No Tradebacks

When I was born, I WAS GOD.

I was God, and in those moments when I struggled

through sweat and screams and slipped into the cold hard hands

of this reality, I held EVERYTHING

everything

in

my tiny

clenched fists.

I was GOD and I held every question to every answer

every answer that has ever been questioned

eternal questions

internal answers

I whispered external

in sweet placental speech

                                             delivered into a world of pinky fingers.

I was GOD

born reciting bibles

proverbs texts and tablets

sermons and psalms

translating truth

speaking cosmology

in every dialect known to man

and some unknown

                                             And they taught me language

                                             with chin tickling fingers and funny faces

                                             goo goo ga ga  coochie coochie coo.

I was solving problems

converting mathematics to bone

physics to muscle

biology to blood

I was building intricate networks of

microfillament tinker toy neuro-electrical synapses

and they said

                                             oh isn't that cute!

I was red and yellow and black and white

and all shades of earth

and they held me in front of a mirror

pointed to my soft shallow shell

over and over

                         Thats you!

                                             Thats you!

until I could no longer recognize myself.

I defied gravity because I breathed magic

They grounded me

holding my hands, cooing

take a step

               take a step

when I was already leaping off the planet

leaving them all behind

I sat in the sun

feeling grass and dirt pulse

intimately conversing with trees and sky

discussing the developing universe

and the existential qualities of man

drinking rain and feasting on clouds

and they came along

scooped me up

brushed me off

scolded me

                                             Now look! 

You peed your pants!

                                            

You pooped your diaper!

I played with angels unicorns and dragons

made faces at gargoyles

My imaginary friends were ancestors

I danced with elves and faires through

fields of non-fiction BECAUSE THERE WAS

NO FICTION ONLY THE

TEXTURE

COLOR

SHAPE

FORMING

BEFORE MY NEWLY OPENED EYES

I was GOD!

and I TRADED IT ALL IN.

I traded it all in

I offered them every key to every past and every future

to every lock and chain

every shackle of every heart and  mind

incarcerated in this prison:

                                             

time

and they said

Now honey, don't play with those, you might lose them

taking them away

pressing into my hand a plastic reproduction

they believed opened all doors.

I gave them the mystery of immortality

they gave me superheroes and Scooby-Doo underwear.

I gave them future personified

they gave me a Big Wheel and a Brady Bunch lunchbox.

I gave them hope

they gave me history, I repeat

history, I repeat

this-story.

I gave them eternity

they gave me bedtime.

I traded it all in

                                            

No tradebacks.

I learned to see with my eyes

and all my imaginery friends disappeared     

(poof)

left me

became cold   

sculptured   

stone.

I was god

No tradebacks

But you know, I don't blame them.

don't hold it against them

don't judge them

I love them even more

because I KNOW THEY WERE GOD ONCE TOO

We are all

still

God.

and it is so easy learning to forget

so difficult this journey through life

grasping to remember

The Miraculous Free Fall Into Unknowing

We are, you could say, a species of know-it-alls.  Not just know-it-alls, but the worst kind of know-it-alls.

We are the know-it-alls that are sometimes right. 

How annoying.

Even when we don’t know, we think we know.  We just plain hate to not know. In fact, there is such a stigma attached to not knowing that it permeates every facet of our lives.  Think about it:

In school, the teacher asks a difficult question, and no one raises their hand.  Remember this?  Remember being the student sweating in fear that you will be called upon.  Even if you thought you knew the answer, being called upon was still overwhelmingly frightening.  What if I am not right?  What if the terrible horrible devastatingly embarrassing truth that I DON’T KNOW is revealed for all to see!

How does it feel to be called “ignorant”?   Feels kinda nasty.  Like there is something in this word that is insulting to your character.  Most people equate “ignorant” with “stupid” and the words are used interchangeably. Yet, the definition of “ignorant” is simply:

Ignorant.  (adj): Lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact.

It simply means not knowing.

We have such a deep dysfunctional relationship with not knowing that we do everything in our power to avoid admitting it, even to ourselves.

We simply do not know what the next moment will bring, and this is unacceptable to our conditioned mind, which then creates a scenario and imagines that it knows, and the result of this is expectation.  

Expectation is a symptom of our internal avoidance of the reality of not knowing, and creates what could be called the root of suffering:  the gap between what we think should be happening (could happen, should happen, will happen) and what actually is happening.

How does this work out for us?

Things simply happen, despite what we expect.  We cannot know. No matter how much we rely on our conceptual learning, our thoughts, to shield us from the dangerous territory of the unknown, we end up in that dreaded landscape.

Yet, the unknown is the ground of all knowing! 

There can never be anything known without there first being not-knowing!

See how ridiculous this is?  How delusional?  We have a negative perspective, a dysfunctional relationship, with the natural, inevitable, completely necessary fundamental building block of all knowing! 

And herein lies the paradox, at least when it comes to spirituality:

This extreme discomfort with not-knowing fuels our motivation to learn and experience. 

We turn our learned ideas and concepts into a cocktail of belief and faith.  This conceptual cocktail becomes who we think we are and how we see the world and our place in it, and we then must expend enormous amounts of energy defending, reinforcing it, and holding onto it. 

We take stories told to us and things we have read to have meaning, and assign that meaning to our own experience, diluting what is happening in the present moment, to our interpretation of what is happening.   

We mistake what we think we know for who we are. 

And of course, what we think we know is different than what someone else thinks they know,  and there must be a right and a wrong, and usually it is them that are wrong.  And if our concepts that we have mistaken for “ourselves” are questioned, or spoken against, we must defend them, as we are engaged here in the literal act of self-survival.

Even if it is “right for me” or “wrong  for me”, it is still a duality.

Separation.

So we think the more we learn, the more we memorize, the more we understand, the closer and closer we will get to the Truth, to God, Peace, Oneness, in whatever name or form you chose to call it. 

Yet the fact is, the Truth cannot be known. 

Can you consider that everything you have learned must be questioned relentlessly and discarded?  Can you consider that the point of questions is not answers, but instead, more questions, leading to more questions, until the questioning is exhausted.   Until it is seen that all questions and all answers are meaningless?

What is it like to let go of all conceptualizations, all viewpoints, all ideas?  Is it possible to relax into the miraculous free fall of not-knowing?

In this classic clip, Lou isn’t pissed because Bud is fucking with him.  Bud is serious.  Lou is agonizingly frustrated because he doesn’t know no matter how much he learns! 

Seem familiar?  Kinda like stumbling around, looking for your own eyeballs.

The Implacable Idea

We are all seekers.  I think this is fairly obvious to most of us, even if we don’t want to admit it.  We are all looking for something, and the strange thing is- we are all looking for the same thing, just in different, and of course, all the wrong, places. 

We could call it happiness, or peace, or satisfaction, or fulfillment, doesn’t really matter. 

What matters is that we must realize that it can never, ever be found.

Yes, that’s right.  Give it up- the search is over.  It ain’t happening.  We can go on and on about all the wrong places where we have conducted our search- in relationships, or in money, in our jobs, in material possessions.  And we could mention all the “hidden” places that we never think about, but are even more convinced that elusive “something” is hiding- like our opinions, our beliefs, our viewpoints, our lifestyles. 

Even our most cherished spiritual beliefs, no matter how comforting, or how much we believe they make us good people, do not seem to hold the slippery truth that we so desperately seek. 

We may even come to the conclusion that it is possible to find what we are looking for, in just letting go of all the rest of it, and resting in “stillness”. 

And then we give “Stillness” it’s myriad of names:  Space, Presence, Source, Awareness, Consciousness.  God.

Sounds logical.  We just need to realize that we can never find true happiness, peace, fulfillment in any ‘thing”, any object, and instead, if we can just “be” with what is happening now, and find stillness, we will discover the true happiness that is available to us all. 

But this, this is the biggest trap of them all.  We effectively turn “stillness” into just another object to attain.  If we practice hard enough, understand enough, somehow “let it all go”. 

How well has that worked for us?

We think we can find happiness in relationships, so we seek the perfect person.  We discover that to not be true.  We think we can find it in our jobs, money, material possessions, and we discover the sad truth of this. And, we think we can find it in spirituality, in religion, in belief.  

Yet, somehow true, lasting fulfillment continues to elude us. 

So maybe we hear about “stillness” and “connection”.  Maybe we hear about letting go, allowing, “being in the moment”. 

Still, where is that true, encompassing, wonderful sense of peace, ease, fulfillment in our lives?  We may find moments of peace, but it never lasts.

See, seeking is seeking, no matter how you are seeking, or what you are looking for, even if it is God or Stillness.  The person you think you are does not seek; the person you think you are is intimately constructed of seeking.  Seeking is inherent in the most fundamental mistake you are making, and have been making all your life.

You are seeking happiness, fulfillment, peace, God, in whatever name or form you give it, because you are convinced that you do not already have it.  

You can never have it. 

You cannot have it, because you ARE it.

See that there is only one thing, one simple thing that limits us, that keeps us from being free, and that is the unshakable, learned and constantly reinforced IDEA that we are not.

An idea.

An idea that is intricately woven into the fabric of your existence, and which is so fundamental that it has never even been questioned.

So, what is this idea made of?