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~~