The True Face of Water

Look at your reflection in a still pool

and see the true face of water.

Schwenk on Water and Renunciation

"What enables water to accomplish this? By renouncing every self-quality it becomes the creative substance for the generation of all forms. By renouncing every life of its own it becomes the primal substance of all life. By renouncing every fixed substance it becomes the carrier of all substance transformation. By renouncing every rhythm of its own it becomes the carrier of each and every rhythm"

Theodor Schwenk

Letting Love Make Me!

Instead of making love

I could let love make me

And dissolve me

Over and over

The Ego's Cell Service

The Ego is answering all calls!

 When we receive cellular (our living cells) information, the ego will answer the call and say something like, "Hello, ok, we've got a problem here, something is definitely wrong! Uh, we don't know exactly what it is yet, but it's going to require a lot of hard work and effort to fix" The ego hates to be unemployed and if it ever was, it might realize that it is actually a big nothing. So it's got to keep creating problems to be solved by... you know who!

Playing Dead

When an opossum is threatened it goes into a state of high activation, with a seemingly lifeless or "frozen" body, hence the term "playing dead". This usually is enough to cause a predator to lose interest in chasing and possibly eating them. When the threat passes and the opossum has saved its ass, it jumps up and resumes its opossum activities. When I studied trauma renegotiation with Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), this was the classic example of a temporary state in an animal that can become a more permanent state in a human being. This "frozen" activation state is the hallmark of unresolved trauma.

Most of us constantly operate in this state of "playing dead". It is the culturally accepted "trance" state and considered normal. This is a flat screen version of life! Trying not to get too "activated" or too "low" we start living in a narrow bandwidth of life energy and then look for ways to escape the constraint. There is a lot of talk these days about not getting too "activated". But what if we were to get completely activated, totally dissolve into activation, in a fluid way.  Now that would be transformative! This is what happens in nature. The opossum is a rare example of trying to save itself by freezing instead of fleeing (running like hell!). I think we humans don't have too many examples of high activation with fluidity, maybe great tantric sex, wild dancing, or peak performance activities, which are mostly considered to be at the fringe of a normal life.

What I notice is that when I let myself completely activate in a fluid way, my being can then deeply relax. This was the idea behind the Osho technique of "dynamic meditation". It is high activation through wild dancing and movement followed by sitting meditation. It is interesting to note that our drugs of choice reflect this desire to bring back dynamism to a life of quiet desperation. We use caffeine to get us going and alcohol to slow us down. But it seems like these substances are just attempting to replace the natural dynamism of an energetic flux that dissolves and recreates our being every single moment, if we have the courage to truly dissolve and not just "play dead".

The now train

Get a ticket for the now train! 

It arrives and departs a trillion times per second.

The Sweetness of Sugar

The sweetness of sugar

is tasted

in the dissolving crystal!

The Thought Eraser

My thoughts form and dissolve

Like snowflakes landing on lake water

A Moment

This is not a day

It is a moment

With a trillion chances to transform

Fluid Fusion

My water brother, William E. Marks tells me that water forms and breaks its hydrogen bonds about one trillion times per second. That's amazing! This is the ultimate in short term relationships! Yet it is the exact property that is needed to allow water to flow and for us to enter into this liquid medium.

"We are but whirlpools in a river of ever flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message" -Robert Weiner, founder of Cybernetics

So water crystallizes and un-crystallizes one trillion times per second and this is what I'm calling "fluid fusion". All cellular transformation seems to occur in high energy, liquified states. For example, the almost complete metamorphosis from crawly catepillar to winged butterfly occurs as a dissolution of the old catepillar form into a semi-liquid goo within the pupa. Out of this cellular goo the beautiful butterfly is formed.

We humans have many names for high energy fluid states; ecstasy, bliss, orgasm, waves of pleasure....enlightenment, awakening, absorption, and so on. Perhaps this fluid fusion/dissolution is the creative engine of life.

What is the Body?

What is the body?
That shadow of a shadow of our love
which somehow contains the entire universe!

Rumi