Jalan jalan....

--"Just travelin' around."

--The edge of the map is physical. 
The map is growing into unknown territory.

--What emotions teach is how to embrace them with not-emotion.

--There is a cost to not wandering away from the statues and decrees of societies. Which animal can speak about the universe? 
If all of them can, who, then, needs to be listening?

--The adventure of life and death is the same as the other stuff.

--Curiosity.

--Risk.

--Alliances.

--Let it go. Whatever it was. This is fresh time.

--Food and water is every body's master. 
Any talking about afterlife is fear. 
No afterlife, no fear. 
Just food and water.

--The skeleton has no fear.

--Build how you want to feel from the bones out. 
Empowered? 
Confident? Alert? 
Shape the bones. 
Posture is mood. 
Move bones, change mood. 
The image is not the canvas frame. 
Bones.

--The "thing people remember" is the least interesting thing about being alive.

--Ezekiel Concentrate, Pencils Down, and Quiz 110.

--The soft tissue is useless. 
It's just for moving the bones around. 
The skull can't fret being empty.

--The history of the illness and malady is worse than the sensations the historian hasn't recorded yet.

--When it was really hectic, nothing was listening to a history. 
The histories popped up after the dust settled. 
That's why time slows down when we are at the edge of knowing what's actually happening. 
All systems are go except the historian. 
This is that edge.

--We have to be talking to ourselves about our lives to know what happened. 
That's extra-curricular.

--There was no good reason to be afraid of what happened to anyone.

--Someone asked what my intention was the other day. 
Survival. 
That's it. 
And having fun with friends along the way. 
And mischief, but that's really what survival is. Universal mischief.

--Awakening. 
Enlightenment. 
Liberation. 
Truest Lie. 
Anti-Awakening. 
Anti-Enlightenment. 
Anti-Liberation. 
Falsest Truth.

--"Word hustles shuffling skeletons throughout eternity." Nun-the-Wiser.

^__^

"If you ask me why I loved him, I can only say, because he was he, and I was I."

Death may not be the edge of memory where life is forgotten, but the release of dependency on memory to substantiate the experience of the present. 
Life happens in the past, where we define and describe what happened in a past present. 
Maybe death is a vehicle that allows us to catch up with ourselves as we shed all dependency. 
Maybe. 

I don't know.

To learn a friend dies is not to lose them [to anything unnatural].

Perhaps death is when the existence of the friend is supremely valued, expressed in the extra-ordinary amount of time they remain in our attention after we learn they are, indeed, in the salad.

Death is the edge of memory. No difference exists between death and forgetting. Many things have already died times-over merely through not-remembering.

What is valuable in experiencing the loss of anything is understanding it was never actually a possession. In the end, no one possesses a single aspect of whatever life could be; an island of picking-up and putting-down; animals fighting, fawning and fretting over everything-on-loan, including each other.

Is there an ecstatic equivalent to grief, a celebratory anti-agony towards those still alive, on par with the intensity of loss? 

If so, do we wait to express this anti-agony for no real reason or do we have a reason to wait? 

Those still alive surround us as much as our memories of those dead. Are we waiting for something sensible or is loss the only time we can actually fully engage, finally free to feel what we really feel about what we can no longer feel?

Do we love our loved ones with as much verve as their eventual loss will create in our life or is that what love is, a penultimate comprehension of inevitable loss? 

Is loving a game forever rigged in the favour of absence, all of us balanced on the edge of grieving, clowns carrying stacks of glassware under a dying sun?

After all, what is it we feel grief for when we learn we lost something? Isn't it for the very thing loss demands we celebrate, the reality of something we like? We like something! Wow! How brave of us!

Have you ever cried for the loss of a lover who is still alive, wandering the island, making love to someone else? Isn't it oddly beautiful, that pain? This kind of beauty is what we live for and what haunts us...the way we affect each other haphazardly and thunderously. 

The beauty of friends is they may be the only immortal reality possible, their lives intertwined with ours, long after they are out of view. 

Would you trade in all the grief for no friends, no lovers? Me neither. 

Fearing suffering to the point of not loving is a drawn-out form of suicide. Simpler to swallow a bullet than to cage up the heart. Fearing suffering is for those who won't risk their delusions on the stark honesty of reality. All is already lost. "Eat, drink and be merry!" 

ps/smoh

May memories of your friends, alive and dead, bring you fat smiles and endless reasons to carry on wildly. 

Fear....

To respond skillfully to a momentary danger is one thing. Living in a state of fear is quite another. 

We really don't need to always be on alert. 
In fact, unless you're walking through a jungle urban or otherwise at night, fear does not serve you well. Indeed, stress hormones that arise for more than a few seconds do serious damage to your body, not to mention your psyche. 
Think of the number of times you can recall when your fear was actually needed in the moment compared to the number of times you have struggled with anxiety and fear.

It is interesting how the fear response is triggered when there is nowhere to go and no one to fight. 
Once in action, definitive opposite truth and distraction seem to be the only things that can eradicate the fear process. 
Would that we could teach the entirety of the world to release this unnecessary aspect of our being. This topic fascinates me for so many reasons.

ps/smoh

Collective consciousness has great power. Like pillars of truth in a black world, our light reveals other beings as they are: invisible, aware, intelligent and - unquestionable as such.

Everything is consciousness. All manifestations (objects, experiences, energies, thoughts, perceptions) are nothing but consciousness. But that is not the bedrock of our nature.
In fact, consciousness is the first step into duality that creates the universe and makes experience possible.
We are that which observes the comings and goings of consciousness. And THAT cannot be named or objectified because it is not dual.

Life has no inherent meaning. 

It is simply of itself, so. 

All meaning is a projection of the mind in an attempt to establish control, purpose, direction, and self-justification. 

Life simply IS. 

It requires of itself no justification. In this complete absence of meaning lies perfect freedom.

All those activities in life simply occur. 

There is no reason for them except that they arise and are performed by this body/mind. Nothing is "not ok." What is is what is. 

No judgements, no intentions, no will, no entity... simply LIFE expressing itself exuberantly, extravagantly, creatively and without preconceived purpose.

“There are no special clubs, there are no special people, and there is no special awakening. There is just THIS HERE NOW, one and complete and all-encompassing. We ARE that oneness which precludes specialness of any kind. It is an ultimate democracy because the truth is immediately and completely available to anyone who looks. Nothing is hidden; everything is in plain sight perhaps that it why it is missed.” said Rose

If you want to discover your true nature, then love someone with your whole heart. Be tenacious and unrelenting in your love, regardless of whether you are loved in return. 

Give yourself away, totally and without reservation. 

Absorb any fear or pain that you may experience by loving so completely. 

Stir gently. Bask in the warmth of your beloved's smile and embrace. And watch what becomes apparent about who you are.

You are the Source of love. You are the Sourcing and Observing of all manifestation. Love arises in that which you are, moves and breathes and changes within that which you are, and transforms everything it touches EXCEPT that which you are. 

You are THAT. And so am I.

ps/smoh

Dare to be unconventional, even a little bit crazy and off centre. Conformity to the herd is a living death. Don't be afraid to be an iconoclast and go your own way. That's when you have a chance to discover/see/understand your true nature.

NO IDEA OR BELIEF IS TRUE--NOT EVEN THIS ONE!

No belief, idea, or opinion is true. 

No set of dogmas or concepts is true. 

No religion is true. 

No spiritual philosophy is true. 

No healing approach is true. 

No relationship is true. 

In fact, nothing, absolutely nothing, we think, feel, see, or experience has the least bit of reality to it. It is all interpretation. 

Love and hate, good and bad, joy and sorrow, these are all illusions. 

Our experience of a "world" is totally dependent on how our senses take in information and how our brains interpret that information. 

Different senses + different brains would = different world. 

Our ideas and beliefs have a tremendous influence on how information is interpreted by the brain. That is why two people can watch the same event and come away with very different interpretations. 

In fact, they have to come away with different interpretations because no two people have all the same set of ideas/beliefs/concepts. 

We build relationships with individuals and groups based solely on how close we are in agreement with them on what is "real." 

If they interpret events in a somewhat similar way to us, they are more likely to be seen as trustworthy and perhaps we will have a relationship of some kind with them. 

If their perceptions of reality are radically different, we may avoid them and even label them as strange, weird, dangerous, or crazy. 

Seen in this way, our friends and intimates are simply deluded in a way that is consistent with or similar to the particular way in which we are deluded. 

As I look back over the years, I can see that I have "progressed" through a number of different belief systems, starting with conservative, moving through a combination of different mystical approaches, and ending up with a kind of nebulous spirituality that privileges no particular tradition. 

No, actually I have ended up with a belief system consistent with healing; seeing the world as composed entirely of energy or consciousness and devising ways to intervene energetically to heal self and others. 

But of course, this is just another set of ideas or beliefs and no more "true" than any of the other systems I have moved through. 

How many years have I spent readying thousands of books and practicing endless hours of various forms of meditation? 

Chasing after the wind, as the author of Ecclesiastes would say. 

So what would it look like to NOT believe in anything, not even LOVE, because that's just another idea or concept? 

Another overlay onto reality that serves to obscure the truth. 

What is the naked truth? 

I AM. 

Subjective awareness is all there is. Or all that can be proven to exist. Nothing else can be proven to be real. 

The entire universe, within and without, is the dream of I AM. 

The cogito is the one thing with the power to dissolve the ego, to send into overdrive and burn itself out on the Incomprehensible. 

Anyone who believes or teaches anything other than I AM is just demonstrating that they don't know what they are talking about. 

And I have been the chief among sinners.

The best teachers are also the best students. Therefore, the label "teacher," at least in terms of being/consciousness, is redundant.

So many doors are open that what is occurring is happening and won’t take 200 years without or with teachers. 

The teacher-guru/student-follower model is slowly being replaced with the "we're in this shit together" model. Let's journey together. I think you are right, the students dare to challenge the teachers and we will invoke conversation! 

I really hope so.

The second model is the default for everyone who does not find a teacher. But it is not optimal. As Rumi put it, 

"Without a guide, the journey of two days takes two hundred years."

I like that 'model' as it seems more honest, authentic. After all, we're all on the same journey. As Oscar Wilde said, 

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".

It seems 'models' are dissolving too, replaced by trust in what appears and how one is moved.
So be done with role models and be yourself, accept yourself and you will find yourself accepting others with mutual affirmation.

Friends in Presence as Jen Peer Rich says.

ps/smoh

In religion and politics especially, you cannot be right unless someone else is wrong, misguided, crazy, or evil. Our essential Oneness becomes veiled as everyone besides me and those who agree with me become "other" and must be convinced, converted, connived or, in some cases, killed.

I stand as one who does not believe the issues are as black and white as they so often are portrayed to be. Live and let live but protect those who cannot protect themselves is the best I can come up with.
What can we hope for but a moment in time, somewhere in time, where understanding dawns on sleepy minds that love - diversity - expression - these are beautiful things but we sometimes fail to fully appreciate the framework?
Fear based approaches to brainwashing masses is an old and tired paradigm and yet it exists still today.
Why?
There must be a reason. Is it that for those who may be on the fence to have an opportunity to be swayed?
Is it for an opportunity to experience narrow-mindedness of thought and resulting limited action?
I have no answers as a mere student in this Earth School but I do have questions, many questions and the only answers I can come up with are related to learning deeper love, tolerance and compassion as hard as that may be.

ps/smoh

There may be two categorical perceptions in conflict. The perception of pure awareness and the real-time perception, both have to be able to see the light.

Is it possible to hear honest feedback, 
criticism, 
even insult, and find a place of deep acceptance in any response that emerges for you in the moment? 

Is it possible to remain fully grounded in the unshakeable knowing that who you really are doesn't need defending in any way? 
And then, staying radically open to experience, is it possible to even find a nugget of truth in what they are saying, to find the place where you see eye to eye, even if that admission results in momentary humiliation, groundlessness, and destruction of the image of the one you believed you were?

This doesn't mean that you become passive and weak. Not at all. 
You simply stop identifying as 'victim' or 'the hurt one', and 
therefore you stop seeing the other as 'abuser' or 'enemy', and 
you simply remain open, vast and unlimited, the infinite capacity for all of life, for all thought and sensation and sound and feeling.

If you feel momentarily hurt by what someone says to you, perhaps there is some truth in what they are trying to say. It's far too easy to hide behind the protective wall of 
"It's all your projection!" or 
"There's nobody here" or 
"You can't touch me because I am pure awareness!". 
What the hell are we protecting?

In the midst of conflict, is it possible to discover the place where conflict ceases to be conflict at all, where humiliation becomes humility, and wake up to a love beyond reason, the love that you already are, and have always been?

Yes, every human relationship is a constant invitation to let go, to wake up, to die to the unreal, to lose every false image of yourself, including the image that you have no image. 

Your mother, your father, your friends, your lovers, your co-workers, strangers on the bus, everyone you will ever meet - here are your ultimate teachers, your final gurus. 
Listen to them, for they will only ever show you the truth of yourself.

Beyond awakening, beyond enlightenment, this adventure of human connection is only just beginning.

ps/smoh

Consciousness Swallows.....

Consciousness swallows everything. 
Every colour, every sound, every scent, every tipsy night out, every broken heart, every lost cause, every championship ring, every mind-blowing orgasm, every frowny face, every chirp, quip, snip and flounder. Consciousness sucks it all down the hole. 

This sentence is flying by at the speed of consciousness, a lawn dart launched into the sky above the tot lot.

Eat salad greens from the bag like they're potato chips.

-Not knowing isn't a new religion. It's what the other species have been doing the whole time we've been yammering about what we know.

I wonder how the tigers, dolphins, turtles and ants are fairing without the calendar and the pocket watch?

Even the model of biological reproduction is just a story. Is it the surest thing around? It's close to what the stuff appeared to do.

Since we're surfing the edge of consciousness sucking, doesn't look like we get to vote on the truest fairy tale. The best we can do is enjoy our ride and carve around the debris in the hole.

What I want to tell you is less important than what the sentence is fundamentally.

Love is the passing of wind.

Receive most questions between Sunday night and Thursday morning. Hmm?

You know that scene in the Titanic when the ship is capsizing and that dude hits the railing during his fall?

Miscommunication is nutrient rich. Make it a hobby to hunt it down and eat it like a heart.

ps/smoh

NB
Whenever my mind tries to be smart, I ask myself 'what would the cat, dog or a deer do in this situation?" .... seems to always make me laugh! 

Looking at? ... more relief just looking... maybe the "at" is implied...

Possibility:

You're looking for what you are so you can't find it. 
That's why you're looking. 
You don't want to find what you are. 
If you did, you'd stop looking for and start looking AT. 
Looking at is simple. 
You can do looking at in your sleep. 
Looking for? 
Come on, sugar buns. 
What could you be looking for when all you can do is look at? 
The other animals are looking at the same traffic go by. 
Some of them don't see it either. 
BAM!

Yarn:

Tried fisting recently. 
Have you ever tried it? 
It did not work out well for me. 
I was alone, fell over, broke my wrist. 
Have you ever tried to pull your own broken wrist out of your already aching rectum? 
Me neither. 
I am typing this with one hand.

Truth:

Zazen is a simple enough way to break even.

ps/smoh

The HOME key is right next to the END key.....

( •_•)
\( (> 
/ \ 'Where is my true Home? 

When will my pain end?', the homesick seeker asks. 

'You are already home', answers Life, 'even in the midst of your pain'. 

'But I cannot see that right now!', replies the seeker. 

'Of course you can't', replies Life. 

'So forget trying to see it in the future. Simply rest in this present moment experience of being unable to see it. Discover that you are Home even in this present feeling of homesickness, even in this frustration, even in your failure to escape this moment. 

To whom is this all appearing right now?'

In my experience if you can rest in this moment as it is and allow a feeling such as frustration to arise fully then that feeling can dissolve to make way for a state of peace and happiness, its a kind of alchemy which can be used to transform lead into gold.

ps/smoh

More words in a world of illusion....

"I am enlightened" is an image. 
"I am not enlightened" is another image. 
"I am a teacher" is an image. 
"I am a student" is another image. 
"I am ugly" is an image. 
"I am beautiful" is another image. 
I know, I don't know. 
I am happy, I am sad. 
I am right, I am wrong. 
I am a success, I am a failure. 
I am, I am not. 
I. I. I.... 
And what you are, as the wide open space that embraces all images as they come and go, cannot be defined by any image, not even this image! 
You are not the dream, nor the dreamer of the dream, but the vastness in which the appearance of dreamer and dream arise and fall. 
So good morning, sweet non-existent dreamer.

ps/smoh

Being Alive is Not A Theory...

There is no present moment to point anyone to. 
There is no one here but us and we all know we're all full of crap.

Now my ass. None of us have ever seen now. 
We don't know what we see.

The no one's here crew has it the best. 
They get to swallow the bullet completely.

There is a lot I can say about living. 
It's pretty much all I've ever known.

Art is an act of survival. 
It is how a computer puts together pictures while waiting for deletion.

Living won't remember, eventually. I was taking a shit and looking at my hands. They are the single part of the body I feel I am the most. 
Staring at them I realized someday I would lose them and that felt like a big thing to accept. But I did because I hate suffering my stupidity more than anything else. 
Bye, hands.

Anything we think is subject to a finite bias. Thinking together really slowly and methodically is the only way we learn what we might be able to say. 
Science is our attempt at a democracy that makes sense. It isn't required to give a shit about anyone's cosmological perspective, though. 
That's pretty liberating. 
It's like playing hooky for the rest of the time. 

Group think is the only kind. This is what it looks like.

Today at the skate park this guy was talking about awakening. I was listening to him. He was talking about being awake for some future event of culminating wisdom where everyone gets what they want. 
I just listened. He told me he was part of a group of people who were coming to realize they could do anything they wanted to. My feet were warm on the pavement. 
Then he turned, rode down the ramp and fell on his ass really hard. He was okay though. It was all part of the plan. 
He wanted that to happen, that wincing in pain shit.

The one who knows the most about living is the one who is alive. 

Treat all social interactions exactly as if you were still in junior high. Everyone is still just here, available to talk to in the "hall". Go back to your teenage self and do what you wish you would have done then now. It's not too late. Really.

Mathematically speaking, this string of sentences was inevitable. 

I am the truth. You are, too. This is it. No memberships. No badges. No passwords. No fees. No lifeguards. Best of luck with the food and water today. 
Watch out for all the shit flying around. 

Treat living like a marble on an ice rink during an earthquake. The story of identity is the story of death. No one will remember the stories. Hang loosely about. Relax. Everything you see is in line for wipe-out.

Hoping for humanity is hoping to live. That's all. It's natural. 

Suffering is really more in the idea of it than anything else it. The less meditation, the less practices, the less doing shit I hate, the less suffering. 
Oddly enough, I had it flipped around. 
Silly me.

Appreciate being alive at the same time. 
Much Respect.

One who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been. Albert Einstein

 "No" is not ever a complete sentence, regardless of its punctuation. I really wish this would go away, but it keeps popping up in recovery circles and whatnot, so I'm going to vent. 

In order to be a complete sentence, one must have in play a subject and a verb. 
Sentences like 
"Go." and 
"Be." 
are complete, as the second person subject (you) is understood; "go" and "be" are the correct conjugations of the verbs. 
"No" is not a verb.
 "No" is not a sentence with or without the period at the end. 

"No." /is/ a complete answer. If you are asked to do something, it is not necessary for you to justify or explain why you cannot or do not want to do this thing; if that person wishes, he or she is free to ask why. 
You are also free to say "No." to their request for additional information. 

But no, "No." is not a complete sentence, and it is ignorant to say otherwise. That's 3rd grade grammar ^__^

It lacks a subject and a verb. It is not in any sense a complete sentence. 

However "I will not." Is, and serves much the same function.

ps/smoh

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. Voltaire

I have talked a little about not leaving your life to chance. 

You should try as much as it is within your power, to be prepared for whatever may come into your life. Being unprepared is tantamount to leaving your life up to the winds of fate. 

Sun Tzu stated in his classic book, The Art of War, that you should not rely on the likelihood of your enemy not coming, but on your own readiness to receive him.

If you are not prepared to make yourself unassailable to a possible enemy, it is not chance or bad luck that causes your misfortune when you are attacked. 

It is the fact that you caused your own injury by your lack of preparation and awareness. You did not make yourself unassailable and therefore when some thug attacked you, you were injured. 
Nothing happens by chance. 
Everything has its cause and effect.

Both your invincibility and your vulnerability depend on you. 

You make the decision. 
There is no such thing as luck. 

You may disagree and think that it was just pure bad luck that some thug picked you as a target, but you were the one who put yourself in a certain location, at a specific time, and on top of that, unprepared to deal with the threat. 

No matter what the end product may turn out to be, you can be sure that there was some cause that preceded it. Nothing can exist without a cause; everything happens for a reason.

ps/smoh