Is seeing believing? Or is to believe to see? Choose your answer carefully, or the DIRE consequences will be that you will have to choose again.

The one thing that most of us would agree on is that it is not the SEEING, but rather the EXPERIENCING which seems to trigger the formation of belief. And this is where we often stop. To EXPERIENCE is not enough. We know THIS..and ignore it in all but the most casual ways.

Something worth believing had certainly better be something with some permanence to it. Something which won't be bulldozed into oblivion tomorrow or become untrue the following day.

And is it always the object of our unfounded beliefs that are the cause of our confusion? Does any of the responsibility lie with us?

Do we perhaps owe it to something as austere and important as our beliefs, the sobriety of experience with discrimination?

Experiencing not with reckless abandon, but rather experiencing reckless abandon with the spirit of contemplation so as to savor every nuance of the recklessness and its accompanying abandon? Every subtle lesson, story, joke or tragedy wrapped up in the possibility and movement of that moment is overlooked until life becomes a sort of a bland, watery soup with little flavor.

Everyone seeking something new when they haven't a clue as to the delicate shades of the old. The old is new. The new is new. It's all crisp and fresh.

We wrap our beliefs around these barely developed snapshots. These bland impressions of the real. These cardboard cutout poptarts we imagine the tasty cordon bleu pastry before us to be.

We are not lost. We are not lost. It's only in our heads.

As we are not 'found'.

For aren't/weren't we always here

beyond experience, beyond belief?

Watching beliefs, experiences
dance across our eyes,
bubble and burst,
bubble and burst.

Our beliefs become the next
curtain call,
the next act, the next scene

Who is behind the curtain?

The Believer
or the Be ing?

There is no seeker because there is no quest. Libraries full of books on self improvement written for no one by no one say to keep focus. On what? To do you mantras. For what? To say your prayers. To whom? And on behalf of who?

Are any of these questions really necessary?

Has anyone ever asked them before?

So we want an experience? We're having one, let's pay attention.
We want to witness phenomenon. We are, let's shut up and watch.
We want this to be more of a struggle than it is. By all means, struggle on.
We want God to crawl into our lap for a nap. God's been waiting there all afternoon.

What if our job is to listen and watch? What if our purpose is nothing more or less important than to see with the eyes of God? What if God doesn't need us to build anything or plan anything? What if God could give a flying crap about whether or not you believe in God? What if God simply said, "Look, this is simple. We put together this great show, and your job is to watch it..and find ways to make it more amazing. Thanks, God."

What if hunkering down and being afraid to move or be moved is the opposite of why you are here? What if death is a concept invented by the moneychanger? What if a moneychanger isn't a banker? What if a moneychanger is a schedule maker? What if coins are the days of your lives? What did you sell to get the coins you have? What would you have rather done with those days?

What if you're on a first name basis with God and you just forgot? What if God's got your back? What if you've been so busy planning your way out of God's help that you've put yourself flat in the middle of the bull that you're wallowing through? What if you had absolutely nothing to do with the wonderful things that you have in your life except for taking the credit? What if Jesus knew a secret that had nothing to do with drinking his blood? What if the ground is filled with the slain corpses of Sons(and Daughters) of God? What if they didn't die? What if they're sitting next to you right now? What if Jesus just left his morning paper on a table in a breakfast nook at a McDonald's in Iowa? What if Buddha drank his left over coffe and finished his hash brown? What if Mohammed gave Buddha a dollar on his way out the door? What if that dollar has Lao Tzu's picture on the front of it? What if that picture was originally engraved by Krishna?

What if our job is to listen and watch? What if the script's been slipped into our hearts? What if we already know the lines? What if we stopped trying to invent our own and make them matter?

daf

If a parent put their small child behind the wheel of a car and set them loose in the middle of a State Fair, we'd call that negligent. And yet, we'll teach our children to speak, with nothing worthwhile to say, and set them loose on the rest of the world.

You are the sensation of a single tastebud.
God is the taste and the tongue.

Enjoying the What Ifs at the Fish Market.

Thanks Maria. Thanks for keeping this place going.
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Throughout your life people have and will continue to try to convince you that there is something wrong with making mistakes or being wrong. Some will yell at you. Some will speak all softly so you feel bad. Some will be downright violent. Some you will love. Some you will respect and want them to respect you. Some will be of no consequence to you, except circumstantial; like a boss or a cop.

No matter what, don't ever stop taking chances and making mistakes. Don't ever believe the hype about FAIL. It's bull. Human beings BEST learn by screwing up.

That's a fact. It might be the ONLY way we truly learn.

So do what you dream regardless of the potential for failure. Fear falls away with each nervous step beyond our self imposed limits. Practice this a step at a time.

You will find that your limits cannot be reached in one lifetime.

Never stop trying to disprove that statement.

You'll do fine for as long as you remember that experiencing failure is simply an indicator that you're engaged in the process of improving.

daf

From a short-lived journal. Entry dated March 5, 2005:

Hello again, my friends. Still here, dying of thirst. I keep trying to cross the desert on my own, and it's impossible. The desert belongs to its Prince and I'm not even worthy to kiss his sandal. Still down on my hands and knees crawling, smoking, gasping for air. I'm a fish that tries to swim the sands of the shore. Tsk tsk. Silly me.

Gunna jot down the recent revelations. Not sure why they keep coming when I'm such a lukewarm excuse for a scribe.

I'll type up the story of Babylon on blather I think. Seems like a fun place to put a story like that. The different tongues? They weren't just languages, they were the wills of the people of Babylon. There was a time when they were of one will, they chose to turn away from that will and so chose to turn away from each other.

The "Word" is the plan. It means "as it should be." As in..."Hey man...I just got a new job!" "Word."
The Word is not really the Bible or the Quran per se, although they are attempts at codifying and explaining the nature of the Word for those who have forgotten how to FEEL it and need to INTELLECTUALIZE it. When it is said that there was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, it was an attempt to describe the very complex nature of the unknowable..the inexplicable. This is the Will, this is the Path...as it SHOULD be, as it was planned, as it was conceptualized and brought about to be. The Will of God is done through his many parts that appear separate, but are in fact united. You are what you become.

The human will stopped going along with the Word somewhere back. Perhaps it was the "Garden of Eden" that marked the beginning. There was no magical fruit. There was a choice, that's all. A choice to be made about whether or not to become the Word (ie. fulfill the Will of God), or to do something else, your own thing. So there it was...noone had EVER done anything but the Will of God. Everything was unfolding according to the plan, everything was "as it should be." Word. Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between good and evil, because they'd never done evil. That fruit was just a fruit, it was tasting of the fruit, doing that which was against the Will of God, which brought about the knowledge of good and evil. You've just done something that WASN'T your usual good. Now you know. And they covered themselves, because they were ashamed. What were they ashamed of? Of their nakedness? Or of the thoughts that were suddenly tumbling around in their heads now that they realized they had the freewill to CHOOSE to do whatever they wished?

Thanks for your time, I'll try to write again soon.

daf

You've always been where you started. You've never walked anywhere. There is no grand circle to traverse, no path to follow.

The surface of the looking glass changes, but the reflection and the one casting it are unaffected.

Human is a condition, not an entity. Forms are notions invented by this condition masquerading as a being. What calls itself human is a sensory organ, evolved of the universe, returning back into it and then again back to microcosmic witnessing of the macro-cosmic being which birthed it and to which it belongs.

Human is a self perpetuating mental condition, parasitic, but also a blessing and an expression of Grace. Without the dance, there is nothing to see. Without seeing, there is nothing learned about the Ever Self. The Ever Self is aware THAT it is, and soon enough, through this dance..of WHAT it is.

Man the condition is "born in (or into) sin", implying that sin existed before man. What is sin? Sin is a sensory organ that does not function properly for the body it belongs to. Sin is aberrant function, improper perception. Sin is a cataract on the eyes of God. Sin is the notion that we are US..chasers after freewill..instead of God, witnessing itself. This notion often leads us away from where we are directed to be. Like a hand that doesn't go where it's directed to..a worthless, diseased limb that burdens its owner..but is patiently nursed back to health.

To be a "human" being is to be confused and out of place, an amputated limb still attached to it's host. And yet, we are not detached, only fallen asleep..waiting on pins and needles for the pins and needles of our awakening.

Love,

daf

no matter how many times I reread this
it catches my breath every time.