Maps..

 

Maps

And the

Territory

Are not two~

All stories

Assume otherwise~~

Words are special hints of freedom~~

"This"

May appear

As words~

Words which are

Not known and

Simultaneously 

Known~

Which may

Whisper that there

Are no special

Words but all

Are special hints

Of freedom~~

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

~~Shakespeare, Sonnet 18~

The stuff of dreams~~

 

Timelessness

No time

Mysteriously 

Stages the conditions

Of time and seemingly

Appears as the stories

Comic and tragic which

are the stuff of dreams

(to borrow a few words)~~

The Timeless Wonder (Andreas Muller)

What we call the natural reality is nothing else than what seems to be happening. It is what naturally is and is not. There is nothing beyond or within that - no absolute reality, no essence, no God. Liberation is the turning out that the separate self and the experience of a separate world is a dreamt reality. Seen from within the dream, the dream is everything - a world of "me-ness", knowledge, longing and the impression of doership and observation. The seeking drive cannot be separated from its source which is the sense of being a separate self. While the seeker hopes to break free from its limitations and its sense of lack, it rather is a closed loop. While assuming otherwise, the seeker stays within its world of experiencing and knowing, within seeking and separation. While it desperately tries to overcome separation, it only confirms its illusory presence. 

Liberation, in contrast, is the loss of all that seemed to be known including the sense of one's existence. Apart from the loss of all known, it is the loss of hopes and above all the loss of one big dream: To finally overcome separation and arrive in a state of fulfilment. Yet, the collapse of that seeming separate energy happens despite all efforts to overcome it. It rather is a letting go of oneself which, however, is not done by anyone. Yet, the dream of seeking is as much what seems to be happening as everything else is. However, it is a dream.

The natural reality is timeless. The natural appearance of whatever appears to be happening knows nothing about separation and the overcoming of it. It knows nothing about unfulfillment, enlightenment or liberation. It all is effortlessly and unconditionally itself.

Burst of perspectives~~

Absolute and relative, for many, brings clarity. And it may seem so. A nice division, and perspectives seem powerful. But non-separation bursts the clarity bubble. With the burst, perspectives disappear and "reality" is already not known. A bursting story! 

Words pile up. Words are searchers. Looking for their own demise. 

Already complete~

Life seems as

Ever arising forms~

Included in this

Inexplicable story

Is the arising of

A separation sense

Synonymous with a

Desire for restoration

And home~all

Told in stories

Of loss and fulfillment

And already complete~~

Wholeness--a new dawn~

 

Wholeness

An empty word

As are all words~

And an arising

Recognition of

Wholeness appearing

May be a

New dawn~~

"It's all wholeness or nothing appearing."  Jim Newman

"It's all already empty."  Jim Newman

The peace that is unknowable~~

 

Just

What appears to

Be happening~

Unknowable 

But somehow 

Arises as

The peace that is

Unknowable~~

It arises..

 

It

Arises and

There is no it

And no doing

Or expectation

For the arising~

A peace without

Questioning~~  

Orthodoxy~~

 

Repeated

Words have a

Fixation and may 

Seem to promote 

An orthodoxy~~

The witness

Said to be a

Way-station on

Paths to discover

What's up~

It's the headspace

Watching apples 

Ripen and fall~

The witness

Avoids the fire~~

Emptiness colored~~

 

A

joyful or darker

emptiness

may simply arise

inexplicably for

no one~

This~~

Stillness~~

Stillness

Permanence

Appearing to be

Noisy and temporary

The concept..

 

The concept 

Arises and 

May or may not 

Seem as a Silent 

Explosion~

Binary Lens~

 

Binary Lens

Simply to recognize

The binary lens  

Its seeming hold

On perception~

Assumed as basic

Unquestioned~

The binary lens

The portal to~~?

Moving Beyond Our Binary Minds

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Father Richard Rohr highlights the importance of developing an open, “beginner’s mind”:

The dualistic mind is the one we’re all educated into. It’s the one that gets us through the day, helping us make important distinctions and necessary judgments, pointing us to the left or right. It’s essential for the advent of the scientific, industrial, and now technological revolutions, so we’re all grateful for it. It’s good and necessary as far as it goes, but let me be clear, it doesn’t go far enough! The dualistic mind cannot deal with the biggies: love, death, suffering, God, infinity, and the very notion of grace.

To balance what I see as our overreliance on dualistic thinking, we have to find ways to practice thinking in a different way, where we can receive the moment as an open field. I call it the nondual or contemplative mind. In that space, we don’t have to divide the field or reject anything we don’t yet understand as wrong. We don’t have to eliminate everything that’s mysterious, negative, painful, or problematic. With the contemplative mind, we can leave the field open.

This is a major exercise in letting go because we have to let go of our fear, defensiveness, and expectations. I think that’s why so many people don’t persevere in meditation practice, daily contemplation, or periods of silence. I do a twenty-minute sit in the morning and again later in the day, and to be honest, it usually feels like twenty minutes of dying, twenty minutes of boredom, twenty minutes of not getting my own way. All these compulsive, obsessive, and negative thoughts come into my mind and try to grab my attention.  

In the beginning contemplation is simply a practice of living with and looking out from our stable foundation in God, what we might call the Inner Witness. We have to be willing to see how attracted we are to negative, paranoid, oppositional, and even violent thinking. We start to wonder, Where did this come from? Why am I doing this?

We must be willing to question, “How could this little flimsy mind ever know God? How could it understand or even hold space for the great love or great suffering that enter every human life?” It will simply jump to the next thing because the dualistic mind is always moving toward resolution. It loves closure and rushes toward judgment. That’s why all great spiritual teachers said, “Do not judge.”  

To well-educated, dualistic thinkers, that just feels irresponsible. We have to make judgments, don’t we? Of course we do, especially when it comes to issues of justice and solidarity. But the first lens through which we receive a moment, a person, or a situation has to be nondual. I have to accept all parts of reality—that which I think I understand (and call good), and that which I don’t understand (and assume is bad). Sadly, most never go beyond that. Anything that they don’t yet understand is presumed to be wrong, dangerous, sinful, heretical, or even to be destroyed.  

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (MacMillan Audio, 2010).

Image credit and inspiration: Beth Macdonald, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. An estuary reveals a world that is more than just land or water, but something beyond them both.

Maps~~

Maps

Arise appearing

To make sense

Of the unknowable

Territory~

But the territory is

Totality including all

Maps~~

No escape~~

 

No escape

From the

Show of shows~

Of which we are

Characters not

Recognizing the

Staging~

A gift of emptiness

Which is not a gift

May be waiting

In the wings~

Yet no escape~~

As you are stuck in your poor body and in your poor life and it’s all slowly dissolving, dissolving into nothing. like all the other bodies, like all the other lives, we all are being counted out, taken down by disease by just being rubbed up against the hard days, the harder years. there’s no escaping this, we just have to take it, accept it or like most not think about it at all.

~ Charles Bukowski

What is happening~

 

The

Resonant story

For what seems peace

Are the words:

What is happening

And nothing is~

The simplicity is

Overwhelming for

No one~~

It's all about~~

It's 

All about

Arriving and

Not arriving

As nothing~

The oppositions

Conspire to 

Declare their

Stand for sake

Of argument~

Which nothing 

Wipes clean~

Delightful and

Dreadful~~

One day at a time~

 

Take it

One day at a time

So often advised~

Perhaps a note

Intended or not

On the futility of

Waiting for tomorrow

And missing the

The completion of

Already present~~

A gathering of words~

A word 

is a story seeming to 

invite more stories 

and those gather more~ 

A story lengthens 

hoping to come closer to 

truth or grace or love~

Yet stories are already

an appearance of these~~

AI and language power~~

 

AI's

only skill 

is to tell 

stories 

based on

vast stores

of data and

advantages of

language power~~

A r(z)oomful of seekers~~

 

Seems

to be happening

without making sense

and time might clarify

but time is missing~

A no-path to

what is sought by

a r(z)oomful 

of seekers~~

Especially poignant~~

Especially poignant 

is an appearance 

of no self 

and no meaning..😎💕

Experience is experience~~

 

Imagined 

experience and 

"real" experience

are not two~~

Nothing

appears as what

seems imagined

experience and as

"real" experience~~

A story of a story~~

 

We

are already 

living a story

which in its

emptiness lies a

freedom  

seldom tasted~

a story of a story~~

Durango on the Animas~

 

Durango

on the Animas

a house on Delwood

under watchful Perins~ 

That's my home

in the saga

which I claim

as fully empty and

nostalgic memory~~

What is meant by "Personal?"~~

 

The 

personal

is and is not~

these words may

arise as a 

narrative of the

completeness of

Nothing at all~~