Belief and Life

When logics die, the secret of the soil grows through the eye
and blood jumps in the sun. Dylan Thomas

I have learned that we see life not only through what we are, but what we believe. This is the prime filter, the colored glass that interprets the innocent white light of the sun. And I have learned that belief is, more than we most often realize, a choice. We choose to believe what we do, whether from the standpoint of familiarity, or security, or because it resonates with our repressed, traumatized being, or because of mutually shared hopes and dreams. If we want to really change our experience of life we must change our beliefs. This is the primal principle of Life, and there is no getting around it.

This is actually good news, because if a belief is ultimately a choice, we only need to choose to be happy and free and then inspect and question our beliefs that oppose it in order to turn them around, bring them into harmony with an innate sense of joy, that which gives rise to our spirit, that which harkens to us, calling us into a broader, freer place where Love is a free function, the primal reality.

Right now we can look at the world and shake with trepidation, for the shakable things are being shaken. If we believe that the economy is our hope and help, our security and well-being, then we are in a precarious position, for the world order is collapsing to allow space for a holistic, spiritually alive and harmonious new state of humanity. But if we shift our beliefs in ways that open us to the waves of Grace that are sweeping the planet, then Grace will soften us, detach us from old habitual identities, expand us as it opens us to the miracle and divine beauty of Life itself.

We have been in a collective spell and are waking up to the Universe as it actually is. No matter how expansive and beautiful our beliefs can grow, the ultimate reality of Life is forever beautiful beyond our beliefs, beckoning us to open more fully, celebrate more joyously, love more passionately, live more wisely, and thus grow big and strong and tall in heart, becoming all we are capable of being.

The Animal Us

THE ANIMAL US

How do we know that we don’t have fur just underneath our smooth skin? I mean the fur of a black bear, smeared with berries and the blood of fish. Oh, the x-rays won’t spot it. It is rougher than coarse stone, finer than air: this animal body in our bodies, this connection to a miraculous creation.

Part of our brains are on a brilliant kind of autopilot… just brilliant, inventing a million ways to keep insanity going in the world. I mean the oh so familiar dysfunctional disconnection that someone soaked us in, an incessant washing of the brain with the milk of discontent. And so the familiar conditioning says, don’t look too deep into the most of you, you might find too much trouble there, while the symbol making, music loving, heart-beated, drum thumped, danced crazed and wild heart of us goes on whistling dream songs beyond the reach of us, luring us through luminous looks and moments of confusing clarity.

There are birds in our blood, the trees are kissing us with every breath. Great beings watch over us from realms where a thousand earth years are one very interesting day. Some of us are kings in these worlds, some queens, some wizards, some prophets, all adventurers, who signed up to be diminished into flesh, squeezed into this world of forgetfulness, this place where we learn the hard lessons of willfully destroying the web of light through every little discourtesy, with each lie, continually shattering the wonder-child’s trust with this twisted insecurity that drives our greed.

It is closing time now: the night has fallen and we don’t even miss the hidden sun. World makers beat the dead horse and shout, it is bound to get up any minute now. But it is over. The whole system is collapsing. Time to wake up. Time to turn it all around, get down on our knees, look into our children’s questioning eyes, refind the deep soul of us, nuzzle earth. Time to let sharp claws tear our skin open from the inside. And in the dark eyes of the animal us a smile will appear, reflected in each eye, lighting up the distant horizons, spattering golden beauty all over the world.

Climbing the Naked Tree

I climbed the Naked Tree today: my favorite tree in the world. The sun is warm, the breeze cool. The fields around the great tree are bright yellow mustard. The breeze makes the mustard flowers move in swirling waves of unanimity. The Great Tree is suffused with strength: about 50 to 60 feet tall and utterly massive: its great gray truck splaying out in 10 different directions about 25 feet above the ground, then stretching outward and up, licking up sunshine, drinking wind with eager leaves.

I pressed my body against the huge trunk and felt its silent strength in stark contrast to its lithe, trembling twigs and clattering leaves all around me. Suddenly it was so clear: this Great Tree and its lessons; the wind whistling its counsel of radical forgiveness and release; the sweet burble of birds in natural song; and the silent earth beneath, resting in its massive weight, alive with glory-making fecundity.

Life… the great mystery, the supreme teacher, the Living beauty, the spontaneous happening just beyond the sphere of ideas and words. Why have we required more than this? I sensed in a moment of innocent clarity that we really can return to Paradise here in this world… that the fiery sword is not that horriid a fate to face and pass through: that it only kills bondage, that it only melts duality, that it only slays fear.


To hear poem: The Ecstasy of Trees

RECREATING THE SACREDNESS OF THE NATURAL

There is a spiritual pathway that is just the opposite of our current economic/social patterns of ever increasing wealth generated by ever increasing consumption. It is a pathway into a profound simplicity of life for the sake of lightness and freedom; an increasing clarity of mind through realizations of the Real; an expanding Love of heart through a growing state of sensitivity to the beauty of all that is natural and good. This way opens to us through an astonishing discovery that we love what we love in life just because in some way it gives us a taste of the essence of what we all most truly are: through that song, or that gadget, or that place, or that person, we sense the freedom, beauty and joy that is the very pure nectar of Existence.

These times of collapse and uncertainty have thrust upon us the imperative of a massive change of perception much greater than politics or current religious paradigms can give. Let’s get with it now!

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THE SECRET LIFE OF BIRDS

How do we know that birds aren’t singing with bubbling gurgles of joy warbling and trembling inside their bodies? How do we know that their little energetic systems aren’t alive and luminous with the ripples and cadence of song? How do we know that when they can’t contain it any more—because the ecstasy is so great—that they don’t dive and dip out of the trees or off of wires to soar?

How do we know they are not blithe and happy as they eat seeds by the road? How do we know that the robin isn’t perpetually cheerful because it savors the sensation of a worm wiggling down its throat into its belly? How do we know birds are not savoring the warmth of soft nests amongst twigs as snow falls on feathers? We who filter out Life with our bodies and left lob limited brains: how do we know anything?

How does a bird feel when it makes love: when feathers part and soft tissues touch? Is the ecstasy so filled with Light that their body feels like it flies with its wings folded? And does a bird know pain that drains its brain and flutters its body out to the edge of extinction as its orifice stretches thin, budging open to expel an egg?

And how do we know that birds do not grieve in song when they see their brothers or sisters in peril: when the cat pounces or shots ring? How do we know that when a bird friend falls and its eyes darken a black stone doesn’t weigh their hearts down so heavily that it strains their wing bones and feathers?

We who filter out oceans of brimming Life with our biological brains, we who dumb down and dampen our senses so we can darken and immure ourselves in abstract thought symbols, the supposed and seditious security of familiar emotions and endless chatter of words — how do we know anything real at all?

The Ecstasy of Trees

(On the incredibly innocent beauty of Being…)

A TREE BRIGHT BROAD AND SHIMMERING

A tree bright broad and shimmering,
pudged wide with thoughts tree slothly slow,
gnarled feet of brown, specked head of blue,
splash what’s quickly quaint and true
that shakes to mold a meek man free,
who drinks with mouthing cell the milk
of Life that squirts like windy silk.

How do we know that trees are not aware of the wind shimmering them, shaking and shivering their delicate twigs, their laughing leaves?
How do we know that they are not ecstatic and happy when the lightest breeze caresses them, or a bird sings in their limbs?

Trees are, like all things, made entirely of energy. And trees are aware. There is a self-regulating communication existent within every living organism. Trees are composed of energy fields existent within living awareness. Isn’t it wholly possible then that the wind-roused trembling of tree leaves and twigs, the spontaneous shaking of branches is an ecstatic thing in the same way that the human body, when fully alive and delicately caressed, trembles in ecstasy?

We have perceived life through the veils of our own desensitized sensitivities, afraid to be too wide open, to be fully sensitive and aware, afraid of “too much pleasure” that might embarrass us, or worse, make us vulnerable to the cynical, pain-sourced scorn of others. How strange to be embarrassed about being too happy, too pleasure-filled.

Is it actually more accurate to perceive life through abstract mental thought ruminations than directly through our capacity for fully alive and awakened sensitivities? That we are capable of perceiving Life through super alive and purified sense conveyance is fantastically true. But most of us are not experiencing Life this wide open and joyous way: rather we gaze through dense sensory filters meant to restrict bodily (and soul) pleasure as we listen to the chatter of habitual mental recollections about the little we perceive and call this an accurate experience of what is real. Are we sure? Are we willing to bet our blooming lives that this is an accurate perception of reality?

Why do most people have a sense that something big and important is missing from their lives? The marketers take advantage of this and convince our mind through repetition (until it seems familiar and thus true) that what is missing is this product or that. But what if what our deep soul longs for is a primal state of being super alive, open, sensitive, clean, clear, whole, harmonious, full of wonder, inspired by Love? What if we are instinctively longing to be ecstatically joyful, creatively imaginative, and peacefully attuned to the beauty and mystery of what we thought we understood but have not ever really known?

Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy … at the coming of the Lord.
(from Psalms)

This Universe is stranger than we can conceive. Quantum physics has been pointing to it, but the ramifications have yet to pierce through our mental veils of social conditioning. The facts of Life point to this: that the Universe is reflecting our own state of mind back to us, and that if our perception radically changed, Life would respond in kind. For example, if we began to perceive trees as unique beings, who (though their rate of perception is on a vastly different frequency than ours), are capable of a range of fluctuating energy qualities — everything from what we, in human terms, would call sadness to ecstatic joy — trees would come alive to us in new ways. It would be as if they (and we) were awakened from a deep drowse, a solemn sleep. Not that trees would become cartoon caricatures of themselves, popping open their newly found eyes and suddenly smiling, but rather we would sense the poignant mood of the trees and how the silent conveyance of energy qualities has always been the primal language of God’s countless creatures.

A DOO DAH DAY

Today, the trees seem ecstatically happy.
Perhaps it is as the psalmist foretold —
they are clapping, they are swaying,
they shimmy and clang!
They feel God…
If they could pull up their roots
they’d dance on them — I’m sure of it!
because when I feel God —
all fresh and lissome,
frolicking in green —
my spirit shimmies, like those trees,
in an inspirational breath,
and I want to dance from the essential urge
bursting from my core!
To throw back my head and howl,
like those trees surge back:
clattering and trembling,
ecstatic and shimmering,
rattling with sky in the wind!

It is a shocking and stunning, fun and far reaching reality that if our perception changes, Life responds. What a mind-blow to discover and become! Even now, right as we are, the wisdom that is inherent in each tree’s way of being can be conveyed to us through a kind of inherent intuition we might call telepathic knowing. And this open-hearted knowing is a true communion. Simply stand before a tree and breathe slowly, deeply, with the intention to move from mind veil to pure, open sensation. See the tree as if you have never seen a tree before. Pretend you have just been dropped on this planet from a place where there are no trees. Caress it with your eyes. See this astonishment emergent from earth: feel through the air with your skin until a state of wonder comes upon you. At some point, if you are ready, you will shift from mind filter to pure energy awareness and experience the tree itself, unfiltered, fresh, alive and real.

THE OOZE OF TREES

The trees draw Life from the earth
up their patient centers,
slowly up their majestic wooden bodies,
from earth, from dark roots, from the wet
and fecund, from the dampness and rottenness
of sweet mother earth, slowly rising,
each tree, slowly ecstatic in the rise of Life,
slowly drawing upward their juice,
their wet ooze into air,
into wind, and freshness, into Light,
into bird song and freedom,
into God.

See what just one tree has to teach you about patience, perseverance, generous self-giving, gentleness — and maybe even ecstasy. We can perceive their symbolic meaning and messages as well, even as we more deeply enjoy their energetic presence and company, And why not thank them for their long history of partnership with mankind: turning the poisons we exhale into life-giving oxygen, meeting so many of our shelter, food, heating and art-making needs.

We can wake up right now, if we want to enough to act on the potential these words convey, and experience for ourselves the language of trees, sense their vital energy and even current moods. Just be very quiet, and feel. Don’t be afraid to sense life directly, to move beyond the conditioned filters of your mind. You can do it because you are human and have wired right inside of you God-given sensitivities and capacities to be fully alive. So alive that you just must overflow with the blessing to others, and inspire as you are being inspired.

Why not be inspired and thus be an inspiration? Why not be blessed and thus be a blessing? Why not bless those you love with your celebration of awakening? And why not bless the trees with your hands and heart even as they bless you with their branches and leaves?

What if on the next windy day you felt a subtle thrill pass through your soul, body and bones because you were happy and child-like enough to accept the freely wild and waving ecstasy of trees? What if you were fully and freely alive?

THE MINISTRY OF TREES

Trees gift a shimmering voice
to the free blow of wind.
From rough roots dark water oozes,
flooding thickened trunks
branches, twigs and stems,
bleeding flat to brighten
translucent leaves.
And as wind-blown twigs tremble
leaves shimmy and clatter
spewing oxygen bursting
mist into free air
freshening sky-birthed breath
to soak into bodily cells,
until your brain dimples and dazzles
with laughing bright Light of Life.

A Passionate Call for Revolutionary Change

"We need a new economic system - one that is embedded in the care of all people and also in the care of the Earth and all of life upon it."
Presentation Sustainable Living Group, Ireland

I passionately agree with this statement, and also recognize that due to the inbuilt inertia of the familiar and fear of radical change a new economic system can only come from a tremendous shift of perception. Humans must "wake up" and embrace realities that will inevitably cause huge personal and social shifts. Our addiction to the familiar and fear of the new must be recognized and rejected out of a sense of deep moral necessity. I believe that once it dawns on us that we really are in a rapidly accelerating world-wide crisis, once the spell of denial is broken, needful human changes will accelerate. But will it be too late to prevent wide scale suffering and irreplaceable loss? That we will see.

The business community is the servant (or should I say slave) of profit. If the average person is unthinking and allowing the business community to manipulate social thought and feelings through clever advertising then the business community will not initiate radical change. But when enough people stand up and say, "No more!" no more repression of Earth friendly technology, no more social manipulation by powerful international corporations for the sake of their own profit no matter what the cost to mankind, no more false dreams of ever increasing material abundance for all through mindless consumerism, NO MORE! We demand non polluting, renewable, inexpensive energy production; we demand and require to restructure our laws so we are free to build the super inexpensive, energy efficient homes now possible out of natural materials that are freely available so everyone can have their own warm, human nest. We require access to the earth, to have our hands in the soil, that each of us can have our own garden full of singing birds and honey bees and grow our own organic food. And we demand this because we have woken up and recovered our passionate love of Life. We are now awake and recognize we are part of a miraculous, interdependent web of Creation.

We require more leisure time to study the wise ways of Life inherent in Nature and recover our sense of the miracle of existence. We require time to express the natural creative instincts that arise from Light-filled, Life inspired, Love bloomed hearts. We require freedom and peace of mind to deepen our meaningful relationships to the Divine Oneness of Life, to each other, to our own eternal, pilgrim souls, and to create beauty for ourselves, our communities and our children who trust us with their future.

It is time for change, for waking up, for shifts regarding where we place our attention and what we value. The transformation of the planet can only comes through the transformation of each one of us.

These are dangerous and exciting times. Will we continue to sleep in the mental/emotional spells created by the business world to drive its unsustainable economic systems, or will we return to that which is deepest, highest and most real within us, the Light of Life, the Love of Life, the reverence for the miracle of all existence?

We do not “have Life” in us. We are Life. We are the Light we see in our own eyes. This is our essence. And Life is, by its own nature creative, harmonious, playful, peaceful, joyful, and nourishing of more Life. Life is a miracle beyond comprehension because it is limitless in spiritual dimensions waiting for our discovery.

Everyday over 350,000 souls die and arise through the sky into higher dimensions of consciousness. Everyday around 400,000 souls come down to this earth to be born. All this movement of Life goes on in realms that our mortal body/mind systems cannot perceive, test or prove. But those who have left their bodies and entered super alive states of consciousness are telling us this over and over again. Read any of the Near Death Experiences sites. NDE, NDE Research Foundation. Read the spiritual mystics of the ages, the awakened ones. Read the awakened poets and writers. Get your attention off dangerous, status quo ways and put your attention on waking up to the larger picture and truer perspective. We must each embrace our own responsibility to do so and our changing lives and the crises of our times will inspire others to enact the same.