Trois Cours
Prix Fixe: Entrée, Plat Principal, Dessert
Mes Amis,
I write to you from the south of France. The wild poppies are blooming, the vines are beginning to show what will become clusters of flowers-then-fruit; the breeze is heady with floral scents carried from garden to garden. Here, the walls are made thickly of stone, the linens are fresh, and there is always a baguette to be shared. It’s like walking through a storybook or a dream.
L’Entrée
Funny how we might debate something such as who we really are.
Older than star dust.
Funny how we might think the infinite can be contained.
The timeline stops here. Period. That’s all there is.
Funny how we might think of ourselves as defined, when so much of who we know ourselves to be is only cultural.
I hold my fork this way.
Funny how we might debate the rightness or wrongness of everything under the sun, yet nothing but acceptance will really nourish.
Who we are is goodness, beyond measure or time.
We are funny creatures, us humans.
And the less serious we are, the easier it seems to get.
Le Plat Principal
I love the evolution of my life experience.
Correction: I love the evolution of my life experience when I let myself flow with the swift current of my soul. Otherwise, what I’m feeling is not true love, but some measure of discomfort. And in that case I am not actually allowing myself to evolve. I have entered a circular argument: I don’t like this, and I shall remain here as long as I don’t like this!
In the 1920s Britain, Dr. Edward Bach discovered the capability of flower essences help a person alleviate any gap between their soul and the focus of their physical personality - the gap between the high, pure, vital life-force-flow and mental focus; between the heart and inculcated beliefs; between our true nature and our perceived limitations. The gap between all that our deepest, wisest, wildest self knows us to be - and who we think we are in the present moment.
The current draws one way, focus another.
Think think think think think think think
How long can we pull against ourselves?
To the degree that we focus ourselves outside our own flow, that is the degree to which we feel the discomfort.
Think think think think think think think
The gap is self-initiated and can be self-dissolved. The snake unwinds its own knots, water blends with water. It feels good to merge with the deep river of our own becoming.
I think:
I should do this, be this, believe this.
I think:
they shouldn’t be doing that, be that, believe that.
I think: Because of habit, because of what someone else said, because of what someone else lived; because of how vivid the thoughtscapes are, because of how convincing the evidence becomes. Mind moves into matter, thoughts turn to things.
The gap is a box of restrictive thoughts we have wrapped ourselves in, disguising the pure potential of our natural condition.
Never mind the esoterics, just let it be an emotional experience.
The current of the soul is felt. True relief is an embodied reality. Wetness is to be lived with the body. Sweetness the tongue. Infinite space, the entire mind-body-life continuum.
We’re not here to prove anything, this is about remembering. Coming back in contact with a knowing held
in our bones
in our blood
in the atoms that make up the sun.
Ideations depart in the face of direct experience.
What makes you swoon, really? When was the last time you felt bright birds soaring through the sky of your heart? Was it that flower whose scent washed you in a sweet bath when you bustled to the car this morning? Was it the touch from the passing breeze, caressing the back of your arms, inviting you to dance in the meadow? Was it the sight of someone you hold dear, doing something so utterly mundane the simplicity of it was dazzling? Was it the mountains? Was it the rivers? Was it the broad wings of a hawk as it flew over the car in a flash of amber?
To swoon is the feeling of: Let me be carried off by this sensate river. Dissolve all of me into this fire. Bind my concepts until all thought abdicates to direct perception.
The gap closes.
Nothing but this.
The Sufis call this fana. Dissolving. Dissolved. No perception of separation can possibly arise.
There is no separation between me and the rose, we are one - I am the perceiver, the flower the perceived - together we are the quantum present.
Together we are the continuum of light.
I am talking about things some say cannot be named, but words are doorways into feeling and direct experience. Let’s walk to the edge together
and fly
In the language of the Vedas - Ta tvam asi :: I am That too
Think think think think think think
Our thoughts are very much our allies. Can be, very much our allies. If we hold them to that station, if we understand how their true fealty is summoned.
Why would anyone kneel before an empty throne?
Ascend. Let us become wholly that which we are.
Claim.
No station is higher than that of our own source consciousness.
Our own source consciousness.
Our own source consciousness.
All beings of the form and formless realms say: To the Lord of Awareness we bow and pay homage. To the one who wields the scepter of attention, we offer gifts of infinite possibility.
In the Tibetan texts, thoughts are referred to collectively as “the gods and demons” - all in the same soup, all from the same land, all willing to serve Your Luminosity.
Did you walk your path by inner compass point? Did you focus your clear-light lens into finite or infinite? Into your natural empowerment or perceived limitation?
Thoughts are an epiphenomenon of focus. We focus, tuning to that electromagnetic frequency - then - we receive the thoughts that abide on that channel.
Don’t like the thoughts? Change the channel! (Can we take a step a back, and remember the dial is in our hands? Can we remember the quantum nature of observation? Can we hold ourselves accountable for our interpretation?)
Like breeds like breeds like. It’s all magnetic. It’s all attraction. Or like the older teachers said, it’s karma. But they didn’t have the luxury of metaphors like radio waves. They didn’t have the examples of frequency and the quantum behavior of particles. They just knew from their deep samadhi realization nectar (and asked: who can understand? Who is there to understand?) Then they translated their nonverbal bliss into - we reap what we sow, what goes around comes around, do onto others as you would do to yourself, do not lest it is done to you in turn. Be mindful of your thoughts, be mindful of your words, be mindful of your actions. Seeds ripen due to causes and conditions
What seeds? Manifestations!
What causes? Endless focusing!
What conditions? Vibrational frequency!
We are never not ripening seeds. We are never not vibrating, while in this body, while physically focused - this is why we said we wanted to be here! Because we choose the seeds, we choose the soil, we choose the rain and the wind and the sun. We choose our focus either intentionally or habitually.
Q’est-ce que vous-voulez choisir? What do you want to choose?
(All of our choices equal the sum total of the flow. The deep current of the soul is a summoning, and we are constantly adding to it.)
This river is alive! Coursing and pulsing, incomplete yet perfected; stainless in its momentum, precious in its primordial benevolence; radiant in its heart-field intention.
Its Becoming
Praise be, we can feel when we are pushing against it because we are pushing against ourselves.
We can feel when we are constricting our passage through life.
Sometimes we think there’s a blockage in the stream; a log! Remove the jam, remove the stick from the eye of the world.
Yet, beauty (and all other qualities) are only ever in the eye of the beholder.
The I of the perceiver. The way we see ourselves is so important! Ta tvam asi. I am that too. Soham.
Small deviations now become large divergences later. A bit of pulling against my own current first feels like discomfort, then overwhelm, doubt, worry, anger, despair. Such a small spec can cause quite the disturbance in the field. Oh, you mean it’s in my eye?
I’ve said it before, but I always like to return to this point - none of this has to do with any banishing of an ego. If anything needs to be done, it’s inclusion. Ta tvam asi. I am that also. The whole of who we are is beyond quantifying, reason, and words (but not beyond our direct experience). Trying to get rid of something is impossible. Where would we send it? As Stephen Buhner points out, we are in a scenario - not a place. We are in a web of interbeing, an coarising universe of phenomena. There is nowhere to go where this interrelation, this mind-body-life continuum does not exist.
If I pull on this thread…
It is the merging, blending, accepting, truly understanding - that allows for the change, the transformation, the evolution.
Dr. Bach found out that dissonance between the purposes of the soul and the habits of the person shows itself emotionally, then physically.
Dis-ease begins when the feeling of well-being ends, chronically, consistently.
Closing the gap is primarily emotional work.
Healing is primarily emotional work.
The literal feeling of relief is the indication we seek. Bach went into the wilds and sought the flowers that, when he came into proximity, offered relief to his acute emotional state.
He focused himself into the flowers’ field, into their scope of influence - where their pure, positive, non-resistant energy signature became the dominant frequency.
It’s impossible to fake how you feel. Oh yes, you can put an empty smile on and contain the tempest, or the flood, or the grating agitation. All, by the way, coming from the way we are interpreting things - as Marshall Rosenberg has helped to elucidate.
“I feel ________, because I am thinking _________.”
Yes there is some effort involved, to activate the intellect in its purest sense. To summon Logos from the depths of who we are to clearly apprehend: is what I am thinking congruent with what the deepest, wisest part of me knows? And here is the secret, this answer can only be felt!
When I circulate this thought, does my body open, sigh, and relax?
Or does it tense, ever so slightly
or greatly?
That tension is the gap widening. The ease, the gap closing.
Yes remedies are nice, but there is the danger of thinking that they do the work.
Le Dessert
Slanting sunlight pools on the stone floor / Pigeons coo their lulling rhythm / See the snails wearing their spiral shells / Clouds, then rain / The wind brings invisible flowers / Pour the twisted vine, reaching deep its roots, into the gold
~ An homage to Provençe ~
Beautifully written
I love this !