A Heart is Beating in the Dark Chilled Night...

Close my eyes and go to sleep...

A heart is beating in the dark chilled night, rhythmically, frantically, and without permission. It is alone, and in this moment there is life. Amazing, what are the odds?

From a birds eye view, pan out into a speck, the scariest hilarity that I can think of is a brief pondering of an infinite universe. To scary to maintain, to epic to handle and categorize, but yet there is life, what are the odds?

In every body, a heart is beating in the dark chilled night, rhythmically, frantically, and without permission. They are alone, and there is life in this moment, and these moments cannot be captured. Amazing, what are the odds?

We are alone. But we have each other to be alone with. If only we are brave enough to impale ourselves onto the spears of our intimacy fears. To finally confront, and to keep confronting those parts of ourselves that insist, scratch, scream, tear, bite, ravage, spit, sputter, spittle, spatter, spite, anger, agitate, and lobby for the advancement of the cause: a stoic self perception of being distant and autonomous. This is incredibly difficult and the odds are remote.

Broken into my waking...

to find a warm body and two hearts beating in the dark chilled night, rhythmically, frantically, and without permission. We are alone and there is life, and we are in love in this moment. And in this moment we have captured each other. Amazing, what are the odds?

Fasting Reflections

Baha'i's Fast for 19 days out of the year, meaning we don't take in food or drink from sunrise to sunset. We considered it one of the pillars of our faith, a time of reflection, detachment, and rejuvenation.

Fasting is always an interesting time for me. My whole world is turned around.

There are the day to day practical changes. I have not been exercising. During the day I need to maintain some hydration while at night, after I have eaten and digested, It is already late and I am tired. I am less social during the fast. I have less energy to engage people in conversation that I am ambivilent about. I avoid going to lunch or coffee with friends, which is usually the most social part of the day. There is also more time to work because I am not excusing myself for coffee and snacks, yet I probably get less work done. My attention span gets shot starting at about 2pm.

Then there are the spiritual things. We are told that every hour of this time is endued with a special spiritual potency. The time that is spent well in my consciousness and spirit is amplified, while the time I waste and misdirect feels more tragic. There are also less things to distract me from my core being, and more things to remind me of it. The day is not broken up in the same manageable chunks before and after meals; instead it is a long and drawn out marathon all day, and then all day again the next, for 19 days. I lose the strength to manage and marginalize in my mind and soul the personal and moral issues that I am facing. Food is no longer a viable way to forget and distract.

It is a direct confrontation and struggle. There are only two ways to respond to this. Either prayer is used to accept, engage, and transcend these issues, or I get resentful and crabby. There have been many times during the Fast where I have eaten just to comfort a whiny heart, and to spite any injunction that it not be pampered. There is no middle ground during the fast. Most of the time I live my life in this middle ground, a comfortable place that neither rejects nor fully accepts spiritual consciousness. Pink Floyd coined it as being "comfortably numb".

During the Fast, we have the potential to grow and evolve, or to sink into the dark depths of ourselves. It is really the only choice we have at anytime, it just becomes especially salient during these 19 days; and probably when we die.

Commentary on "until you find an angle or two"

It occurred to me (through a friend) that my last post, "until you find an angle or two", was written in an overly cryptic manner, reflecting a context that was sensible only to myself. I decided to write a commentary on it because I feel that the concepts are more universal than the writing was.

The main theme of this post is the often cyclical journey of spirituality. We can only hope that we spiral upwards.

How can is act decisively in eyes that stare form other angles?

Is refers to what is, the steady flow of day to day life. In my mind, it carries an aura of mediocrity, of existing in a comfortable bubble. Day by day, week by week. There are no decisive steps, no grasping of true conviction. Therefore, Is can be swept away in a myriad of different thought processes, stare through eyes from other angles.

Why does is always assume there is time to spare?

A continuation of mediocrity. It is easy to assume that we have all the time in the world. With every passing day, we lay our heads to rest; always assuming there will be many more tomorrows to make up for what we didn't do today.

There is no more time, there is no more spare.

Kind of a wakeup call. True spirituality doesn't live in the future, it is right now, or never.

Despair is, is it not? Unless there is time, In which case is can continue watching on the sly.

If judged with urgency, we realize with despair that Is is the world of unreality, the precious hours that slipped through our fingers. At this point we can either confront it (next part), or we can ignore and forget it-believing the misguided notion that there is time to spare. The relative world will filter back in almost unnoticed, on the sly.

Is, the pretense past. Or is the pretense past? In any case (and at this point is can only hope) the scraping is enveloping the desolate heart; appealing to, or emoting into that rugged gatekeeper of childhood; morphology of dreamscape.

This refers to the next stage (at least for me) of despair, after I have realized the Pretense of Is (maybe, Is is tricky, hence the statement and the question). It becomes a very intense, tumultuous, emotion time for me. The scraping of the desolate heart. It reminds me of mortality, and rotting flesh, which to me is all tied up in the landscape from which I came and to which I will return. It is tied up in memories of my childhood, which takes on a mythical aura. The landscape of my childhood has morphed into a dreamscape.

Unexpected, unassumed, and unheralded. That waffling film is being grasped. Being, with the orthodox vantage, sees is clinging, but whatever. That's and was.

Being in this case refers to a spiritual state in which all directions are merged into the eternal present. Where there are no longer any angles, only the oneness of God. The waffling film refers to that thin veil that blinds our eyes, and it is being grasped, crumpled into our fists. There is still a scent of Is, which is clinging, but it is insignificant.

Being...absolute clarity, unflinching vision, pure spirit, nowhere and no chance to run. Unless you find an angle or two. Is, is it not?

The world of Being is very hard to withstand. It requires constant and continual vigilance and self-sacrifice. It is easy, even when you are maintaining that state, to fall off your guard. To let songs slip into your head that seem perfectly rational, and little comfortable, and are very interesting angles that can take root and be justified with time. Is, is it not?