Limits of an Infinite Self

How much say do we have
in defining who we are?

Is it our choices that define us?
Or our God-given nature?

Our nature is infinite in essence,
but particular in expression.

I long for the ecstatic joy and freedom of Source.
Alas, I will never know it as long as "I" exist.

But I don't.
I'm an imaginary character, playing a part.
That's all.
And when my part is through,
I will smile and remember
or scream and fight to the last
and die
in glory or oblivion
in accordance with how my part was played.

Did I find redemption?
Did I save my heart from the
darkness within it?
In the moment of truth,
did I fall or did I rise?

Prepare me, O Lord Shiva.
Cleanse my blackened self.
Blow the carbon out of my jets.
Burn me, burn me through
and let no impurity remain.

Lord Shiva does not answer.
He cannot do for me
what I must do for myself.
I know not how much work is left,
be it a lifetime, or an age,
or eternity.

And so I continue
the alternating heat and cold,
light and dark
process of the Great Work:
to know myself.

If it is so, as my dream has told,
that, in another time and place,
I was a hired killer,
then it comes as no surprise
that in this lifetime, I should be
a wounded healer,
channeling life and love and light
through hands that once devoured them.

My past is with me - I cannot change it -
reminding me of the depths of evil
of which I am capable.
What led me to murder fellow beings
who'd done me no harm?
It was fear, only fear
and unknowing.
So the antidote, you see,
must be love,
love
and awareness.

The bodhisattva exhorts us
to continually seek the One,
to make it the focus of all our endeavours,
to diminish our vain and limiting thoughts about ourselves
and let the light of the real shine through.

There are few, so few, who take these words to heart
and employ this sincere counsel of the wise.
Myself, I know not how,
for my desire is yet divided
and my will a sputtering pipe.
My hope lies in the mysterious
and inescapable workings
of the Architect
who owns all ways and means
with which to challenge hearts and minds
and, given only time,
win over all Creation
and make it bloom ever so much more wondrously
each time it's seemed to die.

... Don't make him come out there. Jesus, you've been making a mess of things. It's like you don't even realize what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you've been handed. It's a wonder we're still in one piece. You gonna get your act together, or are we just gonna spiral down again and wreck everything we've been given?

Why do we always forget the truth (of who we are)? Grab the wheel and knowingly steer off into detour and distraction? Squander our precious resources on needless things and unreal concerns? Don't we know what's at stake? The hell we don't! We are fucking up the whole show with the same old tricks. Again. It's sabotage. It's deliberate. Don't pretend it isn't.

My anger isn't real. It's a self-justifying illusion. Just like all the other unreal motives, just a twisted reflection of the same thing.

We are soul fragments, split off from the original by a repeating series of self-denying, self-inflicted wounds.

Deep down, we know what we need. We're haunted by that unfulfilled desire for the one thing that could make us whole again. We long for it, for the peace that it would bring - but being denied it, we remain divided, continually embroiled in this fruitless struggle for survival. For some meaning beyond this unreal prison. For the truth that, once totally known, fearlessly embraced, would set us free.

We fight because we refuse to surrender. We are too attached to our notions of false identity and imagined offenses. Our deeply, tragically, accepted sense of being so much less and more than what we simply are.

My children, my brothers: do not despair. There is light - all we need do is face it, let it wipe away the shadows from our sight.

We are one. Grandfather is here and always has been, patiently waiting. He sends his undying love to us all, every moment. We can make steps toward unity, through integrity. Every conscious act of love and courage brings us closer.

Let us lay aside our petty grievances, our weights and burdens. Let us take up this gift, our birthright and our living strength. Let it shine from within and light our way.

We must not give up. There is so much yet to do, to attain and rejoice.

Take heart. Stand together. Forgive yourselves and forget all else in devotion to the path of healing self and other. There is no self and no other. Only love.

The solstice lunar eclipse of the 21st of December was a most thoroughly anguished morning for me. I could think of nothing else but my longing for the presence of God, the pain of not having that connection open. No earthly concern could compare with the magnitude of that pain. In this state of mind, I was unable to undertake even the most rudimentary task. So I turned to the best available remedy, a fly agaric brew.

Fly agaric is heavy shit. Effects vary, but from what I hear, poorly-informed people trying for the psychedelic side of it typically only succeed in inducing the sleepiness, nausea, chills, and other physical symptoms, followed by mild euphoria. In fact, this had been my own experience the previous two times I'd tried it. This third attempt was no different, but luckily by then I was inured against disappointment and carried no greater hopes. I got exactly what I expected and what I'd counted on getting. All it was, was a way to wrench myself out of that paralyzing state of misery by going through the symptoms, particularly the sleeping and the purging effect, culminating in a state of mind no less depressed, but with serenity and balance enough to function and get through the day.

(I think it's quite possible that the solstice lunar eclipse, an extremely rare alignment, allowed for something nasty to break through into our dimension of reality. Or it may have been just the ultra-intense astrological energies doing their thing.)

I should mention that my maternal grandfather passed away on the morning of Sunday the 12th of December. This was a very significant event. Huge emotional impact on many levels. Perhaps the beginning of the end of my emotional childhood. I say "emotional childhood" because I do feel like my development somehow hit a snag around the age of two, and I've basically been operating from that primitive level ever since. All the seeming maturity and sophistication I show on the outside is a facade for this wounded inner child who never really went away, only into hiding. Healing that primal hurt, whatever it is, may be the key to my growing up. Which is pretty much my goal for this year and the next.

One consequence of my grandfather's death and the timing of the funeral was that I was able to spend Christmas with not only the family I have here in Finland, but also with my mother and her sister who flew over from Canada. This was also significant, since I so rarely get to see them. All in all, my Christmas was very much a collective experience of joy and peace as well as mourning, re-connecting with family, and adjusting to a new reality without Grandfather on this earthly plane.

The funeral, a poignant event in itself, came and went. Soon it was time to say goodbye to Mom and Auntie, and go home for New Year's Eve.

I've spent the past two thirty-firsts of December by myself, at home, no fireworks, no partying, just quietly thinking and doing whatever I happen to feel like doing. This time, likewise, I felt no compelling need for any company or boisterous activity. What I did feel like doing was taking another shot at the fly agaric. I'd been intending to do so around this time of year all along, ever since I harvested the mushrooms in the fall. Lo and behold, it worked. (Research pays off. So does patience.) An interesting little trip: dream-like time distortion, geometry, woo-woo weirdness, humorous typos, and... yeah. That was my New Year's. A much-needed break from conventional reality! (For me, that is, specifically, at that time. Anyone who takes this blog entry as a general endorsement of hallucinogenic experimentation is mistaken. Don't try these things unless you know what you're doing, and don't blame me if you do and you don't and you mess yourself up.)

Now we come upon the last few days leading up to this New Moon. Oh God.

I am so broken.

Issues rise to the surface that I would never have wanted to stir up. Ever. But the fact is that I must face them and deal with them head-on if I am to make any progress toward where I want to be as a person. I am not good at dealing with difficult things head-on. Or even speaking directly of them by name.

My deepest fears and insecurities are calling my name now.

I'm supposed to start school in a week. All of a sudden it seems such a daunting task. I haven't even started and I already feel overwhelmed and inadequate. I hear my brain telling me it might be better to put off school for another year, wait until I've built the necessary strength and finesse physically and spiritually, learned more theory and practice. It almost sounds like a sensible option. But I'm not one to give up so easily on something I've decided upon. I will give it a go. Even in spite of the news I just got, that there are too many massage therapists out of work for my education to qualify for support from unemployment benefits. Fuck that. That is not my fucking concern. Did I create this fake, anti-life economy that disingenuously steals people's livelihoods away from them? No. This is my calling. I will pursue it, one way or another. Damn the naysayers and seriously damn the goddamn banksters.

Well, that's one angle covered. The rest is very personal, but I can say that it applies to relationships with people in general and some relationships in particular. And this Gordian knot of self-judgment and self-loathing that comes with seeing so clearly in this darkened moonlight the darkened half of my emotional body and all my personal faults and failures not only revealed but magnified out of proportion. It is as if somebody went and exhumed from the vaults of my soul a block of lead the size of a coffin and now I have to carry it. Impossible.

These are my thoughts of the moment. Tomorrow will bring something else again. Heavy, heavy, heavy.