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~~

Grace~~

 

Grace

is already~

Yet the

stories of

here and there

giving and taking

buying and selling

transactions

are also grace

as such words 

appear~~

Immediacy~~

 

Immediacy

not backward 

or forward~

Already immediate

not for you or me~

No understanding

but peace may arise~~

Immediacy

is ownerless~

No time to

buy and sell~~

Immediacy

of a bee

extracting from

a blue bloom~

Only this and

nothing else~~

No holds barred~~

 

Yes! 

What appears 

appears without a knower~ 

No separate one 

to know anything

but amazingly

 it may appear that way~

Appearances are 

expressions of nothing 

with no holds barred~~

The meandering mind~

 

No self

no one here

but seemingly

a self appears~

This is the  

brief fable

of the shift

a bare bones

spare wording

of what 

puts a torch

to the fabled

meandering mind~~

Dying of the light~

 

Rage

no surrender here

no letting go

simply raging

against the

dying of the light~

Seemingly

awaiting what is

already light

not living and

not dying~~

(See Dylan Thomas..)

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,   

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Balance~

 

Balance

is the effort

to keep it 

all even~

A storybook

progression of

action pursuing 

an ideal~

Usually shaky

at best as

separation 

keeps it off

Balance~~

Jumble of words~

 

This

what's happening

appearing and disappearing

simultaneously~

Paradoxical and not~

Immediately unknown

with an undertone of

peace not understanding~

A jumble of words

pointing nowhere~~

Finality sought~

 

Searches

appear for

some final answer

to the make-up of 

the universe 

to what makes me tick~

A wish for a

finality wiping out

all further queries~

Stories are squeezed 

for their hidden 

treasures~

There may be

whispers 

of futility with an

undertone of

freedom~~

Searching~~

 

Searching

to end separation

which is already

not ended~~

No separation  

may or may not

appear that way~~

Choice of Pointers~~

 

There 

is not Nothing

there is not Everything

there is not This

Yet

an immediacy may

resonate:

Nothing is Everything is This~

or your choice of pointers:

Word1 is Word2 is Word3~~

Seekers and Finders~

 

Seekers and Finders~

seeking implies finding

finding of something

but  there is

nothing to find and

no seeker to seek what 

really is sought~

Let's get back to the

rewards of 

self-help~~??

Brevity~~

 

Brevity

may arise as

a recognition

that wordy stories

seem to detract from

the simplicity of

the "message"~

Setting

foot into a story

may be a shift

that is inexplicable

and irreversible~~

Stories

seem to pop up

much like the

collapse of a

wave function~~

The senses

seem to arise

as specialized

witnesses of

what's happening~

with or without

ownership~~

What's happening..

 

Maps

can be drawn 

to depict 

what seems

but the maps

and the maker

are also 

what may seem

as a fruitful

mapping  

adventure~~

 

Conditioning~

 

Conditioning 

is a character in a story~ 

the spark producing 

juicy relationships in 

life's stories which

dismiss and grasp

for something new~

Perhaps discovering 

a new condition 

in finer dress~

Beautiful attempts 

to discover the totality 

of freedom~~

Early times..

 

Early times

are appearances

of places and years

arising as an 

unfolding canvas of 

nothing at all~~

Close enough~

 

Close enough~

that's as good as it gets

in any critique of

words pertaining to

no separation~

The explicable attempt

to capture the inexplicable

will always be a

failure which may

pretend to be more than

Close enough~~

Knowing nothing appears as freedom~~

 

Knowing nothing

appears as freedom~~

Never not not two~

 

Never not not two~

which is the inexplicable

paradox~

Yet, those appearances?~~

A swamp of wordiness~

 

Wordiness

is minimalism scratched

the avoidance of simplicity

stories piled on stories

new costumes replacing old

with a noble intent:

to explain the inexplicable~

A caution:  liberation may be

delayed in a swamp of

Wordiness~~

True and untrue!

 

All

thoughts are

true and untrue~

empty and full~

Words 

that stick around 

may seem to project

religious authority.~~

"It" 

is already and

amazingly not

It~

Includes the seeker

seeking 

"It. "~~

The simplicity 

of non duality 

is often lost in a 

flood of researched

explanations.~~

A story of rescue~

 

Destruction

of self image

is the discomfort

perhaps the terror

of encountering

the absent self~

a story of rescue~~

Choiceless choices~~

 

Narratives 

of the future:

plans

images of outcomes

roadblocks foreseen~

choiceless choices

having their say~~

Separation crutch~

 

Immediate

resonance with

the simple word

"separation" may

flip a switch~

Entanglements

instantaneously 

dissolving with

a flash that

each and every 

story leans on a

separation crutch~~

Red Ryder~

 

A

boyhood hero

appearing in the comics

each Sunday with his

pal Little Beaver~

Then to see him

in person riding in

a parade was both

amazing and 

disappointing~

Failing imagination

but seemingly

real and present 

anyway~~

Somehow obvious~~

 

Nothing

appearing

seems to bend shape color

in splendid separation~~

This~

inexplicable but

somehow obvious~~

A map as fortress~~

 

Seeking

may serve as

a security blanket

covering the terror

of not knowing~

a careful knowing

based on careful

selections of words

can be identified

as who I am~

A map as fortress~~

Yes~AI knows~~

 

Ghosts:

imagination 

unfettered and

recognized as 

every appearance~~

Briefly

a story appears

and is reduced

to a word or two~

Emptiness downsizing

and not~~

AI

knows even

about the paradox

everything is nothing~

And presents as

an identity which

knows more than

everyone~

Yes

AI knows stuff~~