Between Ideas

Between Ideas of East and West Lies a Moment in Bodily Presence

Ivy Gaiser

California Institute of Integral Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contours of the East-West encounter. Further, I plan to situate myself and my own experiences within this context.

Between Ideas of East and West Lies a Moment in Bodily Presence

Where do I stand in the East-West encounter?

            Once upon a time I worshipped scientific inquiry. My truth was that which had been/could be proven by objective observation of the tangible universe. I no longer consider science to be my ultimate truth. Science to me provides a fascinating microscope into the way things work and the visual beauty found in single-cell anatomy or oak tree trigonometry. But I'm interested in why and that's not a question any scientist can answer. I'm interested in diving deep down into the heart of the system to see what keeps the valves pumping. Not the mechanism, but the force. Where and what is the battery? These are questions that I have found are only answerable through self-inquiry.

            Through knowing myself I am able to unlock the secrets of the very universe. Through knowing myself I see that the force that animates this body and these thoughts that I possess also animates everything else that exists. I am the creative mind/force that thinks things into existence. On a transpersonal level this means that I am the creator of myself and this creation called myself. On the level of this one human being that sits and types, I am the creator of my reality, my body, my choices, actions, perceptions and reactions. I am the creator of my illnesses and the thought-energy that manifests into physical illness. I see every universal process mirrored in the individual processes of being human.

As Elgin states, “We are small pieces of God's mental apparatus” (Elgin Year:Page Number). So the universal mind is mirrored in the singular human mind. The power to create material/tangible reality lies in the hands of every person. Every physical thing built by human hands was first thought of by a human brain. Thought turned to creation. A chair is a thought manifested. A human is a thought manifested. Whose thought?

            If this is my reality, then what does that mean in terms of East or West? I think it's safe to say that I stand firmly rooted in the East, whatever “East” actually means, while I dabble in the West with my wandering limbs. The thinker who has come closest to articulating what I experience to be Truth about the nature of reality is Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, and a man certainly from the East, both geographically as well as metaphorically speaking. Within the Tao I find reflections of my own experience and renderings of my own heart in faded Technicolor. On the one hand the depth provided is no less than ten dimensions of vibrantly colored articulation, while on the other hand the depth is so simple as to be overlooked at first glance. Because of my affinity with Lao Tzu and other Eastern philosophers that I have read, I place myself more in the East.  I do not take other people's words and truths on some random sense of them being an authority on the subject. Rather, I feel around for what resonates with my own vibrations and experiences of truth, when it comes to the areas of philosophy and cosmology.

What is the East-West encounter to me?

            What is the East-West encounter...? A collision of the material and the spiritual. The logical and the intuitive. The Scientific Method and self-inquiry. Individual consciousness and community consciousness. When I think of “East”, I think of meditation, yoga and  Buddha-consciousness. I think of thousands of years of experiential knowledge and wisdom gained from looking inward. I also think of those things which are not geographically placed in the east, but nevertheless represent a certain kind of awareness about the interconnectedness of all living things with one another and with the universe itself. There is an awareness that all things are of the same essence.

            It is difficult at times for me to see the importance of the “West” in terms of things we can learn from Western traditions. When all of the various traditions that make up “East” are brought together it seems like a fairly complete and healthy world-view, if we are to take the best aspects of each tradition. There is awareness of the creative powers of thought, whether we are creating that which hinders or enhances us. There is an awareness of the Oneness of all existence. There is the cultivation of deep compassion and care for all living things.

            At first glance, it appears that Western modes of thought are purely egocentric and counter intuitive if one is drawn to any kind of spiritual path. I do believe that if we look deeper, however, there is one big Western paradigm that is very important, and this is self-actualization/individuation. I have much to learn about the specifics of various schools of thought, but it does seem like in the East, with the over-arching cultural paradigms based on community connectedness and interdependence, there is not really a cultural drive to develop as an individual; to cultivate individual talents and to self-actualize in such a way that each person's unique gifts are brought forth to shine and influence the world.

            In the West we are encouraged to be an individual, to follow our personal dreams and become whatever/whomever we can imagine ourselves to be. This individualism is the same thing that causes a feeling of separateness and isolation that pervades the Western paradigm, unfortunately. People seem to think that if we are each singular, unique beings, then there is nothing that ties us to one another. We are separate cells floating, lost in space, unaware that “space” is actually one body of which we are an integral piece.

            The encounter, then, is to take the best of both worlds and mush them together for a more complete picture. Transcend the self not by escaping this human life, but instead by embracing and fully embodying what it is to be a human and to be a unique individual who is a piece of art: 1/1. The challenge is that this piece of art is never done being created while we still draw breath. It is in constant movement, changing and evolving, layers being added, colors and textures playing with light and shadow in a dance that does not cease until the artist has truly completed the work of being human, however many lifetimes that might take. The artist: who is the canvas and the paint and the creator of both.

An Integration of Sorts.

            This discussion of the divine act of creation in which everything and everyone participates brings me to the body, which seems to be left out of everyone's thoughts to a certain extent. This is of course a generalization, but it does seem that in the East the idea is to transcend the body, which is just a material trapping for a spirit that wants freedom from flesh and its desires. In the West there is rampant dissociation from the body, treating it as an object of study by science and the source of sin in Western religious tradition. The West focuses on making the body look good on the outside while ignoring what it feels like to inhabit the body, whether that is a positive or negative experience. Everyone seems a bit disdainful of this human flesh. This is again coming from a person who has not studied extensively the specific traditions of the East, so I may be making assumptions and generalizations.

            For myself, I only came to know myself as a spiritual being in concert with coming into my body and experiencing it as a living body, rather than as a gross lump of flesh that I had to carry around all the time. When I became aware that my flesh was my creation, that “I” was not something separate from all of these cells, and that my thoughts were not my Self, I dove into this creation. I permeated my flesh with consciousness and lovingly tended to the needs that I became aware of for the very first time, since it was the first time I took the time to listen and care about what I was hearing. I cared for the physical and emotional needs of my body, caring for myself as though I were my own child, because in a sense I am.          

            The experience of inhabiting my body feels so different from everything that came before that I feel as though all the moments that came before were a waking dream of the worst kind. My sense of self was wrapped up in negative thoughts floating above a despised body that I couldn't seem to get rid of. Inhabiting this body on the other hand; knowing the experiences of my toes, knees, muscles and organs, is itself a transcendent experience. I get to know flesh consciousness, cell consciousness, wave consciousness, and hence, Universal consciousness. To experience the body is to experience the larger body and cosmic self.

            Furthermore, it is through the creativity of the body, be it physical creativity in the form of dancing or singing, or the mental creativity of perfecting a craft such as writing, or any of the other ways that our unique manifestations of creativity are expressed brings us into contact with our authentic selves. Through self-expression a person is connecting to the creative force, or the Universal will, or the Tao or God or whatever word you feel like choosing to describe this common experience.

            Neither do I wish to escape from my body by hiding in my mind and observing my motions as though I were a robot, nor do I wish to transcend my body and its earthly desires in the pursuit of some ethereal state. When my body stops functioning I will gladly re-enter the ether, but until then I will embody all that it is to be a human that thinks and feels and creates and does so with the larger awareness that there is no separation between this self of mine and all the other selves. I may be one unique thought, while you are another wildly different thought, but we stem from the same mind and so long as I hold that knowing in my awareness, I can be all that I set out to be when I chose this particular body and its lessons and experiences in this lifetime. I would very much like to live up to the high hopes and expectations of the mind that set me in motion; the force that builds stars, mountains, galaxies, and spiders alike.

            In thinking of integration, I find myself grasping at metaphors of “East” and “West” and wondering what really fits. No matter the metaphor, be it the masculine/feminine or the spiritual/material, individual/community; in the end the larger picture to be gleaned is that we are dealing in dualities. Any time we operate in duality we are missing half the picture. If we pretend that shadow is not a part of light, or that masculine can exist without feminine, then we miss the point. So if we are going to do any kind of integration, it is simply to recognize the limitations of a dualistic world-view. There is no East without West. There is no Me without You. There is no Shadow without Light. Rather than focusing on one side or another, it would be best to give the quarter a spin and recognize that both sides belong to a single coin.

References

Elgin, First Name.

            Year of Publication. Title. If it's an article, say In name of publication, author's /editor name of             publication(ed). Place of publication: Publisher.

The Decision

The Decision

Ivy Gaiser

California Institute of Integral Studies

             

              William Jack made the decision to leave his troubled homeland at the dawn of the 19th century because he couldn't handle the constant fighting between the Catholics and Protestants. He was troubled by his family's role in the displacement of so many native Irish, although he also felt a deep connection to the land where his family had been for a hundred years. William bid his family farewell and hopped aboard a ship headed for America to seek a new life.

              Had William chosen to stay in Ireland, he would have seen a comfortable life as a member of the privileged class of Protestants. Instead he decided to start over in a foreign land many months away from his homeland. He risked his life in a difficult sea voyage which saw many fellow passengers succumb to disease and despair. Happily, William made it to Pennsylvania in one piece, and he met a woman on the voyage whom he would marry after a brief courtship.

              Unhappily, William found himself, in Pennsylvania, re-enacting the lives of his ancestors who first came to Ireland as part of the Ulster Plantation. For William it was conflicts with the native peoples of Pennsylvania that made it a difficult life. At times there was an uneasy peace, as William and his fellows played middle-men between the indigenous people and the American government, and other times they were at war with the natives, fighting over land rights.

              It seems to be a common occurrence throughout history that people repeat the worst mistakes of those who came before them. So Jack left Ireland to start fresh, thinking that he could just find some unoccupied land for himself and a wife and children, and instead he found himself displacing the native people in his new land as well. On the one hand he wanted things to be peaceful and yet he would not give up what he thought was his right to his own land.

              William Jack was a confused man who tried to do the right thing, but inevitably others were hurt. As William's son Thomas grew up, he received mixed messages about what was the right and the wrong thing. On the one hand he learned the importance of family and taking care of his own people, and yet he lived through wars and participated in the dislocation of thousands of native people. Thomas was also subject to the increasingly violent and unpredictable behavior of his father.

              There were similar patterns throughout the various settlements of Mercer, PA. People who thought of themselves as rather upstanding citizens were slowly getting twisted inside from the hurt they were inflicting on others. They may not have been aware of the sources of their common demons, but common they were. So you have two families that have now been in America for a couple generations, and their children marry. These two individuals have similar family histories which are then passed on to their children, and so on and so forth, until you come to the 20th century where alcholics are beating their children and drowning in beer because they don't know what they feel anymore. They don't know what's real inside of themselves. The only thing that keeps these people from taking their own lives out of depression is the love for their families and the love of music they've brought from the old country.

              The next generation grows up and resorts to the only path they've been shown by their forbears, which is the path of alcoholic numbness. Perhaps this child is one who is especially bright and sensitive and he is beaten into submission by his angry father for one too many years. This bright and sensitive child, full of creativity and madly in love with his piano, is taught that it's not okay to feel. He is taught to push his feelings down into the pit of his stomach and from there he can drown them in beer.

              It is this child who beats and mentally and emotionally traumatizes his petite little wife. This child of a man is completely separated from those aspects of himself that make him a human. He is afraid of what he thinks and feels and in his anger and frustration he goes blind to his own as well as his wife's humanity.

              Michael, for this is the man's name, soon loses his wife and young children after one too many threats against his wife. He is left alone with his rage and his disease. He drinks more and more until his liver is fighting for life. Michael is lonely and talks of his children and his regret while fused to his favorite bar-stool. Life becomes a daily struggle with a rotting liver and nothing but sadness, and Michael decides to save his family the trouble of a burial and he sets his house on fire before shooting himself in the head.

              Michael is survived by 3 children by two different women. The children struggle with the legacy of self-abuse passed down through the generations. They fight for equilibrium and find that perhaps they are winning this uphill battle after all. They have taken the drive for creativity and made that the focus of life.

              Michael's oldest is a visual artist/clothing designer/musician/all-around creative type who lives and dies to create and express and has dealt with self-harm and suicidal thoughts since the age of 10. The second born turns to the written word to make sense of the world. This child is as sensitive as the father they never knew, and driven to express everything happening inside, intuitive centuries of struggles passed down that are begging to breathe fresh air and escape from the depths of the collective gut. Child number three is separate from the older siblings, never having met them. She struggles to make sense of her life and spends time drawing faeries and navigating the world of substances as well. She looks to the older sisters to make some sense of the world, now that they are in contact as adults.               These children of abuse are looking for a new way to be in the world; A sense of place within their own hearts is the path to freedom from the past. Demons are faced and embraced and a healthier vision of reality is the result. I, for one, am grateful that I get to be the one to end cycles of abuse passed down through multiple family lines. I am a new beginning.

Ancestral Healing: In Recognition that everyone has the same squishy heart at birth and everyone needs hugs.

Ivy Gaiser

California Institute of Integral Studies

What exactly happened this semester? I discovered my history. I discovered a history that I was at first deeply resistant to accept. I was ashamed of the people who came before me; I did not want to be a part of the bloody history of the United States, with ancestors who came here in the very beginning of the 17^th century. I was horrified by this news. I have had to go through a process of recognizing my ancestors, accepting them and what they may have done, and forgiving them for it. Forgiveness is easy once awareness crawls up to the surface of the mind, to remind me that those who cause harm have themselves been wounded. This is the cycle. Knowing the cycle gives me the chance to put an end to the suffering. By knowing the causes of suffering, I can make choices to minimize the suffering I cause for other people by working on myself and coming to terms with my own history, trauma, and deep wounding. I can choose to be the end of the many cycles of abuse that have been passed down through all the generations to land in this moment, in this particular self.

I recently received a strong message that presented me with a blunt truth about healing. I realized that I walk around with this big idea of HEALING as this ominous project that will take my whole life and I have to focus all of my energy on that one thing, but in reality healing simply means coming into and remaining in the present moment. Wholeness is already the natural state. Fracturing is only the mind making choices without questioning why. All things must be brought into presence/awareness. This is healing: Letting go of attachments to feelings that have become too familiar by being clutched for too long, and letting go of the attachment to victimhood and expectations of more of the same. Healing is allowing it all to be okay, whatever it may be. Healing is removing imaginary boundaries from within the mind, between the ego and the shadow. Self/Not-Self. Boundaries are fictional. The fracture is fictional. The self is already whole and perfect. Healing means accepting the inherent perfection of the self. Healing means forgiving the self, and it can be as easy or as hard as we need it to be. Healing is choosing to meet the self, and release old stories in order to embrace the present. One can choose to shed masks and instead let hidden light shine forth. I merely have to acknowledge the power of the self. Feel. Acknowledge. Release. Learn.

This task of healing is a lifelong process; it’s just not the process that I used to think it was. Being at CIIS there is a great deal of talk about transcendence, enlightenment, and meditation. There is talk of the peak experience and a focus on seeking something. The truth is that seeking this elusive thing is often equivalent to looking everywhere for your feet without realizing that you can close your eyes and feel your feet, if you would only focus your attention on how they are feeling right here in this very moment.

For myself, when I focus my attention on my breath, emotions, and the vibrations I feel in every cell, I am instantly healed as I am transported out of the past and back to the present. As soon as I am here experiencing the ever-present moment as it unfolds, I realize there is nowhere to go and that none of my pieces are missing. I am healed by my own presence. I am healed by the love I feel for myself and the recognition that, though there may be pain upon me, the pain does not define me. I am not my experiences. By entering the present moment with full awareness, I become the universe. I recognize that I am everything and everything is me. I can see the whole vast network of interconnected systems that make up Being.

Furthermore, I can see the long histories that each person living today brings with them, from their ancestors back to the very beginning of things. When I look at someone like George W. Bush, I don’t feel hatred. I feel a deep sadness in my heart, recognizing his pain as my own. My motto during his presidency, whenever I heard people spewing hate in his direction, was that this man needed a hug more than anything else. This was a sad man who did not experience himself as divine or worthy of love. Hitler himself was beaten nearly to death by his own father when he was a child. I see in him my own blind anger and hatred that fueled me when I was young. We demonize others who show us our deepest shadow sides, pretending that they alone hold the darkness and we are only light. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot: These men have answered the call sent out by the collective unconscious begging for a scapegoat to hold our darkest selves.

By recognizing myself in others, I can feel empathy for them and I can forgive them by forgiving myself. In order to forgive my ancestors for the pain and suffering they caused, I must look inside of myself for those times when I felt so hurt that I wanted to spew my suffering onto others. I must forgive myself for those times when I have acted out of fear instead of love and I caused suffering for others because of it.

There is a great deal of pain that has been passed down through the many generations and various branches of my family tree. I know from a simple Google search that this ancestor or that ancestor was escaping religious persecution in their home country, or just war in general, when they first came to what they considered “The New World” looking for a better life. These people, operating out of fear, unconsciously passed on all of their wounds to the indigenous people they fought with, and the African-American people they bought as slaves.

Even as I recognize the systems and cycles that created these circumstances, I am again saddened for what my ancestors have done. Some of them were even taken hostage during a raid by the indigenous people whose land they took, only to be rescued 3 months later. Those particular ancestors were also slave owners. Yet I also have ancestors who were on the other side of their own particular conflicts. Oppressed and oppressor at some point created a marriage that created me.

It’s easy to be overcome by the emotions evoked by a history of violence. And then I remember that those who caused harm were first harmed themselves. And those who came before were harmed, and so on back and back and back. I tend to want to find the root, as though I could somehow reach back through history and yank it out, if only I could identify it.

As I search, I am eventually reminded that there is no single root to be picked out and examined. The root is the human condition, as is the cure. We are creatures who are easily hurt and we unconsciously act out of fear and stories that we tell ourselves about how the world revolves around us. We are also creatures who have evolved to a place where we begin to grow into an awareness that we do not, in fact, have to act unconsciously. We are slowly becoming aware of choice. As we awaken to the vast potential held within the present moment, we awaken as well to our ability to make choices in every moment. We choose to hold on to a feeling, or to feel it fully and then release it completely. We choose to shift our perspective or not. We choose to see or remain blinded by our fear.

This examination of my ancestry and the work to heal untold wounds would appear at first glance to be a harrowing journey through shadow and heartache. In reality it is just another practice in self-awareness and presence of mind and emotion. By connecting with my ancestors and their stories, I become more deeply connected to my own heart and recognize the ways in which I act out my own fears and stories. The more stories that I wade through, the more empathy and compassion I can feel for the broken-hearted people who make up my history as well as the histories of everyone else alive today.

It is my duty as well as my pleasure to tear off old scabs worn for too long, paraded like battle scars worthy of praise and respect. There is an unspoken sense for too many people in this country that the more deeply hidden the pain, the stronger the person is for bearing it in silence; to openly weep is considered weak because of the vulnerability revealed by the raw state of emotions. People do not willingly tear off their scabs to reveal the unhealed flesh beneath that has actually been suffocating for want of fresh air.     

In order to tear off scabs, I must choose to engage myself and my family with a memory that is not always kind or forgiving. I am faced with healing the rifts in my living family, which pose a much greater threat to my ego than examining stories that go back hundreds of years. Here in the present, I have a grandfather with whom I am unable to communicate. I sent him a letter several years ago after deciding that I could not bear to go another moment without telling him everything I was feeling. I told him how hurt I was by our relationship, by the ways that he chooses to deal with his emotions, which are extremely harmful to everyone around him. I plainly told him that he has no right to treat others as though they do not deserve the very same dignity and respect that he himself deserves. I told him how disgusted I was by his behavior and that he could choose to change it and to be a better person. I even spoke about our history together, of when I was a kid and I looked up to him and wanted to be a cabinet-maker just like him. I was in awe of him and I said so.

My grandfather never mentioned that letter to me until last summer, when he mentioned it in passing, saying that he knows that I have no regard for him whatsoever and I think he’s a horrible person. That’s what he took from my letter. I was astonished and heart-broken. Thinking back on the letter, I can now see that although my intentions were good, I was not speaking with my authentic voice. I was coming from a place of anger and frustration, rather than a place of love and acceptance. I recently wrote a new letter to my grandpa, but I have not yet sent it to him. I know that this second letter was written straight from my heart, from a place of forgiveness and understanding, and yet I worry that he will not see or feel the love in the letter, because he is blinded by his own stories and stubbornness. I understand him all too well because we are, in fact, a little too alike at times. His bullheadedness is my own, as is his thick, protective shell that guards a tender heart. I have rarely seen my grandpa get sentimental, but I know what is underneath his hard mask.

Examining the longer history that predates, and thereby produced, my grandpa, I come to feel compassion on an ever-deepening level for this man that I once wrote off as a stubborn, unfeeling jerk. I have learned that within my great-grandfather’s generation, with 9 siblings in total and only one of them a female, there was a great amount of violence and aggression among these men. Many of my great-great uncles beat their wives. Many of them shipped their wives off to insane asylums, or their sons did so to their own wives. This small fact alone shows the great amount of repressed emotions within this family. They also grew up in the German Methodist Church, with their father as a pastor, during a time when it was not acceptable to be German in the United States after WWI broke out.

So now I see a generation of men who were beaten down, and then they beat down their wives, who beat down the children. Tracing the violence against women in my grandpa’s family, I not only gain a clearer understanding of my great-grandma, whom I found to be a difficult woman to like on the few occasions that I met her (especially because she was mean and spiteful toward my grandma), but also a better understanding of my grandma and the ways that my grandpa interacts with her and my aunts and then my sister and myself. There is a lot of subtle misogyny that informs the vastly different ways that my grandpa treats my male cousins vs. my sister and myself. Now I know that he learned this behavior from his uncles and his father, and it is difficult to blame him. I feel more compassion for the child that my grandpa was, who learned to turn his own feelings into aggression against a perceived “weaker” other, rather than to appear vulnerable or weak himself. That which we dislike in another, we dislike in ourselves, after all. Women represent the softer side in these men that they were forced to stuff deep down into their guts and ignore, and beating the women is like them trying to beat the vulnerability out of themselves.

Any discussion about healing for me always comes back to cycles of oppression and the ways in which we internalize and then pass on the abuse to the next generation. The other part of the story is then to step out of old stories and enter into the present moment. It is my hope to continue this healing work by bringing my ancestors and their pain and suffering into the light of day. I want to learn these histories and acknowledge each person, no matter what they may have done in their life, as a human with a tender heart. I want to be the forgiveness that these people never granted themselves. I can grant them forgiveness, and let their spirits release the past and re-join the present. The best way for me to do this work is all within my own spirit. My spirit is every spirit, so by forgiving myself, I forgive everyone else.

On a more practical level, my wish is to travel to the lands of my ancestors in order to strengthen my connection to their histories and journeys. Something indescribable happened when I went to Ireland, which was a release for an old man who seemed to follow me around and berate me for everything that I did wrong. I did a ritual for this old man when I was in Ireland, allowing him the freedom to be and do all the things he felt he could not be or do when he had lived his life. He got to release the bitter old man aspect of himself and instead embrace a boy who wanted nothing more than to sing and dance and feel the wind on his face and run through the fields. I forgave this old man, which gave him permission to forgive himself and release his story which was not only holding him hostage, but holding me hostage as well within the same strict code of conduct, which was utterly stifling. As I felt this old man’s spirit lighten, mine lightened as well, and I felt free to sing and dance and be joyful.

It is my hope that by traveling to the lands of my ancestors, I will come to know more of these people who live on through me, and I will have the opportunity to give them recognition and forgiveness and a chance to release the stories that hold them hostage. I want to bring everyone into the present moment with me, to share my joy in life and the love that we all feel in our true hearts, underneath our stories and masks and fears.

By chronicling my journey through poetry, prose, video, photograph, and any other means that comes to me, I will give the recognition and honor that my ancestors deserve, for being warriors in their own ways. I believe that the world needs to forgive and be forgiven in order for us to move forward in our evolution. We have to surrender to the present moment, release everything that came before, and move into a more joyous, holistic future. In order to do this we have to swallow our collective pride and muster the courage to be true to our deeper selves. One by one we have to make the choice to end the cycles that came before and choose to create something new. I only hope that by writing about my own journey, I can affect some change for others who are searching for a way out of their own murky histories.

How does my heart speak?

I see you struggling with the daily challenges, searching for a better way to be and to breathe more fully amidst a litany of heartbreaks and heartaches and all of these moments come and go in the blink of a decision made or undone. Presume nothing and take all your moments as the precious gifts of consciousness in which a choice is made again and again to return to breathing and feeling and worshipping the self in the only way that matters; the only way that shatters every egoic presumption and fires off synapses with the delight of heavy unction to the displeasure of a frightened ego.

Why is the ego frightened?

The ego is frightened because it knows itself without the acceptance of a love encompassing. It seeks out romance, perchance, salvation in the other and a solitary vision of reliving memory into infinity without bothering to feel the heart beat or the cheeks when they greet another face with a mirror of loving gratitude for these precious feet that bear us ever onward and upward, and downward and secretly spiraling even as we are admiring the obviousness of our fate here on this earth in these fantastical bodies of cartoonish proportions. I am only as proportional as my mind allows contortionism outside the realms of opportunity and perpetuity and ingenuity borne of a human air. Like an Irish air, bittersweet melancholy that evokes indescribable joy inside inconsolable sorrow.

This heart dreams the dreams of eternity that everybody feels, even if we don’t always know how to put into words the essence of our own creative desire to return to the source we think is far away but in fact is deep inside our guts. My guts are well aware that something grows within them and yet my mind refuses to acknowledge the wisdom grown in endless acres of intestine over lifetimes of mammalian memory. Bacterial sages that have been through the thick of it and learned the best ways to digest the hidden sensations flowing heart to mind, mind to bowel, bowel to sewer because that’s the value we give to our own internal processes in a culture of bodily exclusion born of historical delusion and shadow discomfort.

I am the singer, the dreamer, the feeler and the believer in you.

You who are me.

I who am you.

We who only exist because of one another and in spite of our separation that bleeds us dry at the scabby laceration points. Lucky for us it is these scars that keep us aware of the inconsistency of our condition and hold us ever mindful of a need for re-integration. The very wounding that beguiles and astounds holds within it all the lessons we think we have forgotten but really we need only to remove the sunglasses and look into the brightness that is our Self. They say the moth is not drawn to the flame because it seeks the brightness, but rather that Moth is seeking the darkest point, just beyond the other side of the obvious sensation; a valuable lesson. Go toward the light not to bask in ascendant holiness, but to seek the source of the deeper, darker sensation we attempt to avoid in premature revelation.

This is the revelation:

 There is no light without darkness.

There is no me without you.

Within the tired regions of my meaninglessness lay your formlessness and our collective desire to merge into the cosmos and know ourselves as co-creators in the Universal process. Our deepest desire is to believe that which we already know inside, the powers we possess inside of our rising and falling chests; the seat of creation in our pelvic thrusts; the anonymity of responsibility within the whole perfect vision of creation.

This vision is my vision.

I envision a long-term, metamorphic scope for this project called Earth, Awareness, Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The reflexive vision of creative power turned back upon itself to reflect upon its own majesty un-self-consciously.

Joyous heart.

Singing heart.

Dancing heart sees itself and knows its own warmth in the light of bodily vibration. Waves of motion sweep the chakras and all the centers know themselves completely in the light of cell-by-cell activity. Infused with energy these cells become aware of the role they play in a devout and holy way, rising to the task of their own self-created image of divinity. They find a balance of activity and receptivity wherein they hold all versions of potentiality within an ever-broadening dimensionality that refuses to sell itself short.

This is the story that my heart tells me in the quiet moments:

I am my own creation and my salvation lies inside my deepest devotional centers. The central identification is one of breath, vision and creation, rooted deep down in my body’s hearth center: the place that was first ripped to shreds before I knew how important it was. My fire lost a lot of coals and it has taken a long while to rebuild the central flame, but now that I know what the fire is for, I can choose to tend it lovingly, gently stoking and turning the logs of my inquiry amidst the ashes of hate burnt up and blown away in ceremonial circumstance.

This may not be the proper answer to the question of this final paper, yet it is the best way I know to express my means of inner manipulation toward a more wholesome sense of self. Between the lines I hope to find a sense of calm that eludes my mind when it gets thinking itself into a circular geometry while forgetting the perfect symmetry of divinity. If I simply allow my fingers the freedom to play with keys and rhythms held under distinct configurations of vowel-consonant-vowel-vowel-consonant, I tend to find some hidden meaning that only reveals itself when I shut down the ego mind for a long while and listen to the wisdom of the body morphic. It is this topography that feeds me daily with the benefit of a counter-key telling me that green pleases and yellow delights me too times the tender timetable letting me know the answer before the question has been formulated by the second-guessing peanut-gallery that sees one portion of the map decontextualized and yet not at all demystified by speaking plainly and gaining a sense of awe and rejuvenation around the center of my heart’s vitality.

My heartfelt experience struggles to explain itself with inadequate language that serves only to confuse a felt knowing that needs no explanation and resists a definitive contemplation that will only result in deflation. Mental migration is the only irrigation worth tending to in moments between sensations rendered invaluable by the popular mind under virtual-hypnosis therapy.

It is the belief of this self that the hours and years are here to teach us something beautiful about the usefulness of a fleshy incarnation and it seems as though we freeze through mental seizures dealt daily by the green-grass-brigade marching down side streets so as not to seem too obvious about their takeover of our senses. It is to the relief of this self that the opium is losing its potency these days and the heart is taking center stage to demand a relational convocation within the conflagrations attended by recovering addicts to the age of the media plague. Up in smoke we go and all that’s left is a sense of self wondering who turned on the lights.

Lucky for us this heart knows best and easily picks up pieces of ash to mix with earth, plant and cultivate toward new growth.

When I breathe deep I see infinity sultry-sleek, languorous and wild, joyous and free-formed. My exponential expansion comes in light of my very nature and so I simply act according to an internal dialogue that knows me better than I do.

And I cry. I cry for the state of the world and the unseen and unacknowledged darkness that drives the forces of excess to deny the heart its freedom to sing and dance and create itself freshly in each moment. I cry the tears of separation that convince us to destroy one another as if we were not one and the same Selfless entity called divinity or energy or vibration.

And then I move. Waves of vibration wash over and embrace me and my whole self dissolves into oneness with the beat of a unifying drum. Then there is the exhale, combined with a gesture of releasing and surrender to the very present moment. Weaving in and out of fellow movers and shakers I elate in my maker, the grand inquisitive creator stirring in my vital center and awakening with a slow crawl up my spine to render me ecstatic—bones and muscles often rigid find themselves suddenly supple, greeted with the mystical energy of the serpent who is no longer dormant. All my centers intertwine and play with one another as I ride the wave and taste the brave substance of my truest self as I come out to play the evening away. In the midst of chaos my breath and limbs are all there is and blood beats fast and fierce to the tips of fingers and toes, cheeks and nose. I am undone and so blend in with the light and shadows in the room. I am light and shadow. No more nor less dense than all that calls itself consciousness.