Posts (page 2)

spider web
intricate strings
run around me
frothing, overwhelming--
after the passion bites

--moon (some help with lines from my friends)

Blood symbolizes the death of Christ.  Blood symbolizes a fallen soldier.  Blood symbolizes the crown of martyrs.  It is all in the blood.  But...

There is a greater blood that is shed for all of us.  A blood that is not curled around the tribal warfare of kings, queens, and other leaders.  There are not nail scars or piercing skins or graffitti on Palenstinian walls marking the inscription of a fallen child gunned down by the Israel police when rocks were thrown from the Palestinian side.

There is so much bloodshed, yes, but there is nothing but the blood of...human compassion flowing through the veins of our spirit.  Pumping first from heart to artery to vein and back again.  True circulation.  And, though we are sometimes disconnected from each other and fall apart by conflict, including families or larger country issues, hand in hand, we warm ourselves.  Hand in hand, we talk about the future, until we let go and isolate ourselves into the very corners of pain and into the very separation of understanding our other self.

We are human and divine, and the divine flows through us from a distance like a shooting star.  How do we catch the heat of that star and spread across our bodies like a mosaic and allow our blood to flow within us next to a fire, next to our kinship, next to our mothers, and fathers, and clans, and tribes, and fight no more.  And live for peace without the blood of Jesus, Muhammad, and others spreading fires and terror across this perfect land.

There is nothing but the blood...within us.  We can choose to allow the motion of it to spread forth goodness to others.  Or, we can fall into a pattern of fire that burns inside us.  We have choices to make!  We as a nation have that choice as well no matter how much evil thrives beyond our control.

The terror always lies within ourselves.  Deep within the core.  It is human nature, and if we let it out, let it out through writing and exploration as I am doing now, as you should, too!

There nothing but the beautiful blood of a red moon rising in the distant sky, when sun and moon combine for perfect light upon our imperfect, conditional, and animalistic selves.

--Pax!

Moon

your heart climbed into me

with one gaze

your eyes hiding freely

behind eyeglass mirrors

and when i first saw you

i saw everything

your open heart

your quick glance into me

and your pessimistic view

of reality.

but i opened up

your pandora box

gave you bright hope

of a future life with me

the romantic the idealist

the smiling, intellectual gaze

and conversation

and all that was then

all of it confined in one

atomic particle

and we exploded into

hydrogen atoms

in bedroom copulation

we were atomic bombs

then

and perhaps we no longer know

how to light the fuses

but as i gaze into your mirrors

again

the fuses no longer matter

for more than a fuse

you have contained my heart

and opened me up

to your selfless gaze

and i don't need a fuse to know

how my lazy eyes

can grow into your

bountiful space.

--moon

When I am happy, I am miserable.
When I am miserable, I am happy.
When I am tired, I am ready to party.
When I am available, I am exhausted.
When I am drunk, I am crazy.
When I think crazy thoughts, I wish to be drunk.
When I am lonely, I want to be left alone.
When people crowd me, I wish they would leave.
When they leave, I need some attention.
When I love, I withdraw into myself.
When I withdraw into myself, I want to love again.
When I am with my family, I want to leave them.
When I leave them, I am happy.
When I am happy, I am miserable.
When I am miserable, I need my family.

-moon

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

People have done some evil things to me over the years.  People do evil things to my best friends.  And, my first inclination is to CONTROL the situation.  I want to fix the world.  What do you expect from a child of a minister and social worker?

But, no matter how much you, my angry and frustrated reader, want to control the situation or shove anger back at a friend or enemy, it only causes you more stress, anxiety, and depression.

And, worse, you begin having the person's VOICE or IMAGE in your head and creating these delusional scenarios to the point you begin to persuade yourself that your internal world is the reality beyond you.

Why live in such a frustrated world.  The coal burns you, and no matter how hard your feelings are harmed, they are ultimately harmed by yourself, for you have allowed the harm to pull you down when you need to let go of the coal and just be! 

Just be you!  Just be all of you!  The beautiful you!  Rise about the evil doers and let them speak badly of you.  Let them say what they will, for in the end, this life is just what it is.  A life leading to the next life, and if you believe in karma or some higher authority or just plain ole ethics, know that you will rise above by pulling away from such petty people and such petty arguments.

It is not about winning.  It is about being authentic, and the Buddha made a fool of himself to his friends while rebelling against their style of religion, and when he returned to his friends, they perhaps spoke of him and gossiped, but he faced the situation as the Buddha, described his newly formed self, and his friends found the truth to his righteous words.

If anything, we need that raw truth this week.  We need to be real and authentic to ourselves so that we can help and serve others.  If we can do that, then we have accomplished our mission as human beings.

Bottom line: there is a lot of people out there who like to bring others down.

Are you going to be the one to play the same game?  And, are you going to be the one to pull yourself toward the hot coal and repeat the same cycle of pain and suffering that will never end?

I certainly am not!  So, I smile tonight to all of you!  Please return that smile, for we all need that comfort and satisfaction of humanity and compassion here.  It will get us by and water down the hot coal!

--moon

William James writes, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

How true!  His quote provides us with a different perception of thinking altogether.  Can we think entirely beyond the scope of our experiences?  Is thinking the "rearranging" of our value systems?  Is college the virus infiltrating our filtered puzzle?

And, once we arrive at a college degree or so-called higher dimensions of learning, are these new values simple rearranged once again?  Therefore, is college simply an additional component of our predetermined social values.

In other words, are we always boxed in by worlds already expressed by others?  Or, do we have a free will that begins with a fresh approach altogether that leads us directly to the LIGHT of our illuminated essence.

Hard to escape our past.  Hard to forego our prejudice.  Hard to be flawed and naked in a room filled with dressed people.

Our dreams perhaps then, as Freud and Jung might agree, are the places when the prejudices are confronted for the first time directly with our core self.  The layers of prejudice and socialization are washed away as we dream we are walking in a schoolroom without any clothes on while the other kids do not notice.  Or, as we dream that we kick our legs as though we were swinging on a swing and, instead, fly through the air like a bicycle without a bicycle.  Or, we live in categories of existence beyond natural reality and hover in the presence of people we have never seen and hold conversations with them within the chambers of our dream world.

Cognitive Psychology might argue that the neurons and junk in our heads are misfiring or moving or maneuvering through brain space at will as a mechanism to relax the brain, but something deeper really is happening.  We are thinking or dreaming beyond the prejudice of our own being.

I realize James was not heading in this direction when he wrote this statement, but I am.  The cliche does ring true: can we think outside the box?  The answer is no.  There are only so many answers, right?  If we think outside the box, we still have to communicate that information to others who still remain in the box.

The box is there for a reason.  It is the thick layer of our prejudice (And I am not defining prejudice as racism or stereotyping.)  It is the scope that keeps our brains from moving too far into the realm of insanity, even though that insane realm contains elements of the wind and the Great Spirit and all this is right and possible beyond this entire generation of Western Rationality holding our thoughts from returning to the root of self and beyond self until we arrive at a place that does not exist whatsoever.

That place is enlightenment, and while James might refer to this place as true thinking.  Or, while Plato might relate it to the Socratic Method.  Or, as Aristotle might coin it as a form of persuasive argument.  Or, as the Catholic monks might refer to it as hermaneutics. etc.

It is the place the Zen Monks refer to as Satori.  It is what Buddha refers to as Nirvana.  IT is what Hindus refer to as Moksha.  It is what Jung refers to as Individuation and the Collective Consciousness.  It is what the Neo-Pagans refer to as Astral Projection.  It is what the Pentecostals might refer to as the relationship and interaction between the human being and the Holy Spirit.  It is what the Jews studying the Kaballah might refer to as the ten Sephirots leading toward Sod.

Everything is holy is what Whitman and Ginsberg say because they saw beyond the difficulty of materiality or they saw the simplicity of atomic molecule spreading itself forth in elliptical beauty.

Here is the bottom line to all these psychological ideas.

Within science, there is the scientific method.  It contains rules that are difficult to understand but rules and laws nonetheless.  These laws change as be better define them.  This obviously represents one box.

Within the other realm of the human species, something else resides.  If it is merely scientific, that is fine.  It means we have yet to understand the complexity of this other realm of moving beyond the box.  This other realm involves INTUITION.  It is sort of the key beyond the box, and that key is the instigator of religion, mysticism, transcendentalism, etc.  There is something to be said about it all.  There is something true about it all, yet we cannot measure it.

Nevertheless, it is beyond prejudice and comprehension.  We stand in awe at it if we have these opportunities to leave our bodies for an instant and see to the other side, which I have done when I fainted at a restaurant and thought I died.  I have felt it in my soul when gazing at the twinkling stars.  I listen to the internal voice coming from nowhere return its calm demeanor to me.  Call it God.  Call it the brain God inside me. 

I don't care what you call it.  It is beautiful and magical and mysterious and calming.  It is a component of the human spirit.  It is within and beyond.  It is the voice in the cave I speak about in a poem I write about Allah.  Gabriel's Voice.  Gabriel singing while I walk in utter confusion in the world.  It is the voice of an angel in your voice as well, and I can feel her presence within you when I stare into your eyes.  It is the difference between our blank-slated mind's existence and our recognition that we have always existed in some form or another beyond the path of this physicality without the prejudice of ordinary experience to keep us from believing.

--moon

"For me to solve my personal anguish over war, I must transform my consciousness until violence is no longer an option." --Deepak Chopra

Chopra speaks about individual consciousness transforming to remove the barriers and replacing them with our peaceful, loving core. On a personal level, we strive toward this goal, and the Muslims refer to this as the jihad bin nafs/qalb (or the jihad of the heart/soul) leading oneself to a greater understanding of God and reducing and eliminating evil and replacing it with good. If you listen to Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), his songs bring this "light" within each of our souls that lead all of us toward love instead of violence.

How, though, do we move toward eliminating the personal anguish of our "warring" and angry soul and strive toward delivering a greater message of peace to the entire world? That idea, my friend, is the 50 billion dollar question.

A revolution of peace, as Chopra asserts, begins with self, but at some point, it must also extend to others. The only method of starting a revolution of peace is sharing your peaceful soul with others similar to the film, Pay it Forward.

With that goal in mind, we could truly hold hands across the entire world and make a difference in society through peace and without violence.

Look at Ghandi and his ability to change the world through words. Look at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s difference with Malcolm X's defense: by any means necessary.

This is not a world that works well with a "by any means necessary" approach. Yes, it is right for us to be angry if a government or another country reduces our lives to poverty or replaces our culture with a predetermined corporate or military unit.

Anger is a human emotion, and we certainly cannot rid ourselves from a human emotion; it is unnatural to do so. But, as Jesus states, "In your anger, do not sin." That is the difference, I think. Anger should lead away from violence. Anger should stir emotion, as intellect approaches the logic of the problem.

That is the difference, really, between making and changing our realities and succumbing to the brutality of another person, community, corporation, or government.

There is so much violence within us now, and it is time for us "to transform [our] consciousness until violence is no longer an option."

-moon

O Shahada,
My affirmation of faith,
I recite your simple creed
For duty to the creator
For duty to the messenger
God is one

Beyond universal space and time
Beyond our elemental being
Beyond the surface of our anger
And other elemental things

O Salat,
My duty to recitation and prayer,
I bend my weakening knees
And fall desperately to the earth
Not for power, greed, or truth,
But for the pouring out my soul
For my rapid prayer of emptiness
So that you, my Creator, may fill
Your compassionate cup to all

O Zakat,
My duty to my loving brothers
My devoted sisters
For those I will soon meet
I serve this world
Through alms of teaching,
Through the hesitation of anger
Through helping others
When death and sadness
Surround the city streets
To bring hope to the hopeless
To share love of joy through alms
My great master, the service to mankind.

O Siyam,
The hunger of my stomach
Turns inward my faith
Turns inward my hunger
Hunger for my Creator's love
Hunger for the equality of my neighbor
Hunger for the destruction of my ego
Until my hunger subsides
And visions from my Creator remain
Perfect in His Bottomless Kingdom
Perfect in the limitless sky
As my duty to others, to myself,
To the lord of the great feast
Arises, Dances, and Sings
Rhythms to our human feats
That touches your holy grace
And our obedience to the Absolute.

O Hajj,
Pilgrimage to the revelation,
My return to the Messenger's beginning
Peace be upon him, upon us all,
As universal peace surrounds the Kabbah
Touches the faith of a rejoicing history
Embodied in the Black Stone
Touches us as an accumulated body
Beyond the territorial terrains
Beyond boundaries of cultural divide.
Beyond the history of Arabic tribes
Beyond war, famine, and historical pangs

Let the Five Pillars Climb
Let the Five Pillars of Faith
Circle and Surround
The entire cultures--
The Arabian Peninsula
European Union
The African heartland
Great Wall of China
Islands of Indonesia
The Maddening Heart of the Americas
Let freedom ring through
Our humble creeds
The thought of God
Leading us beyond our weakening morals
The prayer to reduce our egoism
The giving treasures to sustain our culture
The fast to enhance our limitations
To walk the earth for God's pleasure
For our own internal sustainment
To understand the Absolute,
The creator of the universe,
Our God, spoken to one,
And given to All.

All of us.
Allah, the God of the Universe,
We listen and wait.
We wait for your justice
To rain down your alms
To this weathered earth.

O Blessed Ramadan
Muhammadan peace upon the world
We are ancient sinners
Ancient in our tongues
And our beliefs
Bound by traditions we rarely understand

Oh Abraham
Oh kingdoms in middle eastern lands
Bless you all tonight
Bless the ancestors of the Shia
Bless the ancestors of the Sunni
Bless the Palestenians and the Saudis
Bless the Egyptian fasting for Allah
For the poverty within us all
For the poverty within this world

And let war, death, and genocide
Subside
And bow down deep to the earth
With our entire core
And touch the void of our souls
As we Tread the dirt of our souls
And ask Allah, distant father, God
For some form of inspiration

To free us from this guilty pleasure
To serve the other with our treasures
To take nothing with us to the road beyond
To leave everything here for the others

Oh Ramadan
Ancient Gabriel in the starry clouds
Held in his hands the revelations
For generations of Muslims
For generations of Christians
For generations of Jews
Bound by the Abraham Stars.

But we bind ourselves
to war and pestilence
but need to embrace it all

the Jewish Faith
the Christain Faith
the Muslim Faith
the Sikh Faith
the Hindu Faith
the Buddhist Faith
the Wiccan Faith

the international faiths
of reconciliation
not to create a universal truth
other than the tangled knot of love
between us

O Ramadan
Be that revelation
Be that history to us all
So that we--all people--
Can live upon these holy lands
And stop starving our souls
with injustice and complaints.

Ramadan,
I fast with you for weeks.
I give my heart to it all
and walk down these hollow
Chambers I call my home
and bless your system
your beliefs

O Muslim, I beg for peace
I beg for the American
To be replaced by your love

And though war and anger
continue to thrive in this world
my heart pumps life for hope

for Ramadan,
and the magic of caves
and Gabriel singing.

--moon