how can I use poetry to explain what I mean?
Posted by lune on September 27, 2009
There is a bird singing, singing at the top of his voice this morning right outside the bedroom window; trilling pure, true, beautiful music for music’s sake alone. It makes me catch my breath in harmony, like I am the missing chord.
Ruddy redstart with your twitching tail – the six o’clock sentinel – you remind me of me.
I catch the same thing in my daughter’s face sometimes, when I come into the room and she is there, just there, looking back at me with all the knowing life can muster. She spins away somehow in that moment and leaves behind a molten core of truth; a kaleidoscope twisting again and again on itself, refracting the light, concentrating every shard into perfect focus, where every beam of light collides as one. I see her toothy grin, flapping hair, silly dance and headstands, whilst the truth quietly gets on with its million spinning points of connectedness.
There is always recognition, always. How can it not be so? Yes, how strange that I cannot find anything anywhere that does not contain this immediate recognition of what is.
Everything is, just is, could never be anything else but is. If I were to describe it any other way, it would just be another way, that’s all. The truth; gritty, austere, irreverent, playful – there are some great descriptions for you – is just whatever it is.
Even the truth is nothing but a word, I cannot find a point of fixation.
Redstart starts his trilling refreshed and my attention wanders back to the cadence. Ripples spread out and about; a flowing of sound, pure sound, issuing forth from nowhere, settling back into nowhere again with no reference point to itself whatsoever.
It makes me stop and think: How the hell did I get here? What the hell is it that got me here - right now - experiencing life’s miraculous symphony exactly like this? What the hell is this NOW and what is my relationship to it? Not just that millionth point of light spinning on itself, surely?
There is too much poetry here for me this morning; I usually write it how it is, without mincing words, without the fluff. I am being reminded of the times I used to walk out into the forest and ask the mountains for answers. I am not sure exactly what is trying to be said here today, not sure how it is trying to show itself. Of course, I hear you say, Nothing needs to be said! I just wonder how any of this can possibly be communicated using anything less than poetry, how this can be expressed in any other way than the way it already is. Nothing touches the pristine beauty of it, so it might as well be Everything, mightn’t it?
Sod gurus! Sod satsangs! Sod Advaita! Sod Vedanta; plump full as it is of all that emptiness and silence. Right now, right at this very moment, I feel like a poetic ingénue, bursting forth with birdsong in the crisp morning air.
And tomorrow?
Ah, little bird – there’s no need to wait and see.
Björn Clausen said
Thank you Lune!
Everything needs to be said Lune! Always. It’s The One flowing out into the many. It’s creation, compassion, tantra.
These sod Gurus, this sod Advaita, it’s all about the many coming home to The One. It’s all about liberation, transcendence. It has to be both ways. Liberation AND compassion. Transcendent AND immanent. Advaita AND Tantra. Tantra-Advaita. … as I said … as you said, it’s sexy. Just Advaita is boring. Booooring…. these sod Satsangs….
It’s great to be SOMEBODY experiencing this crazy adventure. Isn’t it? What’s so great about being NO BODY???
lune said
Everything needs to be said, but somethings cannot always be expressed and sometimes nothing actually needs to be said at all.
Variety is the spice of life, don’t they say?? Ah, then, what’s to be done? Why suppress anything?
Life is sexy, raw and unchallenged, always.
Loving ya here Bjorn, let’s celebrate this connection, before we go and lose ourselves again.
x x x
Björn Clausen said
We are are never going to lose our selves. Small self, BIG SELF, ego, mind, story, no-story, what our faces looked like before our parents were born, it’s all an outflow from THE ONE as THE ONE. … How could THE ONE ever lose itself? Where could THE ONE get lost if there is only THE ONE?
Ok, just kiddin, that’s some boring Satsang-bullshit. That’s not me. I know that and I am sick and tired of reading bullshit like that. You see, I have found inside MY SEPARATE SELF (yes indeed:))a deep rooted fear of not being good enough at this Advaita lingo. What if I will burn in hell forever if I ever believe another “me-thought” to be true. Liberation from liberation. That’s my game. You wanna play?
lune said
You bet.
It is all just noise anyway and the need to feel as if we are good enough. Bring on noise, bring on inadequacy – but not because I think it’s gonna get me closer to my ‘true self’ whatever that is, and if I can label it as true, then it sure ain’t it!!! Anyway, I do not want to get closer to ‘that’ now, even though at one point ‘that’ was the only thing which mattered. I see there is no use in even trying now. I just wanna stop being worried about feeling inadequate because I am a normal human being.
Cries of horror from the back row, “You are not a human being!!!! you are NO thing!!!! Naughty girl”.
no thing/human being – both sound like labels to me.
x
x
x
Suzanne said
It is even the resistance, the questioning, the separation. The fear of not getting “it” right is “it”. There is only this, whatever its flavour or guise. Inadequacy, labels, being fed up with advaita – just perfect!
My grandpa is having his 90th birthday tomorrow! Greetings from no one to no one from South Bend, Indiana – very definitely nowhere!
lune said
How far away from Macdonalds is he/you/no one?
Happy birthday Grandpa! Say hi to Southbend from ‘me’, nowhere girl.
x x x
Björn Clausen said
I have become very fond of this chapter from Ken Wilbers book “Sex, Ecology, Spirituality”. It clarifies the themes I am currently trying to express in my poor language. I hope it’s ok if I just paste in this chapter here. You can remove it if you don’t think it’s relevant to your post. I think it’s relevant because it points to a possible reason why you label our beloved Gurus, Satsangs and Advaita as “sod”. It points to the missing part that is … well, it’s better you take it directly from Ken Wilber. As a help I want to provide a illustration but I guess I have to link to that picture. It’s here: http://bjornclausen.blogspot.com/2009/09/phobos-thanatos.html
Phobos and Thanatos
“As we will eventually see in much detail, when Eros and Agape are not integrated in the individual, then Eros appears as Phobos and Agape appears as Thanatos.
That is, unintegrated Eros does not just reach up to the higher levels and transcend the lower; it alienates the lower, represses the lower – and does so out of fear (Phobos), fear that the lower will “drag it down” – always it is the fear that the lower will “contaminate it,” “dirty it,” “pull it down.” Phobos is Eros in flight from the lower instead of embracing the lower. Phobos is Ascent divorced from Descent. And Phobos, we can see, is the ultimate force of all repression (a rancid transcendence).
Or, to say the same thing, Phobos is Eros without Agape (transcendence without embrace, negation without preservation).
And Phobos drives the mere Ascenders.
In their frantic wish for an “other world,” their ascending Eros strivings, otherwise so appropriate, are shot through with Phobos, with ascetic repression, with a denial and a fear and a hatred of anything “this-worldly,” a denial of vital life, of sexuality, of sensuality, of nature, of body (and always of woman).
They are dangerous people, these Ascenders, for the violent hand of Phobos lurks always behind the “love” of the higher that they profess to all and sundry. With tears streaming down the face and upward-turned eyes, these Ascenders are ready to destroy this world – or at the very least, neglect it to death – in order to get to the Promised Land, a land that, however vaguely it might acutally be conceived, is clearly enough understood to be anything but this land, definitely not this world, which is shadows to the core, deceptions in depth, illusions at best, demonic at worse. The Ascenders are destroying this world, because it is the one world they are all certain that they thoroughly despise.
Thanatos, on the other hand, is Descent divorced from Ascent. It is the lower in flight from the higher, compassion gone mad: not just embracing the lower but regressing to the lower, not just caressing but remaining stuck in it (fixation, arrest) – cosmic reductionism run amok. And the end game of that reductionistic drive is death and matter, with no connection to Source. Thanatos is Agape in flight from the higher instead of expressing the higher. It preserves the lower but refuses to negate it (and thus remains stuck in it). And as Phobos is the source of repression and dissociation, Thanatos is the source of regression and reduction, fixation and arrest. It attempts to save the lower by killing the higher.
In other words, Thanatos is Agape without Eros.
And Thanatos drives the mere Descenders.
“Away with all other worlds,” they joyously proclaim, as their down-ward-turned eyes rivet on the wonders of multiplicity, and their infinite joy begins the gruesome task of fitting itself into a finite receptacle. “Away with all other worlds,” as they match their joy to the shadows, kiss and hug the spokes in samsara’s grinding wheel, marry the source of their misery. And their failure to find final release in the Cave, their rage at the finite cage, is turned merely on any of their poor fellows who happen to disagree with them and their love of shadows.
The higher doesn’t embrace the lower; the higher is killed in the name of the lower: not Agape, but Thanatos, and the hand of death touches every love that the Descenders profess for all and sundry, tears also streaming down the face with “compassion” written all over it.
They are dangerous people, these Descenders, for in the name of Agape and compassion, otherwise so appropriate, they mistakenly destroy all higher in a frantic attempt to embrace the lower. And more dangerous still: in their attempt to make this poor finite world into a world of infinite value – and every Descender does exactly that in a thousand different ways – they slowly, painfully, inevitably, destroy this world, by placing on it a burden the poor beast could never carry. The Descenders are destroying this world, because this world is the only world they have.”
lune said
tak, Bjorn, I will read it tonight.
(I have to say your english is pretty damned good) x
lune said
Hi Bjorn,
Jesus, I don’t really understand any of it. Your English must be much better than I thought!
You really have lost me or is that the idea? I thought that terrorists destroy the world, not peace-seekers?
Ha, ha, I just remembered, my husband and I were talking today about a sculpture in our town square which people want to get rid of, it is an eyesore. Somebody emailed me and said that they were all for any ‘non-violent’ way of removing it from the square. I told them I was up for a bit of muck-slinging. I read the emails out to my husband who then said, “Ah, it’s the peace-lovers who do more harm than anyone.” I asked him what he meant and he said, “At least with the violent ones, you know what their intentions are.”
Gods knows what that meant, but it sounded good.
So, anymore thoughts on Adonis flying through the sky shooting arrows at the guys I the cave or shall I just say that really it’s all a pile of ’sod’? Who is this Ken Wilbur bloke anyway? He writes as much fluff as I do.
Björn Clausen said
Maybe you have transcende words and understanding to such a degree that even the poems of Rumi are nothing but fluff?
Hey, I am totally fine with that! Honestly, of course no words mean anything. Words are empty. I know that, but when I look back at the people I love, the people I care for, (I hate to say that i look back down) then I am not totally fine with the emptiness of words. I want to say I love you AND MEAN IT. You know, Emptiness is not Nonduality. It’s duality. Emptiness and form. That’s two, not ONE.
lune said
Rumi is Rumi, no fluff. This guy is a fluff-monger. Where is the I in all this discourse? I cannot relate to it that’s all. No one has transcended nothing here, its just an opinion on, as you say – empty words!
Thing is, there maybe a thought that thinks ‘you’ may know the reality about life, the universe and everything, and within that belief, you may think words still comfort others, still make others mad, still sing like poetry on the page. Nothing to do with a you doing it, it just happens. When you MEAN it, it is not ‘you’ who puts the meaning into it, meaning floats around like it does and lands wherever it wants to.
Ken Wilbur’s meaning landed in your head, not mine, simple as that. It’s not right or wrong, unless those labels are tagging along with the meaning and want to land somewhere too, of course.
Like I said: everything (humanness)/no thing (transcendence) both smell distinctly like labels to me. They are just different sides of the same coin,
x x x