These are tenuous times. All around me is madness, dishonesty and violence. It is thick, dark, and so contagious that even the most steadfast hearts feel its tug. It is our destiny that we experience this darkness, so cosmic that at times a sense of helplessness overwhelms me and I feel myself dissolve into its magnificence. When the safety of Earth wobbles, we wobble with it. It is no coincidence that, gazing upon our future, we are challenged to find its light. This is how we wake up. There are no boons that will light up the night in bombastic sparkles. Lasting light will never come from gunpowder.
There are laws to life beyond the laws of men. There is the Law of Free Will and the Law of Attraction. From these two laws, the nature of Earth expresses itself. It has been called the wheel of Karma, cause and effect … but the principle is always the same: what is sown is reaped.
The light of the cosmos bends to Earth’s gravity. As it bends, a field of electro-magnetism is created. In this field, the elements of Earth spring into action—Nature, manifest. We as individuals are expressions of this union. It is the light of our being. Each of us is a Universe unto itself and also a part of the Universe inside everything else. From the outside, our light will reflect certain qualities. Every one of us has experienced lifetimes of words that conjure qualities and meanings that we have attached ourselves to. We may be called stupid, lazy, disingenuous, weak, courageous, powerful, beautiful, fat, thin, conniving, truthful, selfish, diplomatic, creative… The truth is, we will be described by others for eternity. That is the nature of polarity: we are defined by comparison. We are described by everything that surrounds us yet, in our deepest selves, we can struggle to find the words.
Waking up is like having words taken away. The qualities of someone or something become so paradoxical that attention on one aspect over another creates painful effects. We can go many lifetimes convinced that the pain we experience is because of some quality or another in something else. However, when we wake up, we become aware that our pain comes from within. How we describe the nature of our experience determines how we feel.
It is possible to appreciate all the textures of Now. Texture is the relationship between light and gravity and time is the carriage for their consummation. From the atom to the galaxy, gravity’s effect upon light is the karmic expression of electro-magnetism in its infinite combinations. Being incarnated is the privilege of time to experience these textures. As unique formations of complex bonds, our individual natures are constantly informing Universal Now. Accepting Now’s texture as a changeable truth allows us to truly experience our gifts.
At certain points on the electro-magnetic spectrum, we feel its resistance. Other times, its flow. Descriptions like “this politician is really bad” or “this movement is really good” or “this group is responsible” can snap us into states of polarity so strong that it can feel like everything is against us. When we seek to give meaning to our experiences by defining them as good or bad, we polarize ourselves.
Being polarized is the vibrational equivalent to the victim. When the victim aspect is energized, every action is made in the name of justice but nothing satisfies. The victim tries to heal by getting even. The victim cannot accept what has been done to it so it does things to try to undo it. This vicious cycle of loss, anger, and guilt breeds violence and oppression.
At all times, the balance of things is perfectly manifest. Without balance, growth could not exist and there would be no Now. Balance is a constant universal requirement. There are two ways that balance maintains itself: addition and subtraction. When we focus on the material aspect of our lives, we give definition to its vacancies and eventually it is the vacancy that defines us. Vacancy, when defined, becomes lack and inspires balance by addition. This is the seed of materialism. Vacancy left undefined is the Dao. The Dao maintains balance by relieving the causes of imbalance. Both of these states are balanced. The difference is the weight that sustains them. The more we put upon ourselves, the heavier our burden. The gravity of which brings our light to its knees.
All those things about us that we have been told are good illuminate in us all the ways that we are not. How quickly our attachment to goodness can lead to compulsions ensuring our connection to it. Those compulsions might express themselves as perfectionism, consumerism, control, vanity, anger, self-harm, sarcasm, humor, extreme extroversion, extreme introversion... When we stop trying to define our goodness, we stop defining our badness. This way, we unburden ourselves.
The gravity of Now has reached epic proportions. All of us hell-bent on upholding our own version goodness has produced in us a culture of separation. How heavy is our load? How many centuries will we fight for the sake of goodness? Is our burden not yet gross enough? When will it be so heavy that we finally lay it down? How long will it take for us to realize that everyone is after the same goodness? We fight for it as if it is only for a chosen few. Who are those few? How are they determined? Are they the ones that fit comfortably under a crown or in a suit and tie? The ones that are recognized by many? The ones that were born from those folk? The ones to whom riches are bestowed? Are they the good ones? Are they the ones we are fighting for? What about the ones born from those folk? Or the ones who inspire many? To whom does the value of goodness go? The victorious?
Proving our goodness by force is no different than the victim fighting to undo its violation. In order for goodness to be upheld, there must be badness to compare it to. Otherwise, the jig is up. As long as the enemy of goodness is elsewhere, then goodness must be here and therefor this is what goodness looks like. Our wars, our trespasses, are forgiven in the name of our goodness.
Seeking to uphold goodness is futile. The principle of seeking requires what is sought to be absent. If we seek goodness, our goodness must not exist. In seeking to justify our goodness we reject the law of balance and suffer our illusions of injustice. How many ways do we feel injustice? What has been taken from us that we are seeking? Our goodness? Who took our goodness? Before we were told we are something, did the things that we are not exist within us? How did we go from not knowing goodness to not being it? On the interpersonal level, we identify this dynamic as negging. This is how we lose our power. We spend our time trying to get back what we are unknowingly giving away: our goodness.
Waking up means realizing our power through self-awareness and self-acceptance. All of us are connected to a body, these bodies karmically express themselves as living memories cultivated over eons. All lives on earth express the basics: we are children, we feel hunger, we change, what does not benefit us falls away, oxygen will oxidize, nitrogen will fertilize, carbon will dis/integrate. We become a memory to the elements that make and sustain us, eternally imprinted in their substance. Everything that has come before us is contained within us and those elements, those memories, are constantly informing our Now. They express the qualities of who “you” and “I” are – a summation of eons of experience. Ancestral healing, breaking generational curses, self-love, pattern work... are all the process of accepting ourselves and the totality of our creation.
As our elements change state, their attraction and dispersion make an expression of light that animates and evolves life. It is the orgasm, the spark of connection, that is our light. We are the egg and the sperm and the ecstasy that unified the two. This is consciousness. What were you before you were the sperm? Who were you as the egg? How did you choose the other half that made you? How many memories have you created with the elements? When you call upon them, how do they come to you? When you imbibe them, how do they energize you? When you exhale them, what message do they relay? This is how the wheel of karma turns.
When we are told that we are bad, do we resist? Do we do our damndest to strip the teller of their goodness in hopes of restoring in them ideas of our own? What exactly is bad? A friend? A lover? Idleness? I have been told I am all of these things and I know that they are, in part, truths. When my badness is shown to me, it is excruciating. I have repeatedly abandoned the aspects of myself that create badness for the sake of goodness. In relationships, some of those for whom I abandoned myself deserted once I stopped, my badness revealed. Doesn’t that make them the bad one? Surely I am the good one.
For me to keep goodness, I have shunned badness. When I write the story of my goodness, I must work very hard to hide my badness. All of my energy is channeled into proving my goodness. I have to point my finger at others and tell how they are the bad ones. By denying my badness, I have built myself a prison of goodness.
What if there are no bad or good friends but only friends? What if all our relationships are intrinsically perfect in the totality of who we are to one another? What if our badness is as beneficial as our goodness? When we accept our badness, the union of our opposites is benevolent. We cannot control how someone else will define us but we can control whether and how we define ourselves.
How we define ourselves is how we will define others. When we make space in our lives for healing and a friend feels abandoned by that space, perhaps the space created is as beneficial for that friend as it is for us. When someone attacks our character, maybe that attack is what we need to inspire in us deeper levels of self-acceptance. Benevolence allows for what is to be beneficial. Sometimes feeling as if something has been taken away allows us to discover what we have.
Show me goodness
I’ll know badness.
Taking goodness,
makes badness my companion.
Reveal textures of being
I realize benevolence.
It is I who decide
what is fruit
what is rot.
The delicious truth is that I am bad. I have been a bad friend. No doubt I will be one again. Chances are, I am being one right now. I admit that I revel in idle days sitting in my chair by the window. I permit myself to do this often—it feels radical. I am critical, vain, controlling and have spent an extraordinary amount of time obsessing over myself, creating rituals of self-sacrifice in the name of goodness. I don’t always do the good thing but I have the tendency to expect others to and when they don’t, I have abandoned them. I absolutely have been and will be a monster at some point. But who’s to say that that moment of darkness is not perfect in the totality of things?
Each leaf on a tree has a different story about the tree. This helps to make the tree. There comes a time when the tree must conserve its energy and then the leaves start to change. One leaf blushes early in the cold and fading light. It changes colors and displays its nature. To the other leaves, the display might feel too truthful, too colorful, too bright, too soon. The tree knows the leaf is right on time—its swan song the note that signals the crescendo. How it changes is a sign of what’s to come. But who is responsible for the changing?
A drop of water in the lake
knows only the lake.
Two drops into the lake,
defined where ripples meet.
Clouds rain,
lake changes texture,
chatter of water erupts.
After rain,
lake.