A Region Of Freedom

Close observation discloses that most of us, most of the time, behave and act mechanically, like machines. The specifically human power of self-awareness is asleep and the human being, like an animal, acts more or less intelligently solely in response to various influences. Only when man makes use of his power of self-awareness does he attain a level of freedom. At that moment he is living not being lived.

E.F. Schumacher, the internationally known economical thinker, wrote the 1973 book Small is Beautiful His book is one of the most influential books of the 20th century. The notion that we are asleep when it comes to understanding self-awareness is accurate. We don’t know the self, and most of us have no interest in knowing it. We live life through the thoughts of others. Our own thoughts are silenced by the crowd of conformity.

Our actions change what is acted upon. Action implies the vast possibilities within our focus. Our focus is not limited to physical focus. We can also focus on the self we consider the soul. When the ego is turned inward we begin to live another focus. The action of our egos inner focus changes the action within our soul. We begin to sense a region of freedom. In that region, the action of self-awareness changes our physical actions, and we begin to live more than one life.

Creative Dilemma

First we have to understand what awareness is: to be aware, aware outwardly, the colors, the proportions of this hall, aware of the various colors that you have on, aware without any choice, just to watch.

And also to be inwardly aware of all the movement of thought, the movement of your gestures, the way you walk, the things you eat the habits you have formed, again without choice, merely to observe attentively.

You cannot be aware if there is a division between the observer and the observed.

J. Krishnamurti, the popular 20th century writer, traveled around the world speaking about meditation, human relationships, and how we can effectively evoke positive change in our global society. Krishnamurti understood the concept of awareness. Awareness is the action of consciousness. Consciousness is a dimension of the action made possible by creative dilemmas. Our conscious identity seeks stability while action seeks change. But our identity could not exist without change. Our identity is the result of action, and therefore is part of it. That is one of the creative dilemmas within the action of consciousness.

Our ego is the result of another creative dilemma. Our consciousness of self tries to separate itself from action. But our identity or consciousness can’t exist without action, so the self creates another creative dilemma.

When we try to divorce the self from action, and make it an objective perception we restrict our awareness of self. Creative dilemmas are areas of reality where our inner awareness can experience itself. Experience is the expanding action of all consciousness.

Identity's Action

We are disturbed, not by things, but by the way we perceive them.

Epictetus was a first century slave. Somehow he got the message that he was the master of his own life. Our individuality is never lost. We exist and continue to exist after death. Our individual consciousness grows in what we call the after-life. It is a state of becoming aware of our actions. Our identity is action, and it is always conscious of itself.

Identity is also a state of existence. It is action within action. Identity is unfolding action upon itself. Through this interwoven state of self action an identity is formed. The energy within action, and the working of energetic action upon and within itself forms our identity. Identity can be defined as action’s effect upon itself.

But, we don’t perceive our identity that way. Identity to us is DNA, family traits and learned behavior. All of those things are actions of our consciousness. They are products of the energy that created them.

We are educated to believe that this almighty energy is a separate energy. We call it supreme energy, but there is no separation between action and identity. There is only the perception of separation between the observer and the observed. We forget that the observer and the observed is one and the same in consciousness.

Dreamers Dream

If you’d look at nature truly One as all examine duly! No thing’s inside, outside neither: In is out and both are either. Grasp it quick, let nought confound you, Sacred secret all around you.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was a pivotal figure in German culture. His work had a major impact on German philosophy. He set the stage for other great thinkers around the world. His view was the human race was a stage through which different forms of consciousness interact. In this stage of consciousness, humans must learn how to handle their own energy manifestations, and then see the results of those thoughts and emotions in action.

We form civilizations from the energy within our emotions and thoughts. At some point we realize that our material creations are our responsibility. For centuries we have existed in the soundproof room of religion. This room is filled with the fear of self-responsibility. We expect some supreme being to rescue us from our own thoughts, and the emotions that impact our physical reality.

Goethe knew better. He studied nature and understood the dynamics of self unity. He knew the agony and sorrows that are felt in this reality are necessary lesson that must be learned. He learned to manipulate the physical energy he created, and he felt the sacred secret within all of us.

Humans dream the same dream at once, and a time/space world becomes physical. It is a play within a play. The dreamers dream, and the dreamers within the dream, dream. There is no end to the nature of our dreams, and there is no end to the nature of the consciousness that creates expanded versions of our individual dreams.

Creative Dust

The bamboo shadows are sweeping the stairs, But no dust is stirred: The moonlight penetrates deep in the bottom of the pool, But no trace is left in the water.

D.T Suzuki found that Zen poem, and used it to demonstrate our lack of understanding when it comes to using the shadow that our inner self projects. The inner self sees through the lens of the ego, but the ego has the ability to twist and turn its lens in other directions. It creates inner shadows that touch the creative dust within our thoughts.

We exist and function in a certain plane of reality while we are physical. We intently focus on that reality, and ignore the other planes that exist adjacent to our physical one. Our psychic focus inhibits awareness of other realities until we are ready to intently sweep our ego with inner self moonlight.

Inner self moonlight doesn’t exist in rational thought until we turn our focus to the transpersonal realities that surrounds us. Making that turn threatens our survival until we realize that survival is satisfied through intention. The desire and intention to feel the inner self is the moonlight that penetrates our somewhat capricious egotistical lens.

When we move our focus to another plane we discover a self that is:

The Dust That Does Not Stir

The Water That Is Still

And The Offspring

That Prevails.

Magical Spontaneity

The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like all ripe fruit, from our experience and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows wither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world.

The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world for her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, no rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in his 1841 essay, The Over-soul. As we travel on this physical journey, we know the fruit of all of our relationships will ripen and then change into something else.

Emotions pour through us as we react to these changes. We forget the spontaneity of our soul and try to use reason to justify the sense of cause and effect we create. We overlook the discipline within our own spontaneity, and overlook the spontaneity of nature.

We feel the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, and watch the magical spontaneity of flowers, bees and the earth in all its glory, but we take them for granted. Nonetheless, spontaneity has its own discipline. It is truth in action. That discipline is the robe Emerson talks about.

So where does the wind of the soul blow all these fruits of spontaneity? Religion paints a shadowy picture. Faith, they say, will be the vehicle that puts that fruit back on our barren emotional trees of life. But there is more to us than faith in fear. Perhaps most of our fruity relationships never leave us. Perhaps the fruit is born again and again in the magical spontaneity of an individual reincarnational cycle.

Perhaps the materialization of our physical personality, and all other personalities is just one layer in that cycle. The other layers are not readily known to our ego, but our inner self retains the identity and knowledge of those layers, and uses them with the multidimensional discipline that exists within us.

An Adjusted Blueprint

My mind was a mirror: It saw what it saw; it knew what it knew. In youth my mind was just a mirror. In a rapidly flying car, Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.

Then in time Great scratches were made on the mirror, Letting the outside world come in, And letting my inner self look out. For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, A birth with gains and losses.

The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself. A mirror scratched reflects no image… And this is the silence of wisdom.

Edgar Lee Masters 1919 poem, Ernest Hyde is part of his work, The Spoon River Anthology. His Anthology is a collection of epitaphs written by the inhabitants of a small town cemetery in Spoon River, Illinois. In death, truth and free will abound, but in life free will as well as truth can be unmanageable by-products of the ego.

Our free will is an innate gift, but we have a blueprint within us that guides us, and helps us function as individuals and as a race of people. We can override that blueprint, and often do, thanks to the portion of the self called the ego. Our ego is the lens for the inner self. When that lens is distorted by beliefs and perceptions, our focus changes and so does our inner blueprint.

Masters calls the distortion the birth of the soul in sorrow, but the soul doesn’t experience sorrow. It is always in a state of well-being, and it is always prodding us to sense our inner reality with or without the help of our ego. We constantly put obstacles in front of the ego, so we can use our version of free will. We tend to over-sensitize and over-develop our egos because of those obstacles. Our lens becomes foggy from the challenges. But even in the fog, the silence of our own wisdom is like a rapidly flying car. It always offers us a ride to our inner self on an adjusted version of our original blueprint.

A Wave Of Two

This world flickers from light to dark, brother.

I miss your brilliant light.

Now, a bright beam sifts through our youth

A seaside beach, a mother’s treat

Built our nest without regret.

Brother’s dreams, far-reaching schemes

Dressed in suits, states in pursuit

You grew tomatoes, I sipped grapes

Sublime the quest our mates knew best.

Then Age took us for a ride

Twists and tangles, laughs and angles,

Filled our lives with means and fearful seams.

We found a bridge in the mid

And crossed it like we knew

That life would be a shallow sea without our wave of two.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

In Memory of Bob Manogue 1954-2013.

Hal Manogue 12/5/2013

Water Of Creativity

In the falling snow

A laughing boy holds out his palms

Until they are white

Richard Wright’s work helped redefine race-relation discussions in America during the mid-20th century. In his later years, he became enamored with Haiku. This African-American author wrote over four thousand poems. In 1998, his book, Haiku: This Other World was published.

Haiku is an art form that few of us recognize. It lives outside the boundaries of accepted thought. Haiku redefines the imaginative lines of desire, creativity and expectations. When we are immersed in these poems, we find ourselves searching between those lines for the meaning. The meaning is in plain sight, but our sight is fixed on the words not the meaning.

We have the impetus for incredible creativity within us. We know this impetus exists, and we give it an exalted name. We project this impetus outward and make it stand on its own in order to visualize it, but it is never a separated from us. Just like the laughing black boy in Wright’s poem the impetus to be what we desire to be is an innate state of being.

Our innate knowledge retains the memory of this state. Within that knowledge is the impetus for change, survival, creativity and development. Just like the falling snow that contains the water of creativity, we sense the whole gestalt that formed our impetus.

Impetus Of Truth

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct face to face verification somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.

William James wrote those thoughts in his 1906 lecture, Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth. We all develop a very complicated belief structure. We creatively interlock our truths and seal them with thoughts, influences and associations. Our creative consciousness builds a reality from the non-being that anchors the beliefs of many Eastern Religions.

Trying to describe non-being is like trying to catch the wind that shakes the consciousness of nature. Perhaps non-being is a state, not of nothingness, but a state of possibilities and probabilities, which are known and anticipated, but are blocked from physical expression.

Non-being, then, is a state of agony where creative and existence are known, but the ways to produce them are not known. Our creativity and truth are drawn from the agony experienced by the consciousness that first felt the impetus of change, development, survival and creativity. A portion of that impetus is within us, and our free will uses it to create our own form of non-being.

Psychic Pyramid

I am the ever-loving God, the ever present creator living within you and moving through you expressing as you in myriad forms- as you and you, and you- as the animals as the trees and the sky and the firmament as everything that exists.

Eva Pierrakos wrote those thoughts in her 1957 book, The Pathwork Of Self-Transformation Making sense of God is not an easy task. We believe God is a three dimensional entity that is above us, but that concept mirrors the belief that the world is flat. The notion of a god-particle comes a little closer to the nature of God, but God is more than a particle or even a cluster of particles.

Religion conditions use to believe that we can’t explain God. This belief structure creates questions with no answers. Faith, they say, is our only salvation. But the fact is there is nothing to be saved from. God is the ever present consciousness living within us and all physical and non-physical beings.

A new, but old, image of God is emerging. God is not human. God is an energy gestalt. God is a psychic pyramid of interconnected, ever-expanding gestalt of consciousness. This energy creates instantaneously as well as simultaneous universes and the individual consciousness that are endowed with psychic comprehension, personal perspective, intelligence and eternal validity. This gestalt is aware of and is active within every conceivable form of life.

Eva goes on to say: I shall dwell in you and if you allow Me to act through you to be known through your brain to be felt through your feelings you will experience My power that is limitless

The Old Year

Others see only the old year shadowed, wrinkled and harrowed, sad fearful moods; we though see shining friendship and trusting; see the new thrusting find us renewed!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is considered the most important writer in the German language, and one of the most important thinkers in our Western Culture. His massive library of esoteric thought influenced 19th century German philosophy. His work also had an impact on thinkers like Hegel and Schelling.

What do we see when we look into our soul? Eyes of fear shine a light on the darkness that exists within the shadows of consciousness. Reflections of trust create sturdy beams that support the character of our essence. We sense a new thrusting within us. We rebound from the goal post of one reality and pass the ball of time to another fabricated value system. Within that system, we find the brilliance of our wrinkled and harrowed creations.

Flutter In The Breeze

The blackbird swooped, eyes shadowing earth, dead leaves, feathers tipped with snow One finds beaches anywhere, airports, skies of snow. Perched on the ticket counter, blackbird watches the four-engine plane land, propellers stilled. Dead leaves flutter from the sky

Shinkichi Takahashi words can be interpreted in several ways. At first glance, they make no sense, but when his work is examined as Zen thought, they make perfect sense. Death is a word that brings senseless images to mind. Death to some of us is a senseless void, but to Takahashi it was another reality. A reality connected to all realities. Takahashi understood the meaning of the word dead. To him, death is a incarnational holding bin.

We change after death. We experience endless dimensions. None of those dimensions destroy the others. Our future personalities are as real as our present one. Consciousness is the creator of individuality. It does not destroy it. Just like the blackbirds perched on the ticket counter, we watch our personality blend with other aspects of our self, and we flutter in the breeze of our multidimensionality.

Spiritual Elasticity

Christianity is therefore constituted not only with the teaching of Jesus himself but with all the dogmatical and speculative interpretations concerning the personality of Jesus and his doctrine that have accumulated ever since the death of the founder. In other words, Christ did not found the religious system known by his name, but he was made founder by his followers.

D.T. Suzuki in his essay, Doctrine of Enlightenment, explains how we give birth to our inner religious drama. This interior drama is a psychological phenomenon. We push our desire to connected to other portions of the self outward, and we establish modes of behavior, and symbols of worship in order to confirm our inner knowledge.

This symbiotic relationship creates a union between God and man. We feel closer to our inner truth, when we have an outward symbol of our inherent connection with the key aspect of our identity.

Our worldly issues are the result of this spiritual ignorance. As we move through this new wave of knowing, no man will look down on individuals from other races. No sex will be better than another. An open-ended consciousness feels its connection with all forms of life.

The result of this wave will be a radical change in our social and governmental behavior. We will have more freedom to use our spiritual elasticity as we move through this three-dimensional training ground.

Perpetual Becoming

Many times the mountains have turned from green to yellow So much for the capricious earth! Dust in your eyes, the triple world is narrow; Nothing on the mind, your chair is wide enough.

Muso Soseki, the 13th century Japanese poet, used his inner senses to express his multidimensional personality. Everything within our three-dimensional world occurs simultaneously. Every action of consciousness creates other probable actions. The infinite energy of the universe is never still. The whole of consciousness is more than the sum of its parts.

Time and duration are distorted. We consider duration an existence within a time framework, but existence and experience are not dependent on those limited bedfellows. Everything happens at once. There is no beginning or end. Consciousness has no expiration date.

Our concept of growth and development implies a journey toward perfection, but consciousness never reaches a point where development ends and creation stops. The freedom within consciousness, guarantees our perpetual becoming.

A Certain King

A certain king in India, who was of a very realistic and logical mind, went to Shankara to receive instructions as to the nature of the Absolute. When Shankara taught him to regard all of his kingly wealth and power as no more than mere phenomenal illusions arising out of the absolute self which is the ground of all things, the king was incredulous. And when he was told that the one and only Self appeared multiple only because of the dualism of his ignorance, the king straightaway decided to put Shankara to a test and determine if the sage really felt this existence was no different from a dream.

The following day, as Shankara was approaching the palace to deliver his next lecture to the king, a huge and heat maddened elephant was deliberately turned loose and aimed in Shankara’s direction. As soon as the sage saw the elephant charging, he turned and fled in an apparently very cowardly fashion and as the animal nearly reached him, he disappeared from sight. When the king found him, he was perched at the top of a lofty palm tree, which he had ascended with remarkable dexterity. The elephant was caught and caged and the famous Shankara, perspiration pouring off him, came before the student.

The king naturally apologized for such an unfortunate and nearly fatal accident. Then, with a smile breaking across his face, but pretending great seriousness, he asked why the venerable sage had resorted to physical flight, since surely he was aware that the elephant was of a purely illusory character.

Shankara replied, “Indeed in highest truth, the elephant is non-real and illusory. Nevertheless, you and I are as non-real as the elephant. Only your ignorance, clouding the truth with this spectacle of non-real phenomenally, made your Highness see illusory me go up a non-real tree.

Shankara the 9th century Indian philosopher formatted the doctrine Advaita Vedanta. His teachings are based on the unity of the soul and non-dualism (Advaita). Shankara amusing story does shine a light on reality. Reality is a mind-consciousness tool and there are an infinite number of those tools to experience. We believe reality must be objective, solid and grounded in our three dimensional time-space-environment, but that is a very limited way to view our creativity.

This three dimensional reality is just of many probable realities we experience. Certainly a charging elephant is very real, but it is also a product of one of our probable experience. In another reality like our dream reality the elephant is an illusion, but it certainly is real in that dream state.

Shankara’s message is too open the mind and sense our own creativity. We are focused one objective state, but it’s not the only state we live in.

What Is Consciousness?

We have been taught that the word consciousness means the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. The dictionary also describes consciousness as the awareness or perception of something by a person. Both of these meanings are credible descriptions of our objective consciousness, but as most of us know we are much more than the objectivity we express. Consciousness is not limited by our description of it. In fact, nothing limits consciousness as it continues to expand in the action and energy of awareness.

The billion dollar question is how does consciousness act in its subjective state and how does that action affect our physical being? The answer may surprise some of you. Others may discount the answer based on individual beliefs. No matter what you belief, the fact that all physical objects exist in a subjective region of consciousness before they become objective is a metaphysical and a recent scientific truth.

Atomic Awakening

The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable foundations of physics have broken up. . . The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?

Alfred North Whitehead wrote those thoughts in his 1967 book, Science and the Modern World. Scientists have been studying atoms and how they act when they show themselves in our system of reality for years, but they still don’t understand the nature of the atom. Scientists understand there are spectrums of light, but they fail to realize there are spectrums of matter as well. We are conditioned to think in single-line thoughts so we believe events are complete actions. But in the probable system of life, those events are just a fraction of their entire existence.

If the atom was capable of phasing in and out of what we call time then these same atoms would appear in other systems of reality. If the atoms that support the body exist in other realities, our consciousness would function in these realities as well.

The mechanical explanation for these mind-blowing truths is right around the corner. Hang on. We’re in for quite an atomic awakening. We might begin to understand other portions of the self and the atoms that support it.

Nervous Energy

The place that Solomon made to worship in Called the far Mosque, is not built of earth Of water and stone, but of intention and wisdom And mystical conversations and compassionate action.

Every part of it is intelligence and responsive To every other. The carpet bows to the broom. The door knocker and the door swing together like musicians. The heart sanctuary does exist, but it can’t be described. Why try!

Solomon goes there every morning and gives guidance with words. With musical harmonies and in actions, which are the deepest teachings. A prince is just A conceit until he does something with generosity.

Rumi hits our ten pound bag filled with nervous energy when he shares his thoughts with us. Science is just discovering what Rumi understood eight centuries ago: Thoughts creates and influence matter. A church or mosque is not just stone or brick; it is a composite creation of thoughts.

Thoughts and beliefs create places and we develop a story around those thoughts. Intention and wisdom fill the cracks in the mortar, and appreciation dresses the interior with the action of consciousness.

Worship is a form of awareness. It should not turn into idolization. There is nothing to worship outside of the self. The environment and everything in it is an extension of the self. Everything material extends outward from our consciousness. Physical reality is just one form of reality. We value it because we focus on it. We choose this reality to physically feel the action within our experiences.

Consciousness Seeds

Poetry seems to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common with others, I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognized the object by the symptoms, which it provokes in us.

Alfred Edward Housman, the classical scholar and poet, was born in Worcestershire, England. Housman was the main character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play, The Invention of Love. Housman wrote an early 1900s collection of poetry called, A Shropshire Lad. A wall hanging was created for A Shropshire lad, and it now hangs in St. Laurence Church in Ludlow, England.

Poetry floats above our beliefs structure, and it creates a cloud of thoughts that showers our objective world with subjective hail. The hail melts and our belief system floods with new roots. Those roots move to the rhythm of our consciousness. We feel the need to explore these roots, even though we have a hard time accepting them.

Poetry defies the collective conforming creature in us and shakes us awake. Every poem drenches us in the knowledge of nothing, but the pureness of our own freedom. The freedom to perceive and interpret it in an individual way.

We recognize poetry by its consciousness symptoms. Poems are consciousness seeds that dwell outside the rigid walls of our beliefs. They wait for a crack to appear in that guarded wall, and then they fill it with awareness.

You Are An Eye

Since you have perceived the dust of forms, Perceive the wind that moves them; Since you have perceived the foam, Perceive the ocean of Creative Energy.

Come; perceive it, for in you Insight is all that matters; The rest is just fat and flesh, A weft and warp of bones and muscle.

Your fat never increased the lights in candles; Your flesh never became roast meat For someone drunk with spiritual wine. Dissolve this whole body of yours in vision:

Pass into sight, pass into sight, pass into sight! One sight perceives only two yards ahead; Another sight has beheld the two worlds And the face of the King.

Between these two Is an incalculable difference: Seek the remedy of vision, And God best knows that which is hidden.

Rumi, the 13th century mystic and poet, was actually born in Afghanistan in 1207. He lived most of his life in Konya which is in southern Turkey. Rumi uses 13th century language to describe 21st century concepts. He understood the power that rests within us. We can use our inner senses to experience physical life once we become aware of them.

Silence

A bird delegation came to Solomon complaining, “Why is it you never criticize the nightingale?”

Because my way, the nightingale explained For Solomon is different. Mid-March to mid-June I sing. The other nine months, while you continue chirping, I’m silent.

Rumi, the master mystic and poet, wrote those words over seven hundred years ago. At first glance the story is hard to understand, but given a little focused attention the meaning is clear. Appreciation is the key to happiness, and a positive outlook on life is the door that leads to heaven on earth. Our idle chatter is the noise that blocks the ego from hearing the mind, but silence is the sound of our aware consciousness.

LOVE

Love one another, but make not a bond of Love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, As the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Stand together yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

The words of Khalil Gibran, the 20th century artist, writer and poet, frames love in poetic verse, and it dances through the soul. Love is the energy of life and the impetus for being. We are filled with it yet we always seek it. We run from it, but it always finds us. We hide it, but it always frees itself. Love is the bark on a tree; the rose next to a thorn, and the calf that drinks its mother's milk. Love is all there is when there is no fear.

More Of A Genius

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghost-like we glide through nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet we have no super-fluity of spirit for new creation? We have enough to live and bring the year about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. All that our Genius were a little more of a Genius.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1838 essay, Experience churns the mighty mixture of unconscious thoughts within us and we discover a taste for the unknown, the undiscovered and the untamed portion of the self. Our life is never threatened, but our perception of it dangles on the precipice of our distorted beliefs. Life is a series of endless experiences that cross the boundaries of our objective knowing and bury themselves in the shroud of death.

We invest and impart tangible things in physical life and those things melt away in the creativity of death. We wallow in that creativity and blossom within the super-fluity of our eternal life. We are the genius than creates more of a genius. We are the genius that frolics and lingers through all lifetimes.

The Universal Beauty Of Socially Correct Politics

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in his 1844 essay, The Over-soul. Emerson, the Unitarian minister and leader of the Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century, is a well-known figure in American History. Emerson had and expressed bisexual tendencies while he attended Harvard, but he didn’t act on them. Emerson was not the only famous man or woman to express, but keep secret, a same-sex love. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton; Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed; Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt and Emily Dickinson have been credited with some sort homosexual or lesbian activity during their lifetimes. But their sexual preferences were wrapped in silence because of the laws and beliefs of the times.

The list of famous gay American’s would fill a chapter in our book of history. Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rudolph Valentino, Charles Laughton, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Janis Joplin and Joan Jett are just a few names in that chapter. Each one has contributed a particle or a part to the foundation of America History. We praise their accomplishments, and our lives have been enriched by their creativity. Most of them would have enjoyed the freedom of self-expression and same-gender marriage, but none of them received that freedom.

The history of Egypt, Greece, Italy, France and Britain is filled with contribution from gay citizens. All of them contributed to the political whole in some way, and the whole thrived because of them. King Richard the lion-hearted, Philip II, Beethoven and Shakespeare are on their country’s gay list. Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo Di Vinci also made their nation’s list. The opportunity to partake in an open marriage was accepted in some of those countries. Individual contributions to the political and social whole were enhanced because of that acceptance.

The recent ruling by the Supreme Court changes the nature of freedom for gay couples in America. These individuals may be able to live as a whole within the diversity that exists in our political machine without castration. They may be able to express the deep power that exists within this new freedom, and bring a touch of unity to the divisions, parts and particles that condemn the freedom to choose a specific partner.

When we look back, we see our history covered in sexual secrecy and matrimonial entrapment. The Supreme Court ruling brings that secrecy and entrapment to the forefront of our thoughts. Our social and political beliefs are changing. We are beginning to appreciate and accept personal unity within political diversity. We are writing a new history. A history filled with the universal beauty of socially correct politics.

The Heart Of That Which Exists

Blessed be you, impenetrable matter: You who, interposed between our minds and the world of essences, cause us to languish with the desire to pierce through the seamless veil of phenomena.

Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will thereby take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, the Jesuit priest and French philosopher, was trained as a geologist and a paleontologist. He conceived the idea of the Omega Point, and developed the concept of the Noosphere. His book The Phenomenon of Man is an incredible account of the unfolding of the cosmos. He abandoned the interpretation of creation in the Book of Genesis, and that put him at odds with the church. Most of his work was not published during his lifetime because the church condemned most of his opinions.

Pierre believed that God is pulling all creation towards him. He believed that evolution occurs in a directional, goal driven way. Evolution unfolds from cell to organism; planet to solar system; and solar system to the whole universe. Teilhard also believed the more complex the matter, the more conscious it is. Complex consciousness arranges itself into more complicated structures in order to achieve unification.

We may not believe what this philosopher believed, or we may tweak his belief in one way or another. The fact is we experience different realities when we open the back door of our conscious mind and allow our unconscious mind to express the uniqueness of what exists within it. We try to explain what we sense when that door is open, but the act of sensing changes the nature of what we are sensing. Sensing the very heart of that which exists is the act of knowing the self in all its splendor.

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A Pot Of Thoughts

I’m hidden behind the wall, And yet I’m right beside you. You are oppressed and suffering, Yet I am near.

You who are anxious to get Where you think you’re going, I’ll make your dreams come true. I’ll cook well every pot you try to boil.

My friend, you thought you lost him; That all your life you’ve been separated from him. Filled with wonder, you’ve always looked outside of him, And haven’t searched within your own house.

Rumi wrote those words in the 13th century. He understood that awareness is action. Awareness is consciousness feeling itself. Rumi’s conscious mind was not only focused on the physical world, it was tuned-in to his inner self. The conscious mind feeds the inner self with beliefs about the nature of reality. The conscious mind sets goals, and the inner self manifests them using the inexhaustible energy of consciousness.

We are responsible for the joy and successes we experience. We can change our perception of life by altering our belief about the inner self. As Rumi said we haven’t searched our own house for the keys that unlock doors of awareness.

The inner self is the “him” Rumi talks about. This self uses the conscious mind to experience a reality filled with the incredible richness of color and form. Our non-physical form was born in the flesh to feel its own energy physically. We cook every pot of thoughts in the energetic water of the inner self.

Perhaps This Is The Age

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

Confucius, the Chinese politician, teacher, moral reformer and philosopher, wrote the symbols for those words five hundred years before anyone thought about Christianity. Confucius liked to be called as a transmitter who invented nothing. He urged his followers to study the ancient Classics. The Classics revealed solutions to the moral problems of the present by analyzing past political issues and events. He also wanted students to study the reflections of noblemen, and how those thoughts impacted working class individuals.

The foundation for his teachings was firmly rooted in moral and ethical correctness, self-cultivation and skilled judgment rather than knowledge of controlling rules. His methods were often executed indirectly using tautology, innuendo, and allusions. Confucius was never short on thoughts. Almost all of them require attention in order to be understood. Over the years, Confucius developed a knack for expressing humanism in a very unique way. The significance of attention in relation to what is important to us in political affairs has suffered a major setback. We get a failing grade for giving our attention to the methods of politicians. We pay more attention to what we are thinking rather than paying attention to what they are doing. We pay homage to the original idea or suggestion, and neglect to focus on how that suggestion is manipulated in the minds of our elected representatives.

When we focus on the original idea and overlook how it has been turned in some manner by this group, we open the doors of control. And when the altered suggestion is accepted en masse, it can become what no one wanted except the few that push the buttons of control.

When those buttons are pushed, the individual becomes unimportant. Unimportance opens the door of fear. There are countless examples of working people giving their attention to a good idea and losing freedom and individuality in the process. History is filled with examples of how we fail to understand the ins and outs of political economic games and gains.

Perhaps this is the age when we all pay attention to the idea as it evolves in the political arena. Perhaps we will wake up and begin to focus on our collective freedom and individuality. Perhaps we should start to use Confucius tactics on our elected officials. Perhaps then we can adjust their attention to our wishes instead of our gullibility.

Dancing At The Dome Of Our Own Sky

Oh sun, rise.

Particles are dancing.

I see headless, footless spirits dancing with ecstasy.

Some are dancing at the dome of the sky.

Come close.

I'll tell you where they are going.

Rumi, the immortal poet, blends our thoughts into free flowing images filled with creative imagination. The ego is a product of our conscious mind’s imagination. The ego is our idea of our physical self. Our inner self-image is not unconscious even though we have been taught to believe it is. We are very aware that we are more than ego, but we limit our thoughts about how much more because our belief structure limits our awareness. We don’t believe we can dance at the dome of our own sky.

The ego can ignore the conscious mind, and when it does subsidiary beliefs develop. These invisible beliefs have an impact on our core beliefs, and that action changes our perception of reality.

The conscious mind is not a thing. It is an ever-changing phenomenon. It can be turned in endless directions by the ego. It looks outward, but it also looks inward and is able to see its own contents. We experience what we concentrate and then focus on in this reality. Reality is a composite of our visible as well as invisible beliefs. Come close. The ego will tell you where you are going.

Unconscious Beliefs About Consciousness

The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable foundations of physics have broken up. . . The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?

Alfred North Whitehead wrote those thoughts in his 1967 book, Science and the Modern World. Science is in a state of change. Old truths are always being replaced with new truths in conscious time. Our beliefs are in a constant state of change. Science is just one belief in a stable of conscious mind beliefs.

It’s relatively easy for the ego to identify visible beliefs like science, religion, relationships, morality and a few more, but our invisible beliefs are a little harder to identify. We forget that our reality is formed and reinforced by conscious as well as unconscious beliefs.

Invisible beliefs become truths just like our core beliefs. These invisible truths are old school unquestionable assumptions imbedded in our conscious mind by outside influences and associations. Within our seven conscious beliefs categories, there are numerous invisible beliefs that impact our reality. The ego only uses beliefs that fit into our focused concentration point. That point is influenced by the ego’s perception of time.

The ego only perceives information that fits into a certain point of conscious time until another point of conscious time is reached. When new data reaches that point, we realize that some of our old truths were only truths in conscious time. They are not be truths in the timeless area of the inner conscious mind.

Our Dancing Consciousness

In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying, dancing into the air. His very gestures are of enchantment... He feels himself to be a god, going about in ecstasy, exalted, like the gods beheld in his dreams... He is no longer an artist; he has become a work of art. In a paroxysm of intoxication the creative power of all nature has come to light in him at the highest rapture of the one that is All. Nature, with its true voice undissembled cries out to us: "Be as I am! I, the primordial ever-creating mother amidst the ceaseless flux of appearances, ever impelling into existence, externally finding in these transformations satisfaction.

Friedrick Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, gives us his thoughts about the nature of our conscious mind. Dancing is art in motion. Dancing is the paint, brush, and canvas for the music within us. Dancing gives us a means to release the emotions that fester in the ego. It gives us the opportunity to be as we are, and move through one dimension of time into another. We find comfort and freedom without restrains in each movement of our physical dance.

The ego dances with the conscious mind as we perceive reality, and we learn new steps in our expanding physical experience. The ego moves the lens of the conscious mind in tandem with our dance steps, and we sense the richness as well as the folly of our self-created tango of beliefs. When we swing the ego lens through our dimension of time, we suddenly realize of the instinctive knowledge and inner freedom we possess.

Looking through this lens we see another part of the conscious mind twisting with the music of creativity.

Where All Things Exist

Zen is the ultimate fact of all philosophy and religion. Every intellectual effort must culminate in it, or rather must start from it, if it is to bear any practical fruits. Every religious faith must spring from it if it has to prove at all efficiently and livingly workable in our active life. Therefore Zen is not necessarily the fountain of Buddhism thought and life alone; it is very much alive also in Christianity, Mohommedanism in Taoism and even in positivistic Confucianism. What makes all these religious and philosophies vital and inspiring, keeping up their usefulness and efficiency, is due to the presence in them of what I may designate as the Zen element.

D.T Suzuki explained the life force, which permeates all consciousness in his 1949 book Essays In Zen Buddhism. Zen is a region of consciousness. Zen is not a product of Buddhism; it is the source of Buddhism and every other religious belief. Western religious groups call this life force by other names, but the energy captured within those names comes from the same region of consciousness that Suzuki identifies. Our beliefs about the nature of this region creates the mystery that surrounds its existence.

When we examine our belief structure, and consciously change the beliefs that don’t give us the experiences we want, we discover the power of Zen. Zen is the region where all things exist. In that region, energy manifest very quickly. Our imagination illuminates the light of Zen, and our emotions signal the physical presence of Zen. Our imagination, beliefs, and emotions create our world. These psychic elements constantly change our reality even when we are unaware of the power within them.

Information Is In A Constant State Of Change

Facts do not carry labels indicating the appropriate level at which they ought to be considered. Nor does the choice of an inadequate level lead the intelligence into factual error or logical contradictions. When the level of the knower is not adequate to the level of the object of knowledge, the result is not factual error but something much more serious: an inadequate and impoverished view of reality.

E.F. Schumacher, the Buddhist economist, may be considered a bit judgmental by some readers. In the view of our essence, all realities and levels of awareness are acceptable to the conscious mind experiencing them. We attract awareness like a magnet. Awareness always moves toward the consciousness that is attracting it in the form of information. Information is never dead; it is connected to all those who originate, perceive, accept and understand it. Information is in a constant state of change.

The inner portion of the conscious mind is filled with unique information. That information has already been used by some form of consciousness. When the conscious mind stimulates the brain in the direction of that information it becomes new information. That information creates awareness in a psychic channel in the conscious mind. Ideas and imagination are psyche material. They can dislodge unsuitable beliefs as well as create new beliefs. In order to get rid of unsuitable beliefs, the imagination must repeatedly move information in and out of the conscious mind.

When we become aware of the power of our imagination, it can propel new information in the direction of our desires. The brain analyzes new information, and the experiences that result from this process are in line with our current belief structure.

Layers Of Beliefs

The exploration of the highest reaches of human nature and of its ultimate possibilities has involved for me the continuous destruction of cherished axioms, the perpetual coping with seeming paradoxes, contradictions and vagueness and the occasional collapse around my ears of long established, firmly believed in and seemingly unassailable laws of psychology.

Abraham Maslow, the 20th century American psychologist, is considered the founder of humanistic psychology. Maslow identified a hierarchy of four layers of basic needs. The four basic needs are: physiological esteem, love, friendship and security. Beyond those levels higher levels of needs exist. Those needs include understanding, esthetic appreciation and spiritual needs. When all of those needs are satisfied the need for self-actualization is activated, which means a person becomes the person they think they were born to be.

We live in a body filled with beliefs. Maslow identifies needs, but in essence he is talking about our belief structure. Our ideas and thoughts are not shadow images. They are electromagnetic realities that have substance. Thoughts and ideas impact our nervous system and the body responds accordingly.

Our conscious mind is designed to evaluate and assess our physical reality so we can chart a course in our corporeal universe. The energy within the inner self is concentrated to initiate the results asked for by the conscious mind. Our power of action follows the concentrated thoughts and ideas that we turn into beliefs. If we believe we are weak we deny our power of action. Similar beliefs attract each other. We like to be consistent in our experiences as well as our behavior.

Learning to deal with beliefs directly instead of indirectly will change the way we look at the self. If we combine our beliefs with imagination and emotions and form a mental picture of the desired results we can initiate action that will manifest physically. In other words, the inner self creates what we want and the conscious mind responds, but the responses may be tainted with certain beliefs that restrict rather than expand our desires.

The Ying Of The Yang Of The Conscious Mind

The Poem

It discovers by night

What the day hid from it.

Sometimes it turns itself

Into an animal.

In summer it takes long walks

By itself where meadows

Fold back from ditches.

Once it stood still

In a quiet row of machines.

Who knows

What it is thinking?

Donald Hall, the 14th U.S. Poet Laureate, digs deep into the subconscious, and we find another portion of the conscious mind smiling back at us. The subconscious has gotten a bad rap through the generations. Religion plays a part in shuffling the deck of fear, and then dealing us a distorted hand filled with half-truths. The Western World has been taught to believe that the subconscious is unpredictable, unreliable and filled with unpleasant energy.

The door to our inner self has been padlocked with a mental combination lock. We have been taught to believe that we are divorced from a portion of our own reality. The concept of original sin holds us in a hammer lock of uncertainty, and the only way out is to participate in superficial rituals and guilt-filled obligations. The idea of a tainted consciousness opens the door for major psychoanalysis and soul reconstruction.

As Hall points out, we live without consciously knowing how we maintain and use our physical awareness. But, we do know. The atoms and molecules within the cells have their own consciousness, and they mesh with the molecules and atoms in the air, earth, and universe. That mixture produces a unique reality that is built for us by our subconscious.

Our subconscious believes in us even though we don’t know what it is thinking. It is the night of our mental day or the ying of the yang of our conscious mind.

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The Inexhaustible Energy Of Consciousness

When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.

Therefore The Master Acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn't possess, acts but doesn't expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.

Lao-tzu, the Chinese philosopher, wrote those words 2500 years ago. The Master is the inner self. The inner self adopts a physical consciousness in order to manipulate the world we call our reality. Our consciousness exists in many forms and is active in many dimensions, but our conscious mind is focused on directing outward activity using a dualistic method. That method is a product of our belief structure.

From the duality the conscious mind sets the goals and the inner self brings them about using the inexhaustible energy of consciousness. The value of the conscious mind is its ability to set direction and make decisions. The conscious mind has a dual role. It assesses data that comes from the inner self as well as the information we perceive from the physical world. When the conscious mind is not limited by our beliefs, it is able to act without doing and teach without saying anything.

We are taught to fear the consciousness within us. We fear our own thoughts, and accept the beliefs of others. We distort inner data and our physical expressions reflect those distortions. There is no war between the inner self and the conscious mind. That is only a perception based on our choice to ignore the information we receive from our subjective self. But, the inner self continues to give us the information we need whether we use it now or store it in a mind cell labeled “forever.”

Interior Hut Of Consciousness

This hut is larger than the earth, Since there’s nothing that is not. In the small charcoal stove

Burn sun and countless stars, And the corners of the kitchen Buzz with humankind

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poem Here is a good example of 1920’s Dadaism mixed with an abundant dose of what-the-hell? The 20s and 30s were restless decades in Japan. Takahashi was an emerging artistic figure. His work gave that reality a touch of existential flavoring.

The hut in Takahashi’s work is the inner self. Before we perceive anything physical we sense it through our inner pathways. Everything exists in the non-temporal reality before it is materialized, and perceived physically. Ideas generate emotions and imagination. They activate interior patterns, which come from the creative force from which all realities manifest.

We consciously react to the noise of physical data. Takahashi calls it “the buzz of humankind.” Physical data is carried through the nerves using time lapses. Time lapses are necessary within this dimension. The sun and the stars represent the invisible light and sound patterns that form using the electromagnetic energy of the nothing that is not. This nothing is not ruled by time and space, and cannot be explained using our limited format.

From that nothing temporal perception takes over, and we separate everything that is not accepted by our educated conscious mind. But in our interior hut all physical and non-physical events and objects are recognized and connected.

Invisible Consciousness Patterns

The forms of a person’s thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language.

Benjamin Lee Whorf, the 20th century American linguist, believed that different languages influence cultural thoughts about reality. His 1956 work, Language, Thought and Reality, was published 15 years after his death.

Expressing our thoughts is a product of the cooperation of the conscious mind and the brain. Thoughts and mental associations are living things. They are energy formations, and they are assembled in invisible consciousness patterns. Thoughts surround themselves with like thoughts. They love associations and they magnetically attract like thoughts so our emotional and mental life is a framework composed of these thought structures.

We are born with basic beliefs, but most of our directional beliefs are handed down from our parents. They make us feel safe. There is no reason to be bound by these beliefs unless we limit our perception of our reality using specific language that reinforces those beliefs. When the imagination is stuck in antiquated beliefs, our emotional responses follow that course and the body consciousness if affected.

Thought structures have a direct impact on the physical cells in our bodies. Our body image and the language we use is a reflection of those structures. Some thought structures become beliefs and truths, and others move through this dimension and manifest in another. Thoughts are energy so they are always in motion and in that sense they are eternal.

Clear Water Of Consciousness

A Wood in Sound The pine tree sways in the smoke, Which streams up and up. There’s a wood in sound.

My legs lose themselves Where the river mirrors daffodils Like faces in a dream.

A cold wind and the white memory Of a sasanqua Warm rain comes and goes.

I’ll wait calmly on the bank Till the water clears And willows start to bud.

Time is singed on the debris Of air raids. Somehow, here and now, I am another.

Shinkichi Takahashi is considered a master poet in Japan. His 20th century work is regarded as Zen discipline. Subjective thought is buried in the confusion that spins around the conscious mind. But the conscious mind digs through its own rubble, and exposes the inner self. That self dusts itself off and shouts in unheard syllables. The vibration of this unity catapults through the complete psyche, and this incredible interaction gives credence to our physical manifestations.

We think the conscious mind and the inner self are at war thanks to our belief in the power of superficial exterior stimuli. Takahashi explains that one self waits for the other as we imagine our physical experiences. The conscious mind is the vehicle the inner self or soul uses to feel itself physically. Our conscious and unconscious beliefs form our reality. Some of our conscious beliefs are singed debris. They are the fallout from external air raids that influence our feelings and imagination.

Beliefs automatically attract appropriate emotions. Beliefs are reinforced through our imagination, and they cause the body to react in certain ways. Our personal relationships, our body and its condition, and our environment are the result of this fallout. The conscious mind perceives the fallout and our ego detects the presence of our inner self. Somehow, in the here and now, we become conscious willows that start to bud in our own clear water of individual consciousness.

Consciousness Is Not Limited

Wean Yourself,

Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say.

From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, Move to an infant drinking milk, To a child on solid food, To a searcher after wisdom, To a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, “The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheat fields and mountain passes, And orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight The beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up In the dark with eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

There is no “other world.” I only know what I’ve experienced. You must be hallucinating.

Rumi’s words stimulate an innate presence within us. He uses mental pictures to describe how our beliefs create our experiences. Our beliefs surround us like an electric fence and we use that fence as our physical boundary. Consciousness is not limited; they are no boundaries that contain the self. When we realize that the self is a form consciousness that functions in more than one reality at any given moment, we begin to breakdown our self-created barriers.

Rumi, tells us to connect with our inner feeling-tones and sense the self that is not restricted by space and time. When we listen to these feeling-tones we wean our ego from some of the baggage created by our belief structure.

Ancient Consciousness

Eternity and time, we say, are two different things, the one belonging to the sphere of the nature which lasts forever, the other to that of becoming and of this universe; and at once, and as if by a fairly continuous application of our concept of them, we think that we have a clear and distinct experience of them in our own souls, as we are always speaking of them and using their names on every occasion.

When we try to concentrate on them and so to speak get close to them, we find again that our thought runs into difficulties; we consider the statements of the ancient philosophers about them, who differ from one another, and perhaps also different interpretations of the same statements, and we set our minds to rest about them and think it sufficient if we are able, when we are asked, to state the opinions of the ancients, and so we are satisfied to be freed from the need of further research about them.

Plotinus wrote those thoughts in the 3rd century. Plotinus had a major impact on the Western World. He is considered the founder of Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism influenced Christian thinkers like Augustine, Bonaventure, Boethius and Pseudo-Dionysius. Islamic and Jewish thinkers like Maimonides and Abu Nasr al-Farabi also used Neo-Platonism. They found it in Greek and Arabic texts.

Trying to explain consciousness is like trying to part an eyelash. The first thought is to separate it. We like to separate things. The ego separates things for the conscious mind. We like to limit the conscious mind so we can understand it and assign a definition to it. We use that process to understand time, space and everything else that is hard to put in our box of facts and figures. Just like the air, we know consciousness exists, but we have no idea how to describe it. It surrounds us, and infiltrates every aspect of the self, but we can’t adequately define it even though we absorb and express it.

It is easier to let the ancients define consciousness for us. But the consciousness of the ancients is not the same as the consciousness we are aware of now. Consciousness is energy in action and that action creates expansion of the self who is experiencing individual as well as mass consciousness. Consciousness is a whole within a whole and as the whole expands we find a group of selves traveling within infinite boundaries of consciousness.

The Well Of Consciousness

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, In the forest at night cherished by this Wonderful, unintelligible, Perfectly innocent speech; The most comforting speech in the world. The talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges. And the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it; nobody is going to stop it. It will take as long as it wants this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

Thomas Merton, the author, poet and social reformer, was one of the most influential monks of the 20th century. He wrote more than 60 books and scores of essays and reviews. He was proponent of inter-religious understanding. He met and had conversations with the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and D.T. Suzuki. Merton liked to have conversations about individual beliefs and the value of religious unity.

Merton understood that the inner self is a portion of our consciousness that is not controlled by our perception of time and space. Merton was Catholic, but he was also a student of Zen. He believed that Zen is an aspect of the inner self. Sitting in the forest at night, he physically experienced his inner self. He discovered the voice of the conscious rain. He perceived the voice using his religious belief structure.

We all interpret our experiences using aspects of our religious and scientific belief structure. The ego with all its bodily connections must deal with the beliefs created by our sensual perceptions. We live in a body of beliefs, but the inner self is free to listen, and to act as it creates more rain from the well of consciousness.

The Garden Of Consciousness

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! Ah fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, and one of the most influential tragedies ever written in the English language. Hamlet has been analyzed, dissected and argued about over the last four hundred years. Why Hamlet hesitated in killing his uncle in the chapel seems to be a complex ethical, as well as philosophical issue. Hamlet’s decision may have been fueled by religious beliefs that were called truths at that time. Perhaps Hamlet believed that killing a praying villain would send him to heaven instead of hell.

We create our own weed-filled garden. It is a blend of beliefs, associations and influences. It is a root-filled comedy; a seed-filled tragedy, and a guilt-filled emotional flower. We materialize all our beliefs; the positive as well as the negative, in order to completely understand that our thoughts create our reality. We don’t completely understand the power of our thoughts until we physically experience what they create. Our garden is a world of mirrors. We plant and pick the images we want to experience. Our choices show us the beauty of recognizing our inner self or the folly of believing we are separated from it. Every choice creates an assortment of probabilities to experience. In each moment we can make another choice, and change how we perceive truth in our self-created world.

A Consciousness Enriched Sky

Evening Clouds Something like a cloud is spread over the sky, The earth, too, is something like cloud.

Fingers stripped of their gold foil, Overspread the earth, black as cloud shadows.

At sunset, when clouds burst into flame, The fingers move.

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poetry is an Eastern mind adventure that tickles our mental taste buds and challenges our Western perceptions. The meaning of his words seems to be tucked away in a Japanese vault of wisdom; our limited ideas about the self conflict with his Eastern esoteric thoughts. While seeking the essence of his work, we find the conscious mind and our ego wrapped around a poet’s world that is spread over a consciousness enriched sky.

All intense aspirations and unconscious motivations manifest and wait for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind. Our thoughts produce results, and when they are habitually repeated they become beliefs and truths. These beliefs and truths seem to have a permanent effect on the mind so we rarely examine them until we are assaulted by physical difficulties that change the nature of our reality.

We may blame others, or our own childhood upbringing for these negative experiences. We may also blame God or the devil and hold them responsible if our religious beliefs are rooted in separation. Or we may simply say “that’s life” and accept the negatives as necessary aspects of being physical.

When we begin to realize that we create our experiences through our concentrated thoughts, emotions and beliefs, the clouds of negativity burst into flames. The energy of the conscious mind is free to choose another thought that alters the conditions that cause us the discomfort and diminish our creativity.

The Widening Perspective Of Consciousness

The idea that our sense of self, which we usually assume to be relatively stable and enduring, is actually constructed anew each moment out of a ceaseless flux of thoughts images and sensations may be an interesting concept when we read about it, but when seen directly in meditation it becomes undeniably clear, and by understanding egocentricity it can be life changing and helpful.

Roger Walsh M.D. Ph.D. wrote those thoughts in his essay, Hidden Wisdom. The fact that the conscious mind can change like a rapidly blinking light is a hard concept to grasp when we use our pragmatic education to explain that reality.

Reality and imagination are synonymous. Without one there wouldn’t be the other. We are taught that imagination has no place in our physical reality, but our reality originates in our imagination. Our creativity and desires come from imagination. Civilizations spring from imagination, and our belief system is created and altered by our imagination.

Imagination widens our perspective of consciousness. Consciousness expands from the imaginary desires we manifest physically. Our imagination within consciousness existed before our physical form. The data within our genes and chromosomes is imprinted long before we become physical, but it is constantly expanding as we expand our awareness. Consciousness is not dependent on physical perception, but our perception of consciousness is expanded by the experience of being physical. We are constantly in a state of action, and that state has no physical or non-physical limits.

Rhythms Of Consciousness

What you knew before you were born isn’t lost. You only hide it till you’re tested, till it’s time to remember. And sure enough when you want, you’ll find some odd, funny beautiful way to find it again.

Rich Bach wrote that thought in his book The Messiah’s Handbook. It’s hard to comprehend, but we do feel and see what we expect to see. Our physical world is a reference point. The exterior painting is a replica of our inner desire. Our living portrait of the world grows in the mind. It is three dimensional painting, and every individual in it is using a unique brush to color that painting. The great creativity of our consciousness was functioning before birth and it continues to function after death.

All consciousness has a hand in creating the world. Our physical world rises from the ancient feeling-tones that make up portions of our psyche. Feelings and emotions manifest in specific ways, and our thoughts grow on a bed of deep and abiding rhythms. These rhythms of consciousness are the result of the innate creativity that is inherent in all species.

The earth’s consciousness is connected to the consciousness of every species. We rise from unknowing to knowing rhythms in an odd, funny and beautiful way. As we do, we remember that our unconscious knowledge is knowing in its own unknowing rhythms.

Bach explains the unknowing this way:

As you’re one with the person you were a second ago or a week ago, as you’re one with the person you’re going to be a moment from now or a week from now, so you’re one with the person you were a lifetime ago, the one you are in an alternate lifetime, the one you’ll be a hundred lifetimes into what you call your future.

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Fearless Consciousness

Keep walking though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, But don’t move the way fear makes you move. Walk to the well. Turn as the earth and the moon turn, circling what they love. Whatever circles comes from the center.

Rumi’s poetry is timeless. He lived over 700 years ago, but his thoughts are 21st century thoughts. Rumi understood that the inner self is fearless. He also knew that contradictory beliefs create fear. Unassimilated and fearful beliefs adopt a life of their own, and they dominate certain areas of our reality. Being human is a journey through a particular area of consciousness. That journey is a melting pot of choices, perceptions and probabilities. We stir that pot using the brain. The brain is spoon-fed by the conscious mind, and it deals with the time lapses implied by our sensual perception.

Rumi believed that the inner self functions without time and space. The inner self is our fearless consciousness. It guides us through this area of consciousness and never leaves its area of consciousness. It interacts with the conscious mind as well as other areas of consciousness. The inner self is the catalyst that instigates the fulfillment of our deeper purpose as we experience our journey. We interpret those pulsations using our belief structure. We act out our beliefs, and move in and out of fear in order to sense the purpose of our inner self.

When we sense that purpose, the earth and the moon turn as we turn. All energy turns to the music of the fearless inner self.

The Consciousness Of Flesh

You are not made of water and earth You are not from this whirling universe The body is a river And soul is the running water of life there But where are you? You are not aware of either

Rumi, the 13th century poet and spiritual advisor, talks about the body and soul as if they were one. We forget that the body is composed of atoms and molecules that possess their own consciousness. Our organs possess cells that sense their own identity. They function with a purpose and have memory even though they are constantly changing. They produce a vital body consciousness that has the ability to maintain its own health and equilibrium.

The body is a living gestalt of responsive flesh. It has its own right of existence. The same energy that moves our mind forms the body. The flesh is as spiritual as the soul, and the soul is as natural as the flesh. We can say that the body is the living soul. The soul lives in physical as well as nonphysical form, but while we are physically alive in the flesh the body is the living soul.

The body has the ability to heal itself so the soul in the flesh has the same ability. The soul automatically expands by trusting its own nature.

Truth Of Consciousness

Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth, strength etc., are names for other processes connected with life and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is made, just as health, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience.

William James, in his 1907 essay, Pragmatism’s Concept of Truth explains how truth is whatever we want it to be. We design our reality around a set of beliefs that may not be true to others. The truth we call truth is flexible; it is wrapped in beliefs and changes as we alter our beliefs. There are inner truths, and they exist without beliefs. They are expressions that hold elements of significance in all areas of consciousness.

We don’t identify many of our beliefs as beliefs. We call them truths so we don’t question them. When we rely on the preconceived truths of others, we create a reality filled with judgmental convictions. We add these convictions to our accepted truths, and we experience a mass reality of sorts. We create these different realities so we can expand our awareness of physical consciousness.

The Universal Beauty Of Consciousness

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the Eternal One.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in 1841. Emerson knew that ideas are psychic intent. Psychic intent generates emotions as well as imagination. Ideas are a force of action within consciousness. They are the means by which all interior events are manifested physically. Everything is the result of the action of consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing; it is action. That action contains and is the wise silence of the eternal one.

Emotions and imagination are a powerful form of energy. Intense emotions have more energy than the energy required to launch a rocket in space. Emotions are thoughts from our interior reality. They break the barrier between the physical and nonphysical and manifest in our objective world. They achieve this feat over and over again as we focus on our individual and mass reality.

We do live in divisions, in parts, and particles. But we are never separated from the universal beauty of consciousness. Our physical activities are directed by the conscious mind, but the body consciousness also plays a part in constructing our reality. The invisible counterparts within our body consciousness are fueled by the whole. These counterparts never leave us. Even after death the invisible interior sounds and interior light qualities of our body consciousness stay with us, and we continue to use them to focus and experience other realities.