Transmutation

FuturePeak, Boulder Creek, CA July 2018

Dancing alone, wide, green eyes gazing up

starry, wondrous sky, expanding;

Twirling around, counter-clockwise motion, 

arms grounding, extended hands,

compassionate Universe,

transforming Ego,

longing for flight—

Heaven 

Heightening True Love to raise like seeds,

blown from trees, afloat, featherlight,

lifting above suffering

Earth’s dreamscape,

Where separations enmesh;

Fear evaporates like intense

summer storm, quickly dissipating into

atmospheric tranquility

You, guiding your feet to meet me,

dancing your own, unique rhythm, 

vibrational ascension,

holding each timeless moment

freedom for all beings;

Composing creations, interwoven like Tabriz and Kashan,

collaborative, masterful designs—

bliss and peace 

Fly weightless, infinitely deep,

high above temporal clouds, 

obscuring neither pure mind nor soul;

contented abandonment of aloneness,

intermingling independent movement;

spinning clear light, resonating,

strumming heart strings— 

One Song

  

Learning to Be Confirmation Unbiased

During the presidential election season, all over social media, people post "evidence" that comes from sources with one political leaning or specific intention. While none are truly unbiased, there are ways to sort through the muck. One great way to manage is to find information that challenges our views. To do that in a fair manner, one should give as much passion and time to seeking out unpleasant information that is opposed to our beliefs and stances as one gives to finding information that supports current beliefs.

If you already lean toward specific ideologies and beliefs, and then only seek circles of information that consistently confirm and never challenge that framework, there's a term for it, "confirmation bias", and chances are, your ideologies and beliefs are shaky, at best. At worst, those beliefs can kill people, when those with such bias are allowed to effect legislation and rules for the rest of us, or when average people decide to allow their biases to affect others' right to life and freedom.

Challenge your comfort zone and welcome others of and in the world to take you out of your personal status quo. Through allowing others to challenge our beliefs, our beliefs are either fortified, adjusted, or they are changed altogether.

It's how we learn and grow. Changing your mind or not being able to make up your mind is not weakness, it is strength. It fortifies and grows the mind to be flexible in thinking. And sometimes, issues are so complex, once we allow more information in, there can be no cut and dry solution or stance, because reductionism marginalizes and trivializes.

Anyone who truly understands an issue can argue for or against that issue with equal fervor and breadth, because they can explain all sides.

It gives us greater ability to be able to protect ourselves against tyranny and injustice when strategizing in a geopolitical sense, in business, or in our personal lives. And when need be, it also adds a sense of humility and compassion to our stances, so we are able to deeply understand the view of our supposed enemy.

So, challenge your mind's comfort and step outside the norm. Take a different path home and see what you find.

Receiving

This morning, I was having a shitty feeling for a few moments, which upset me, because I was emotionally responding to an Internet thread... talk about a double-edged sword. I mean, no one likes allowing one's self to become upset at all in some negative ego response, let alone when it is due to Internet strangers. So, I stood up to look outside my large, floor-to-near-ceiling, front window.

On the top of where the deep, green, creeping juniper arches, there was a bright, handsome, male cardinal eating berries. In swooped a male blue jay whose immense size put the cardinal on high alert. He, too, began munching berries, but at the flat base of the plants, closer to the house. Then, just as the scene triggered an early childhood wish to be able to see both of these birds together, something amazing happened: a butterfly dashed across the yard, the female cardinal appeared on a pine tree branch, a bumblebee flew to the vinca and hopped from flower to pink, trumpet flower. Goldfinches arrived on their thistle seed-filled sock feeders and a common northern mocking bird landed in the driveway, which led my eyes down to see a pair of mourning doves scouring the ground for treats.  At that moment, the sun burst through the fluffy, white clouds that mostly blanketed the sky, revealing bright blue that reflected on the lake, where a silhouetted squirrel hopped over the landscape's horizon.

It was a scene right out of Snow White.

The collective whole was symbolically telling me to not be so serious about something so trivial when, if I just open my eyes and release my silly, hurt self, there is so much beauty to be seen which helps the ego to rest peacefully and just let it flow into a new moment, being ever-present.

Just in case I forget what matters, the universe is happy to remind me and, fortunately, I am grateful to receive her song. I guess it does the same for others in whichever way they need to be shown. For me, that comes in the form of reminding me that there is so much more that is seemingly, infinitely smaller and equally, infinitely larger than a moment that will, ultimately, be nothingness.

Little bit harder, just a little bit more,
A little bit further than you've gone before.