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.