While the Alpine Queen found it disquieting, there was nothing that could be pointed to that was quintessentially 'wrong', so she continued on her way - which was nothing more than staying put. Being a particularly large and volume-displacing sea-going vessel, this was entirely appropriate.

I, on the other hand, was not ship like, and _also_ noted a disquietude in the air. She was gone and forgotten quickly, apart from the tracer association lay quietly in my neural network.

The rest of the inlet commute was forgettable; docked and hopped ashore with little fanfare, and walked into the terminbus quickly to get out of the cold.

Second tracer: the termnibus was all but empty. Unusual, given the commuting day of Monday, the day where chiseled intellects and egos streaked through leaving their pyschic scents like an updated version of Hansel's bread crumbs through the labyrithine passageways that connected them to their burrows which brought them home to work.

I stepped aside from myself for a moment, getting as close the nonlocal as was possible - there was a need to think here, and while surrender would have been pleasing, it was not practical at this point. The main point pressing on the pineal was whether or not this was a dream, and the answer was not as straightforward as it seemed.

There was the no-people thing, which was freaking me out a little; this would be hard to explain outside the context of a dream. And there was this ability pull myself into different parts of the termnibus with nothing but eye contact and a little will. Still, there was a subtle sheath here, a _something_ that was containing the freedom I knew from lucid dreaming.

Tracer three: The ability to sit stand half in and out of the nonlocal; felt like the point where lightness and darkness met on the moon. From here, I was able to point, pinch, and grab parts of the scene before me and move them like a magic nine squre sliding puzzle. Surely a dream!

But no, this toffee reality had smudges and blurs that were clearly attached to the sheath, there was no breaking through to another plane.

I moved up through my head, careful to latch my toes on the front of my crown center - gods knew where I would end up if I slipped up and out. I wasn't sure that this place was even on the gods' roadmap.

Final tracer as my head popped through the sheath and looked around at ... the not finite. Sparkler connectors bounced the protganists out away from the gelatinous bubble like bait on god's fishing rod, attracting others who were connected to their own rods into their own bubbles.

A strange bearded fellow bounced happily from orb to orb, latching my eye contact, pulling me with him; out of the crown and spread eagled into the not-finite;

which became the Alpine Queen

which was outside the train

where it all began.

Tracers path registered, and the day

continued

The Want's Needs

Different, this time.

I had grown to the size of the mountains, crouched down with river systems tickling the bottom of my feet and was generally in a pretty good mood, apart from the yearning.

Yearning is distance - from This to That. Distance implies difference - between This and That. Distance and difference can both be reduced into a a spiritual roux, that when ingested and eliminated lets us focus on what IS.

Knowing this, on one level, I was fine.

On another level, I just wanted to get high.

Really high.

Flipped the switch from rational to the space between not-rational and rational, a desert zone whose bereft-ness was perfectly suited to these times; when the animal yearning howled like a wolf, piercing the ear drums and bringing a razor sharp focus to the Want.

Knees popped as I pressed myself up to standing and breathed deep.

My vision was a sharp as my size was enlogated, and as I took two thunderous steps (which skewed geological data right down into Washington state where several plateless tremors were registered and puzzled over), I was hooked.

The want was there before me in sharded beauty. Sun had bested the clouds and was illuminating the water east to west, and the carpeted universe of life running through it took my breath away. The bigger creatures - only a couple here this morning - killer whales out for a foray - stood out, but the rest just formed a massive, seething underwater community - a net of life that could never be captured, or even cognized, but could be breathed and, well, I thought, smoked.

Four steps down to where the inlet narrowed, and I was ready to begin on the Want's needs. Clouds had come over the sun a bit, and I lost a bit of depth perspective (literally). Easily rectified - I reached up and plucked the sun between my first finger and thumb and brought it close to the surface of the water which allowed me to see everything.

I flicked the sun into a long arc back up onto it's perch, cracked my knuckles, and started to roll the inlet up into the largest fatty unimaginable. Brought it to my lips and inhaled and then

The desert flooded, the Want was sated, but the Want and the desert and all the gaps between this and that were flooded with life, but beyond life,

Everything, was flooded by

Everything

And I looked down and saw myself become a reverse tsumani, body becoming self becoming water; me becoming everything flooding everything, into and of the wild as

swoosh

one.

Between the Keys

Bflat triangle, that's what it feels like in my head before it makes it to my fingers, where it holds fairly true, but a little SOLIDER that what was upstairs.

As it should.

F/A - connected but a tetris left to right shape, not much translation and then down onto the keyboard.

C&/Bflat - like an isosceles triangle on its side, left to right almost like you can close your eyes and slide down the side and

plunk

In between the keys.

It's a little Rick Moranis-like to start, looking up at the towering ivy on both sides of me and then like some huge terrible beautiful Khumba icefall - the tower to the left comes down. But it's a shearing, not a tumbling, and though I can't see the finger I know it's there. Way up in the sky I can see the eyes, mostly closed in concentration or joy, but the rest of the form fades as it comes down to the ivories and then

I realize what's coming and I start to think quick. Real quick.

The mechanics are straightforward - pressure on the ivory or ebony, key comes down, counter-levers a hammer which hits a string which vibrates at a particular rate; particular enough to send compensatory or complimentary shivers up and down it's bloodline.

It's the timing of the mechanics that has me wondering here. I suspect that I'm close to the timeless place here - music does that doesn't it - connects the divine space with the subtle with the gross - but time is still an engineer in my fate, and I really wonder how long I have before the hammer literally falls.

The tower to my left - and I suspect a key over to my right aw well - is still moving downwards but I can see where it will hit bottom and I think STOP and to my surprise

it does.

Not exactly a full stop, but slowed significantly, enough to give me a fighting chance and I run down the length of the hammer cantilever and stare up at the hammer, which is almost imperceptibly pulling away from the string, distance greater now, and greater and farther and the tension -

The tension between the notes between the keys is almost unbearable. Gravity, telos, sex and magick as the chord teeters from its context over its future and looks at it dead on and then

It splits. Moving closer to the subtle now, visions are sprouting seedlings and seedlings upon seedlings into a full carpet of magentas and yellows - so many yellows - an impossible number of shades of yellows. And the cat in the box, keeping the isotope company and reminding me that

...in the gross /subtle world, the futures are splitting faster and faster, Mickey's buckets of water borne by broomstick faster and faster and more and more uncontrollable and now

The Vision of visions is putting its screen up behind it all; but its solidity is temporary, it particles and splits and tears (always in one piece though) forward and back until the visions are encompassed by the vision, everything is surrounded and underscored and now it's moved from a visual to a ...

feeling

and the Feeling is the ride of where the next notes will land. Odd, because these haven't landed yet, but before they can they must know where they're going

And the gravity is delicious, I AM the screen now, and the screen is an ocean powered by love, shimmered and shadowed by the little things as it moves towards the surface and breaks and when it breaks

Opalescent Moon! As bright and pure as imagination, shining over the strings and I am reminded that with the decision made the hammer is going to fall and fall it does but instead of sound it's just

vibration

and the stamping of the moon in my throat center and I'm

Back looking down at the keys, throat on fire with love and other layers, and now it's time

For the next chord.

Rich Paulsy is a Coward

Cold morning. Rain sheeting the windshield, but the ignition is off now. Just the radio and the fan to keep the steam off the inside of the windows while I wait for my train.

Early? No - false alarm, that's just a freight that rides a parallel line with mine.

They can be noisy bastards - come and watch the platform and see how many people have their hands over their ears as the screech of metal on metal gives the second and final notice that the train is HERE, get ready, all aboard kids.

But when they keep moving, all good, just a thumble runder of wheels on steel, load shifting as one two ten 100 cars go past, metal snake making its way left to right past to present to future. Lot of writing on the side, me thinks as I watch the beast trundle by.

And THAT's when the strange shite starts. Rich Paulsy is a coward. Straight and narrow script, stick letters, and as it moves from my present to the future (to my left, in front of me, to my right). And out of the periphery of my vision -(you know the space where ghosts and intuition tease you and flirt with each other) I see movement. Careful now so as not to derail the happenings - no pun intended. Peripheral vision happenings are very cat like - you know, the little feline coming down the hall, you approach with clippers and intent, and if that intent is borne of your headlight vision preceding you, the cat will pick up on it and take off. Same with the peripheral vision - if the happenings in that space even suspect you are about to focus full attention front and center on them, well, they just return to form and the shows over.

So I'm careful. Mood supports my intention, grace I guess, you can't control these things - sometimes it either works or it doesn't - but out of the side of my vision I can see the words start to peel off the side of the train - like one of those kids tattoos coming off of its backing and now its completely off, fluttering like a leaf towards than away from me and now

I can't help it, I've got to have me a look-see. And what I see is the words wrapping themselves into a running form - not exactly human, but close to, and running. Full out sprint now and I've been made. Rich Paulsy is a Coward makes eye contact with me (it's two 'i's lighting up and tracking me like a laser pointer) then disconnect and it runs as fast and as hard as it can into a building and

fuka

It's now up there. Same script, different location.

Train hasn't stopped moving throughout this whole event, I squint to see the container car it came from and it looks like the writing is gone there...

But this is one of those things that lives in the spaces, that can only be acknowledged by grace or luck (maybe luck IS just grace) and doesn't need to be quantified or verified - I just KNOW.

But, as if to underscore it, there's another performance. And another.

Letters are flying off of the train now, Heisenberg's graffiti cleaning service front and center and now they don't seem to give a rats ass if I watch or not.

It's a strange dance now, kids. The alphabet is out in front of me in a tornado whirl, a carnival merry go round of fantastic proportions, words forming and dissolving, a linguistic trinity creating sustaining and destroying (but never really destroyed, just back in the soup) and the colours are there, and the Sounds. The sounds of the mechanics of creation, a deep hum that is marching band and solitary voice and terrible thunder and falsetto cry of a bird on the wind all threaded together in a fantastic cacophony that finally

Explodes

And the letters with it. They DO know they've been made. By me and a couple of others with the i's to see. They explode and cascade down in the city, splattering against building sides and sidewalks and bins and cars.

I close my eyes to hold the vision and the bright burning after image is collapsing on itself into a single three lettered word that ties the city together north to south east to west

aum.

Just a Spoon Full of Toxins

Nice hat.

I look at the raven sticking out of my chest and push him back.

He's hungry this morning, and I know what THAT means. Lot's of colour commentary. Well, more like grayscale commentary, it's all black or shades of black.

I have a feeling I know who's holding his leash, but maybe I'll have a look anyways

Nice driving. Nice makeup. Nice attitude.

He's pulled out of my chest further this time, trying to pull his wing out, stuck like he's exiting an aberrant birth canal. So I reach down and pull him out - awareness is supposed to dissolve his kind, but I have the distinct feeling that today might be one of those exception days.

Not even grateful as I pull him free, just looks at me with jaundiced fire-eyes, unashamedly takes a chunk of flesh from my arm (subtle body, but the bleeding that's left there is almost worse than what a 'real' pound of flesh would be), cacks something up that crawls up to my mouth and is swallowed before I can see what it is.

But I can feel what it is. It's the leash. Ego's got this little fucker on a leash. And I have Ego on a leash, so theoretically, I can reign in Ego, and judgment will be caged as the little shitty song-bird it is but

Oh that's nice. Cut me off. Learn how to drive, fucker

but it looks like Carlos is off and at 'em. Maybe I'll just listen for a while.

But Carlos's words are becoming context now, or better put they are FILLING context around me like a jaundiced yellow pudding. It's pulling at my legs now, plugging my ears and gumming up my eyes. Every pure input I have is now subject to this, and it's a nasty plague kids. Even as I clear the sense canals out, it's STILL there, a curtain in front of perception and perspective.

And I look over at him, perched on my shoulder, expecting to be assaulted by small words of attack, but it's WAY beyond that. He's got a fire hydrant stream of yellow ghoulash coming up and he's directing it everywhere I look, everywhere I listen from.

Ego's laughing his wiry little ass off.

Interesting, that. Ego normally presents as a bloated pig, stewing in his own juices and whatever he pulls down from Id World, but today's he's all but naked. And not a pretty sight. But what's interesting is that it takes a LOT of effort for him to keep Carlos dancing like a kite at the end of the string. Lot of energy to keep the ...

Separation

up.

And with this insight, Carlos turns and looks at me, a little chagrined, but more than that, a little

worried?

About his survival. And with THAT observation, he's vacuumed back through the chest cavity, Ego fattens up, and I'm back in control again, thank the g...

Nice Hat.

shuka sha.

The Place Between

Mechanical beast is ahead of me now, eye contact made, commitment in place.

Decisions line up like toy soldiers and are summarily dismissed with orders. It feels like the car is being driven by intuition, but that same intuition tells me that there is more going on than meets the I.

Coordinates are punched, fluids placed, eyes relaxed and ready and

shah!

We're off.

The first 30 seconds - the first of the first - is easy, tinged with a bit of hard. System is acclimatizing here, blood flowing from the torso cavity to the legs, light burn and lungs starting to heat up. The second 30 is a little bit more edge and then

huzzah

Onto the second minute, which is OK. A relief. 10 or 11 seconds to edge o'er the painful spot, then 20 seconds of inner repair work, then the rest to rest. A few seconds before that second minute is up and I'm ready to go again.

Edge that fucker a little higher this time, maybe a lot higher, pulse goes from 129 to 143..44.47.. and hovers in there.

shuka

The first 15 seconds are fine, then it starts to hurt, and when I start to look for toolsets.

Figure eights of breath winding from my navel to my head; rough sheaths going up and down the airway and

tik

I'm back. What did that take care of? Shit. 7 seconds. Close the lids halfway and look through a moonscape; internal / external, field of vision narrowing and expanding at the same time and I've forgotten about the pain for a minute ... a minute?

Shook!

Back and looking at the time. Still have almost 30 seconds left. Pulse is maintaining at a mid-high speed, aches settling in the legs, fear -white energy - coming up from the feet and

tik

I'm back again. 15 seconds left. I can hold this, stare down the numbers and just BE as the clock winds down.

Maybe not.

I close my eyes, hands out to hold onto the rails, open my eyes

close

open

close

and finally it's over. Button down, shitcakes, we're moving into slower gear now, hear?

sir yes sir

and we're 13.5 12 11 10 7 6 5.5

Ahhhh 5.5

Takes a few seconds for it to kick in but I'm not going anywhere. Decision made quickly that the minute of rest doesn't start up until the whole system is back down to a steady 5.5 Probably about

15 seconds

shah!

And we're on.

And the cycle repeats.

A lot like playing Centurion. The initial gap between the first shot of beer and the second seems interminably long, the second the same, the third a little less...and as the alcohol hits the central nervous system, the innerverse becomes an expression of a physicist's wet dream - time expands and contracts like a rubber ban. This, friends, is repeatable, falsifiable experience. Inner proof of the flexibility of time.

But the edge is lost in Centurion quickly. The innerverse on the machine or on the track, on the other hand, is white fire and electric blues as the system is brought to Tilt then pulled back and caressed into recovery and readiness again.

It's duality merging here, under the auspices of physical exertion and the clock. The merge point starts with white hot suffering, taking me to the end of an inner yuga and presenting me slobbering, hot, hurting but standing to the rest period. But it is not an in door / out door. It is 10 or fifteen seconds where I transition from hurt to not-hurt. Not fully recovered, just not-hurt.

Even the 10 or fifteen seconds can be deconstructed into quantities that themselves can be deconstructed. We get to the 3:30 am point - not quite night, not quite morning, and yet somehow both. It's the place between.

And this is timelessness in a way. Not arrived to as gently as a soft perspective change or shift, not simply getting in the gap or sitting in Big Mind, more like a violent fuck into the space. Which makes it the same but different. Gap with an edge, a white hot blue edge around it that burns itself into memory, so it can be recounted, in places like This.

Incommunicado

I take the down escalator from reading a book or an up escalator from sleep and enter the lobby.

In every direction as far as the eye can see, polished hardwood flooring. In front, behind, side to side. Natural light would indicate that I'm outside, but there's nothing to prove that; just a feeling. The flooring extends in front of me to the horizon, where sky and floor mate and meld into a single horizontal line.

It's...OK...here. I've come up or down from a place of release and freedom, and even though there are some structures here, it's still an overwhelming feeling of openness.

I think Clive Barker, and manifest.

Words take shape and leave my mouth in soft jelly-sacked ambivalence. Different colours, different shapes, different levels of energy.

From nothing to something to electrical activity in the lobes to chemical transmitters down the ganglia to the voicebox and OUT the door, Henry.

Somewhere between the something and nothing and electrical, of course, there are feelings and ghosts and samskara and desire, a spinning archipelago of pre-thought islands, somehow gluing together into drivers for the thought then the word which becomes THE WORD.

And it's OK.

I watch my sires, bouncing and giggling across the floor. Some possessed of a darker energy than others, but none truly repugnant. They scurry around and zip out towards the horizon and back again, there is an invisible leash back to master.

And it's OK,

until.

Shit! On the horizon! Sally forth men, we have a body. It's impersonal, this is good, don't know them but on the other hand that means that they are up for free flowing jugdgemental poppycock from Idworld, and more disturbingly, from closer to the surface from the cognitive centers. Ouch. Can't blame darkness for everything.

The thoughts aren't all mine any more. Mined but not mine. 4 out of 10 of them keep on the leash, but pull hard to sniff and wonder at the stranger. The other 6 are hellbound for glory, they've slipped or broken the leashes all together and are glomming onto the stranger to suck as much as they can out of them and then return.

And return they do, back down the rabbit hole to ganglia to chemical to electrical to ... SOMEWHERE.

And this somewhere is where the trouble lies.

By the time the stranger is up to me and wanting to talk, any purity and openess has been sullied by what's been brought back. And by what I've augMENTED from what's been brought back.

Our words are more like septic ulches now, meeting midpoint in the air and collapsing into a puddle around our feet.

I don't feel so good.

But wait...there's more.

Sally forth men! On the horizon again, more people. That's right - it's plural now and they're gonna gitcha. the words that are still out on the range break leash without much problem - I'm tired now, and resigned. And this time they don't even bother to try to reintegrate into the Somewhere inside. They BRING the Somewhere outside myself, and pull the other's words in as well.

We continue to talk, and the room up behind and above the cortex busies itself with the paradox that the more we talk, the less we communicate.

Sha!

Happy?

Happy?

It's complicated.

Doesn't mean I can't find out for you. Let's have a look at the feeling factory. I've got the key, just stay behind and keep your safety belt near. What's that? Oh, just the usual - flashlight if things get dark, some cortisol and sugar if you get somewhere dangerous and want to go old-school on the monsters' ass. Couple of reminders of visualizations there for you too, but to be honest, they're a little like books in that if you get into a situation where you need them, if they're not already tucked away in your noggin then you probably won't have a chance to fully engage them.

Anyways, just stay close. It's my factory and the reporting lines are mostly respected.

Ok then, where's the light - oh there. Shit! Bulb's burned out. Pragma - you busy? You're never THAT busy, I know, cause if you were sector 7 - relationships and homebuilding - would be a lot less choppy than what it is. Listen - can you get a new bulb in there - thanks mate.

Ok. Let's see - where too first? Autonomic? That's a good place to start, get a real time view of what's going on. They're up the stairs here, follow me.

Phew, little out of breath - Hi Otto. Otto's world here is all about self-regulation, he monitors without getting involved too much. See that guage over there - vitals. It spiked as I came up the stairs there, settling back down now. That vat over there is fight or flight - always kept at a simmer, you never know. Not a lot happening here right now. Otto, can you let us in the lift there - thanks partner.

Ok, we're going downtown, mate. This is where the bad boys hang out. Id runs in and out of here like it's a public library; trying to get him secured better but its all about time isn't it.

Here, best idea is to look through the viewing window. WHOA big fella. Now here is a good example. Dread and fear. The big grey blob - that's dread; the blanket - well, it looks like a blanket anyways - that's fear. Real bedfellows those two.

What's that? Well, we're getting to your answer, but answers without context are like swallowed sneeze - tight, constrained, and pretty unfufilling. You really NEED the environment before you can paint the picture. We're almost done.

Look down - see all the gasses - well -that's the easiest way to picture them. Plexi floors give a pretty good show yah? The gasses are the good guys, delight, grace, freedom, and mixed together into a pastel powder blue - happiness. They're constantly mixed at a fundamental level, then they settle into the predominant shade. Hmmm? Yes, those are two way pipes between Otto, the Badboys, and the flooring. Happiness piped in calms and diffuses, Otto and the Badboys get aggressive, they can feed into the gasses and create a real shitstorm.

So. To answer your question. Yes, I'm happy. I'm also enraged and ecstatic. Manic and depressed. Grace filled and contracted. All depends on the timing mate.

Heraculitis.

Check It At The Door

Yes, yes yes, I'm surprised you even have to ask. He was given the same directions as everybody.

For the record, he came in a bit after the doors opened around 8:00 o'clock, big chip on his shoulder. Looking not so much for fight as for confrontation, but in my business that's a bit worse. A fight is in your face; confrontation is the big What If and ends up taking more effort to babysit in the long run.

So he comes in, full eye contact and then some. Passes me his ego in a suit bag and tells me that he's been having a lot of issues with it, so it would probably be in everybody's best interest to keep it out of the light of day. It was whining and grovelling and kicking petulantly at the sides of the bag, I figured what's the big deal? - and hung it up with the rest of the egos. Most of the real big hitters - huge AND small egos - they both have their minefields you know - come in after nine. The lonely, the horny, the lonely and horny, testosterados and estrogonitas. But at that time - 8:00 o'clock? Figured I'd hang it and leave it.

So I did.

Then I watched him.

I didn't notice the correlation at first, was too fascinated watching him zone in on his targets - and they were many. Couldn't figure out what he was selling at first. What's that? Oh it was OBVIOUS that he was selling something. His demographic cut across age and gender, but it seemed to smell currency. And when I figured out what the currency was, a lot of things started to fall into place.

He was selling God. Not in a pill either. Holy roller. Gotta watch those guys. You have the JW's, who can canter and countercanter with the best of them. Great debaters, slippery slope if you don't know what your up against. Then you have your Mormons - too easy to pick out - buttoned up like they're heading to temple right after they leave the sin bin. Then there were these guys - AEs. Aggressive evangelists. These aren't the Rick Warren emerging church let god reveal your purpose for you - this was I KNOW the book and YOU don't. Even if you think you do you don't.

His second mark that night lit up when he first approached her - but so did his bag. Whining increased. Petulant plus now, like if anything it DESERVED to be out. I caught him looking at me - well, it was past me really I was just in the field of vision - squinting like he was trying to hear the bag (well out of his earshot), and this just made it more frantic.

Didn't take long though, it was all AT instead of To. Talking AT. Teaching AT. Lecturing AT. Even cajoling AT, which is no grammatical mean feat let me tell you.

I went back and looked at his bag and it was monogrammed with a double B standing back to back like angel wings, and if that wasn't enough to get the message through, a cross and a halo o'er top. Rang a bell with some kind of fatty, dogmatic ego-blubber-driven Church stew that passed itself off as Christian counselling every week day on the AM dial.

Strange thing was the more the mark was brow beaten, the more histrionic the ego got. It was feeding off her! And when she neutralled-out, it would pep up too! The balance it needed to quiet down seemed to be engaged-but-sycophantic.

Well, she never quiet got there. BB got his dander up and hers with it. She finally upped and slapped him hard across the face and stormed off. His ego stormed at this - all the ugly patriarchy and true currents of xenophobia, misogyny and shallow knowledge trying its best to pass itself off as wisdom - raised up in a terrible storm and burst through the bag. Power and glory and dark purple well done ego met half way between the dance floor and the checking in room. He looked at the Beast, it and him, then they simply enjoyed a flaccid embrace. BB rolled it up like a deflated sleeping mat, folded it twice and swallowed it whole.

Which finally, FINALLY leads me to where we are with your questions. It wasn't a customer back here with too much to drink, it was ME with too much to see. I vomited like there was no tomorrow. Yessir, guarantee I'll have it cleaned up before the nine o'clock crowd comes in. We don't need any more issues with checking it at the door.

But between you and me, it did serve one purpose. BB did a wide circle away from me and out the door. Heard his ego mewing like a stuck pig. Trust me, a blessing, I don't know what MY ego would have done if he circled in with his goods to make a sale AT me.

Yup, sad

Open bag by the check in desk, but not sure she'll want to go into it. Hell, I don't want to go into it and it's MINE. Layer upon layer of black plaque; white around the edges; a necrotic lasagna I scraped together from residue I've been aging in the wild id-spaces like an obsessed oenophile all this years.

I've had a peak before, guessed it was time for another tonite, but it was more like it chose me as opposed to the other way around. I peeled it back, layer by rotting layer, laying them carefully around the bag and looking up for quick eye contact, wondering if she was going to call security. She gave me the look you know. You know, the LOOK. You have a few minutes, but a very few. Better make the right decision.

And I was ready to, thing is, when I got to the final layer, it was terrible beauty.

That's always the way isn't it. Easier to say goodbye and pack this fucker with all it's slimy siblings and inbred cousins together and ship it off somewhere. But that's if it was even a little bit worse than the pasta I've pulled off. Thing is, it's a little beating heart, shimmering in a perfect square of shimmering plasma and highwayed artery lines. And not little in terms of it's an infant heart, no, the littleness is just part of the gelled metaphor, kids. It's a little part of me.

Beating excitedly now, it knows it has my attention. It wants to be fed and nurtured. And I could do that, almost decided to do that, when I heard her shuffling o'er me. Shit, she's brought company too. Both of them have looks of warning on their face ~ you've got a toxic emotional pyschological topspill their waiting to happen cowboy. You're either going to contaminate us or give the little guy (that means you too) a heart attack. Make your call.

And so I do, piling on the rotten blankets on top of it again, knowing that it's the right thing to do but...

As I put it on the conveyor belt, consciously, without a tag or a return address, I feel the desire, the clinging, the sadness and utter aloneness creep up and lodge in my throat.

It descends through the plastic teeth out of site, and I could swear that I hear the little heart break a little bit. Or maybe it's growing, hard to tell.

For now all that's certain is that it's contained and on its way somewhere.

I'm back to one attendant now. She points up to a departure arrival sign, simple message there for me:

No Separation Means

.a surprisingly less-complicated life.

And that seems to be because wants, needs, desires fall into the separation category. When separation is seen to be illusory, it swallows the needs, desires and wants like neutered leatherback, folds back into the silver waters of awareness, and vanishes.

Some examples:

I listen to Badlands by Springsteen, and am taken to a core level of Holy Ghost revival meeting joyous Being listening to it. The desire comes to the surface of awareness, teeth shining, maw gaping. I should be doing music. I should be creating this kind of joy for myself and others. I have an ability that I should be harnessing. The beast is full out of the water now, I am thrashing my gear back and forth, but it is gobbling the heavy line like candied dental floss, eyes bulging and shining at me.

and then

No separation. I am not on this side and Bruce and my talent on the other side. We're all the same stuff, dancing on the surface with all of our needs, wants, desires, watching them pop up and dissolve again like a beautiful, effulgent circus game made up of a sheet of silver awareness.

There's no should. Just a realization that I can enjoy Bruce. Just enjoy Bruce.

Same thing with my need every night to have something to look forward to. Again, that suggests space, distance, separation. There is none.

I started playing with the idea of just showing up at home with no agenda every night, being fully present and seeing where it would take me.

Freedom.

namaste

Shift

Greg Goode has given about as fine an explanation of enlightenment as I have ever come across. Which I will now promptly screw up, through paraphrasing. In essence, enlightenment is establishing the non-difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment.

Now this might seem like semantic chuff, but it actually encapsulates the whole enchilada from a non-dual perspective. To whit:

Wanting to be enlightened presupposes that you are not. Two states. You are unenlightened, and somebody else is enlightened. You want to move from your state to their state. Thing is, there is only one state.

This can be realized through the realization of truth through pointers:

-You are not your body (you exist in sleep without bodily perceptions per se)
-You are not your mind (you exist in dreamless sleep without mind perceptions)
- All non (non-dual) experiences revolve around self and an other:

This can manifest in happiness (feeling of non separation) and unhappiness (feeling of separation). In either case, there is a subtle duality, which will inevitably lead to suffering. (Happiness based on duality is set-up to fail by its very nature; unhappiness based on duality is, well, suffering and unhappiness).

In duality:

When you are depressed, you want to feel a different way (duality).
When you are angry, you are propelled to feel another way (duality)
When you are happy, you have moved from one feeling to another (duality)

So it can all be boiled down to this: realize what you are not. when it is seen, then realized, that there is no separation, all relative happiness and unhappiness dissolves. you are left as that which is. Awareness, the big fabric without thread count or edge, out of which everything arises from and fades back into.

Which is why Yogananda's prayer of a multi-jetted flame (one flame, split into hundreds of little flames through a stove burner) was such an affecting metaphor.

Which is why the picture I have of space reversed is such an affecting metaphor. (No space between individuals. Negative space, like in drawing. Draw what is not, and the picture appears. See the space between individuals as non-space, and you have a connectedness that we all poke up through. My picture, however weak, is like an eternally large piece of dental-dam, with shapes appearing in and then returning to it).

So. That is enlightenment. Initially you are motivated to find out what is 'wrong' - which points to a world of duality, which needs to be integrated. Non-dual realization identifies this seeming duality, and integrates them. Thing is, after integration, a survey indicates that they were never separated in the first place. Thus, it is seen that there is no difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment. When this seeing becomes a realization, one is rooted in the absolute, and free. Which was the case all along, right?