conceptualization

our innate longing for intimacy

299

Many folk express the longing to be able to draw or paint some-thing.  They long to faithfully render a beloved face, or a favorite object, or the marvel of a landscape.  Or, with the plethora of photographic devices now available, they eagerly capture moments both miraculous and mundane.

Might this have something to do with our innate longing for seamless intimacy with that apparent object or experience, with longing to know it, to be it, on the other side of conceptualization, categorizing, labeling?

.

unknowable knowingness

nothing that can be contained, it flows and ebbs;
calls itself perception or consciousness or awareness
or life or grace or destiny or God

the ‘ten thousand things’ are its toys –
its appearances rising and falling
wherever It casts its sensory antennae

is it not the ultimate
seamless intimacy?

~

go for the guts of IT

262

What can be said about the overpopulation of the planet?  What can be said about starvation, about terrorism, about climate change?  What can be said about the spread of diseases like AIDS?

Whatever is said or imagined by thought will be the product of conceptualization – the same source that produced the problems, the questions, and that endlessly spins the solutions.  But genuine change cannot be wrought by thought’s projections, for it only knows the known, and the known is the past.  Revolution is never creative; it may be innovative, but that’s not the same as creative.  Innovation is generated by thought re-arranging what it already knows.  Is it possible for thought to find a new question?  Or can new questions only arise from That which is beyond thought?

What thought knows cannot be the Truth for Truth is changeless and unknowable.

Go for the guts of IT: find the changeless, unknowable Truth and then see what happens to the rest.

Watch in amazement as Life rises to meet ITself – with wisdom and compassion and your name on ITs ID card.

~

when wideawakeness strikes

203

Something about that ‘disconnected’ door-chime rang a bell:  a neuron noticed; a metaphor morphed.

Wild wideawakeness is like that ungovernable power which, under the appropriate circumstances, appears as lightning.

The door-chime is like the ‘person-pattern’ – whether onto the ‘game’ or not, connected or disconnected, the potential energy (aka Life ITself) is always in place.

When widewakeness strikes, it doesn’t only set off the door-chimes, it blows the door IDEA wide open.

And along with it goes the whole IDEA of a separate unawake little old ‘me.’

BOOM!

~

wouldn’t you want to know?

185

A dear friend calls – a woman who has spent her life on the spiritual path, ceaselessly seeking and serving, and now in her 8th decade.  The power of evil in the world, she says, is too much for her.  She no longer believes in the power of goodness.  She’s contemplating a premature departure.

I sit.  An echo arrives.  It’s not exactly comforting.  It’s an invitation:

Beloved, brave Beingness –

Leave if you wish, but don’t kid yourself that you’ll leave evil behind.

The concepts of evil and its partner, goodness, are inextricably intertwined.  And – they exist only in the thought-system of a perceiver.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to check out for yourself – before it’s too late – who or what this perceiver is?  Perhaps its information isn’t the full story.  Perhaps it’s making up a story that’s not true.  Wouldn’t you want to know?

Find that perceiver.  Track it to its burrow, feel its terror at being exposed, notice its valid and invalid functions.

Finding, tracking, feeling, noticing … who or what does any of this?  Can it be observed and examined?

It’s possible only if you conceptualize it – turn it into an object to be observed.

But then the hunt begins again, and again … for some-thing that’s just another fragment of the thought-system.

Stop!

What’s left when the mind’s merry-go-round stops?

When the giddiness subsides into stillness?

Beloved! 
~

the gift of grace

89

the ‘perfection’ of the universe is
nothing more than a concept about
that which is totally beyond
conceptualization

the concept demands that all be
goodness and kindness and
sweetness and light;

it excludes the inevitability of opposites

Grace, as a concept, suffers the same
exclusions

but perfection is exactly this-as-it-is
all of it: the good the bad and the ugly

and Grace is the gift
of knowing and flowing
as this ultimate perfection

~

good morning pain

44

pain, pain, pain

perception grabs pain –
perceived location?
above ear, left side of head

conceptualization grabs pain –
conceptualized description?
sharp, irregular, might be telling me something…

awareing views pain –
without label, placement, explanation or conclusion:
sensation, energetic, shimmering, wondrous

in this naked knowingness
pain simply is …

no problem

~

awareness simply views the View

43

awesome thing, perception

a no-thing itself,
it makes up the web of
space and time
so that the world can appear

 

awesome thing, conceptualization

a no-thing itself,
it makes up the labels that
name and explain
those worldly appearances

 

awesome thing, Awareness

a no-thing itself,
it does nothing at all
but view the View
whether I turn up at the lookout or not

~