Father Reason, by Rumi

astronomydvd

The universe is a form of divine law,

your reasonable father.

When you feel ungrateful to him,

the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.

(this and upcoming images from drwcampbell )

Make peace with that father, the elegant patterning,

and every experience will fill will immediacy.

Because I love this, I am never bored.

Beauty constantly wells up, a noise of springwater

in my ear and in my inner being.

Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms

of those who have submitted to the mystical life.

Leaf sounds talk together like poets

making fresh metaphors.  The green felt cover slips,

and we get a flash of the mirror underneath.

Think how it will be when the whole thing

is pulled away!  I tell you only one thousandth

of what I see, because there's so much doubt everywhere.

The conventional opinion of this poetry is,

it shows great optimism for the future.

But Father Reason says,

No need to announce the future!

This now is it.

This.

Your deepest need and desire 

is satisfied by the moment's energy

here in your hand.

(pakistantimes)

11/7/11

( in5d )

What I love about

the 11th month

in the 11th year

after the millennium

is that every day

for at least the first week or so

is a palindrome --

it gazes at itself in the mirror,

with little emotion,

but absolute equilibrium,

challenging each of us

to assume

the same composure -

11/1/11

11/2/11

11/3/11

11/4/11

11/5/11

11/6/11

11/7/11

11/8/11

11/9/11

- it's a narrow marching column,

like a count-down,

counting up --

to 

11/11/11

and then the perfect palindrome,

a beautiful balance to aspire to:

11/22/11

 .

( paradigmsearch )

The Dream That Must Be Interpreted, by Jalal al-Din Rumi

This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was your grief.

But there's a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconscious

done in the illusion of the present world

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays,

and it must be interpreted.

All the mean laughing,

all the quick, sexual wanting,

those torn coats of Joseph,

they change into powerful wolves

that you must face.

The retaliation that sometimes comes now,

the swift, payback hit,

is just a boy's game

to what the other will be. . . .

And this groggy time we live,

this is what it's like:

                                              A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams he's living

in another town.

In the dream, he doesn't remember 

the town he's sleeping in his bed in.  He believes 

the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities 

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

                                        We begin

as a mineral.  We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

That's how a young person turns

toward a teacher.  That's how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

all photos by Makropoulos

the love that exceeds, reprise

Sometimes

I think about something I wrote 

a month,

a year

a hundred years

ago, 

and I think:

somethings just don't change;

that's still what I think

and feel 

today.

The following is an entry I wrote

16 October 2010 --

and it is an important one for me.

I wanted to revisit it today.

Thanks for revisiting it with me.

(Sounio, south of Athens, Greece

photo by Makropoulos)

When we love

      with a love

                 that exceeds

our expectations of love,

we ignite a fire

in our being

that unites with

the infinite, 

and

the penetrating

incapacitating

                     power of the All

is engendered there.

(also at Sounio,

photo by Makropoulos)

Incapacitating

                it is

because it erases

our

mortal individuality

and implicates us

in a nameless

immortality.

(The human

and all that it imagines 

and comprehends,

even of love,

has boundaries -----

the temporal frame

of earth 

and life and death

and the portrait of

                  our living

that that frame embraces---

is our lives

is our lives.

(pebbles through water 

off a beach

in Kythnos, Greece

photo by Makropoulos)

That frame,

the only portal

at our disposal

that gives us acccess

to the beyond

is the subtle,             

delicate

heart

                             so inextricably wedded

to mind

and the melody

                           plucked on the strings

      that bind

them

is the song of our love

seducing us to love

beyond our limits.

When we love

      with a love

                 that exceeds

our expectations of love,

we ignite a fire

in our being

that unites with

the infinite,

the penetrating

incapacitating

                     power of the All

is engendered there.

heart song

Every time a heart goes forth

on a journey to join

with another,

                         it risks a pain

                                 no body can bear;

                     it risks the 

                        burning tear

of remembering

that true union is impossible

                                                          in the land of the living.

Our hearts/Our souls

are the entity

             full;

our bodies are vessels that demand

division.

My heart

           Your heart

Seek to be whole,

but the walls of our skin

imprison.

Be still and listen

to the voice that is you,

that voice that has no body.

It is the voice of God,

                      and God

is the juncture

at which we all meet.

The Human Band Width

So,

let's imagine that it's true --

that on 

12/21/2012

the planet Earth,

Sun,

Moon

all the other planets

all align

with the center of the Solar System,

and we realize that this actually puts us

into a rather vulnerable position,

especially with regards to

Unpredictable

solar flares.

And our protective

ozone 

has a hole in it.

( godlikeproductions )

Listen,

I'm no physicist,

but I have a crazy idea :

let's imagine that,

the ethereal entity that unites

all humans -- the collective

soul, the breath,

the essence of life

 -- is composed

of something akin

to radio waves.

(To understand this, let me ask you this:

is there anyone on the planet -

brother, sister, mother,

grandmother, spouse 

friend

with whom you feel you have

some uncanny bond?

And do you ever have these bizarre

but wonderfully natural

moments when 

you're both thinking of each other

and one calls

the other --

only to find the other was intending

to call?

Or do you know

when something bad

is happening

to your brother

(sister/spouse/grandmother/

best friend)

?

What is it that links you to that person?

Well, I propose

that's caused by a form of

radio wave,

and you and that person 

just happen to be

tuned into the same channel,

so to speak.)

If you'll actually buy into

this bizarre proposal,

we are all,

more or less,

giant radio beacons,

and we are indeed

"in tune"

with a few of our 

closest family members and friends.

At one time, too, we could also

tune into the entire human life-force,

but now, our collective tuning

is way off.

But it is possible to

tune into a larger collective.

Centuries of deception

and discordance

and distrust of the other

has made it nigh impossible

to actually recognize

that humans all share the same band width.

If we cleaned out the receivers

in our hearts,

so to speak,

and if we could

tune everyone

into the same tone,

well, 

we might produce something akin

to a radio blanket

sort of like a shield of tightly woven

energy

that would protect us against

the hot hot waves

of the maddening sun.

And let's pretend for a minute that this

absurd flight of fancy

would actually work

to save the planet and all of humanity.

So this is the deal,

from 

Radio Makropoulos:

at a certain point in the not too distant future

we should all put ourselves

into the zone of

Selfless Love, and 

this would produce the 

necessary frequency

to imitate the 

ozone layer,

and save the Earth

and all its inhabitants.

(Sounds simple, right?

We just have to love each other.

Honestly.)

Of course, Selfless Love is preceded

by Self Love

because one cannot exercise

Selfless Love

of others if

one does not love the Self first.

So,

using my wildly idealistic and irrational premise,

the best way to save the world from final destruction

is this:

Step One:

Love Yourself.

Step One-A:

If you do not love yourself,

if you think your life is worthless,

or anything else like that,

it's time to give that routine up.

Just give it up.

You've been doing this

all of your life, and all it's made you

is miserable.

Instead,

recognize

that you got up this morning,

and somehow got yourself

to a place where you can read

this crazy woman's rambling.

You're able to eat,

communicate,

most likely move around,

and have an opinion.

And therefore,

you have value.

You are an individual worth loving,

and I love and respect you

for getting through this nutty blog entry.

So, there:

start loving yourself.

And

STEP TWO:

get on with the task of selflessly loving 

everyone and everything around you.

And then, well,

our collective love

will create a shield of

protection.

In my idealist blogging past, I declared

a trial run, to begin

11/11/11, at 11:00 am or pm,

in any time zone,

it really doesn't matter.

I keep thinking that would be a good idea.

So read my proposal above,

and my proposal for

11/11/11,

and then

do it.

I dare you.

If everyone on this earth

would suddenly decide to 

#1: Love Yourself

#2: Love the World Unselfishly,

well,

there may actually be something like

peace

on earth,

and we might have the side benefit

of actually seeing Jesus

face to face.

All Together Now . . . 

Channelling: When Divided Time Meets No Time

(Preface: I don't know where this message came from.  If you can get through it,
and understand it, well,
I'll give you a piece of chocolate)

weber.edu

You see, in the New Age,

we will have to recognize and accept,

and forgive

the fact we are not one and never will be one --

we are parts, equal parts of a Whole, for sure,

but not One,

for God is the One.

It's impossible for us

to be one,

because we are all separate yet equal,

                                   different

parts of the whole that The One

produced

for the sole intent 

of being able to see                           

itself    . .  .  . . 

you see

this is what 2012 is:

it is                    

the year of the palindrome:

it is the year when

the Divided Self perceives the United Self, wholly, finally.

And Vise Versa.

 apod May 6 2011

As I said last week, how long can it take

for the Singular God (aka: the United Self)  to perceive 

its own Creation (aka: the Divided Self)

in all its parts?

Well, if you're on God's side 

of the mirror,

it takes an

unmeasurable instant

for the One to perceive 

its mirror image,

in all its disparate,

hopefully beautiful

parts.

But that instant

in Timeless Time

is an eternity on our side of the mirror --

paintingsilove

So anyway,

in the year of the palindrome,

God  (which is the linguistic placeholder

in our language used

to represent The Nothing Out of Which We All Came)

will have formed a conclusion

on what s/he thinks about the state

of her/his creation. 

                             (I hope you can follow what I'm saying)

I'm saying that by

12212012, D.T. (Divided, human time)

we, dear humans, will reach

the juncture at which 

the amount of time it takes the Creator to perceive It's Creation

intersects

with the numerical system we use to count the time.

That juncture, by the way,

can be best represented like this:

and that symbol,

dear friends,

is as much representational

as it is abstract.

Abstractly,

it is a number to indicate

no number:

the double zero,

so

to

speak.  And it is also representational 

(graphic):

it performs on the page

the intersection we

are about to experience.

The best way to describe it is an eclipse.

Now, we know about

Lunar Eclipses

boston.com

which occur when we, the earth that guides the moon

on its whirling, twirling path

stand directly in the way

of the moon's view of the sun.

It's an alignment that occurs because of a series of revolves

within revolves.

And then there are Solar Eclipses:

nationalgeographic


. and then there's something else,
that many people have speculated about:

infinitelymystical

 The eclipse we will encounter in a year or two
is much greater than the others,
it is the eclipse of one celestial habitation
as it comes in direct
alginment
with the larger force that it encircles,
and that keeps the celestial habitation
in motion,
just like the earth keeps the moon
in motion.

If you can foollow this,
then perhaps you'll be able to see
what I'm trying to say:

at this fabulous intersection,
all of creation (all of which exists
within the realm of Divided Time)
will be eclipsed by the force
that we call god,
and we
here on earth
will be in a position
where we will be gazing in
to God's eye,
as if gazing lengthwise along through the expanse
of the palindrome
of infinity.

And as with any eclipse
of the small
with the larger,
the smaller (we) will be able to see
the outline of the larger
around the the edges of the celestial bodies
between us.


~ ~ ~

The thing is:

the Unknown and Unknowable contains
the very force that produced
US,
and, well, we're about to have a good look at each other.

~ ~ ~ ~

And since we are, in essence,
a product of It, well,
the Unknown, the Unknowable, the Vast Emptyness
That is Everything Other Than Us
(let's just call that God, for the lack
of a better word),
so when God encounters us,
it will look upon us a bit
like a father looks at a son.  And if
S/He is not pleased
with what it sees,
well,
we may be screwed.

We are, after all,
just a product of division.

Yes.

For the One to Produce Many,
it must Divide.

Because one
cannot produce another one,
and remain the Only One.  No;
at that point when One becomes Two
it inevitably also become Three and Four and
on to Eternity

which is
12212012
or thereabouts.

Now,
the actual period of time
in our time
which summarizes
and translates the amount of time
that it takes NoTime to react to its perception of
All Time
is approxiamately four days,
give or take an hour or two,
and that four day juncture
that includes 12212012
will be kind of rough,
because for a brief
period of time,
when No Time meets All Time
we'll be in a state of,
well,
Frozen Time,
and there won't be much
we'll be able to do  about it,
except wait,
and it will seem like an eternity,
but it will really only be
four days,
give or take a minute or two,
and when
the big that after The Four Days occurs,
well,
we'll know the outcome
of the encounter of the All and Its Reproduction (aka US),
and those of us who survive
the intense interrogation
of Self against Self,

 will be in a time beyond eternity,
and in that time,
we'll finally realize
how insignificant
                   significance
really is.

The Age of Narrative Interruptus (a channelling)

Why do we take delight  and more delight

in songs   

stories

movies

that end abruptly?  that don't give closure?

. . . the song that melts away

on the lingering chord 

unresolved?

. . . . the story that does not tell us
that we live happily ever after?  But in-

stead leaves us
                   midsentence
                               midaction
                                       midthought
                              mid deed (?)

(or even before the deed; think:

Raymond Carver,

that dear, dear man who many fiction writers today

love to hate, but, well,

I not only still like his writing,

I also still have great respect

for him.

I actually knew him, he and his wife,

Tess Gallagher,

were my neighbors 

for a few years while

     I lived and studied

in Syracuse.

Notably, I studied Creative Writing there,

which of course is what Ray taught - 

I was in the graduate program

he was part of,

but, also notably,

the year I got there, Carver

got something like a MacArthur, 

and well,

what self-respecting writer really wants to teach

when they don't really have to?

He stopped teaching the year I arrived.

Anyway, it didn't matter, I was so clueless:

I went to Syracuse because I wanted to be a writer,

and not

because I knew anything about the teachers there.

In fact, I didn't know who he was the first time I met him

at a party, and I think that may be why 

he always sort of followed my work

for a few years (until they moved);

he would go to my readings, and talk to me

at parties, and give me all kinds of suggestion.

Looking back at it, I can see he 

kind of took care of me, 

in a very quiet way.

I paid him little heed; I was way

way

too in awe.

So anyway --

think Raymond Carver story. . .

OK,
back to my point about why
we take delight and more delight
in songs,
stories
movies

that end abruptly.

Well,

the Age we have been leaving has been
a Narrative Age,
and the age we have been entering,
rather haltingly and painfully,
but now we are absolutely in it,
is the Age
of Narrative Interruptus.


lastwordonnothing

The Age of Narrative was an age
that sought and sometimes found
happiness in its endings.

The "Happy Ever After" marks
Satisfaction and/or
the Desire for Satisfaction coupled with
the Belief
that Satisfaction is possible.

Since this is the Age we are currently exiting
we have inherited a truckload
of Happy Ever After Tales
that promote and perpetuate
a rather stilted view of the world.

IE:

• if you are good, Santa will bring you packages;
• if you clean inside your ears, beans won't grow in them;
• if you make a lot of money, you'll be happy;
• (a subnarrative of this one is: money can buy happiness -- if you believe this, just think about how much money it takes to be happy all the time); 
• if you're a blonde, you're stupid and easily pleased
• if you a marry a particular type of person just like you, you'll be happy
• marriage and reproduction are the ONLY routes to happiness

The list goes on:
essentially,
they're all mini narratives, all with
happy endings built right into them,
and we grew up using them
to define our paths in life.


But Hot Damn!
Most of us who are my age
                                  (that's 425, remember)
and over have learned
through this rather miserable experience
called life
that those lovely stories, produced by people
whose time, circumstances & personal beliefs
allowed them to think in terms of happy endings,
are lies.

Lies.


Life happens like this:







(and then it's over)

As we have come to understand this
is the true structure of
life in our time,
our stories --
and the literal structure of all of the stories
that we use to help us understand life
has gradually changed.

We prefer
Narrative Interruptus,
because
that is more true to reality.

~ ~ ~


~ ~ ~
It has taken art: aka:
reality's reproduction
a long time to catch up to reality itself.

Reality is this, this life
we lead, and
within this life we lead,
we Humans  were produced by the Creative Force
(aka: Allah, God, Yahweh)
to be the chroniclers & recorders
of the Force's creation,
to be the ones
to show that fabulous creation S/He produced
to the Master
who produced us.
It is our job to mimic all that we encouter
for the enjoyment
of our Progenitor.
(Yes, we are advanced apes,
we are the ones
in all the animal species
to be given the task of
going forth and finding
a way to show the beauty of nature
to the Creative Force
we call God.

That's our job.

Period.

(and, by the way, every now and then God wants to see this creation,
and that, my friends, is Makropoulos' explanation
of Two Thousand And Twelve:
that year marks the juncture
at which God is able to view
The Creation in its entirety,
and,
well,
we'll see what S/He thinks.

In other words, 2012 marks the end moment of the period of time it takes
(when measured in our realm of time)
for the timeless to be able to perceive
of everything it has produced
for the soul purpose of being able to view Itself.
 Eternity, then,
is best defined as a number, and it looks
like this:

fameisn'teverything

After 2012 (which fundamentally marks
the end of the period of time as it is measured in the realm of time
that it takes the timeless to perceive
of the timed)
we'll know how long infinity is,
and we'll be able to use that #
in actual counting, because
at that point
we'll have experienced an eternity
and come out the other side of it.
I'm not kidding!
That's what
12/21/12
will be:
the realization of the year
of the palindrome,
and the realization of the Perfect Mirror Image.



But I should get back to my point, which is
we live currently at the Dawn of the
Age of Interruptus,
during which our primary mode
of representing ourselves to ourselves
will be
by fragmentation.



Life
is
not
one
long
thin
con
tin
u
a
l
thread, no

it is interruption.


We believe no more
in the Aristotelean narrative,

because we know it is no longer
a complete narrative that fits our time.

No.

Our current life narratives acknowledge the short
ness and the changability
of real lived life.

One of the most compelling stories to us
right now,
unfortunately,
is the one that shows how
if you hurt the one you love the most
you can absolutely destroy them,
thereby
robbing them of the possibility of their own happy ending,
when we know darned well we're not going to have a happy ending.

And so we kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and lie
and lie,
then kill
and kill
and kill
again.

It is the acting out of our personal discovery
that not every one of life's stories
do not have happy endings, and
it brings happy endings to no one,
and death, painful death
to all.

But the fact is:
endings are often not happy;
endings
are often not even


endings.




We live in the Age of Narrative Interruptus.

Dvinity and the Diva in You

aspireauctions

Divinity is the 

                                  imperfection of God;

but it is still the

                              perfection of man.

(Hazrat Inayat Khan The Unity of Religious Ideals, page 119)

Divinity, according to Hazrat Inayat Khan,

is "God personified"

Divinity is the physical manifestaion

of the divine idea

held within the mind

of every man and woman.

"Divinity is reduced God and enlarged man."

Divinity in this equation is

the intersection point,

the intermediary, 

between God and humanity.

Divinity is of God but it is not God.

layoutsparks

God is total

unutterable

all,

inconceivable

in words,

capable of conceiving us,

but we

are not capable of conceiving g-d.

The Divine is our route,

it is the nearest we can get

to conceiving the unknown and unknowable

g-d.

The Divine

is God Captive

in the Realm of Humans;

it is the seed planted and engendered there,

by the spark within each of us,

and when we open

our hearts

our mouths

our wombs

to produce our understanding of the 

divine,

we produce

divinity.

In reality, divinity is

the expansion of the human soul;

divinity is human nature

in God. . . . (Inayat Khan, p. 116)

umich/limitedforkatlas

Thus, there are as many deities as there are

perceptions of the divine.

And that is why

we should not,

we must not

chastise another,

              if her

              or his

divinity looks different from our own.

We are all responding to the same compulsion

to represent something sacred,

we who seek the divine are all listening

to the diva inside of us.

ourscience

Each human carries the seed

of divinity within --

Some religious authorities have tried to recognize the divinity

of Christ while ignoring the divinity of humanity.  They

have tried to make Christ different from what

may be called human; but by doing so they have not been able to keep

the flame alight, for they have covered the main truth that religion

had to give to the world, which was that divinity resides in humanity,

that divinity is the outcome of humanity, and that

humanity is the flower in the heart of which

divinity was born as a seed.

 (Inayat Khan p. 118)

-- I fear these words as much as I see the absolute sense in them.

I know some people may read them and immediately

leave this blog and never return.

That's the risk I take

when I write these nutty entries.

And yet, I write these words here, these words that indicate both

the absolute humanness of Jesus

(who was also divine)

and the potential divinity

of each human.

And it is true.

When Jesus said that the only way to salvation 

is through him,

he didn't mean to deify him,

he meant to work

through him,

through the metaphor he offers

in the script he provided.

It is important to note

right now

that Jesus never wrote down words.

He acted.

His script was one of deed;

it shows us how we all should

act and do if we intend

to embody the divine that dwells

in each of us.

Do not worship Jesus,

worship is a passive act.

Rather,

if you find his story to be a story

that fits your perception of divinity,

well, then,

imitate him,

walk in his shoes,

for the argument Jesus poses

is the most convincing argument

for the end of violence.

Notably,

(and I've said this a few times already)

in our current world

people who do take Jesus' words and actions

literally and live then literally

suffer one of two fates:

* we kill those people, perceiving them to be dangerous

* we chastise and alienate those people, condemning them as ignorant.

The time has come

it is now

to stop killing and chastising

the lovers of peace and truth;

the time has come

to join them.

I am not lying.

I never lie.

We have had our second chances.

The time is now.

My charge is clear; my message, simple:

if we could all just stop this bullshit

and find the divine within ourselves,

and embody that divine, then

without a doubt,

Jesus would come

Jesus would be here.

In that sense, one may call man

a miniature God, and 

it is the development of humanity

which culminates in divinity; thus

Christ is the example of the culmination of humanity

(Inayat-Khan, p. 119)

bobtowery