return from exile

Dear Unborn Kin,
   We humans, in this time, have exiled ourselves from the rest of existence. We have made ourselves separate, regarding all that is not human as objects to be manipulated, even destroyed, for our pleasure. In doing so, we are committing suicide.
   Some of us are open to the experience and understanding that all of life is a seamless flow, that we are all interconnecting all the time, that a callous attitude toward one aspect is a callous attitude toward all. We know we are in dire trouble with our self-exile.
   Our solution is simple yet profound: a transformation of human consciousness in which we know we are not separate but are at home and all of life is our family. I pray and work for this transformation as do many others. You will know in your time whether we were successful.
   Blessings to you.
   Your Loving Ancestor

may it be so

Dear Unborn Kin, I awoke this morning, performed my ablutions, sat down, and the Bible called to me. I opened it with no conscious intent. Before me were the words: "O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one to come."(Psalm 72: 17,18) You can see that you are mentioned there. May it be so. Your Loving Ancestor

opening to the energetic flow of being

Dear Unborn Kin, I love the way the world, the cosmos interweaves, interflows. This morning I asked a group of folk who are practicing opening to the energetic flow of being to listen to the birds, the animals, the plants and trees this week, that they have much to disclose and are willing to do so to those who listen. In the afternoon I walked downtown and bumped into a man I know who is an avid student of the Bible. "Look at this," he said immediately, and flipped the pages to Job 12: 7-8. He read aloud: "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." I love this cosmos, my kin, and its mystery, openness, and solidity of confirmation. I wish you well. Your Loving Ancestor

we talked we laughed

Dear Unborn Kin, In dream last night, three large brownskinned men appeared together with a fourth standing apart. Warriors. We looked at each other. This morning I walked the hill near our home. At the top, at the overlook, three large Native American men stood side by side with a fourth taking their photo. I stopped. We talked. We laughed. Each shook my hand and wished me Happy Father's Day as I did each of them. We laughed together some more and I went on my way. Your Loving Ancestor

stories for the yet unborn

Spinning mandala come to earth, I watch the snow come down and know

that I am but one of many falling, melting, and returning to the sky.

 

I have wished, as perhaps have many, that I could have opened into the minds of my ancestors and heard some of their stories directly from them. Oh, I have a few snatches of information from here and there, just enough to whet my appetite. So I thought I would remedy the situation for my future kin. Here are some stories for the yet unborn, not in any kind of linear sequential order, but in accord with the mysterious way stories arise out of the depths of the heart.

Note to my beloved and as yet not visible kin: Please be aware that these stories are from my own experiencing of situations (what other do I have?) and that other participants in the situations I recount might tell it very differently. Given that caveat, what I tell is the gospel truth.

dreamy kid

 

This story is a joke on myself, but then all our stories might be that if we look at them with the right eyes. I was in the fourth grade at Dawson Street School, just a few blocks from the house where I was staying with my grandmother and grandfather (my father was often between jobs and my grandparents would take us in).

This particular morning, I dressed to go to school. It was a cold morning and we walked to school in those days so I made sure I wore a sweater. I meandered along with the other kids cracking ice in the puddles with my feet and with rocks and sticks as I went. When I entered my class room, I went to the back to the cloak room (that's what we called it in those days though no one I knew wore a cloak) and began to take off my sweater. To my surprised horror, I had forgotten to put on a shirt. I was a dreamy kid and still am. I hastily buttoned my sweater back up and took my seat. Saved! No one had noticed. The bell rang and the school day began.

Then there was the fateful knock at the door. All eyes turned in that direction. The teacher opened it and one of the sixth graders stood there and handed an item to the teacher saying in a loud voice I was sure could be heard all the way over in Alabama, "Richard forgot to put on his shirt!" Laughter everywhere as my true state of consciousness was revealed. No place to hide. The walk back to the cloak room with my shirt helped me later to understand the Stations of the Cross.

i went to meet the hermit (part one)

I went to meet the hermit. I had already peddled up the road to Fred Manfred's house and encountered his wrath and consternation over my having ignored the sign at the beginning of the long winding newly graded road that said something like "do not come up this road under penalty of death -- leave all vehicles where they stand." He got over it pretty quickly though -- that silver-haired grizzly lightning storm -- and told me how to find my way to Houston Lockwood, a King James English speaking man living in a cabin he built up in the Northwest Angle of Minnesota.

I peddled on, up through Wilmar and Bemidji and on past Red Lake to Warroad. A long journey but one I was accustomed to, having participated in more than one 100 mile race on my red Schwinn. Now I had to get through a portion of Canada to reach my destination since the Angle juts out from Canada into the Lake of the Woods.

At Warroad I made the acquaintance of two drunken painters who gave me a ride. I left my bike with a lady I met who swore to its safekeeping. We bounced down the road to the border, me in the back of their pickup with a couple of cases of beer, some ladders and paint and stuff. The border guard waved us on through like we were kin.

I went to meet the hermit (part two)

 

The painters dropped me at a small privately owned bait shop grocery. Nothing much else was around except water, forest and a dirt road leading inland. I asked the bait shop man for directions to Houston Lockwood's place. He looked at me for a moment and said, "He's gone to British Columbia. Getting too busy for him around here." Then he gave me directions, such as they were, to the cabin.

I walked down this scraped dirt road for a mile or so and eventually saw a faint trail leading into the forest. The trail was charming. At intervals select trees had little shelters built between their roots and in their hollows -- little overhanging roofs and beds of moss -- as if designed for leprechauns or small forest animals. The trail meandered as if in no hurry to reach its destination, eventually crossing a stream by way of an arched wooden bridge delightful in size and design. Then there it was. The cabin.

I walked onto the little porch and peered through the door pane (I knew the door's secret for opening , no key needed, but that entrance was not for me). Lovely hand carved furniture. Mr. Lockwood was quite an artisan. What caught my attention the most was the headboard of the bed -- up one side was a hound, up the other was a bear, the two frozen into a perpetual encounter. Feeling that I had intruded way too much (and I had), I turned and walked away.

I was left to encounter the solitude at the center of my own soul and no one else's. After all, isn't that what a hermit does and is? I contemplated this as I walked down the road under a cloud of mosquitoes (remind me to tell you the mosquito shaman story) and was eventually picked up by a man in an old doorless logging truck moving not much faster than I was walking.

He took me through Canada and across the border to a rooming house where I stood in the bathroom exhausted, preparing to shower, picking legions of ticks from my body, and flushing them down the john. I showered for one blissful eternity after another before falling into oblivion on the bed resting for the next day's adventures of bicycle reunion and reclamation.

the mosquito shaman

It was a warm humid dark South Dakota night. We walked through the trees by the river. Our night vision worked well. No lights anywhere except the stars, a crescent moon, and their reflections. He said, George, come with me. We walked a ways and then down into a deep hollow left by a huge uprooted tree lying there like some sleeping giant. The hollow was moist with water at the bottom and was abuzz with mosquitoes. None landed on him. He stood there unperturbed. My perturbance however was about to get out of hand. I was under vicious attack by the whining beasts. He said, you do not have to let them bite you. Then he told me the secret. And it worked. I stood there mosquito free.

What's that? The secret? It was not told me in words, but telepathically. So I know no words to pass on. I can tell you this though. It has to do with opening to a certain state of consciousness, a certain way of being where everything shifts into calm. 

the fine art of rock sniffing

When I was a boy in a little southern town, Bobby Page, whose Daddy drove a Pepsi-Cola truck, taught me the fine art of rock sniffing. I saw him doing it and asked about it. He said get your own rock. I've been getting my own rock ever since. Nosing around the Grand Canyon helps me sniff deep time. You want to know about this? I utter the words of my teacher: Get your own rock.

yakking with harriet

Taking a shortcut through the 'hood, I bump into Harriet, 90+ year old extraordinaire, clipping her hedges. "They lost some of their top leaves in that late May frost," she says. "I lost some of mine, too," I say, taking off my ball cap and rubbing my nubby head. "Mine is on the way," says Harriet. "Well, at least we still have our marbles," I opine. "You just can't tell about that," she says.. We both laugh.

"Seriously. I'll be going to the Funny Farm," says Harriet. "When?" "I don't know but you can bet I will if I keep breathing." "Where will you go?" "I haven't decided," she says, her eyes blazing.

A little silence.

"We all turn back into babies eventually," says Harriet. I pat my belly. "I'm already taking the shape of one." "Don't let that thing get any bigger," she exclaims, her eyes widening. I ask her eating secret. She's thin as a rail. She allows as how she eats anything she wants and that a cold beer or glass of wine is mighty fine.

"Well, I'll be on my way to the Cancer Center," I say. "What do you do over there?" "Harass folk, like I'm harassing you." "Well, you're good at it," she smiles.

As I walk away, I hear her say, "You're a good kid."

(I was 70 at the time.)

my (successful) come on line

Several years ago, upon hiking up to the saddle of a mountain pass, I saw a woman sitting there and asked her: Would you like some Whoop Ass? Even now, she continues to allow our co-existence.

somehow i have become

Somehow I have become this older man strolling home from the town library after a brief stint on a park bench in the December sun. Newfound anthology under his arm, his eyes record the change in shadows since this morn, and the faint paw-prints in the broken cement of the sidewalk of cats once purring.

Jacked into his body, I feel his presence but he doesn't feel mine. I sense his slow even breathing, his awareness of the changing textures beneath his feet as he leaves the sidewalk for the alleyways.

I follow him into the house. He goes barefoot, sinks into a chair and begins to read. We become as one.

baptism

My old life had crumbled around me in every possible way and it seemed to me, just at the exact moment that I approached the ice-covered Missouri river in the late afternoon of a South Dakota winter day and saw the hole in the ice, that a baptism was due. I needed to die to the old and open to the new.

Without hesitation I walked out on to the ice shedding my clothes as I went and plunged through the hole feet first. All calm and quiet beneath. No sound. I looked up through the brownish-yellow light and saw Hole-iness above and pushed up and through gasping with new breath, born again, cleansed and clean.

I lay naked on the ice for a while, happy and content, arose, got my clothes and shoes and walked to shore.

wyoming night

I grew tired of being a university professor and went to driving truck. I didn't do it long but had some fun. The route was a South Dakota - California round trip.

One wintry night, full moon blazing on snow-covered Wyoming landscape, Harry and I strode full-bellied (the chicken-fried steak special with pie and coffee) toward our 18-wheelers. "Take the lead," he growled.

We climbed up into our rigs and crunched across the parking lot ice on to the open empty road. After shifting upward through the gears and achieving a hefty flow, I heard Harry's voice crackling on the CB:

"Professor, put the pedal to the metal."

Some of the sweetest words I ever heard.

the way it is

My head, flaming outward in all directions, has never been able to fit within any manmade structure. The shuddery image I get of such a fit is that of a hen confined within a cage, feathers mashed into insensibility, forever laying infertile eggs (with an atrocious retirement plan).

In the early '60's I was reprimanded more than once for not "staying at my desk" even though all my work was done. I didn't tell my reprimander that I had found a "Forbidden Access" way to the roof where I contentedly gazed on far horizons.

I was always escaping -- in the Marine Corps I made myself a duplicate I.D card and Liberty Pass so I could go off base whenever I wished. When offered tenure at a university, I caught the scent of the cage, resigned and went to truck-driving school. And so on.

But I mean more than the confinement of an organizational structure. I mean the worst confinement of all -- being locked into conventional ways of thinking.

I am told that many people perceive their mind to be inside their body, somewhere within the head area. No wonder folk get so afraid! If I were inside there, peeking out at "the world," I would be too. My body is inside my mind and just a small portion of my mind at that. My mind encompasses the universe. No bounds except what I allow. (And when I say "my," it is just a figure of speech, not an indication of ownership.) When one's mind is universal mind, one is at home in the universe. No fear.

As far as I am aware I was born this way (maybe we all are), though I have carefully (and sometimes not so carefully) cultivated it over the years. I know how to pass for white (get by within the dominant culture) and yet I know I am constitutionally unable, even if I were willing, to shrink-fit my head into any human-created socio-politico-religio-philoso-cogno-emotio-domain.

that little paper bag of pecans

I met an old man long ago. I was just a boy and I delivered his daily paper. If the weather was good, he would be sitting on his simple open front porch and I would get off my bike and walk up and hand him his paper. Sometimes he would hand me a little paper bag of pecans he had shelled himself.

Neither of us said much, but we had long conversations. He was quiet and still and wide open with knowledge and wisdom and understanding. He saw who I was and allowed me to be. I liked and still like that old man.

I have already claimed and transformed for myself the title of "geezer" a person hurled at me with spitting rage (another story to tell). Now I'm opening my understanding to what it is to be an older man. Which I am becoming, getting to be. I like the journey.

the art of the empty hand

My Uncle Jay, a driver for Safety Cabs in our rural Georgia town, ("Ride safely with Safety, dial 3545" went their radio jingle) gave me my first hand weapon: a sap made of a chunk of lead sitting atop a spring all neatly bound in leather and finished with a wrist loop. It was right after my dad deserted our family.

I suppose my being the oldest of the five kids singled me out for this honor. "You might need this," Uncle Jay said, showing me how to use it. I kept it under my pillow at night. My mom found out about it and took it from me. I think she is the only one who could have done that.

Maybe that is part of what prompted me later to learn the art of the empty hand (kara-te) on Okinawa: If you have nothing, nothing can be taken from you. Well, there you have it. Dad. No dad. Sap. No sap. The art of the empty hand. As they taught us in Sunday School: "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

the dove is not unscented

I was lying there minding my own business which at the moment was no business at all since my whole being was deeply relaxed in the arms of the dark, warm infinite universe known as sleep. I am brought back to the surface from these happy depths by words being spoken in my ear: "The dove is not unscented."

All three brain cells firing, I struggled to comprehend their meaning. Were they referring, as they seemed, to a bird that smelled? Were they pre-arranged code words for "There is a burglar in the house?" But no, there was no sense of urgency in my partner's voice.

"The dove is not unscented," she repeated. Slowly, the words revolved in my head searching for a fit within a context. A portion of my consciousness clicked into place. "She is talking about a beauty bar," the part of me already surfacing said to the me in the depths.

Now I had never heard of a beauty bar until yesterday when my newly acquired dermatologist, after having bored new holes in my head, drew back in horror when I told her I used 99.9% pure Ivory soap to cleanse my showering body and had been doing so for several decades. "That strips your skin!" she said, making slash and burn, clearcutting motions across her bare arm.

That is how I found myself at the store not long afterwards staring at a bunch of Beauty Bars, my testosterone level dropping dangerously as I stood, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I did what my Dermo said and bought the unscented Dove. At least that is what it said on the label. And now I was being told the label lied.

"Huuhhh... " I sighed. "I guess Valentine's Day is over. I expect to be awakened with 'I love you, you handsome devil and feel so fortunate that the gods decided to put you in my life; now come over here and snuggle closer while I bask in the sunlight of your love' or something perilously close to those words and feelings."

She poked me with her elbow knowing I was beginning to wax rhapsodic while she was attending to the practicalities of life (something not unnew in our relationship). For a while we discussed soap and beauty bars and manufacturing labels and epidermal strip-mining and dermatologists and the chemistry of unbearable scents. She went off to sleep and I lay there wide awake pondering the poetry and the forbidden double negative of the words: the dove is not unscented.

the cat whistle

My mom, my two brothers, two sisters and myself had made the big time. The oldest of us had good jobs and we even were paying on a little house in Atlanta. We boys were in our late teens, early 20's (as the oldest I had left our little town and gone to work in Atlanta right out of the 11th grade, finishing high school at night, the advance guard of the Breeds who invaded Atlanta). My sisters were around 16 and 10 at the time of this story.

It seems that Ginny, the older my two sisters, had an unexpected talent. One early evening when she was about to go on a date (and her preparing for a date was always an ordeal with only one bathroom and three brothers in the house -- Hours! Days! Years! she would stay in that bathroom!), she and her new beau were about to go out the door. Like all of us at that tender teen age, extreme self-consciousness was the norm. She had made it safely thus far -- her brothers behaving themselves with reasonable decorum. It was the cat that did her in.

The cat had decided it needed to go out at the exact time that Ginny and her date were making their desperate escape from her family's penetrating gaze. Ginny picked it up wrong-end forward and turned for all three to go. As the cat's butt arc swung round and past Ginny's young man, it let out a loud high toot. Of course, we three boys fell all over ourselves. From then on, we let the news be known far and wide. Our sister had hidden talent -- she was the only one we knew who could play the Cat Whistle. Of course, I now would never tell anyone about that today.

the dynamic duo -- hog matador and pig saver

I awoke to the sound of thunder, lightning, and pouring rain. I knew one of the sows had dug a nest for birthing her piglets out in the field rather than in the dry warmth of the hog barn where the other six were snugly nestled. She was an ornery cuss, but I liked her, identifying with her rebellious ways. She was the same one that would stand way back from the electric fence and then run at it full force squealing all the way knowing she was going to feel some shocking pain. She would always break through, the powerful dragon that she was, and go to munching contentedly in the neighbor's corn field. O Boy! I thought. She's birthing tonight.

My son, who was about 13 or so, rousted himself out and the two of us went through the driving rain with the night lit by lightning. I had a wheelbarrow and Phil had a large bucket because we knew what was going to happen. Sure enough, there she was, her dug nest filling with water and little newborn pigs trying not to drown. She was frantic and thought that the best thing to do was attack me and Phil.

So we did our little dance. I would bait her to charge at me, standing the heavy duty wheelbarrow up on its wheel between us so she couldn't get me with her teeth and bulk. Bam! She would hit the barrow. At those moments of distraction, Phil would jump into the nest and put a piglet or two into his bucket. She would turn toward him and I would have to run around between them so he could dive in and get some more. I believe she had about 12 or 14 in all. Then we had to go all the way back to the hog barn with her chasing us and me doing the wheelbarrow trick. We got them settled in, then soggy wet and muddy, juiced with adrenaline, we made our way through the night back to the house.

peace officers

I could get a little ornery back in the olden days, pretty much always having a full head of steam and ready to go. In South Dakota where I lived for 15 years, I hung out with about every type and group of people in the state, which contained only about 600,000 people. The standing joke was that anytime you met somebody in South Dakota if they didn't already know you, they knew someone who did.

One year I was invited to attend the South Dakota's Peace Officers Association annual meeting. I rode along with a Highway Patrolman friend of mine. We drove across the state with me soon falling into his wary habit of noticing what was going on in cars and neighborhoods and farm houses. We pulled in eventually into a large gathering of peace officer types and the next thing I knew I had consumed several beers. They were a very friendly crowd. Then somebody strapped a pistol belt on me complete with pistol, clapped a pair of earmuffs on my head, and pushed me toward the firing range. Yep, some of them had been banging away all this time and I guess they figured they would give me the honor too.

Well, let's just say I didn't kill anybody and generally fired in the same direction as the targets. I must have passed some kind of test because it wasn't too long that a bunch of us were running through the night together without the guns of course. But there was one fellow that just kept messing with me, pushing at me in various ways, kind of semi-insults like some guys will do.

Somewhere around 2 or so in the morning, we all wound up at breakfast in a restaurant courtesy of the local sheriff, a white-haired well-liked man much respected, built kind of like John Wayne and with the same type of aura. We were sitting around this big table, about 8 or 10 of us who had made it this far in the night and wouldn't you know it, the butthole dude sat right down beside me. We all placed our orders and he said something else to me and I had had enough so I made my move with no thought, no thought at all. I took the lid off the ketchup bottle and upended all the ketchup on his placemat. I was still holding the ketchup bottle and ready for the next move which I figured would be his and then mine in rapid succession. There was silence at the table.

Then the John Wayne sheriff dude, whom I admire to this day, said quietly, "Now boys."

The spell was broken. I put the bottle down, took away his placemat for a new one, and we went happily into the night with his never saying to me another word.

the mystic truth

What has saved my life all this time even in spite of my hellion rebellion is what has been called "the mystic truth." I have known since early on, as I suppose most of us have, that the literal truth must bow to the spiritual or mystic truth. The literal truth is the form of things, the structure that we humans have set up and attempt to enforce. Though I live within it I do not abide by it. The spirit is like the wind and blows where it will and no one can predict its coming and its going. Like my friend Ken the Celtic Christian minister and spiritual warrior says, the spirit is like a wild goose coming out of nowhere from the upper stratospheres and taking off again at some invisible summons. I follow spirit, the mystic truth. It is what "has brought me safe thus far" and always is my home.

I live my life "outside the camp." I cannot, am constitutionally unable, to fit myself within the frame or creed of any religion, including the religion of atheism. I cannot swear allegiance to those creeds, so I do not. I'm a creed celibate: no sects for me.

This life has been from a certain point of view like a meandering river that ranges from flooding to going underground. No set channel. No orthodoxic shoes. Barefoot all the way. So there you have it: a barefoot rebellious hellion who flows where the wild goose flows, on the winds and the currents of Love, the spiritual energy that pervades the universe.

tucson!

I was driving back to South Dakota from Nebraska and had settled comfortably in the rhythm of the road when I heard the Voice I knew and know so well. It said one word, Tucson! Like always I had to question it, so I said mostly out of surprise, What? It said again, Tucson!

And there arose, though I could still see the road and continue driving, an image of the southwest as seen from high above and where Tucson is located, a spiraling of healing energy rising upward. When I reached home, I told my wife of this and said we are moving to Tucson. I had not been to Tucson before and knew no one there.

A few weeks later, we drove the Volkswagen camper to Tucson and traded it for a Honda Accord. Now we had a car sitting in our South Dakota driveway with Arizona plates. We had a big garage sale, sold our household furnishings, and returned our house and property to the bank. We drove to Tucson, looking to see what would unfold.

instant heaven instantly

He was a large African-American man, at least half again as big as me. I was a psychiatric aide on the locked ward of a high rise hospital in downtown Atlanta working my way to an undergraduate degree in psychology at Georgia State – going to night school and happy to do so.

I was supervising his unpacking and saw a nylon stocking in his bag. "I will have to take that," I said, knowing it could be used for sui- or homi-cide. He looked unhappy. "I need to roll that up and put it on my head before I go to bed or my hair will be spronged all over in the morning." I could see he was right. His hair had a mind of its own. "I have to take it anyway," I said, "but I will ask if you can have it back."

Later, after I got to know him, he told me of a plan he had for striking it rich. Instant Heaven Instantly, he called it. He said he would arrange for people's corpses to be shot into space where they would be in heaven instantly and forever. I liked that man. He and I laughed a lot.

The head nurse caught me talking with him and with others and gave me a stern lecture that I was not supposed to talk with the patients. Only the psychiatrists could do so. Many years later, when I saw Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", I thought of her. I talked with everyone anyway. Now I had two reasons to do so.

potato blind job

The shortest job interview I ever had was at Gurney's Seed & Nursery in Yankton, South Dakota where I was applying for a job after refusing tenure at the university and resigning. I was filling out forms in the personnel office when this burly man walks in, looks at me, and says, "Can you lift a hundred pounds?" I said yes. He said, "Hire him!"

I wound up hauling burlap bags of potatoes and feeding them to the knives of three women listening to country western music on a blaring radio in a basement. They would reduce the potatoes to "blinds" by cutting out their eyes, put 51 eyes in a bag, and send the eyes back to me where I would fold the bag top, staple the correct label (two staples placed in exactly the right location, mind you!) astride the fold, and put them into a flat for shipping.

I rode the 23 miles home at night with a guy who raised attack dogs and had bite scars on his arms to prove it. My son and I would come over and get those sacks of blinds (free for the hauling) to feed to our hogs who dearly loved them. I can still lift 100 pounds but my hearing has gone south and I wouldn't be able to hear that radio with its insistent commercials and its songs of love gone wrong. Not too bad a tradeoff, I reckon.

no healing please

Dear unborn kin, if you don't automatically click your heels and salute when someone tells you to do something, you might know that it runs in your blood. Way back yonder in the dark ages, 1980, I was invited to design and teach a series of Wellness courses as part of an allied health curriculum in a medical school. So I did.

The dean of the medical school called me in and said I could not teach a course on Healing. He said healing was looked upon with disdain and disfavor at the medical school, that it was outside the realm of SCIENCE. Now I don't like anyone disturbing my creations and can get ornery about it. So I taught the very same course with no alterations except the title: Stress Management, two words that the medical school knew a lot about.

I also knew he hated anything "touchy-feely" so I brought the entire class of about 30 folk out on the lawn just outside his windows, having them sit in a circle, each person facing the back of the person to their right, then massaging that person's shoulders. Everyone was simultaneously giving and receiving a shoulder massage. He looked out the window at us but never said anything, at least to me. I guess it was alright as long as we were not doing any healing.

long johns, a tractor, and a buzz cut

Where would one be without one's friends? I am convinced that two grade school buddies, Dion and James, are responsible for my early balding head. The three of us were inseparable, though also subject to each other's torments, like the time they made unmerciful fun of me when after a cold Georgia winter my grandmother sent me to school with my long johns rolled up under my new spring shorts and my running around on the playground made the long johns roll down.

But Dion and James were not exactly fashion plates themselves with their overalls and clodhoppers (which they ditched whenever possible preferring bare feet). That day, that fateful day, we had a new toy -- a little green tractor made of metal (you remember metal, don't you?) with a wind-up spring that made it go. The school day had just ended and we were outside experiencing FREEDOM and preparing for the journey home. I always walked while those two rode the bus being as they were country boys.

One or both of them got the idea to place the wound-up tractor atop my head where the spring immediately caught itself in my at-that-time thick mop. They boarded their bus with whoops and tears of laughter while I suffered great agony on the long walk home with the eyes of the entire community if not greater Georgia on me with a green tractor atop my head. After dying on that cross, I did have a resurrection. Among other things, my grandfather was a barber, part of the house being his shop. The next day I joined the trend toward buzz cuts in the school.

rag bag

When I lived in South Dakota, I conducted a class on Healing once a week at the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska. I remember the first evening very well. About 14 of us sat in a circle and introduced ourselves. Only one white-hair was in the group, a stooped and gnarled elder well-worn by life. When it came her turn to speak, she said with twinkling eyes and an enigmatic smile, "Just call me Rag Bag." I now know more deeply what she meant. Pursue the meaning of these words, dear future kin: kenosis, sunyata,  fana, and of this phrase: "of no reputation."

kerplunk!

We lived twelve miles north of a town of 10,000. Our acreage was along the Vermillion River which flowed south into the Missouri and its last untamed, undredged stretch of 24 miles of eagles, herons, beaver, geese, and large prehistoric paddlefish. My daughter, about 9 years old at the time of this story, did not care for country living. She was (and is) a spirited sort and neither did she care for following along behind.

In winter we walked the surface of the frozen river and saw marvelous sights. She would fuss and complain because either I or her brother would lead the way. This day we were walking on the river ice near the shore and had gone about 3/4ths of a mile from the old (1890's) two-story brick farmhouse we had made livable. "Up front! Up front! I want up front!" she kept saying as we walked in single file. Finally (she could always twist me around her finger) I said okay. As proud leader, she took two steps and fell through the ice.

She swears to this day I set her up. But I am the one who scooped her in his arms and trotted back to the house so she had no frozen digits so she could later teach clogging to Texans and bake fantastic cheesecakes for restaurants while raising three delightful children of her own. I rest my case.

ignore-ance and stupor-idity

Dear unborn kin, lest you think by my recounting of these stories in which I consistently turn out to be hero even when I am victim that I believe myself to be a virtuous man beyond reproach, I let you know right now that I am guilty of all seven of the deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Though I started out as a boy determining deeply within my soul that I would not follow those paths, I fell, sometimes falling so far I would sit alone and cry, feeling like an angel with soiled stained garments, battered functionless wings, and a forlorn despair of any hope of redemption.

The Maker however is gracious and gave me a path out and the warrior will to walk it. He taught me "Seven times down, eight times up!" I learned forgiveness of myself and others. I learned per-sever-ance (the ability to cut right through and keep walking). I moved out of the hell I cast myself into and rejoined the flight of angels.

Don't take that last (angel) remark too literally. As I tell these stories, just know that I know who and what I am -- an embodying of the life-force totally dependent on the coursing of that fine energy, an outbreathing of the Maker, and beyond that no more than a bag of rags. Who can tell a pretty good story. Woops, there goes that pride thing again!

shit on a stick

I was driving around South Dakota interviewing Anglo and Tribal police about some stuff and decided to spend a night on the beach of the Cheyenne River. I drove the university car down under the trees, threw a blanket over the door, covering over the large red coyote logo, and proceeded to explore.

I like sticks, still do, and one caught my eye. It had the size and curved shape of a samurai sword so of course I picked it up. A large cottonwood limb jutted out horizontally in front of me -- a perfect opportunity to see what this stick was made of. If it broke or cracked, I wanted nothing to do with a thing of such inferior quality.

Holding the stick-sword with both hands I swung downward with vicious force. For every action, there is an immediate and opposite reaction. Swing-Blam-Blam! The first Blam was the stick hitting the tree limb. The second Blam was the stick rebounding and hitting me in the head. Almost knocked myself out. I stood there for an eternity. Then I walked back to where I found the stick and laid it reverently in the exact spot from which it came.

joining up

They came to see one of my brothers. I was the only one home. They were all spiffy in their uniforms. I knew it was time for me to go. I had done all I could for my mom and my siblings. Now it was my turn.

Except for a wonderful grandfather, I was raised by women. Women everywhere -- my mom, my grandmother, my great-aunts. Now was time to see how I would fare in the world of men. The Marines seemed like a good alchemical furnace. And it was. I jumped right in.

They took all us young boys to see Jack Webb in “The D. I.” the night before they bussed us to Parris Island. Seeing the movie helped alleviate the shock. Thirteen weeks later I came home, one solid muscle, and tossed my two brothers out of bed. Ganging up on me did them no good any more.

I took to the world of men quite well.

his first cannon

He cruised the desktop with his newly found tank, not letting it fall into the inkwell and bumping hurriedly over the grooves cut in as pencil holders. He made tank sounds he had heard on Movietone News and fired the little cannon from time to time --"Peww! Poww!"

"STOP THAT!" The teacher seemed horrified. "See me after school!" He had never been in trouble before. He sat at his desk later while the teacher graded papers, saying nothing but glancing at him angrily from time to time.

When he got home his mother said where have you been, knowing that he liked to dawdle on the walk home. "Teacher made me stay after school." "What did you do?" "Nothing. I was playing tank and cannon. At recess I saw some other boys make one so I made one too. See?" And he gave his mother the finger. Innocence still unspoiled.

angel

I was suffering and saw no exit. Two I loved were at fierce odds. Our three souls were being mangled, dripping raw blood. Day after day.

I sat in a little cafe in the small town where I lived drinking a cup of coffee in momentary contemplative solace. A man I never saw before nor since seated in a back booth signaled me to come. I sat opposite him and he told me my situation and its resolution. He was right. My soul found release, then went into action.

listening to spirit

In December, 2007, I decided to not make anything happen for a while, to not restart another round of Warrior of Spirit weekly meetings, to not apply to conferences and gatherings as a speaker / workshop leader, to not put myself out there in any form.

Rising in the pre-dawn every morning and sitting quietly, as is my wont, I fully expected that at some point, the word of my new marching orders would come. Four weeks went by. Five. I was prepared to sit for at least a year and was enjoying the silent bliss.

Then it came. Pre-dawn. January 18, 2008. Quietly sitting. Still small Voice: “Write a Baptist Crime Novel.” “What!?” Again: “Write a Baptist Crime Novel.” I sat there laughing, almost giggling. I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding!” but I knew from experience not to ask a third time. One just gets the same answer.

I shook my head in bemusement as I walked over to the computer keyboard. “Alright, I will.” Within an hour, I had written four chapters. Along the way, my sister Ginny, a staunch Baptist, became involved. On February 13, 2009, the completed manuscript of The World's First Ever Baptist Crime Novel went to the publisher.

eagle vision

My yet unborn kin, I will include a journal entry from the past from time to time so you can know your ancestor better -- Journal Entry 9/21/78 A powerful dream of flying, higher than I’ve ever flown, a clear sky, so clear I could see the entire area called South Dakota. When a piercing scream came from my lungs, I knew I was an eagle.

Directly below me ( I was hovering over the central part of the state) were 5 Indian men with long red and white war bonnets with their backs to each other doing a war dance. To the east stood a huge Indian man taller and broader than a skyscraper exhorting and cajoling people to take action. The people were very small; he was naked to the waist. To the southwest was some sort of disturbance having to do with Indians but also with Whites. I saw all this through the body and eyes of an eagle.

piece of cake

As the oldest child, and at my father's ongoing request, I accompanied him on his job picking up bread in the wee morning hours along with other "bread men" from the 18-wheeler truck bringing bakery goods from the city. We loaded our smaller truck with the various types of bread, cinnamon rolls, and cakes and then began the journey to all the local stores.

At one point we were living in Eufaula, Alabama (we moved around a lot). I settled in to the local school, having grown accustomed to "the new kid" process, and of course, was immediately assisting my father on his bread route. On the day he was struck with appendicitis resulting in a prolonged hospital stay, I entered the adult world. No one knew his bread route except me, a twelve-year-old.

I guided the man the bread company sent with meticulous and exacting instruction. I could have done it in my sleep (and no doubt sometimes did). All of a sudden I became aware, except for driving the truck, I could do my father's job. I knew the route, the people, their orders. The external reward I received for my labors that day, a 25 cent milkshake, though delicious, was small in comparison.

service station

I was caught in that kid's nightmare, removing a too-tight long-sleeved wool sweater, pulling it over my head and getting stuck, my head and arms firmly encased in its smothering embrace. Staggering around the room, I called to my brothers for help.

We were home from the Sunday church service and I wanted to be free of all encumbrances, both theological and physical. Ben grabbed the sweater and pulled. When I popped free, I fell backwards and cracked my head on the windowsill. Blood. Dizziness. Emergency room. Stitches.

I wore this small plaster dome on my head for a few days dreading the time the stitches would have to be taken out. When assisting my father on his bread route, we were leaving a few cake snacks at a service station. You remember service stations, don't you? They would wash your windshield, check your oil, pump your gas, take your money, get your change, while you sat inside your car. Well, this day I got an added service.

Doc Lee pulled up for gas and we said hello. He had delivered me and probably about half or more of the kids in Troup County. I'm not sure how it happened but the next thing I knew I was sitting inside the service station having my stitches taken out. Doc finished the job, paid for his gas, and drove on. No one seemed to think anything of it. A common service.

theology school

A preacher, always from one of the local Protestant persuasions in our small southern community, and my grandfather would sit at his kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon and talk Bible talk. They would debate scriptural meanings. After reaching a certain point (where neither was persuaded by the other), my grandfather would give the preacher $5 for his church and the preacher would leave. An inexpensive theology school for the young boy who stood by listening.

crude man

"Crude: not changed from its natural state; not altered or prepared by any artificial process"(Webster's, 1828)

I am a crude man, I grew up in a lower middle-class environment, blue-collar, and went on to get a doctorate. I was a marine (crude) before that, then became a martial artist (crude), and taught others how to maim and kill (crude) before ever moving to the elite halls of academe. Maybe that's why I wasn't satisfied there though quite successful. When offered tenure I resigned, a crude move.

I must admit I read all sorts of high-falutin' esoteric philosophical books. I brought some home the other day that my partner looked at and laughed saying the librarians must be really happy to see those books finally being read by somebody. I like to read them, translate them into my crude language.

As a crude man I like the warrior way. My favorite weapon is a stick (crude). I know my dark side, the dragon, and my light side, St. George. Neither of them are changed from their natural state (crude) and they know each other well. The three of us get along just fine. We go everywhere together, me and the dragon and the saint. All other folk see is this old dude walking along but being a crude man I am “not altered by any artificial process,” such as my perception of other people's perception. That gets way too complicated for me. Crude is the way I have been and crude is the way I will always be.

yes

Back long ago, before meditation and mindfulness became our paths to salvation, when living in the now was regarded as the of course thing to do, when most folk would have bought Eckhart Tolle a beer and invited him home for supper and a stay, just another brother on the move, I faced down demons.

They were tiny at first, wisps of distortion in the clarity.

I had been and was sitting quietly. That's what we called it way back then, if we called it anything at all. Sitting quietly. No posture. No cushion. No straight spine extending through all the chakras into the cosmos. No chakras. No effervescent doctrine of auric splendor. Sitting quietly. In some kind of chair. Didn't matter. Just sitting.

Then they came. Hideous faces contorting, aimed in my direction, growing larger. Some with bodies. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. They were outside of me and coming toward me, their numbers increasing. I was teaching martial arts at the time, working out most every day, so did what was and still is natural. I deepened. Settling more deeply into my center, I heard a whisper at its core. Rather than just listening to the whisper, I became it. "Yes."

It grew in size, doubling, then doubling again in its quiet unassailable strength. Soon the Yes expressed itself in voice, singing aloud in strong sweetness. The demonic energies with faces and bodies began shrinking in size, then disappeared out the window.

The Yes sits with me still.

dreams

Dreams. Dreams of different states of hell and anguish inflicted by people on people and on themselves. Sometimes dreams seem instructive and guiding. Other dreams, like this one, leave me with horror and a sense of futility.

A carnival going on, packed with people, in a city’s remodeled center. Eagles, hawks and dragons soaring high above. Heavenly dragons. Me lost from, separated from acquaintances, wandering through the remainder of the city and seeing the anguish, despair and deadness of those too tired and desperate to even notice the carnival, much less attend.

My most horrible encounter was with a shapeless bag of bones lying in the street under an arch connecting a passageway with the center city. An old woman crying for help with heavy pleading and wailing, the bag of bones was once her body. Her head was separate, its tongue thick with thirst, and she was calling for water. No one was responding though many walked by. By the time I got back with what water I could find, rain water in a gutter, 3 women had stopped. We poured the water into her jaw, almost disconnected with pain by now.

1979

Amanda called. She was between TV shows. She said we could stop some things (I had asked her opinion of the world.) She said we could stop pollution, inflation, and depression. She said the president didn’t know what to do. What he should do is set up a vote so that the people who wanted to could vote that inflation didn’t exist. I said yes, that should certainly stop inflation. Stop what? she said. My daughter is a real card. The Princess of Violets.

1982

And a man, strong, ageless, with a blue face put his forehead to mine and stared into my eyes, transmitting an outpouring of energy. When he stepped back, I felt, by simply visualizing, energy flowing forcefully up and out the top of my head. With no movement of arms / legs, by simply thinking upward, my whole being lifted into the air. I went up once with my legs straight, as if standing. I went up again while in a seated lotus position. “Only the strong can do that,” he said. I went up again with a person in my arms. I was flying, through the directing of energy by thought.

1984

“The Eagle of the Spirit claims this body for its Work” — awaking from sleep on a November Monday, 1984.

1999

His Holiness, The Dalai Lama and I were in a bookstore of a hotel. No one else recognized (or could see) him. He said, George, you must read this book. He was looking for it on the shelves. A book with dark blue cover appeared in my mind. He spoke without stopping. Yet slowly, calmly. I listened to him attentively.

At one point, I realized I was looking at a double of himself he had created. He was talking with me about this ability. I “created” both double and myriads. We laughed quietly.

When we first met, we stood facing each other. Our energies merged. Our belly energies, heart energies, head energies, all energies. With the merging, a gentle “bouncing” of energy — ventral to dorsal and back — occurred. We laughed. We walked down the stairs together to the bookstore. He invited me to open without his saying a word. I put out both my arms, palms up at 45degree angle in front of me. Bliss! He showed going-out-of-body to me. I went out, above my body about 6 feet — in energy realm — no eyes, no ears, no nose, etc. I could still hear him. He invited me to come back into body. I did. He said, as we stood once again facing each other: George, I would like for you to take the Three Vows. Tonight. I said Yes. I was to come to the hotel later that evening for the ceremony.

A shifting occurred. He was standing, back to me, on my feet. Our energies merging. I was standing, my back to another one, on that one’s feet, energies merging. Three Energy Bodies. We stayed that way for a while, with chanting-like sounds. We went back into physical bodies.

back steps

On my 12th birthday, I became aware of men killing each other in Korea and I sat on the back steps of our house and cried. Seven years later, I joined the Marines.

I joined the Marines for two reasons. I wanted to see how I would fare in the world of men and the Marines were the toughest men I knew. I wanted to make myself strong so I could do something about those who abuse others.

I moved through the rigorous training at Parris Island with great vigor, became part of the 2nd Marine Air Wing (ground to air communication -- helping train jet fighters to land and take off from carriers), then embarked to Okinawa with the 3rd Marines and a Naval Gunfire unit (if surrounded by enemy, I was to radio to the ships "Fire On Me").

In addition to the Marine training on hand-to-hand combat, I became a student on Okinawa of Sensei Tatsuo Shimabuku, who taught me how to attack every weak point on another person's body with any hard part of my own body. It is called Isshinryu Karate. Isshinryu means "the way of one heartmind."

I am no longer age 12, but I still sometimes cry.

clan

Dear Unborn Kin,

Folk around here, the Colorado Plateau, introduce themselves by clan. I belong to the Navel Tribe, as we all do, and have the scar to prove it, plucked from the Vine some 68 years ago.

My clan is the Unshrivelized Clan. We have never been shrivelized and never will be. Shrivel-i-zation is not for us. We are King James English loving people. The metaphors and poetry that flow from this way of speaking and imaging are tremendous in their impact on our soul and expression of spirit.

No one ever gets us down for long, we always rise right up. We come from what is later called Scotland and Ireland and Wales, from Appalachia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Georgia. We are scattered now all over, yet we recognize each other in a flash. Visionaries, hardcore, funloving, outlanders, mavericks, rebels with a cause.

bookhead and geezer

Bookhead says that Geezer's intellect is a voracious beast. Bookhead has been slowing it down recently by throwing him thick theological tomes and huge bales of cosmological understandings. He remembers when Geezer, as a young boy, was satisfied with stacks of comic books. "Maybe I never should have started feeding him!" Bookhead sighs.

Bookhead and Geezer are up while others sleep. It is their nature. Accompanied by his buddies, Eternal Bliss and Flamboyance, Bookhead asked Geezer the age-old question: "If you had to choose only one book to take with you to a bookless place, what would it be?"

Geezer gazed around the book-filled room. "Hmmm....Definitely not a novel. The mind would grasp it quickly and that would be that. No learned treatise on anything (from plumbing to metaphysics), unless regarded as a challenge to write a learned treatise in response to the learned treatise. Hmmm....Poetry? Perhaps. Rilke? Possibly.... It would have to be a book with depth. Like the Upanishads. Or the Bhagavad Gita. Or the Zohar. Or some of Ibn al'Arabi's writings. Or Rumi's Mathnawi. Or Meister Eckhart. Or the Diamond Sutra. Or the Heart Sutra.... I know! For me, it would be the King James Bible with Apocrypha. Poetic, metaphorical, illuminative, challenging. "But I think I would copy the Heart Sutra on one of its blank pages. And maybe put Rilke's Book of Hours in my back pocket," he muttered under his breath.

Bookhead sighed.

gunfighter

1987 dream: The small demanding blue-eyed gunfighter banged into the gentle calm of the two men playing a board game of ancient origin. A man and a woman walked to the half-pint’s left, away from his gun arm, shrinking from the unfolding scene.

“Why aren’t you attending to my needs?” he focused angrily on one of the two men, me. “You didn’t answer the door. You pay no attention. I should fill up your life, should be in front of your face at all moments, should put on and wear the suit of your existence.”

He pulled his gun and aimed it at my head. I could see the smooth rounded bullet heads wishing to become part of my own. We stared at each other.

"Let me tell you a story," I said, gazing into his short blue eyes. "Long ago, beside a peaceful flowing river, two men sat under a graceful willow, playing a board game of ancient origin. The day was Sunday. All was calm and languid. The day was perfect and beautiful. Then a half-pint sun-uv-a-bitch came along shouting out his ego demands. Now put up that pistol before I shove it up your scrawny ass and let’s get calm and lively mellow."

And I awoke from that dream into this dream. My ego and I were more at war in those days and my tactics less refined.

i don't know when it happened

I am old-fashioned. I don't remember when I turned this way, but I did. It might have happened while I was gazing into people's souls day after day and had my back turned to the world. I am hopelessly old-fashioned, unhip, not cool. See what I mean? No one talks like that anymore.

A man about my age, in a store the other day, a man with long hair, neatly done, an equally long beard, and a turquoise earring in one ear, looked at me and unexpectedly said: "The world has changed since we were boys. I do not recognize it anymore." We quietly stood there agreeing in our old-fashioned way.

Some years ago I walked through a large mall with my older friend Willard who did not say a word. As we returned to our car, Willard said in his soft endearing way: "I never saw so much stuff I don't want." Old-fashioned. Hopelessly old-fashioned.

Only one thing truly counts for me anymore. Relationship. Right relationship. With myself. With others. With the cat. With the eagles. With the mountains and the desert. With the trees. With the cosmos. With the gods. With the Source. Old-fashioned. Deeply, unchangeably old-fashioned.

 

how the martial arts got into me

Well, yes, it's time for another re- collection, or this one might best be termed a wreck-o-lection. Seems to be that time of year -- the re-member-ance of yore. I already told you how I got into metaphysics. That was yesterday. Today I want to tell you how I got into the martial arts. This boy when I was mebbe 14 or so invited me to his house. It was a setup but like all setups the dupe doesn't know and guess who was the dupe?

This boy, let's call him Biff as in Biff-Bam cause that's what happened, had a dad who taught him how to box. Now I didn't have a dad and didn't know nothing about nothing. Biff says wanna box? I says sure. Next thing I know I got these gloves tied on my hands where I can't throw any dirt clods which is my favored form of defense and he's beating the holy hell out of me. He must have gotten worn out in there somewhere because mercy was not in his catechism. I went home with a stinging face and a determination -- you can guess what it was. It took a while though -- I had some things to do first.

Years later I joined the Marines and went to Okinawa. Fast forward. I was teaching karate and jujutsu in Atlanta with a bunch of fight fanatics. A boxer came over -- it was a large open gym -- and asked if he could try out his boxing against what I was doing. I said sure. Poor guy. He knew nothing of Biff. This time I didn't put on any gloves. Every time he jabbed I went in low and gave him a spear hand in the armpit. He stopped jabbing pretty soon. We departed on friendly terms. And I had come full circle. He had given me a gift.

So there you have it. How I got into the martial arts. Or rather how the martial arts got into me. I guess if there's a moral it's that getting whupped up on in life can cause one to blossom in unexpected ways.

cukes

Back in the '70s, a strong good friend invited me to take over the fecundity of a large cucumber field. It was mid-summer and the cukes were reproducing like crazy. I said ok.

The deal was to pick the cucumbers while they were at a certain small size and sell them to the pickle people.

Every morning at dawn I would make my rounds to pick up my crew. Have you ever tried to round up hippies? Like herding cats. We would eventually get to the field and begin the stooping hours of moving aside the leaves to pick those green phalluses from their Adamic Eden. Some of the women would start picking topless as an aid to us men for zen and yogic attentional training.

At the end of the picking day, the cukes were hauled in an old converted truck bed trailer to Irene, South Dakota and poured into a size sorter. The little ones got the biggest buck bang per pound. Meanwhile those cukes were steadily growing.

And so the summer progressed with hot humid days and afternoon rain storms and double rainbows, the rich smell of earth, laughing camaraderie, and stoop-muscled backs.

the nets of heaven

As a child I had a choice: submit to the world of humans or open to the cosmos. The choice was simple since I instinctively knew I was choosing between death and life. At that moment I became a rogue, a ronin, outside the bounds, courteous but unconstrained, except by the forces of heaven, as Lao Tzu might say. I only held jobs until their or my completion, whichever came first and then moved on, no job lasting longer than five years, until joining up with that bunch in Flagstaff where the job description was to be myself. Went 12 years on that one. Now out ranging around again, no one calling the shots but the nets of heaven, and hey, that's the way it has always been.

that cycle complete

Long years ago I packed my metaphysical bags and left Georgia’s Troup and Fulton Counties and the Baptists behind to go see what the Buddhists were up to. I could not have stated it that clearly at the time, but had a definite sense of mission and purpose. Little did I know that I would begin learning the rudiments of Zen through the martial arts at Tatsuo Shimabuku's dojo behind his house in Agena, Okinawa. And now I have reported back to the Baptists with my Zen Baptist blog and with The World's First Ever Baptist Crime Novel and can move on with this life into other realms, that cycle complete.

check mate

Dear Unborn Kin,

To work my way through college and to help support my young family, I worked in the baggage room of the Greyhound Bus Station in Atlanta, checking baggage and loading it on buses. Later I moved "up" in the world of work and became a check sorter for a large bank at night. Each of us commandeered a machine which we kept fed with an ongoing supply of checks. My machine read the account codes and placed the checks in proper numerical order. I was friendly with the other guys and when we took our midnight "lunch" break, we would sit at the break room table and chat. Being an adventurous sort and prompted by the current sit-ins, freedom rides, and my own dislike of the southern racial barriers, I announced one night that I had black ancestry. What a sociological experiment! None of them would eat with me after that. My little sermons to them did not help at all. I would say I am no different now than earlier. I received only cold looks and got the cold shoulder from then on out.

“Who knows what evil lurks within the minds of men?”

Your Ancestor

weird kid

I was a weird kid. I would read anything I could get my hands on. In addition to the comic books I traded with other kids and avidly read, during summer visits to my paternal grandmother's home in Alabama, I would sneak a peek at her Christian literature and its tales of redemption and salvation.

One revival-tent story that struck me most vividly was of Big Jim, a hellacious dude who found Jesus and just lit up with love. Big Jim was transformed in every aspect of his being! Until that point, I did not know such things could happen. Everyone around me seemed to stay pretty much the same. I have been a fan of transformation ever since.

As a psychologist, zen baptist, intranaut, and investigator of religions, my attention continues to be called to the understanding that two general categories of transformation exist -- sudden and gradual.

Amongst some Christians, the first is called conversion -- one is going in a certain direction and then does a complete about-face and heads the other way. Some of the old Zen dudes (Hui-neng for example) also experienced this sudden enlightenment. It's a human characteristic -- not bound to any particular religion, philosophy of life, or culture.

The latter, the gradual way, seems to be the way of most folk, with perhaps a few Aha! blips on the screen.

And what is it that is transformed? Some say the soul. Soul is a beautiful word. Fine by me. Another way to speak of what is transformed is consciousness or awareness. Other terms that point to this process are transmutation, shape-shifting, theosis, theophany, and transubstantiation. It was a natural process to open from there to pondering the evolution of human consciousness a la Jean Gebser, Teilhard de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo. No doubt I will pursue this interest the remainder of this life. And it started with my Mawmaw's salvation stash which I read while the other kids were out doing Lord knows what.

letter to great-great-grandchildren

Dear Great-Great Grandchildren, I write to you from 2009 in order to let you know how things are here. Some of us have it pretty good while some of us are starving. Some of us are strapping bombs to ourselves and blowing ourselves up in crowded places. Some of us are looking for power. Some of us are looking for love. Some of us are looking for Jesus to split the sky. Some of us are looking for clarity. Some of us are seeking stupor. Religions and philosophies are bumping up against each other and trading points of view. We propel ourselves by sitting in chairs attached to large gas-sucking engines. We like to go shopping, buy stuff, and bring it home. Our food contains "acceptable levels" of debris and chemicals. Many of us are "holding jobs" we do not like. I'll tell it to you straight. "Holding a job" means you are selling your life. Some fortunate ones of us hold jobs that match our life mission on earth. We continue to live in nation-states that continuously go to war. Species are disappearing. People are fat (except for the starving ones.) Giant trees are being logged to make toothpicks. Movie stars and musicians are often more effective in helping people and the earth than are politicians. We are way over-populated. The human herd needs thinning. Technology is allowing us to communicate with each other more, but only by turning attention away from each other and becoming engrossed in little machines or talking into the air. There is still a lot of love around. Some of us are doing mighty fine things to help each other and the planet. Well, enough for now. I love you very much and hope all is well with you, Great-Great Granddad

geezerman

My future kin:
A chronological oddity: Superman and I share the same birth date, June 1938. Like me, he does not care for cars, being a fan of walking (solvitur ambulando: "problems are solved by walking around") and of flying over conventional reality for the eagle view. Beyond that the resemblance ends. I have no blue and red outfit though I did wear capes made of old towels or pillow cases when I was a boy. They seemed to help when I jumped from garage roofs or off the porch or out of trees. There should be a Geezer Superman comic. Especially since he is now almost 71. He and my old buddy Stagger Li could team up. What? I haven't told you about Stagger Li?

2001

Dream of large eagle, larger than me, hovering about 6 feet above ground, his head in sky, long tail feathers toward the ground, wings outstretched. I turned to my left toward him, about 10 feet away. He moved toward me, placed his head atop mine, his chest and body pressed to mine, his wings enveloped me. We merged….On the way to town (10:30 a.m.) two eagles soared above the car.

too close to the edge

Dream, 1979. I worked out with some karate stretching exercises on the roof of a building. I worked out close to the edge which had stone columns about knee-high like a parapet. A martial arts master, his gi-top open and with no belt signifying rank, approached smilingly and said I was working too close to the edge for my own safety and the small boy with me. He asked me to move over to a spot designated by him (further from the edge than before but nearer to the edge than he had chosen for himself). Smiling he moved over and continued his instruction of another. The nature of my life has been to push the envelope, to not only "work out" this life too close to the edge, but to be the edge. Surfing atop the cosmic wave, I peer into the boundless.

i only wanted a beer

Toward the end of a failed marriage of 15 years, I got on my bicycle and hit the road, hoping to peddle away some of the misery. In those days, we neither had the multi-colored lizardskin outfits nor the salad bowls strapped to our heads. Jeans, tennis shoes, a long-sleeved shirt, and an old beatup cowboy hat made up my fashion ensemble.

After having been on the road long enough to lose track of time, somewhere in western Montana, along about sunset I spun my wheels into a little town built mostly on one side of the road. The buildings were facing the dying sun, which should have given me a clue.

I was thirsty and tired and road-beat, so was happy to see that one of the buildings was a bar, a cowboy bar. I admit I wasn't very presentable and certainly did not match the cowboy code of attire. My beard was long and no doubt scruffy and my hair was even longer, resting on my shoulders. I walked in, adjusted my eyes to the gloom, and sat at the bar. No recognition by the bartender at all. None. "I'd like a beer, please." Nothing. "Sir, I'd like a beer." "We don't serve your kind here." Uh-oh. "Is it my hair?" An affirmative grunt.

I decided to give a little speech. I stood up and began what I thought would be a persuasive harangue to the unadmiring barsters. I began enumerating all the frontier and cowboy heroes that had long hair starting with Jim Bridger and Will Bill Hickock, proceeding through some of the Presidents of the United States, and ending with what I thought would be the beer-getting clincher: "...and Jesus Christ himself had long hair." I had the full attention of my audience, but still no beer.

I walked out of the bar, saw a little store a few doors down, went in, bought some beers, took them to the steps of the saloon, and sat down there, popping open a cold one, finally washing away the throat dirt. Meanwhile more pickups were pulling up and spilling their cowhand contents past me into the bar.

I thought the best strategy for my camping that evening should be total vulnerability, so I pitched my orange tube tent in the little schoolyard just down the road at the edge of town. I slept with my hatchet next to me that night. Evidently I was regarded as a kook rather than a threat to the cowboy way of life. No one bothered me at all. I packed up early the next morn and peddled on.

six people, twelve dollars

We were returning from a two-day Save The Black Hills conference and gathering in Rapid City attended by Native Americans, A.I.M Americans, Hippie Americans, Activist Americans, and Just Plain Americans in my old beat-up Jeep Wagoneer which had been up every hint of a road, whether snow-packed, dry-graveled, or gumbo-sucking, in southeastern South Dakota. It broke down just outside of Murdo.

Now I don't know if you have ever been to Murdo, but there's not much there. We walked in, late evening, found the Gem Motel which looked like a holdover from the buffalo-shooting days. I went in to talk with the office manager/owner. "Evening." "Evening." "We need a room. There are six of us and we only have twelve dollars." Bam! He dropped to the floor out cold.

I called out through the open door behind him leading to his private quarters. His wife came out, an ambulance was called. The whole flashing lights scene with gurney took place. They hauled him off. He had suffered some kind of seizure. He would be okay. The wife turned to me and said, "Now what can I do for you?"

I was afraid to repeat the words for fear they had some magical power but I did. Room. Six people. Twelve dollars. She did not hesitate. "Fine. Sign in." One room, 6 people, 2 beds, 1 floor. We sorted out the logistics and crashed. The next morning, our friend, Steve, drove his pickup from Vermillion, hooked it to the Wagoneer, and pulled me all the way back on the freeway, passing semi's and everything else he encountered. No one would ride back there with me as I whipsawed down the road.

quest - ionings

Twice in my life I was asked a question that changed my life course. I do not think the askers ever realized the profundity of their asking.

In growing up in the small-town south of the 40's and 50's, I did not encounter much expectation as to what I should "be" other than the current roles around me: cotton mill supervisor, preacher, teacher, blue-collar worker. One of my high school teachers one day out of the blue said, "Where are you going to college?" College? The thought had never entered my mind or been spoken of by anyone. The question itself signified that I was college material. (It was not like these days where everyone is enrolled in college almost at birth.) So I decided to go. And I did.

The second question was asked by a college professor. "Where are you going to graduate school?" Graduate school? What an idea! I thought about it, named the university, and went there. Following those lines of study, thanks to those two questions, changed my entire life. I love those two teachers, my mentors. I am reminded of the tai chi saying: a feather's weight can move a thousand pounds. Delivered at the exact right moment of course.

making the most of things

Way back yonder in 1959, my Marine buddies and I, young and wild and invulnerable, partied through the Okinawa night, relieved to be in town, away from our Quonset hut camp. We were to ship out the next morning for war games so we were making the best of it while we could. I got back to camp just before dawn and showered and changed to fatigues (appropriate wear for my condition). All of us "smartasses" as we were called (and worse) were assigned to Naval Gunfire where our job was to go into enemy territory as deeply as possible and call in the coordinates of targets for the ship guns to demolish. Every boy's dream. In addition to shooting a .45 and M-1, I shot a ship. The downside was we were totally expendable. If surrounded by enemy, we were supposed to radio "Fire on me!"

So I drove to the Okinawa docks in my radio jeep to find the ship assigned to carry me to Taiwan, the site of the maneuvers. I drove aboard, chained the jeep in a spot I found in the ship's hold, found a top bunk (a piece of canvas suspended within a metal rectangle) and went to sleep. When I awoke, we were out to sea. I walked the ship and found I did not know a single person. Wrong ship.

I followed my General Survival Strategy which almost always works -- I acted like I knew what I was doing. I stood in chow lines when hungry and found a bunk when sleepy, otherwise keeping on the move and making some crucial acquaintances. All other Marines aboard were infantry -- groundpounders, grunts. I found we were going to hit the Taiwan beach in waves of landing barges. I got myself assigned to a wave and made friends with one of the ship's crane operators. He said he would lower my jeep into a landing barge when the right time came.

After a few days (the entire fleet was on the move), we were in sight of the landing beach. The maneuvers were made as real as possible, so there was a whole lot of hell going on, but with dummy ammo. Planes were diving and strafing. Large explosives were going off ashore. Men began to go down the cargo nets draped down the ship's side and fill the landing barges. The Navy dude hoisted my jeep from the hold and swung it over the side into a barge below. I climbed down the net and timed my drop. Due to the movement of the waves and the rocking of the ship and the barge, there were only certain moments to let go. I landed in the barge.

We sped away joining a moving circle of ten or so barges, all filled with men with weapons ready to hit the shore. My jeep and I were the only cargo in my barge. Uncircling into a landing pattern, we bounced full-tilt across the waves to shore. The ramp fell down and off I drove accompanied on all sides by screaming yelling men moving to close combat with other men wearing strange helmets identifying them as enemy. "Oh Yeah!" I thought, taking my camera out of the glove compartment, climbing on the hood of the jeep, snapping pictures.

"What the f**king hell are you doing here?" bellowed in my ear caught my attention. A major and a captain with "Umpire" markings on their uniforms seemed quite enraged. I followed my second General Survival Strategy -- "They told me to." The nuances of the resulting conversation escape me now, but it was definitely profanity-filled. They put a tag on my jeep that said it was out of commission due to a land mine. They put a tag on me that read "Brain Concussion" and made me lie down in the sand. I lay there listening to them talk about their lives. One of them nudged me with his foot and said to call for a medic. "I can't." More profanity. "Why the f**k not?" "I have a brain concussion." Hoo boy! That really set them off. So it's probably the first time in medical history that an unconscious man called for help.

audacity

Soon I will have completed the training required to be a hospice volunteer. The training is strong and deep and good. My only concern in working at hospice is not being able to hear those who speak softly. My audiologist is a very discerning person and when I visited her last week for a hearing aid tuneup, she asked if I used the third setting (the first is "surround sound," the second is "restaurant," the third is "phone"). I said no, I do not like telephones.

She said people who are dying and people who are in bereavement speak very softly and you need to hear them. She changed the phone setting to an "I'm dying/I'm crying" setting. When I switch to channel three now, I can hear the cat thinking in the next room. I can hear butterflies landing on the flowers outside. I can hear the books in my library reading to themselves out of boredom. My ears are ready for hospice now.

I love my audiologist.

getting loaded

In e-chatting with one of my sisters last evening, I recalled working at the Atlanta bus station as a baggage handler (one of my many jobs putting myself through school and helping support my young family). I liked the checking in of customer bags and loading them on the correct bus. But every so often I had to open unclaimed suitcases to see if I could find identifying information.

I found bus riders, at least at that time, to be a fairly unhygienic bunch. It was as if some folk decided to load a suitcase with their unwanted junk including unwashed clothes and leave it all behind as someone else's responsibility. Maybe they started afresh, which is more than I can say for their gifts to Atlanta Baggage Claim. It was this part of the job that prompted me to resign and get a job loading semi trailers.

It was strong good work. I remember coming home so tired and dirty (2 a.m.) that I would run a hot bath, fall asleep in it, and wake up to the stimulus of the cooling water. Before long, I accepted a job driving a cookie truck and unloading its contents at various warehouse sites in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina. I kept attending college at night, steadily working toward an undergraduate degree in psychology. Loading up with info at night, unloading cookies during the day.

Hometown Boy Makes Good

This is from the  front page of my birth town newspaper, the LaGrange Daily News, a paper that, as a boy, I once delivered door-to-door on my trusty bicycle. The article is based on an interview with my sister Ginny.

Cross-country collaboration: Local woman, Arizona brother pen mystery LaGrange resident Ginny Stewart and her brother, George Breed from Arizona, spent a year writing a novel together, mostly through Internet ‘conversations.’ By Sherri Brown

Ginny Stewart spent a lot of time in the last year playing “pretend” with her older brother. Stewart, 65, and her brother, George Breed, who lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., managed to turn it all into a murder mystery novel. Breed, a retired psychologist has written two nonfiction books and decided to try his hand at a novel based in a southern Baptist church. He asked his sister her opinion of the first chapter.

“I really liked it. I told him it reminded me of a church we attended as teenagers,” said Stewart, who lives in LaGrange. He sent her his second chapter as well. “Then he wrote me an e-mail and told me he was stuck on a character. He asked me to write it for him,” she said. While Stewart has dabbled in writing throughout her life – for fun and sometimes for work – she’s never considered herself a writer. Her brother’s confidence in her ability spurred her on to give it a try. “I wrote the chapter and sent it back to him. He loved it and said, ‘Now you’re in it.’ I figured if my brother who has already written books thought it was good, then maybe I was OK,” Stewart said.

For awhile the two wrote alternate chapters, then a particularly challenging plot problem caused them to change their strategy. “We’d schedule sessions in a chat room and we’d work through a chapter at a time,” she said. The two would “act out” the plot online, then develop it into a chapter. It wasn’t long before Stewart found the process not only exhausting, but emotional as well. “It has a lot to do with spiritual bullies – people who don’t accept others because they don’t believe exactly like they do. It brought up memories from our childhood. The hardest part was dredging up those past memories. It became very emotional for us,” she said.

The two concocted some creative ideas within the novel. The Baptist church is in financial problems and church members come up with the idea to hold a “preach-off” to raise money. They invite pastors to preach, take up an offering after each preacher and the one who raises the most money wins. The church keeps the money to pay off its debts. Stewart openly admitted that many of the characters – some good and some just plain mean – were based on real people from years gone by. “Absolutely I had certain people in mind while I was writing,” she said with a laugh.

She does make it clear that there are a lot of things in the book that don’t reflect her own beliefs. “My brother and I have varying beliefs. I’m somewhat of a prude and he is not,” she said. “If there’s anything bad in it, my brother wrote it.”

spiritual harassment

The Alabama Sunday School teacher kept saying to me every Sunday without fail -- "When are you gonnacceptjesusasyourlordandsavior" (all run together as one long word). I guess he wanted to ring up one more twelve-year-old toward a star in his crown of glory. Finally, my mom approached him at church and said "I have a bone to pick with you." After her little talk, he never tried to "get me saved" again. Thanks, Mom.

tour d’anomie

In July, 1971, in pain and alienation, I pedaled from Vermillion, S.D. to the train station at Willmar, Minnesota, put my bike and me on a train, got off at East Glacier, Montana (where I saw my first ever Columbine flowers), pedaled up the Going To The Sun Road and down the other side to Kalispell, Missoula, Butte, Yellowstone, and was stopped at Red Lodge by a big sign in the back window of a car that said GEORGE STOP, otherwise I would have kept on going.

I counted it up once. I crossed the Continental Divide 16 times.

on the cross at the crossroad

As a youth, I ingested Christianity, swallowed it whole, without any suspicion of or attempt at deviation from its premises. Its dogma was the frame, the structure which allowed me to make sense of who and what and where I was. As I grew older, the ingestion created indigestion. As the old Zen dudes said about the impact of koans long dwelt on, it became like an iron ball within the stomach of my psyche. I saw that Christianity was not whole, was ailing, had carved off a section of What Is for its domain and consigned the rest to hell. I had a choice between a Southern Baptist seminary or graduate school in psychology. Making the choice was agonizing. I was at a crossroad; the crossroad of my life. Unable to voice the struggle with anyone, including my young wife, I chose psychology and began moving forward, looking for understanding as to the healing of all patients (myself, humans in general, and Christianity). Richard died and George was born.

first encounter with the penal system

I was just a little kid. We had a community center in our neighborhood. I wandered into a locker room one afternoon when almost no one was around. A teenage boy was lying on his back on a bench, his pants unzipped. A girl was giving him a hand with his situation. He never looked my way but she sure did. The next day, a pair of white tennis shoes appeared before me. She had tracked me down. "Little boy! Don't you tell! Don't you ever tell!" I looked up. Her eyes were blazing. Well, I'm telling. I'm telling now.

brothers of the gun

My friend Jerry and I were coming back to South Dakota from a martial arts training camp in California in 1974. Jerry had an old beater of a car with no air conditioning. As we crossed the desert, the temperatures soared. We didn't care. We were pretty happy with our training camp experience, plus we had a bottle of tequila we kept under the seat, sipping on it occasionally to wash down the food we had brought along. Eventually though, our clothes became too much. The heat was stifling, even with the windows down. Soon we were riding along naked, sitting on towels.

We topped a rise and there were two Highway Patrolmen with a speed gun. They pulled us over. One came to my passenger window, the other to Jerry's, as we were pulling on our pants, then shirts. "Are you his father?" the one said to me (I have had white in my hair and beard for some time). "No." Jerry told me later that the other one asked, "Are you his son?" We got out of the car and talked a bit. Soon we were standing on the side of the road and they were showing us how to use the speed gun. No ticket. Just a friendly warning and we were on our way.

lsd

There was a time when "acid" was a normal part of my life. My consciousness was already outside conventional thought patterns and roamed the universe, so it was mostly like drinking a strong cup of good and holy coffee. I had no fear, so had no bad "trips." I took long walks through the night down by the river, sometimes by star light, sometimes by moon. I saw and understood many things. I know why the substance is called an entheogen.

the day of the father

He took me fishing once. He taught me to make a banana sandwich. He taught me to fend for myself. He showed me what anger is like. He never saw my heart, my soul, my mind. He showed me how not to be. Because of him I learned the gift of toughness: how to stop the bleeding of the heart and move on.

evening high school

Upon finishing the eleventh grade, I left the little southern town of my birth for a full-time job in the big city of Atlanta. That was further in school than my grandfather Ed (my early mentor) had gone when he went to work.

I went to evening high school at night with some pretty exotic people and finished the twelfth grade. The school was in a not too desirable part of town. I would wait at the trolley stop each evening for the trip to a great-aunt's house where I was staying. Women of the night would approach me from time to time there and ask if they could do anything for me. I was a sweet young virgin and could not imagine crossing that barrier with any one of them. Besides I was dog-tired.

I remember finishing all the workbooks assigned to us in all the classes for that twelfth grade year in the first few weeks. After that, like much of life, it was just a matter of showing up. Unbeknownst (I like that word) to me, the exposure to so many types of people in that school helped steer me toward psychology as a field of study. I thought my near kin were strange. Now I was beginning to see it was the entire human race that was afflicted and blessed with peculiarity.

my mom

My mom used to sing to us when we were kids, sing us to sleep. That was before the horrors and tribulations of life began to gnaw at her soul. She taught me the difference between a "d" and a "b " when I was learning to read (on which side of the "l" the "c" went confused me for a while). I remember her hanging clothes and my playing with the wooden clothespins as I sat in the grass under the warm sun with the wind billowing the clothes.

My dad and granddad were working in the shipyard building ships to help kick Hitler's ass. My mom made do at home with rationed sugar and margarine like playdough in a bag with a red dye spot to knead until it turned the goop to a more butter-like color. She made biscuits and my brothers and I liked to count them as she placed the raw dough in the pan, leaving our fingerprints on their surface. Sometimes she would add some "baby" biscuits just for us.

She is a very tender person with the fierceness of a taloned eagle if she or hers is threatened. The tender and the tough do a dance at her core.

the nursing and rehabilitation center

Dear generations-to-come, my mom, your ever-how-many-greats-grandmother or whatever label the kinship system puts upon her for you, is now in a "nursing and rehabilitation center." It's a good place, as far as such places go. She gets an hour and a half physical therapy five days a week, meals, shelter, and attentive care. But still, it's an institution, not a home. Of course, all the personality quirks of all the family members hovering around her dying campfire are revealing themselves, mine included. That's just part of the equation. Folk all around America are going through this scene all the time. All this brings me back to my favorite zen question: "who is it dragging this corpse around?" My mom won't tell me. She just laughs.

dew drop

The out-of-the-body experience I had in 1950, viewing the earth from afar and seeing/experiencing its complete harmonious interplay with no bounds, no divisions, no schisms, had the effect of collapsing the every-day world into an illusionary dream that others around me treated as real -- mental patients all, including the "doctors." But from the majority point of view, I was the one insane.

From that experience, I fully comprehend Wolfgang Giegerich's interpretive description of Carl Jung's African experience: "Jung pulls himself out of the presence of this moment in which he actually is while seeing the animal herds and rises above it, indeed above the whole infinite manifold of the world at large in both its temporal and spatial extension, and thus above the corresponding whole level of consciousness. And he contracts or condenses, indeed collapses, this manifold, this infinity of moments and of phenomena, into one single abstract thought..." (Giegerich, The Neurosis of Psychology, p. 176, his italics).

In following Giegerich's description, it did not seem as if I had pulled myself out of the presence of the moment and rose above it. It felt as if it had happened to me. The organismic process that I am unfolded rapidly and assumed its rightful dimensions. I rose above "the whole infinite manifold of the world at large in both its temporal and spatial extension, and thus above the corresponding whole level of consciousness." The entire dichotomous, dualistic world collapsed "into one single abstract thought" -- Illusory Fabrication.

I feel like an advance water droplet in a coming tidal wave of consciousness change.
Blessings to you, the yet unborn.

professional advancement

I was at one time a reviewer of articles for and a contributor of my own articles to relatively obscure (to the general public) psychological and philosophical journals, but I gave that up, seeing it as a cul-de-sac with little traffic. I remained relatively silent for many years. I now publish my thoughts on an obscure blog that putters along an information superhighway. This is an ongoing story that has no punch line nor cute ending.

arms raised to stars

Thirty-five years ago, a sweat lodge in the Black Hills with good strong Lakota warriors. Prayers. Songs. Water dipped out of bucket onto glowing rocks. Steam. Sage. Prayer. More rocks forked in. Fiery red. Another round. Darkness. Chanting. Praying. Timeless. Emerging naked into cold night air. Body steaming. Falling into, rolling in, snow bank. Smiling deep inside with happiness. Purged. Clean. Arms raised to stars.

ratatouille

My mother carries a mortal fear of mice since, according to her report, she was chased as a little girl by a little boy with a dead mouse. I heard her scream one pre-dawn morning (she rose early and went to work across town, Atlanta, before her five grown and growing children went to their jobs or to school). I rushed into the kitchen where she stood atop the table. "A rat!" she said, looking fearfully toward the water heater. With me blocking the approach of her nemesis, she left the kitchen and shut its door.

It WAS a rat. A large one, which had to be removed from the kitchen or my mom would never return. I stood there barefoot, in my skivvies. I got a broom and poked the rat huddled in the corner behind the water heater which prompted it to charge straight toward my unprotected feet. I did a flat-footed straight up and back jump for the safety of a kitchen chair seat.

The chair went out from under me and I fell on my back on the rat. We both let out a yell, both scrambling wildly to make our escape. We each did.

My mom caught the trolley to her job. I resumed my early morning action as older brother, part of which was to play John Phillip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever at high volume so as to gently and tenderly awaken my brothers and sisters to the dewy morn.

eaten by the catch

A friend of mine said I am a hermit teacher. Not a teacher of hermits, though I suppose that could be true. Most every hermit's cave these days contains a laptop, each monk's cell a cell phone.

No. A teacher who is a hermit.

A teacher is one who casts the widest net of understanding possible, hauls in the catch, boils the bejesus out of it, and serves it in suitable form for the tastes of those taught. I think I'm moving on past that now. I continue to cast a wide net, but now the catch hauls me in, eats me alive, and sends me staggering back out into the world.

I don't think I am a teacher anymore. I think I am a bit of cosmic indigestion that serves as a reporter. A hermit reporter. Hermit to the World of Appearances. Bon vivant, confidante, cosmic traveler, and indigestible morsel in the Realm of Energetic Interwhirling. Try putting that on your resume'.

calf rope

My two brothers and I liked to tie each other up and see how to get out. I think it came from watching those serials and cowboy movies on Saturdays (price: 10 cents). We would bring sandwiches and watch a double-header, staggering out into the bright light of a Saturday afternoon, minds filled with rescue and adventure.

Our favorite tie-up method was "hog-tieing." The two would get the one flat on his stomach (voluntarily or involuntarily depending on the mood of the moment), loop the rope around his pulled-back neck, and tie the other ends to his lifted-up ankles. Hands were tied behind the back with a short rope.

In those days, yes kids, even before television and way before fritter and twitter, we always had a supply of rope and sticks and rubber inner tubes of tires and string and tongues cut out of old shoes and rubber bands and homemade glue and so on, the simple materials of life from which so much could be fashioned: sling shots, kites, bow and arrows, cudgels, poison sticks (remind me to tell you about poison sticks).

We would sit and watch the tied-one struggle until he either got out or said the shameful words of surrender: "calf rope." We got better at both tying and freeing ourselves, ever-escalating arts. Ah, the simple pleasures of a Georgia boyhood!

jail time

Some years ago I did jail time, having been judged by a store detective and then a policeman as an accomplice of another's crime. (I was innocent.) A free ride to the county jail, relinquishing of all possessions, fingerprinting and photo, then placed in a small holding cell with solid walls and one small window in the door, and another prisoner making guttural sounds and grinding his teeth.

After a while, who knows how long, jail time is like no other time, I was taken to a large rectangular cell containing 14 cots, seven on each long wall, with an open toilet at one end and the cell door at the other. Two men were asleep or passed out on two of the bunks. Seven other inmates gazed at me curiously as I claimed a bunk and sat on its folded-back mattress in a semi-lotus position, relaxed and unmoving, as I searched for my options on getting out of jail.

Time went by. One loud-mouthed jerk shifted from his never-ending self-inflating harangue and recounting of his exploits to talking the others into luring a guard inside by one inmate pretending to be sick, then all jumping the guard and pounding the bejesus out of him. All seemed to agree that was a great idea.

O great! I was already nailed as an accomplice to something I had no awareness of. Now I was about to be an unwilling accomplice to something I knew about. I had had enough! I got off my bunk with cold steel deliberateness, already centering firmly from hours of sitting unmoving in deep meditation, and walked down that aisle to the door where the idiot was standing, my line of energy cast ahead of me to infinity, as if I was going to walk right through him and the door, and I was. His only options were to move or get knocked down. He moved. The consciousness state in the cell changed. His plan evaporated.

I reached the door, then turned around. He smiled weakly and said, "Hello, sir. How are you?" I said nothing and went back to my bunk, back into meditation position.

door sign

After a while, as a university professor, I put this hand-lettered sign on my door --

DO NOT PROJECT YOUR GRADE B PLOTS
ON MY UNWILLING SCREEN

I continue to hold to that sentiment.

Chuang Tzu and my doctoral dissertation

Chuang Tzu says once you have the fish, you forget the fish trap. Once you have the rabbit, you forget the snare. Once you have the meaning, you can forget words. He ends by saying, "Where can I find a person with no words so I may have a word with him?"

I first read that quote in 1960 as a Marine aboard a ship in the East China Sea. I copied it and kept it in a little notebook next to my heart. Nine years later, I did one of the first experimental studies on nonverbal communication as my doctoral dissertation, strong enough to be published in the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

I put into words my study in the nonword realm. I found people with no words (their nonverbal behavior) and had a word with them.

nightly bow down

As a child I was taught to say my prayers every night before sleep: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. Guide me through the starry night. Wake me with the morning light." This was followed by asking God to bless individual family members (each called by name: "God bless Mama, God bless Daddy," and so on, the prayer becoming longer with the addition of the baby sisters). We were never taught to pray to ask for something other than to have our soul kept by, and for all to be blessed by, the Great Ah-Hoo-Ah-Hoo-Ah.

N.A.I.L.S. & A.I.M.

Was sitting in a South Dakota restaurant in the '70's with two Lakota A.I.M. men and a lawyer from N.A.I.L.S. (Native American Indian Legal Services). I was listening to accounts of some of the everyday atrocities against folk at Pine Ridge. Wounded Knee was happening. At one point I said, "That makes me just want to throw this chair through that window." Dave, the N.A.I.L.S. attorney, gave me a sharp look and said warningly, "George!" I understood and immediately began to wind down.

cell phone zombies

They walk right past each other, site and sights unseen. This is no lamentation. They are the hope of the future. As the herd expands, all must retreat to another zone beyond the physical. Cell phones prevent mass murder, in-your-face walk rage. Cell phone zombies -- earth's final hope.

too positive for sds

I was a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in my graduate school years but was tossed out on my ear for being too positive.

I had been given the responsibility for reproducing a handout because I had access to a mimeograph machine. You remember those, don't you, with the revolving drum and the goopy ink? I thought the message in the handout was way too negative and proceeded to edit it into more positive statements which I thought might go further in winning the hearts and minds of the masses. I ran off a few hundred and gave them to the group.

Such howlings of betrayal! I was supposed to be negative and stay negative. Nor was I supposed to make decisions on my own.

flight

Henry Ross & Dan Packard of the University of South Dakota Art Department (back in the '70's) made a large glider out of bamboo and some kind of fabric. They invited me along for a test flight. Each of them tried it but couldn't get liftoff. They asked me to try it because I was lighter.

The takeoff procedure was hilarious. I stood in the cockpit and lifted the bamboo under my armpits while, simultaneously, several guys lifted the wings and tail. At a signal we all ran down this hill as hard as we could. I had my eyes on some electrical towers in the distance thinking I have to clear those suckers. No worry. I went up in the air a short distance then banked and crashed. Chip Simone was recording the event for posterity. He caught the flight.

the first coming: a real-life operetta

Last night I was awakened during the night by my partner warning me that she turned the water off because the pipe beneath the sink had sprayed a geyser. And now I sit waiting for the plumber.

Chorus: The water spray led to her dismay and his entree' into the day and now he sits awaitin' for the plumber.

She went to work. I called the plumber number. I left my call, my plea for help on his machine. And now I sit waiting for the plumber.

Chorus: He paces the floor, looks out the door, cleans house some more, reads buddhist lore and now he sits awaitin' for the plumber.

I terrorized facebook with comments on everyone's site, played spider solitaire to hear the sound of silence, and began to clean the lint from my navel.

Chorus: He can't go out, can't walk about his accustomed route, feels filled with doubt and now he sits awaitin' for the plumber.

I would like to wash last night's crusted dishes in hot soapy water before they need a jackhammer, instead I sit waiting for the plumber.

Chorus: His life is o'er, his spunk no more, ennui galore, his butt is sore as now he sits awaitin' for the plumber.

allowing

When I lived in South Dakota, a man told me that I was the most powerful man around but didn't know what to do with the power. He was correct about the latter in that I didn't know the next societal role to take on. He was incorrect in that, in alchemical language, I was going through the putrefaction process and knew exactly what to do with it -- allow transformation. I was an alchemical furnace.

the dental corpse

Back in the olden days when I was growing up (being raised, as they used to say), the focus was on keeping food on the table and clothes on the back. Doctors were seen in extreme emergency (blood that kept bleeding). Dentists were not even in the picture.

The same for eye doctors. I asked my fourth grade teacher if I could bring a cheap little telescope I bought at the five-and-dime to class. She must have been puzzled but she said okay. When I used it to peer at what she wrote on the board (seeing it clearly for the first time), it wasn't long before I was scheduled to visit the eye dude. I walked out of there with glasses and the trees actually had leaves and the daytime moon was not doubled. I love my teacher -- she might have paid for that out of her own pocket, there were no federal programs like that back then.

I'm still getting accustomed to the modern ways. Like I said, a dentist was not even in the scenario, much less a tooth cleaner person. I went to have my teeth cleaned this morning thinking I was in pretty good shape since I did not have large chunks of food caught in my teeth and I brushed regularly. Nope. Now I have a Treatment Plan and several Cleaning Appointments. That old Zen question comes to mind: Who is it dragging this corpse around? And is he going to leave behind a set of redeemed born-again teeth?

what is it exactly you do now?

Dear unborn kin, if this info reaches you, you will probably want to know what exactly I, your forebear, DID "for a living" (as they say). Actually, I have done nothing for a living, nor know what possibly I could do or have done. Living is a gift. But somehow we have determined that one has to DO something for it. We have to EARN a living. I know, I know, it's very strange. Maybe in your day you will have figured out something different.

Let's rephrase the question. What do I do to occupy myself? Which is again a loaded question -- as if I were empty and had to be invaded by some foreign army and kept occupied, otherwise I would fall into some undesirable state perhaps resembling anarchy (shudder) or home rule, which is definitely frowned upon, like unto home schooling.

No. I must be occupied. Don't want no devil's hands in my idle workshop, you know.

Some of my friends who are busily engaged in building stuff and making things, at times lift their heads from the inner workings of their gizmos and out of social politeness or benevolent pity ask, what is it you do now George?

I say well, the other day I was talking with a person locked deeply within a rigid invisible prison self-created from misery and life's woundings, completely understandable because they didn't want to get hurt anymore, so they had settled for the known expected pain rather than any unexpected assault from elsewhere, and that person after a few minutes was smiling and laughing. That same day, I also burst into spontaneous song with a child looking lost and forlorn.

Eyes glaze over and the very next sentence is "have you seen my biodynamic defibrillator of nematodes for the exaltation of ph content in stratospheric layers that might assist in ozone depletion?"

"Well no, no I haven't. But since it makes your eyes light up, let's go take a look at it."

dear unborn kin

My dear unborn kin, humans need, insist upon mythology, mythopoetics, metaphysical understandings of our situation as conscious walking meat. The ascendant metaphysics of the past hundred or so years -- that metaphysics is an illusion that is best abandoned -- is losing way. The metaphysics of no metaphysics is being seen through.

Scorn has been heaped by this created human system upon all other human created systems of explanatory and revelatory power. These systems, captured within the pages of the I Ching, Zohar, Tanakh, Kabbalah, Bible, Qur'an, Diamond Sutra, Heart Sutra, Tao Te Ching, Upanishads and other Vedic Scriptures, and so on have assisted humans in gaining meaning, understanding, confidence, hope, courage, and lovingkindness for centuries. The only time they fail is when clusters of humans decide their system is THE ONLY AND TRUE system and get all gnarly about it, their meta-fizzy-kuhl underwear all in a wad.

The only way these systems work is as living systems which change to meet the spiritual and cultural needs of the times. All metaphysical systems are creatively organic, evolutionary. Those who practice each system to its depth are changed by the experience and also recommend changes to the system. They often catch holy hell or hellish "holiness" from other humans for doing so.

A deeper understanding of all the Pathways mentioned above is that each of us is an offspring of the universe and that as we open to our birth right we open to unlimited energy, awareness, and capability. The dotes (poisons) that we hinder ourselves with are hostility, greed, and stupor. The antidotes are lovingkindness, generosity, and wide awake awareness. The antidotes are practices but so are the dotes.

So, dear unborn kin, you will no doubt be born into a familial and cultural metaphysical system. Enjoy it. Eat the peyote. Drink the wine. Dance the dance. Genuflect and hop up. Bathe in the Ganges. Climb the Himalayas. Study the Sutras. Walk the streets as a Zen Bum. Whirl like a Dervish. Experience yourself as a Stranger in a Strange Land.

I predict one thing. You will get to know the poisons and you will begin embodying their cure.

Great Mystery and Rabbit Have A Talk

Great Mystery said, "Hello, Rabbit."

Rabbit was of a garrulous nature, not satisfied with a mere hello response. "Hi, Great Mystery. Thanks for showing up. But that's one of the things I like about you. I tell my friends: Great Mystery is always here. Great Mystery always makes Its appearance."

"I see you finally got my gender right."

"You are both male and female and neither male nor female. You are outside the gender category. Thanks for teaching me that. That's another thing I appreciate about you. Though you are Great Mystery, you are always revealing yourself. I have a question for you."

Great Mystery laughed. "I bet you do." Great Mystery was always betting on Rabbit. Rabbit was an endless source of amusement, full of shenanigans, getting into and out of trouble, hopping down the complex maze of bunny trails. No matter how lost Rabbit got, Great Mystery's bet was always the same: that Rabbit would find a way out.

"All of this," Rabbit gestured all around, "came from you, from Great Mystery."

"Yes."

"We are embodyings of Great Mystery."

"Yes."

"What's the point?"

Great Mystery began laughing so engagingly and contagiously that, though at first Rabbit was offended, they were both soon rolling around on the Ground, whooping and holding their sides, which was quite a feat for Great Mystery who had so many sides.

After a while, they caught their breath and wiped their eyes.

"What's the point?" gasped Great Mystery.

"Yes. What's the point?"

"This, my dear Rabbit, this."

money god and heart power

Money God said to Heart Power, "You are nothing. I rule the world." Heart Power smiled, having heard this before.

Money God said, "I create wars. I make people waste their lives on jobs they hate." "Yes, you do." said Heart Power.

Encouraged by this agreement, Money God said, "I am infinitely powerful and you are spiritual schmaltz." Heart Power laughed.

Money God got mad. He said, "My reach is further than yours and I will prove it to you. With one leap, I can jump further than you can ever go." Heart Power said, "How will I know how far you have jumped?" Money God said, "I will take a piss where I land and if you ever get there you will see my piss puddle."

And with that, he took a mighty leap and landed at Far Infinity. He saw a post there and peed on it. Then he leaped back. "There!" he said. "Top that!" Heart Power held up his hand. His third finger had Money God piss at its base.

(A retelling of an old story with a slight but meaningful revision.)

hobby

My hobby is the recognition and collection of frames of consciousness and the ongoing development of a mega-frame through which they can be seen.

A heresy is a form of consciousness that threatens the form of consciousness we perceive as true and real. A thought community consists of persons with the same or similar mental templates for viewing and thus creating and reinforcing a certain brand of reality.

We live in an age where previously ascendant thought structures or templates are held suspect and abandoned.

The thought structure that contains the most "juice" for me and provides the most room can be labeled cosmotheandric (Raimon Panikkar's term). Cosmos-theos-andros. We are the cosmos embodying. The cosmotheandric thought structure or consciousness form has been with me, has been my vision (my actual way of seeing) since I was a boy.

As a psychotherapist and as a social psychologist, I have been studying human consciousness (human thought forms) and their repercussions for several decades. Two conclusions thus far: (1) Belief creates reality. (2) One's cogno-emotional stance creates one's social and emotional dance.

I love my consciousness hobby and will continue these explorations until this body drops.

a bedtime story

The supreme start must have been startled, else how could it start? What startled the supreme start? An infinite progression looms. An infinite digression. A hall of mirrors. Some say the supreme start startled itself. The universe jumped into existence. A jump start. The positive and negative poles got juiced. And we have been positive and negative and juiced ever since.

Veteran: A Soul's Journey

I did not join the Marines because I wished to “wage war for democracy” or any other of those flag-waving ideals espoused by politicians who need fodder for their cannons. I joined the Marines because I wanted to see how I did in the world of men, the toughest men I could find. I had finished my commitment to my birth family and its establishment in physical security. Also, something in me, mysterious and unspoken, urged me toward Japan. The recruiters said they would send me there and eventually they did.

I enjoyed Parris Island, the ultimate summer camp, gaining 20 pounds of muscle. On I went to Infantry Training, basic ground-pounder grunt stuff. Then on to the Second Marine Air Wing where, as a Radio-Telegraph Operator, I provided ground-to-air communication with fighter jets from my radio jeep. And finally to Okinawa and Japan, my job there with Naval Gunfire as the spotter onshore who calls in rounds from the mother ship on enemy positions.

America, at that time, was not engaged in constant overt war, so I was fortunate in not having to destroy or be destroyed. For that I am grateful, and I pray for and send blessings to those Marines who are faced with such.

I was offered Officer Candidate School at Quantico if I re-enlisted, but I said no. Three years, three months was enough for me. I left the Marines (does one ever truly leave the Marines? I think not) with three gifts: the knowledge that I could match the energy of any man plus raise it one notch higher, extensive training in martial arts, and a willingness to face and deal with whatever comes up. For that I thank the Corps.

Semper Fidelis!

dear unborn kin

Dear Unborn Kin,

We fiddle with superficiality while the earth burns. No help and none anticipated from politics: clowns to the left of us and jokers to the right, to quote Mister Bobby Dylan. The schizoid rant of demagogues. Religion has gone down in flames. Its supposed replacement with ratio logic and the sciences of externality is not proving satisfactory. Big Pharm busily manufactures chemicals that give us cancer and other chemicals that promise its cure. We don't care as long as we can push full carts of junk from big box stores with our fat fat bodies to our awaiting dinosauric chariots. We don't care as long as we can keep stuffing our eyes and our mouths with trivia of so little nutrient we crave more, our hunger never satisfied. But we do care. Underneath we know something at the core is wrong. We know what we need is the light of wisdom and the heat of love. Many of us are looking to embody that light and heat. Close to the end of this dark age, we look to light a beacon so strong that allies from all over can land and help us. I know our light is seen. That is why I write to you. I know we will make it through and you will be here.

Your loving ancestor

the whole animal

In my older age, I find myself the recipient of what gerontologists label as crystallized intelligence. I go beyond a predilection for the fine art of hair splitting and move more deeply into a fondness for looking at the whole animal with all its fur.

As I look into the crystal ball that is reputedly now my brain, I see a cosmic melodrama continuing its play. I see us humans as a species inhabiting an outpost furtherest from the central core of the divine, our source. I see that cosmic characters abound in the form of energy bodies and that we are the same, with one addition: we have assumed flesh, invaded matter with the aim of its redemption, of calling it into a higher forming, into an arising out of the muck of darkness to an ever-closer relationship with the Flame, the Light, the Divine, our Source.

We are both Light invading Matter and Matter opening to Light. We are the fleeting Arrow and the dense Target. We are the Target opening to receive the Arrow. By the Arrow we are wounded and by this wound we are healed, made whole, made holy.

dear unborn kin

Dear Unborn Kin,

America is fast becoming not America. The Super-Rich are making a power grab. Under the guise of balancing the budget, they are pushing to take money from those who are not Super-Rich (or even rich) and divert it to their own interests (war, profiteering, planetary ownership). The old dividing lines of republican -  democrat, conservative - liberal, city dweller - country dweller, and religious differences pale into insignificance. It is the Super-Rich versus The Rest Of Us. Greed may cause destruction but it will not win out.

Your loving Ancestor

the realm of the mythos

Dear Unborn Kin,

My refusal to live in the plane of ordinary reality has placed me in the realm of the mythos: the free flow of energy from the Wellspring. I highly recommend it. Being "in the world, but not of the world" produces great freedom of movement, lack of fear, and a strong sense of humor. One is on (and one is) a continuous adventure and is not bound by those hemorrhoidic fears associated with security-seeking. One knows there is no security, only free-fall by which one glides and swoops and dives. Rather than trying to make a living, one is a living. Exhilaration becomes one's way of life. One's heart knows what moves to make in this moment now. (Re-hearsal means to visit the hearse once again.)

Enough for now.

Love to you,
Your Ancestor

the daze of the weak

Dear Unborn Kin,

We of this age and time are so odd. We know the earth spins, sometimes facing the sun from our location and sometimes not. We call the sun-facing intervals "days" and chunk those days into clusters of seven.

Five of those days are bartered (with our lives) to "work." "Work" generally means that one is doing something which is not one's first choice of action in return for electronic blips. The electronic blips are traded for a shelter, food, clothes, and transportation to "work."

That "work" is something not totally desirable is affirmed by our relationship to "days." Mondays (the first day of the "work" week) are met with unwillingness and a level of despair. People do not like Mondays. Why? Because they must go back to "work." Tuesdays are a little bit better. Wednesdays are known as Hump Day because they are the middle of the "work" week. The horse can see the barn. Thursdays give great hope and Fridays are cause for rejoicing.

Then come two days in which one is off "work" and is free to tidy up one's shelter, to go to the company stores to trade some of one's earned electronic blips, and to engage in re-creation. Saturday night is a time of total abandon and Sunday is a time of either asking for forgiveness for Saturday night or a time of re-coop-eration in which one begins to bring all one's chickens back to roost in preparation for Monday.

You see how it goes. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Folk who steadily come to "work" are rewarded with vacate-ion days. Usually only a couple of weeks though. If they vacate longer, it is feared they will go native and never return to "work."

Like I said, we are very odd beings. Yet this is the way our world "works."

Blessings to you,
Your Loving Ancestor

pardon me sir

Was walking down a Flagstaff street yesterday when a couple approached and the woman said: Pardon me, sir, but my husband needs to ask you a question. I thought: O boy, what kind of scam is this? He said with much evident nervousness and consternation: I was in the Marines in Iraq and while I was there did my duty but when I came back to the States a woman told me that from being there  I was now a sinner.  What do you think? Am I a sinner?  We looked in each other’s eyes. I said: One definition of sin is separation from God. Do you feel separate from God? He said no. I said: Well then. He looked much relieved and shook my hand. 

top secret journal

i start writing in my top secret journal today this info never to be disclosed to anyone i think i am a mutant i have looked in my diagnostic and statistical manual for confirmation of this as a disorder but have not found one that truly fits by mutant i mean this is my best explanation best hypothesis for understanding that my consciousness seems different from the mainstream but perhaps everyone feels this way and says nothing my consciousness has never fit what is portrayed as normal normal meaning get a house and car and mate and kids and job and die and even more than that feel separate from the cosmos and try to find god or a god-substitute out there somewhere i have never fit that realm instead my mind is cosmic i have been "out there" since age 12 at least maybe before maybe since silence first whispered all this into existence and i know that out there and in here are the same i became a psychologist partly because i wanted to help people through their pain and partly because i wanted to investigate human consciousness after all that i still think i am a mutant in material science terms that would mean my brain is different but i don't think that my brain produces my consciousness i think consciousness produces the brain see what i mean i got it all backwards from what the truth doctors of today promulgate promulgate where do these words come from enough for now i will stick this back under my pillow

permeable membrane

like f w h myers said for some people there is a thin permeable membrane between the supraliminal and the subliminal i have a thin one when i close my eyes i almost immediately see a different world as real as this one this journal is in and when i open my eyes i am right back here again even when my eyes are open i am aware of a vastness beyond what is right in front of me nothing changed for me when i dropped acid back in the 70's i had always been in the place where acid takes you a vast universe of interwhirling flow i already knew it well and that is why i think i am a mutant my brain fluid must be a tripping juice or at least predisposed so that when i was opened up into the cosmos that day when i was 12 and given a look around it didn't seem that strange at all of course if i revert to the baptist language i was brought up in it was that i had received the gift of the holy spirit and was whisked away to the 7th or so heaven like saint paul and that language is fine and comfortable with me i know what it means and i know i am no saint but i do see things different

cruising with ray

ray and i had breakfast again yesterday he's nothing but trouble riding around with him in his old beater getting me all involved with societal machinations designed to help the moneyless homeless just try it for an hour he says you'll be changed forever grinning me that elf grin the poor you always have with you the sticker on his dashboard two old geezers riding around flagstaff the car lugging needing to go into a lower gear but finally dealing with it and cruising kind of like a model of life

geezer man

yesterday i stood on the sidewalk waiting for the mountain line bus or rather not waiting i gave that up long ago finding it an uncomfortable subjective state i stood on the sidewalk looking around at the forty-fifty feet high ponderosa pines the snow-topped san francisco peaks the houses of my neighborhood and i laughed aloud this is what i have become this is who i am a little old man waiting for a bus in this place this place now and now i understand why older folk talk to themselves and laugh aloud the world is so amazing

bell ringing

0551 hours, 13 days pre-winter solstice, 08 -- the three warrior angels guarding the salvation army bucket were a formidable force strong with cheer i'm standing here until you leave i said looking for ray to bring my santa hat they laughed and spoke of church services three every sunday plus a thursday nite meal for two dollars and fifty cents a good meal too they said concerned with the state of my belly and my soul as they packed to go to their next gig ray arrived carefully arranged santa's stocking cap on my head took off i learned several bellringing techniques recess over, town crier, old maid, fan, navaho blessing, and tickle my fancy the clapper kept falling off bell way way too small next time bring a turbo bell and send some sound waves acknowledging the reverberating hearts dropping their coins into the tiny slot also sunscreen and water and the mormon tabernacle choir might also be good as backup

mouthpiece

0456 hours, 8 days pre-winter solstice, 08 -- i have no doubt what on earth i am here for -- i am a mouthpiece -- what in the old days might be called a prophet or a seer or a diviner -- not my choice -- i didn't want the job -- still don't -- it has its price -- some time ago i tried to dummy down, to lose awareness, lead a "normal" life -- not possible, not allowed -- i am to keep on expressing the largest awareness possible no matter what -- not to worry, i know i am two to three pounds of shit at all times like everyone else -- maybe that's why i am trusted for the job -- it's become part of me now, this vocation that one does not find in the help wanted pages -- mouthpiece -- mouthpiece of the Larger Context.

just outside my open door

Dream: I opened the front door from inside my house and faced a sheer wall, black, of a huge spinning tornado inches from my face, extending beyond sight into the heavens and below to the ground -- immense and awesome power that could have taken me away but did not, allowing me to see and experience it without being consumed. Raw naked whirling vast energy just outside my open door. I was terrified but calm, awe-struck.

meteor

In my first six decades, I blazed like a meteor through earth's atmosphere, burning in fierce agony and joy, and now have hit pay dirt, on the side of a mountain in northern Arizona -- come to earth, pulsing with the radiance of the heavens.

just another chunk of spastic spam

"Do you know what it means to be alive?"

"Why, sure, I've had the skull cap of conventional wisdom placed atop my head, its electrodes seated firmly in my brain and the juice turned on, jolting me into just another chunk of spastic spam, ready for the slicing knife and the eventual perfect fit into a gated retirement community or drooling nursing home.

Yes, I know what it means to be alive. It means to be the one hog that breaks free when the tractor trailer bearing its pig load to the kill for mass consumption jack-knifes on the road; breaking free and running like hell, first with adrenalinic desperation, then with mad euphoria, disappearing into the wilderness beyond; hopefully returning later like some kind of hoghisattva with a full report and a bag of goodies."

mortificatio

Am engaged in that age-old process of watching a parent succumb to dissolution -- fierce, proud, loving, scared, angry, confused, alert, joking, laughing, defiant, sometimes elsewhere, sometimes here, helpless, independent while dependent, her body no longer her own.

my mom

My mom lay in her bed last night ready for sleep, her teeth and hearing aids out, and sang to me, my sister, and brother-in-heart some of the songs she used to sing to us kids when we were small children. She sang with heart and gusto, hitting the high notes lengthily and with vibrato, smiling during pauses between her selections. We kissed her on the cheek and said good night.

geezer report

Women are getting boob and butt jobs and their faces lifted into the stratosphere. Viagra-drugged men are putting a bridle on that thing, riding that hobby horse with no hint of taking it back to the stable. Whatever happened to aging gracefully? You know -- character lines called wrinkles that show where the face has been and what it has done -- man-woman relations based on fine nuance and relaxed presence -- no agenda agendas.

One of the pleasures of getting older is the lessened pressure to put on any kind of face. In a sense, one becomes invisible, is dismissed, is relegated to geezer status. I find this enjoyable. There is plenty of room to be oneself rather than yield to that oh-so-subtle social pressure (which I have rarely yielded to anyway, since I was born a geezer.)

Maybe this wave of boomers heading into geezerhood will find these things out. As America ages, maybe looking like a geezer will become popular and younger folk will be getting butt-sag and boob-droop operations and wrinkle inducement will become the rage and men will be saying things like honey do you mind if we just snuggle and talk tonight.

not taught in school

Last night in the world we call Dream, I met with a learned man in a tunic and a woman in flowing robes of wisdom.

"It all comes down to this," he said, summing up his elocution. He wrote 4 letters in the air which looked like Greek to me (in both the pun and non-pun meaning).

She transformed the letters with a few deft movements (at the time I comprehended each step of the transformation) into three infinity signs. The beginning and ending letters became vertical infinity signs, like 8's. The two middle letters merged into one horizontal infinity sign (like an 8 lying on its side).

Three infinities, multiverses, one horizontal (this world) and two vertical (realms unseen by physical eyes) co-existing simultaneously, a thin membrane apart, within one Word.

As humans we have access to them all, if we have the willingness and the capacity. This is not taught in school.

last thing standing

I was at one of the hospice training sessions last saturday and we had to write out twelve things (on separate slips of paper) that make up our lives -- three things we do that we like the most -- three people closest to us -- three objects we own that we cherish -- three characteristics of ourselves we appreciate.

Then we were led through a visualization scenario where we got the bad news of an inoperable cancer and all the way through to receiving 24 hour care just before our death. Along the way, periodically, we had to choose a strip of paper and tear it up. Whatever we tore up was no longer available in our lives.

We were left in our final hours with one strip of paper. When we went around the room (there were 13 of us) and read aloud what was on the paper, everyone had chosen a person except me.

The last thing I had with me when I died was "sense of humor."

my angel

I saw my angel the other night. In what I have come to know as a waking dream -- as real as this dream with my fingers on this keyboard. He stood quietly and looked at me. Not one of those large-winged robed depictions we see on Christmas cards and in New Age stores. He looked just like me -- short white hair, beard, blue eyes, pants, shirt -- except he was very handsome since his body and being had not been compressed and contorted by earth's societal and physical pressures.

I got out of bed and stepped toward him. I thought I would give him a belly bump in greeting like I do with some of my friends. My belly went right through his. No felt contact. I thought he should get more grounded, then I realized, I should lighten up. So I released my earth-gripping stance and this time our bellies met.

opening to true power

A voice spoke as if it were my own:
You have yet to claim your full powers.
I thought: I must do something about this.

Immediately from deep within the vision came
of the wilderness encounter of Jesus and the Adversary.

Three powers were offered to Jesus

The power of alchemical transformation. "Command that these stones be made bread."

The power over death. "Throw yourself off this temple pinnacle and no harm will come to you."

The power of ownership. "All this shall be yours if you fall down and worship me."

Each of these "powers" would require Jesus to listen to a voice not his own.

He rejected each in turn, saying he would listen only to the voice at his core, the voice of God, of his Source, the Godhead, the Tao, the Wellspring, Allah, Wakantanka, the One Whom No Name Captures.

Jesus listened to the true power. So may I. So may we all

this funky little town

walked downtown to my favorite watering hole to embody spirit in a little different way with a celebratory sipping of some 18 yr jameson -- the celebration being life in all its peculiarities and amazenings -- met a man coming out of the courthouse who looked a little down, i said are you okay -- his reply included the word divorce -- i said yep i've been through that -- he said george, do you know why divorces cost so much -- i said why -- he sez cause they are worth it -- we stood there laughing at recent and remembered pain then went our ways -- stopped and yakked with a japanese man -- mutually admiring his streamlined hog -- in the course of the conversation he said he learned something from the homeless in japan, if you stuff newspapers over your chest to keep warm put them right next to your skin or they won't do the trick -- i thanked him -- who knows might have to use that some day -- and moved on -- sam was decorating weatherford for christmas -- she said when they drop the pine cone this new years MSN is going to be broadcasting it on its web page -- camaraderie and shared info and a sip of jameson, ahhhh! -- this funky little town

what’s the matter with you, are you deaf!?

Being deaf is rather fun. Though I'm supposed to say "hearing impaired" to be p.c., it's my "disability" and I'll call it what I want to.

I guess I also am not supposed to use the word deaf if I can partially hear. I claim it anyway -- it doesn't matter what you say -- I can't hear you.

I am reading a novel about a man who is h.i. -- he calls it his deaf sentence. I find most deaf folk have a good sense of humor. Maybe it is partly because we are not bombarded with noise all day long. You don't know how noisy the world is unless you are deaf and then put in some hearing aids.

Another advantage is that I can go into deep contemplation most anywhere. There are very few distractions. Unless there is a babe in the room. Both kinds -- a baby babe or a babe angel. I am deaf but I am not dead.

When I first got hearing aids some decades ago, the ear-tometrist said after I had put them in, "There is only one sound that will really drive you up the wall." Then he took some paper and began crinkling it up nonstop. He was right. I wanted to hit him, but he seemed to think he was performing me a valuable service. I still think about that man. The need for vengeance is long-lasting.

I used to go for walks with a guy who was blind ("visually impaired"). We laughed a lot. We talked about the deaf leading the blind. I always felt protected because he had a stick. It wasn't a little dinky stick either. It was an oak staff, about the size of a small tree limb.

I find I cannot hear folk who talk through their noses or their upper throat at all. They have thin voices. No depth. I hear folk more readily who talk from deep within their center as if they are solidly based and anchored. They come through. I find I can usually tell whether a person will have a thin little voice by the way they walk -- all tentative like.

If I had to choose an "impairment," it would be hearing.

Silence and I get along just fine.

soap box

I set up a soap box at a university once. Got up on it and ranted away. Drew quite a crowd. Vietnam war, ecology and all that. Tethered the box to a tree with a string thinking that the university needed a free speech area. Grounds and maintenance took it away the next day.

the hedgehog and the phoenix

Forty years ago, my research on the relationship between religious fundamentalist beliefs and peak experiences showed that folk with high fundamentalist beliefs were less likely to have peak, oceanic, or mystical experiences. Stating it another way, folk having mystical or peak experiences were less likely to be religious fundamentalists.

My later research showed that people with concrete conceptual systems were more likely to go against the evidence of their senses and yield to group pressure to accept a false conclusion than were people with abstract (open) conceptual systems.

Today I call these differences in human consciousness: the hedgehog and the phoenix. The hedgehog, when challenged, rolls itself into a tight ball with extended bristles. The phoenix, when challenged, lets its old self burn into ashes and rises anew. A huge difference in style

healing

I had pain in both hips for several weeks. Unceasing, and sometimes severe enough that I had to grit my teeth to keep from making noise. I was up between midnight and four a. m. one night, reading The Perfection of Wisdom, my consciousness opening in new understandings and wider, deeper realms. I went to bed, still in pain.

I had a dream which I will not go into, for fear it will not be understood by some, perhaps ridiculed. The sacred must remain sacred. It was a powerful dream in which I met some beings, one in particular, and went through great transformation.

I awoke about 5:30 a. m. and began what is usually a torturous process of getting out of bed, standing, and walking across the room. There was no pain, absolutely none. It is now almost 5: 30 p.m. and still no pain. It has disappeared. (That was September, 2009. The pain is still gone.)

the view from here

I sit here in my monk cell with ten zillion million books from all cultures and civilizations and schools of thought and religious persuasions and philosophies (including some R. Crumb) and scientific and mystical theorizing all perused and some intensely studied in my attempt to understand, to comprehend the human condition. Each book is a human consciousness and thought system.

I've hung out with the outlaws and the saints, with the hippies and the farmers, with the police and the merchants, with all races and creeds, with street people and the well-to-do, with gangs of women and with rednecks, with professors and with truck drivers, even with some politicians, all to further my understandings of this peculiar made-in-the-image-of-God creature who keeps returning to his folly like a dog to its vomit (as one of the Books so graphically puts it.)

And what is the outcome of these decades of attempt at comprehension? What is my diagnosis of our species? We are heros and heroines who will give up our own lives with hardly a thought in seeking to save others. We are the most perverted, cruel and ignorant bozos around (and fanatically proud of it). We are stuporous jackaknapes working for the man, slaves of the obscenely rich whom we worship and attempt to emulate with our Walmart copies of their Dior fashions. Each of us has our head firmly encased in our own virtual reality helmet.

We are demons; we are angels; we are suckers; we are fools. We are prophets; we are poets; we are mystics. Each of us is a personality disorder with some form of addiction. We are an experiment gone wrong looking to right itself. We are an experiment going right waist deep in the muck. It's all up to us and we can't do it without some help. We are the universe itself coming to Awareness.

May God (and the gods and goddesses) help us all.

the eagle and the raven

A bald eagle flew toward me, zoomed by, about 12 feet to my left and 10 feet off the ground, head and tail white aglow, a large black raven in his wake.

angelic voices singing

I had been pedaling my Schwinn for some time, up and through the mountains of northwestern Montana. I sat listening to a clear-running brook making its way from these heights to the valley far below. After a while and unexpectedly, its sounds changed to what I can only describe as a heavenly choir, angelic voices singing in exquisite harmony. It was an en-chant-ing. At some point, the singing ended and the brook continued its own joyous burbling.

Pythagoras was right. One can hear the music of the spheres, the cosmos singing.

still stoic after all these years

Last nite at hospice training we got to talk with the hospice doctor and after that a hospice social worker, both fine folk doing good stuff. After that, we watched a video on hospice work with veterans dying of old age and its various ills. An excellent video by a knowledgeable person. But then, BUT THEN, something just stuck in my craw. So I'll see if I can spit it out.

Now I know that when I signed up for the Marines, I really messed up by choosing a three year period when there was no war. Oh, we loaded up with live ammo and floated off the coast of Lebanon for a while and we did war games around Korea and on Taiwan, but there was no carnage of combat. My bad, as they say these days. Forgive my lack of experience of wading in blood.

Still, if I am in a V.A. hospital or elsewhere and dying, DON'T COME GIVING ME A PIECE OF PAPER honoring me for my service, and for heaven's sake, DON'T COME PINNING A FLAG on my hospice / hospital gown. Especially as some misguided attempt at therapy.

Maybe I'm the only veteran in the world that feels this way and all you other vets want and need this. Fine. And maybe this is an indication of deep psychological issues and an underlying sociopathic nature on my part. Fine.

I've been this way as long as I've known me. I have always been on the move and took no time to hang around for honors. Do the job and get out of town is my style. I like it that way.

If I am ever in that particular dying situation, if you want to give me anything, give me a hug. I'll receive it and give it back simultaneously. Then just shut the f**k up and move on. Don't give me an award while I'm lying there defenseless.

my mom the alchemist

When I was a young teen suffering from heartfelt pain, my mom said that my heart would be placed within the hottest fire, heated white-hot, removed and hammered hard, then plunged into the coldest of water. She said this process would be repeated, that I was being tempered. She said I had only two choices: to keep my heart open or to slam it shut.

Dear Unborn Kin,

I don’t know if they will still twitter in your time, but the fashion here for any wordsmith was to accept the challenge of writing a twitter novel. Rule: use 140 characters or less per chapter. Of course, I had to give it a whirl. Here it is.

Psychopomp

Chapter One

Mountain trail. Sheer drop right. Cliff face left. Wind blasts, shrieking energy threatening footing. Nothing personal. But real.

Chapter Two

Around hairpin. Out of wind. Safety. What!? Piercing luminous eyes matching his. No advance. No retreat. Heart thumping fear rage. Impasse.

Chapter Three

Nietzsche laughed. Ironic bitter joy. Was this his doppelganger, his death twin? His doom and salvation in one package. He moved in.

Chapter Four

Japan opens doors. Tesshu leaps through. “Zen warrior relentless openness seeks Prussian intellectual fire.” Fair trade.

Chapter Five

2 yamabushi clash. Mountain warriors. Highest peaks of awareness. Alpine thought sword, Fuji no-thought sword. Stand-off. Zanshin.

Chapter Six

Thinking! rails Nietzsche. Not-thinking! thunders Tesshu. Swords locked they stand. 1 and 0 in eternal combat.

Chapter Seven

USA. Two bulls. Dakota field. Horns locked, eyes bulging, foreheads bleeding, snot and drool, shit running down back legs. Relentless.

Chapter Eight

No backing up. Sheer cliff face. No backing down. Sheer abyss drop. The two masters see no opening. No way to close.

Chapter Nine

Alpine clash. An eagle flies down, rests on their immovable X-crossed blades. Without-thinking, it sighs. Flies away.

Chapter Ten

"Without-thinking!" the two cogno-warriors simul-shouted, tossing philosoph-swords into abyss. Laughing and pounding each other’s back.

The Beginning

this counseling business

She said, “When he comes in the door, I just want to throw up.”

As a counselor in a state-funded behavioral health agency that takes everyone who comes in the door, one sometimes has a client who can trigger such involuntary reactions, in this case disgust. Dis-gust, not gustatory, a feeling of wretched retching.

She was one of the best and most sensitive counselors I supervised. She had come to me for help, perhaps to have the man reassigned to someone with a stronger stomach.

I said, “The next time he comes in, pull out your trash can and puke into it.”

Startled, she looked at me in disbelief.

“Really?”

“Really!”

A couple of days later she came in smiling.

“What happened?”

“When I knew I could throw up, I didn’t have to. We had a good session and I think it’s going to work out fine.”

Permission to hurl turned out to be no hurl needed.

This counseling business can get pretty dicey sometimes.

the way of story

And then he said, "What I continue to realize is that it is all story. We create story and story creates us. The story that creates us determines the world we see, the "data" we find, the experiences we are. A story is a diaphanous cloud floating across the face of the moon. The moon is its own story. It is not that story is more real than anything. It is that story is all there is. As soon as the mouth of the brain is opened, here comes story. It is said if you get real quiet and still, very quiet and still, your stories will cease. A story bigger than all your stories will emerge. But then again, that is another story. Stories within stories. This is the way the world began and this is the way it is. The way of story."

jaguar energy

9/28/09 I read from "The Perfection of Wisdom" extensively and deeply. Felt joy open in my heart. Went to bed at 3:45 a.m. Dream: Flew across a road and into a room where three Amazon jungle shaman were standing in triad and chanting, s

tanding on a bed. I flew to a bed beside the opposite wall and stood on the bed as they continued chanting. I could at times understand the chanting. It would go on unbroken but seemed to be in English at times. They stopped, looked at me. Two left. The head shaman stayed. He was old and his face almost black and sometimes dark brown. He wore only a loin cloth. He brought his face closer and closer to mine. I could smell and feel his breath. I was unafraid. Soon we were eye to eye, nose to nose. My head became jaguar. I snarled. Good, he said, but more calm and even, not so rough. I shifted the powerful jaguar energy I was and am to calm unwavering imperturbable control -- contained power. He told me secrets. I immediately became his head apprentice. I stayed with him for some time. In the room. At one point the room opened its bounds. I could see into the clear water below. I was perched on a large dead limb protruding from the water. An alligator, three very large frogs (his totem animals), and a spotted jaguar roamed in the water world. I reached to touch the alligator's snout. It snapped but missed. I was quick in movement. The shaman was old and was ill but very strong. I prayed for him and helped make him a new bed. A younger shaman and I did it. We made sure to leave the covers loose and untucked in. Other shaman would appear at times, but had not the power of my teacher nor of myself. I said nothing to them though one kept speaking to me in a testing and ingratiating way. I awoke with no pain in my hips and legs though there was considerable when I went to bed and had been for several weeks. Jaguar shaman healing energy.

Dear Unborn Kin,

Our society in this day and age is based upon two fictions: ownership and property. We have decided that it is proper to divide the earth into property. We prop ourselves up with our property, achieve social standing. We stand upon our property. The more property we can stand upon the higher our standing. Those with no property have no standing.

We own property. What does this mean? It means we can maim or kill anyone who threatens the sanctity of our property. We back the fiction of property with guns. Owning means paying a steady flow of money to other fictions also backed with armed might: governments. Governments have the right to take our property from us if we don't pay money or if our property gets in their way. Maybe it is more accurate to say that property owns us.

We are all squatters. We squat on land taken from others. We are allowed to squat as long as we follow the squat rules: keep paying money. Even when the property is "paid for," money must continue to be paid.

Where does property come from? From violence and force. All property is stolen. Who stole it and steals it? Those with the most devastating weaponry and willingness to use it. Physical weaponry and legal weaponry are used in tandem.

You probably will shake your heads and wonder how we could all fall for this. Property and ownership are our religion and we believe it with all our might. We are still very primitive, yet believe we are highly sophisticated.

I hope things are well for you.

Your Loving Ancestor

Dear Unborn Kin,

In these times from which I write, everyone wears a thought helmet. Hardly anyone gives a thought about it. The thought helmet firmly and seamlessly encompasses one's head. One's thought helmet not only determines what one sees but what one is capable of seeing. This has drastic consequences. Especially since thoughts are not dry and dusty but are juicy with emotion.

Thought communities are formed by wearers of similar thought helmets. Each community thinks that other thought communities are composed either of idiots (the harsh view) or the unenlightened (the soft view). Each thought helmet wearer believes s/he is not wearing a restricted-view helmet but is helmet free and sees Reality clearly. As, of course, do members of one's thought community. It is the other unenlightened idiots whose minds are firmly encased by blinding structure.

The helmet wearers of any given thought community band together in groupings both formal (political, religious, business, enforcement) and informal (social clusters). In doing so, they tighten each other's helmets and regain energy to wage war and wrest power from those other idiots.

Efforts have been made by a few over the centuries and continue even now to learn to release one's heart mind from this helmet. These learnings and teachings have been cataloged by helmet wearing scholars under the code names of meditation, contemplation, yoga, mystical experience. One has to be careful that each of these ways of being do not harden into a brain cast and thought communities are formed once again.

Perhaps by the time you read this, the helmets will be museum pieces and everyone will be riding helmet free. In any event, blessings to you and I hope we have not left the planet in too ravaged a condition for your survival and enjoyment.

Your Loving Ancestor

The Judge
A few years ago a local judge was hearing his last case of the day before Christmas. A psychiatrist friend of mine was on the stand testifying that the defendant was a delusional, hallucinating transient and a potential threat to self and others (Title 36 of the Arizona Revised Statutes). The judge sighed and said bring him in. Law enforcement officers brought me in dressed in a Santa suit (complete with beard and a pillow for a belly). "Ho, Ho, Ho!" I pealed out as I strode down the courtroom aisle and addressed the judge. "What do you want for Christmas, little Billy?" Great surprise and laughter, hilarity and a happy ending to the day!!

Kudzu World

He came to earth,
was born to a jealous man and a believing woman,
and opened his eyes to a kudzu world
choked with tension, strife, vain imaginings,
hounds, chickens, eggs, and gardens,
yes-sirs and no-ma'ams, yelling preachers,
snuff-dipping and can spitting,
barely concealed cruelty and violence
which could erupt at any odd moment,,
calm and singing and laughter,
one-cent sales downtown,
and the strangely-accented voices on the radio.

A kudzu world, where even the strongest tree
could be smothered by surrounding creeping intimacy,
slowly moving in to maim and destroy.

He came to earth with a burning in his heart.

mom

I sang to my mother as she was dying. I was her firstborn. I read this a few minutes ago (from James Joyce's Ulysses). The ghost of Stephen's dead mother appeared to him and spoke these words: "You sang that song to me...I pray for you in my other world...Years and years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb." Thank you, Mom! I love you!

my mom and the curandero

In the wee hours of a Sunday morning, having been up all night, sitting with others in the dark, a shaman curandero, singing and whistling healing songs, began singing a song that felt as if it were aimed directly at me. "I come to the garden alone...." I began singing it a couple of days later while cleaning the kitchen and reached a place where I could not remember a certain line. I called my Mom who said, "Son, that's my favorite song!" and gave me the words I sought. What a wondrous world that an Ecuadoran curandero can sing my Mom's favorite song to me during the quiet darkness of a healing ceremony!I sang the song to  her years later as she lay dying. 

genetic and karmic flow

As the oldest member now of this line of the Breed clan, I stand at the edge of the Cliff from which all plunge into the Sea of Eternity. Five of us stand here, 3 brothers, 2 sisters. Our Mom and Dad have gone on ahead of us. We have launched our children into the world; each following his and her own creative destiny. We pray for them and for their children's children. And for all yet to come.

 Dear Unborn Kin,

Our society in this day and age is based upon two fictions: ownership and property. We have decided that it is proper to divide the earth into property. We prop ourselves up with our property, achieve social standing. We stand upon our property. The more property we can stand upon the higher our standing. Those with no property have no standing.

We own property. What does this mean? It means we can maim or kill anyone who threatens the sanctity of our property. We back the fiction of property with guns. Owning means paying a steady flow of money to other fictions also backed with armed might: governments. Governments have the right to take our property from us if we don't pay money or if our property gets in their way. Maybe it is more accurate to say that property owns us.

We are all squatters. We squat on land taken from others. We are allowed to squat as long as we follow the squat rules: keep paying money. Even when the property is "paid for," money must continue to be paid.

Where does property come from? From violence and force. All property is stolen. Who stole it and steals it? Those with the most devastating weaponry and willingness to use it. Physical weaponry and legal weaponry are used in tandem.

You probably will shake your heads and wonder how we could all fall for this. Property and ownership are our religion and we believe it with all our might. We are still very primitive, yet believe we are highly sophisticated.

I hope things are well for you.

Your Loving Ancestor

 Dear Unborn Kin,

In these times from which I write, everyone wears a thought helmet. Hardly anyone gives a thought about it. The thought helmet firmly and seamlessly encompasses one's head. One's thought helmet not only determines what one sees but what one is capable of seeing. This has drastic consequences. Especially since thoughts are not dry and dusty but are juicy with emotion.

Thought communities are formed by wearers of similar thought helmets. Each community thinks that other thought communities are composed either of idiots (the harsh view) or the unenlightened (the soft view). Each thought helmet wearer believes s/he is not wearing a restricted-view helmet but is helmet free and sees Reality clearly. As, of course, do members of one's thought community. It is the other unenlightened idiots whose minds are firmly encased by blinding structure.

The helmet wearers of any given thought community band together in groupings both formal (political, religious, business, enforcement) and informal (social clusters). In doing so, they tighten each other's helmets and regain energy to wage war and wrest power from those other idiots.

Efforts have been made by a few over the centuries and continue even now to learn to release one's heart mind from this helmet. These learnings and teachings have been cataloged by helmet wearing scholars under the code names of meditation, contemplation, yoga, mystical experience. One has to be careful that each of these ways of being do not harden into a brain cast and thought communities are formed once again.

Perhaps by the time you read this, the helmets will be museum pieces and everyone will be riding helmet free. In any event, blessings to you and I hope we have not left the planet in too ravaged a condition for your survival and enjoyment.

Your Loving Ancestor

9/28/09 I read from The Perfection of Wisdom extensively and deeply. Felt joy open in my heart. Went to bed at 3:45 a.m. Dream: Flew across a road and into a room where three Amazon jungle shaman were standing in triad and chanting, standing on a bed. I flew to a bed beside the opposite wall and stood on the bed as they continued chanting. I could at times understand the chanting. It would go on unbroken but seemed to be in English at times. They stopped, looked at me. Two left. The head shaman stayed. He was old and his face almost black and sometimes dark brown. He wore only a loin cloth. He brought his face closer and closer to mine. I could smell and feel his breath. I was unafraid. Soon we were eye to eye, nose to nose. My head became jaguar. I snarled. Good, he said, but more calm and even, not so rough. I shifted the powerful jaguar energy I was and am to calm unwavering imperturbable control -- contained power. He told me secrets. I immediately became his head apprentice. I stayed with him for some time. In the room. At one point the room opened its bounds. I could see into the clear water below. I was perched on a large dead limb protruding from the water. An alligator, three very large frogs (his totem animals), and a spotted jaguar roamed in the water world. I reached to touch the alligator's snout. It snapped but missed. I was quick in movement. The shaman was old and was ill but very strong. I prayed for him and helped make him a new bed. A younger shaman and I did it. We made sure to leave the covers loose and untucked in. Other shaman would appear at times, but had not the power of my teacher nor of myself. I said nothing to them though one kept speaking to me in a testing and ingratiating way. I awoke with no pain in my hips and legs though there was considerable when I went to bed and had been for several weeks. Jaguar shaman healing energy.

a time to hold on and a time to let go

We got all our touching of my Mom done (kissing her forehead, holding her hand, caressing her arm) while she was in the dying coma, then we stopped touching her. Some folk want to grab, touch, pull up and hug the dying person even and especially in the last phases of the dying coma. It's a selfish thing to do. The person is trying to die and that pulls them right back here. We sat there around her bed wishing her good wishes and Bon Voyage!

Dear Unborn Kin,
We are busy converting the universe into throwaway junk. We gnaw at the earth. It is called freemarket enterprise and is the god many of us worship, capitalist junkies searching for our next fix. We sell our mother and ourselves for a buck. I fear our prostitution will lead to your destitution.
Your Concerned Ancestor

well you see it's like this

Well, you see, it's like this. First you have to become aware that, in addition to the ever present information from all the various and continuous formings of the basic everyday elements of earth, air, fire, and water, people who think have been writing about this stuff for centuries. You read the writings of one, or maybe just excerpts to start, digest it, put it with whatever you have already come up with. Then you read the thinking trail left by another person giving their best and most sincere shot on the meaning of being a human. Let that ricochet and bounce around on the previous accumulation, go to another, and so on. Eventually you find yourself going outside your culture to see what thinking folk in other cultures have made of the world and the cosmos. You get lost. You backtrack. You circle around. And, this is important now, so listen up, you take it all personally. It's not just abstract fluff in your head like you are studying for an exam and looking to dump your load at the earliest opportunity. No, you become what you know. Along the way, you don't abandon the world that folk who don't want to think too much live in. You learn how to drive truck, slam tequilas, kick ass, cook good food, dance, and all that other physical-social stuff that is so highly esteemed. This goes on for several decades or so and almost before you know it, you have become a philosopher.

the cups

A bunch of cups were sitting on a shelf. They began to size each other up. Each thought they were the only one capable of containing True Reality. Some were hoping and predicting the others would be smashed on the charge of False Containment. God opened the cupboard. They went wild with fevered anticipation. At last the day of reckoning had come! A wall of Wine came flooding through. Cups, shelves, cupboard, all were washed away. The Tsunami of the Wine of True Reality was beyond all expectation. The sputtering cups got so drunk they began singing a common song: How dry we were! How dry we were! We did not know how dry we were! God roared with laughter and led them in a round of Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. True Reality was just a couple of words for nothing left to lose. 

going to alabama

...so we went to the convenience store on Christmas Day in Georgia to pick up a six pack of beer to take back to the motel after a Christmas day meal of chicken fried steak at IHop because no other restaurant was open in the whole danged town and the lady said we can't sell you any beer on Sunday but you can get it in Alabama & you can get there in 20 minutes so we skedaddled to Alabama and sure enough right there within a few feet of sanctified Georgia was a store selling the devil's handiwork & the fella said I'll put that beer in a bag for you and I said I don't want a bag and he says it's the law to put it in a bag and I said I'll put it inside my coat and he said the police will love that and he put it in a bag and we drove back into Georgia with our sin hidden in a plastic bag and all was fine with man, the law, and God and verily it was Christmas and we were content... 

the prophet's lament

He said: It's hard finding work as a prophet. And if you're a true prophet, you don't even want the work. You got no choice in the matter. Channels of communication are open, awareness is there and it must be spoken. Certain things are KNOWN and they must be said. Everything else comes last. If you rebel against it, you'll be chased around until you do your job. Thunder storms erupt in your head and lightning strikes hit your heart. Even when you live up to all the job requirements and speak what must be spoken, it seems to not amount to jack shit. I wouldn't recommend going into this line of work. But like I said, you got no choice in the matter. Don't mind me. I'm just having a bad day. Sometimes I'm totally prophetic. 

hit

How “hit,” oft regarded by the supercilious as the speech of uneducated hicks, is in reality a holdover from the language of King Arthur, a lineage which the scoffers will never attain.

In “The Quest of the Holy Grail” (Malory), Galahad is about to pull a sword out of a stone. “And anone he leyde hys honde on the swerde, and lightly drew hit out of the stone, and put hit in the sheethe, and seyde unto the kynge, ‘Now hit goth better than hit dyd aforehand.’” 

self-talk

I'm not a rational man. I'm a mystic, an intuitionist, a seer. Oh, I know ratio logic well enough. I grasp Aristotle and reasoning and thesis-antithesis-synthesis and hypothesis formation and testing and the scientific method and all that stuff. I know how to "pass for white." I went over to the camp of the left brain and learned its ways and its palaver. But I operate out of my right brain and my heart. This awareness goes way beyond human societal endeavor. To whom am I speaking? Myself, I guess. There aren't all that many of us around. Us mysticos. Living outside of time and geographical space, "in the world but not of the world," I walk the streets and marvel at the souls of men, humans and human pursuits. At one time I prayed to dummy down, to not feel and see so much. To no avail. Here now, at 73, I see I have done the best I can. Thus far. Now I look to see what higher gear I may shift to so that I may accomplish more. Accomplish, meaning to fulfill the expression of the light I see and know and feel. Making further schematics of the cosmos is fine, but there are plenty of those around. Saving trees is good. Feeding the hungry is mighty fine. I know how to think and see and speak and write. I listen fairly well, though I did that intensely for about thirty-five years and have had plenty enough of that. I know what to do. Keep expanding my capacity to receive. Not from humans, but from that-which-breathes-me. And the only way to do that is by expanding my capacity to give. Okay. Got it figured out now. Thanks.

land mine

My soul is still reverberating with the anger and suspicion, the doubt and fear hurled at me unexpectedly yesterday. Wow! Did I step on a land mine! Judged, sentenced, condemned and executed in one fell swoop. My head was handed to me on a plate. I sat stunned for a while and then began to laugh. We humans can be so weird. I do not laugh at that person. I have sorrow for their pain. I laugh at the bizarreness of it all. And I weep within my heart.

open and shut case

This will blow your world together, not apart.
So if you like your life of dramatic separation, do not grasp this --
There is no that unless you become a this.
There is no there unless you become a here.
There is no you unless you become a me.
To the hinge of a door, open is the same as shut.

kin

Somewhere within me
is a backwoods country preacher
living on pine sap and eggshell coffee
holding his Bible above his head
and crying out for Mercy.

He lives in a cabin in the woods,
reads by a kerosene lamp.
He picks and eats the muscadines,
savors their purplish damp.

He prays for those all around,
the chipmunks and the squirrels.
Splits kindling for the widowed lady
and entertains her girls.

On Sundays he goes to church
and calls the angels down.
The people stand and sing and pray,
eat dinner on the grounds.

I am not him but he is me
and I welcome his dear soul.
He visits in the dead of night
and we open to God's gold. 

time on earth

To get a sense of how long humans have been on earth, hold one of your arms straight out to the side, palm extended. Considering the time of earth formation as at your shoulder joint, if you took a nail file and filed off the tip of the nail of your furthest reaching finger, you would eliminate the entire human species. (In my moments of greatest chagrin at what we are doing to the planet, I peer into the heavens for any sign of the Cosmic Nail File.) 

if you're so smart, why do you keep reading all them books?

I have been reprimanded more than once by the less bookish for keeping a number of books with me across my lifespan. The central thought of this admonishment is ditch the books. I suppose I am seen as some sort of snail that drags this large shell around. I should annihilate the shell and become some other creature. More free and open. Like them.

My focus in life is on states of consciousness. The books by philosophers, poets, metaphysicians, scientists, martial artists, zen patriarchs, psychologists, gnostics, and so on -- thinkers spanning centuries and cultures -- comprise part of my laboratory of consciousness investigation. A woodworker should as soon give away all his woodworking tools.

a little morning rant and affirmation

Who in their right mind would want to have a voice in Washington? I would rather have the voice of the crocus blooming or the sky-filling happiness of the goose reunion or the rush of the brook now unfrozen. A voice in Washington? Might as well wish to inhabit the foreskin of Baal or to become the sputum sneezing weaponry and progress and war. Washington is not in our favor. We are less than pawns in its games. The Voice I love is the Voice of the Tao, of the Flow of Life Spirit, of the Earth so radiant at Her core, of the Cosmos from which we spring and which we Are.

monks of yore

Monks of yore oft called their body "Brother Ass." Their discipline was to ride their ass to salvific enlightenment. I call my body "Dawg." I feed him snacks and we take each other on long walks. I love my Dawg and he loves me. We even sleep in the same bed. 

CosmoGeek

A definition common among self-identified geeks is: "one who is primarily motivated by passion," indicating somebody whose reasoning and decision making is always first and foremost based on his personal passions rather than things like financial reward or social acceptance…. A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest. –Wikipedia

My entire life (seven decades plus) has been spent, and no doubt will continue to be spent in looking to comprehend what it means to be a human, what it’s all about. I am a CosmoGeek.

A fisherwoman told me the other day if you want to catch fish you have to know what they are biting. You match the hatch and the catch, she said. You find the hatch under rocks and logs. It’s not just lying around, she said. You have to look for it.

That’s a useful metaphor for my life as a CosmoGeek: turning over rocks in odd places. Trying to understand the hatch and what it catches, the bait-fish duo, then opening to comprehending the stream and its environs, the astronomical seasons, the astrological signs, the state and extent of the cosmos, and back to who it is holding the pole anyway? And wasn’t I, when it got right down to it, trying to catch myself? Well, I’m getting ahead of myself, but you see how it goes with a geeko mind.

While other boys were exploring four-barrel carburetors and/or the intricacies of the female anatomy, I was looking to comprehend belief systems, thought communities, religions, ways of life, philosophies, superordinates, supraordinates.

Why, when I asked adults my spiritually geeky questions, did they respond with some version of you-will-understand-as-you-get-older?

Why, I pondered later, in the ‘70s, did R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, when asked what it all means, reply “Don’t mean sheeit?” This puzzled me. Was this profundity? Or simply a casual tossed-off expression of a tortured mind? And if it don’t mean sheeit, what does it mean?

Very few wished to talk about it. 

Dear Unborn Kin,

We fiddle with superficiality while the earth burns. No help and none anticipated from politics: clowns to the left of us and jokers to the right, to quote Mister Bobby Dylan. The schizoid rant of demagogues. Religion has gone down in flames. Its supposed replacement with ratio logic and the sciences of externality is not proving satisfactory. Big Pharm busily manufactures chemicals that give us cancer and other chemicals that promise its cure. We don't care as long as we can push full carts of junk from big box stores with our fat fat bodies to our awaiting dinosauric chariots. We don't care as long as we can keep stuffing our eyes and our mouths with trivia of so little nutrient we crave more, our hunger never satisfied. But we do care. Underneath we know something at the core is wrong. We know what we need is the light of wisdom and the heat of love. Many of us are looking to embody that light and heat. Close to the end of this dark age, we look to light a beacon so strong that allies from all over can land and help us. I know our light is seen. That is why I write to you. I know we will make it through and you will be here.

Your loving ancestor 

my dear unborn kin

My dear unborn kin, cast out of Eden we are developing our own little fortress here. Conquest is the name of our god. Last man standing is our motto. Blood-red is our flag. Stupor and defiance armor our soul. We are insane. 

coopdom

Human society thus far is built upon cooperation and domination. Cooperation with those who will help you dominate. Domination of those who will not cooperate. 

ghost toasties

Human consciousness appears centered around the satisfaction of its physical orifices. The holes must be filled or emptied in ways that are pleasant to the beast. And we must include the satisfaction of the non-physical orifices: the ache of the heart, the emptiness at one’s core, the gnawing restlessness of the fanged mouth of aggression, the vulnerable lacuna of the search for meaning, and the desperation of loneliness and abandonment. We eat the world and are unsatisfied. This is the hungry ghost, the demon of today. More! we cry. Give me more! And not more of the same, but more and different! This is the goblin consciousness which we must rise beyond or die off as a species, to which the cosmos would no doubt respond with indifference or a hearty good riddance to another failed experiment. We feed off the earth like a fat tick on the jugular of its host.

the smell of a newly sharpened pencil

Back in the olden days, when desks had ink wells instead of usb ports, during the first week of school, they would herd us chirren to the local Coker-Coler bottling plant, some of us still tough-soled barefoot from our vanishing daze of freedom, where we would be given a view of the clanking circling bottles on the assembly line and a subliminal understanding that it would be that way for us too until the Christmas release and our tops popped by Santa who also drank Coker-Coler and the baby Jesus who drank only the words of his Father. At the end of this indoctrination, each of us was given a red Coker-Coler pencil and a tablet for sending escape notes of help they've got me once again. 

circumlocution

We come out of Mystery over which we have no control. We call this life.We go into Mystery over which we have no control. We call this death. Hahahahahahaha . . . ! 

dream

I am an older woman. I climb the stairs to reach the loom on which I weave the spawning of existence of this time now. My fingers, gnarled and worn, untangle threads easing knots in fibrous brains. 

me and donald

Dreamed last nite of Donald Trump. He and I were talking at his house. He spoke to me of the virtues of money, knowing I have little or none. I told him I was unattached to money. He wanted to know if I was some kind of saint. I told him perhaps he was a bigger saint because he had a lot more money to be unattached to. He laughed and from then on we were just a couple of guys hanging out and having fun.  

tribal holy book

The King James Bible is my tribal holy book. I cut my eye-teeth on it, my world vision shaped by it. I have long since ditched tribal interpretations of its contents, but still revere and learn from it. Especially some of the Psalms and the book of John. 

whut i am doin on my summa vaycayshun

i done had me a since of yuma all my life and i wood get in trouble for being too happy -- in the marine corps -- in bars -- in hard time sitchooayshuns -- ever body else all glum and mad -- sumtimes mad at me for bein happy -- i dont get it -- i figgered resuntly that i wood get me a ego -- partly becawz i am told yew are not supphose to have one -- so i am working on it -- i figger it is about sayin i a lot -- tawkin about my self yew know -- and partly not lissenin to what others say but acktin like i am -- man thats hard -- i fine my self sukkered in ever time -- lissenin away -- i keep trying to re member -- it aint about yew -- its about me -- i think that is hill air ee us though -- and start laffin -- and my ego goes out the winder -- if i keep hunkering down to it i bet i kin git it though -- if i cud just stop laffin 

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

heart and gusto

My mom lay in her bed last night ready for sleep, her teeth and hearing aids out, and sang to me, my sister, and brother-in-heart some of the songs she used to sing to her kids when we were small children. She sang with heart and gusto, hitting the high notes lengthily and with vibrato, smiling during pauses between her selections. We kissed her on the cheek and said good night. 

Sunday, June 28, 2009

aye men

om a'telling ya, om vizitin mah mama,
en tom woof sez yew kaint go hum agin,
butt he iz rong, yew kin! en aint nuthin chainged.
ever body iz steal thuh sayme die-namicks thay wuz b4.

purr-pet-chew-all pat-urns purr-pet-chew-ate.

harts r good, butt thee auld woonds r steal supper-ate-ing,
en pipple r ee-ton up bye thair woon-dings.

bliss thair harts en bliss thair woon-dings,
eye esk thee you-knee-verse,

bee caws eye kin own-lee luv ever body
en hope thair woons keep heel-ing. aye men. 

Friday, June 26, 2009

mortificatio

Am engaged in that age-old process of watching a parent succumb to dissolution -- fierce, proud, loving, scared, angry, confused, alert, joking, laughing, defiant, sometimes elsewhere, sometimes here, helpless, independent while dependent, her body no longer her own. 

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

me mom is going downhill
this boy go see her 

just another chunk of spastic spam

"Do you know what it means to be alive?" "Why, sure, I've had the skull cap of conventional wisdom placed atop my head, its electrodes seated firmly in my brain and the juice turned on, jolting me into just another chunk of spastic Spam, ready for the slicing knife and the eventual perfect fit into a gated retirement community or drooling nursing home. Yes, I know what it means to be alive. It means to be the one hog that breaks free when the tractor trailer bearing its pig load to the kill for mass consumption jack-knifes on the road; breaking free and running like hell, first with adrenalic desperation, then with mad euphoria, disappearing into the wilderness beyond; hopefully returning later like some kind of hoghisattva with a full report and a bag of goodies." 

In my first six decades, I blazed like a meteor through earth's atmosphere, burning in fierce agony and joy, and now have hit pay dirt, on the side of a mountain in northern Arizona -- come to earth, pulsing with the radiance of the heavens.

 Dream: I opened the front door from inside my house and faced a sheer wall, black, of a huge spinning tornado inches from my face, extending beyond sight into the heavens and below to the ground -- immense and awesome power that could have taken me away but did not, allowing me to see and experience it without being consumed. Raw naked whirling vast energy just outside my open door. I was terrified but calm, awe-struck.

a mutation of consciousness

i find there are certain things i cannot talk about with others (except for a select few) because they are not familiar with that way of thinking and its concepts and are disinterested in gaining familiarity -- they gaze blank-eyed and change the subject -- as a result there are many things i do not discuss or bring up -- instead we talk of cabbages and kings -- i hear their world of discourse and i respond -- they seem not able to hear mine -- that leads me to believe that my consciousness is more inclusive -- this has been borne out by several decades of conversing with thousands of people -- this does not lead to any air of superiority but leads me to think that i am an evolutionary mutation -- a mutation of consciousness 

 

 

tao zing

i am no fan of plots and schemes -- i am as out of place in this society as a river in an ice tray 

 

 

mouthpiece

0456 hours, 8 days pre-winter solstice, 08 -- i have no doubt what on earth i am here for -- i am a mouthpiece -- what in the old days might be called a prophet or a seer or a diviner -- not my choice -- i didn't want the job -- still don't -- it has its price -- some time ago i tried to dummy down, to lose awareness, lead a "normal" life -- not possible, not allowed -- i am to keep on expressing the largest awareness possible no matter what -- not to worry, i know i am two to three pounds of shit at all times like everyone else -- maybe that's why i am trusted for the job -- it's become part of me now, this vocation that one does not find in the help wanted pages -- mouthpiece -- mouthpiece of the Larger Context 

 

 

geezer man

0310 hours, 16 days pre - winter solstice, 08 -- yesterday i stood on the sidewalk waiting for the mountain line bus or rather not waiting i gave that up long ago finding it an uncomfortable subjective state i stood on the sidewalk looking around at the forty-fifty feet high ponderosa pines the snow-topped san francisco peaks the houses of my neighborhood and i laughed aloud this is what i have become this is who i am a little old man waiting for a bus in this place this place now and now i understand why older folk talk to themselves and laugh aloud the world is so amazing 

 

 

preacherpire

0320 hours, 16 days pws, 08 -- i got bit by a preacher long time ago and turned into a preacherpire -- i try to control it but every once in a while i just bust out with a sermon -- at those times i'm thinking that everyone has a stake in my heart -- maybe someday i will see the light 

 

 

into the main train

0327 hours, 19 pws, 08 -- awoke with these words ringing aloud in my ears - out of the compartment sweetheart! out of the compartment really for ongoing hurtling change into the chaotization the chaotization of reality - the train was rushing through the night 

 

 whatever you got in your head it ain't gonna happen like that