WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT
You are here you are here you are here You are here
O what’s inside of me?
Can we be nearer than side by side?
The wave’s swell passes from water to water
We each feel each
nomads monads
of electricity
Who is perfect?
We sink or swim altogether
Suck out our mutual taints
Fold in descrying sight
Our Real Being is the rock formation through which the roiling surf swirls and surges.
The impression made upon the rock is the obverse of the waves: force, cruelty and hate will sculpt lovingkindness in the real person, the rock which can never be marred.
“Out of the Depths I Have Cried unto Thee”
Orpheus: We descend again and again into these sorrowful vales, so we can grasp the hand of our Beloved.
The person who touches my Consciousness takes my hand.
Those people take others’ hands. All beings that have ever lived are travelling together.
A man fell into a raging river and was swept away. As he was drowning, he saw another man swimming frantically towards him. He climbed up on the man’s shoulders, grabbed a passing overhanging branch, and they were rescued. “I owe you my life,” he gasped. “How can I ever repay you for swimming out to save me?” The other replied, “I thought you were swimming out to save me.”
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A common grackle wears no clothes builds no roof eats today’s manna only
lives iridescently We humans sip our energy from such titanic casks
The growing world receives return on our investiture
The tiny input/output of a flea is proportionate, in ways we may never see. (The output outvalues the input, as there’s always increase.) The great receiving of resources and the seen and unseen giving by us humans is likewise proportionate. So we and the flea both fill our roles in the world equally worthily. “God is no respecter of persons.”
Some acquaintance of mine knows an acquaintance of anyone in America (statistically speaking).
If we all suddenly became six inches tall, we’d realize there is room for everyone. Well, there’s room now; if we each stood on one square foot, all six billion of us could stand in a field 20 miles by 12 miles. This heavenly world isn’t limited, it’s boundlessly expanding.
This is a spiritual universe. Everyone here is supposed to be here; we fear the poor and the hurt who shout out our own need, while underneath we long to feel the infinite source flowing unhindered from us all.
“Seed thrown on rocky soil” could never be personal. God, the Source of the generating seed is never personal, and the soil is our common ground in humanity, whose rocky patches also are impersonal, universal. We’re cells in the body mystic; error is impersonally distributed. And the rocks are secretly nutrifying and protecting the earth. So there’s no one to blame, everyone to cherish. As our single Consciousness is lifted from scattered stones, the entire field gaily flowers amongst the jewels.
Every Valley Will Be Exalted
What goes down must come up.
Mountains would not tower without canyons or swales; they’re part of the same rumpling process. Every problem will be extolled, among people the last will tie for first.
Through the valley who is lowest, the most water flows.
Even a bright flame produces soot.
So we can never judge others, nor say that their apparent traits are indeed faults. And our own defects really possess no power to hinder our receptivity. They do lead us to dig deeper into wisdom.
Dream: A detective investigates a baffling murder, only to find that he himself had imagined it while hypnotized.
This dream helped me lay down the responsibility and return into God’s care.
A watch that has broken and stopped, and only such a watch, will register twice a day the exact time with unobservable precision.
The Goldsmith
The Goldsmith had just finished his masterpiece. All the villagers shouldered up close to gaze at the marvelous candelabra. Suddenly a brash man pointed and exclaimed, “I see a mistake there! That’s too forceful!” Then each of them began to pick out a single flaw. “That’s not supportive!” “Too reclusive!” Finally it dawned on them, the goldsmith had composed the magnificent treasure out of nothing but the faults of everyone in the village. (Nineteenth century tale)
It’s a Tough Job, But Someone’s Got to Do It
Emptying out must happen over and over. All of our errors, repeated, further clarify things, as ghee repeatedly skimmed makes clarified butter. And they lead to nullifying our human sense of deserving. God does not need to deserve. Our lowest bodily function, elimination, is one metaphor for our holy continuous emptying out of our human quandary: each of our difficulties connects us to all the earth and replenishes it.
All the issues we face are resolved within our own souls. We learn in this part of the book to meditatively admit divine love, which brings compassion, honoring ourselves and each person, animal, plant, each formation of the One, in our problems and grievous faults. A contrite heart and feeling of total personal inability help us graciously. Thank You for our mistakes and shortcomings.
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Emotional healing is at least as important as changing a picture of physicality. For it’s our feelings about a situation that make up our suffering. This woeful feeling is real even if taking place in a vision. Our sense that the universe contains accidents, tragedies, insoluble confusion, is the basic anguish. So when we meet an “afflicted” person, we may be hurting just as much as him. Then in meditating, our finite impressions can be instantly dissolved.
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And every tiniest event is unique, needed. We each contain combinations of general currents (generation, nation, party, religion, gender, race, morphology and temperament, interests, occupation, class, family set-up, etc.), but even in our particular mix we’ll be unique, as well as having a singular place within each of the currents. We practice something repeatedly yet each go is special. God is utterly abundant, utterly economical. Between divine Consciousness and our mass psyche, remember, no detail arises accidentally. Every event contains multi-level puns so people with varied perspectives can each be led forward in that instant by an infinite Intelligence. For the great metaphorical rounds of expression, which can seem to operate only mundanely, are constantly spiraling up through an all-embracing dimension, unfolding spiritually. So all our souls, each passing incident, every mistake and byway and leeway, are nothing but the purposefully evolving acts of our passion play.
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Symbolisms of the Cross
Symbolisms: God is suffering by incarnating, our temporary self-sacrifice in humanhood, form crossed with the Beyond. Submission of the ego. Ending the dream-repetition of child replacing parent to be replaced, by declining the roll. Osiris cut up, then reborn through death. The return of spring. The messiah arrives again and again.
Sword pointing down: violence and judgment return upon oneself, until we lower the sword. Hanging limp, no desire. The abnegation of every material sense of dependency. As the positive pole of a magnet attracts the negative, total non-violence attracts and takes upon itself and absorbs the totality of violence, producing Great Peace. Sword into Earth, a plowshare.
We’re stripped and cleansed by adversity.
Completing the human sacrifices: Untying our karmic knots, uniting our free ways.
The
caduceus: Rising to a higher level, making the crossing. Asymmetry of the
cross, imbalance of transcendence.
: The sacred
heart is our higher center, the center of the world. I sacrifice My Self for
You; You give Your Self for Me.
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The Eye is the Light of the Body
“The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” Enlightened individuals are few, just as the eye is a very small part of the body. Yet the enlightened serve a purpose for the entire body of humankind, just as does the eye. At this point, the body of humanity, and the body of each person, provides itself with just enough eye to see, but with unfoldment the entire body will be seeing. We feel the vast concert, in serving the body in one function rather than another; it’s due to the body as a whole that some are designated or designed to be the eye.
When our eye is single it’s non-judgmental, not living in duality. We see that each one of us is unique, a church unto himself of unique belief, and as miraculous particularities we mesh into an extraordinary carpet together that is beyond the critique, the prodding, the comprehension of any person. So we include everyone in Love, not only non-resistance but welcoming Love, and the entire body becomes filled with light.
How would a building stand without the first story? How would a snail slide with only the outmost rim of its shell? How would a lampwick shine without the pot of oil, which siphons up and breaks into light?
Each person we meet strikes us as very impressive in their life. We find our place within the whole. While we can tell what plane of awareness someone occupies with our spiritual discernment, any feelings of inferiority or superiority, of judgment, act as alarms awakening us to return to our spiritual level. In sacred relationship, the divine activity of everyone shines through, the love flows.
Everyone has special virtues and experience for their mission. There are people who never think God, but constantly do God. We’re all truly equal. We’re each just one of the gang.
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A rising tide lifts all ships---entrance of Divine Consciousness vivifies all our stories, including the “past,” the good needing this as much as the bad, redeems them and full fills and encompasses them, all of what has ever happened.
Unbeknownst to ourselves, we offer ourselves up in this world---as a parent, a woman, a gainer or a loser---each sacrifice serves to lift us all and nothing was ever lost, all reborn, restored.
I suffer with all the sufferings of the world, and my joy saves the world moment to moment.
So the evolution of God As all life braids a growing cornucopia opening up time and space, a basket of one long plait.
