Say whaaat??!!??

Okay, immediately after I posted that last piece, I realized I was possibly pitching the right article to the wrong demographic. I am slowly growing to understand that I have different audiences in different places. Generally, most of my writing online has been rock and roll oriented, but I realize that the world is larger than that. So, let me tell you a little bit about another topic I enjoy thinking about: My lazy man's quest to become a "Spiritual Leader" - I'm not driven or ambitious enough to try and get rich doing it, but it does service my ego fairly well.

I have a creative process as a writer that is neither particularly unusual nor original. A lot of my work comes out as "automatic" or "stream of consciousness" writing - which is not to say that there is no intellectual process involved, simply that any intellectual or analytic component comes later on in the editing phase, when I realize (hopefully) what the heck I was talking about.

On some rare and very special occasions, I am visited by words the source of which I cannot trace. They quite literally come from a location within myself that is unmapped. The poem I wrote to read at my wedding falls under this category (which, if enough people express interest in reading it, I may post here as well). Yeats, among many others, claimed to have accessed some other intelligence or state of being in some of his writing. I do not purport to take a stand for or against the verity of such claims. All I know is that occasionally I have the experience of writing something, then looking at it and going "Where the heck did THAT come from?"

At this point I would like to "out" myself and confess that I am the author of this blog [link] which has heretofore been anonymous. I invite you to partake of this exercise in mostly or somewhat automatic writing as you have leisure to do so. Here is a small excerpt of that writing, to give you a taste of the sort of subject matter it deals with.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

to be loved

possibly every fear, every worry, every sorrow can be traced back to the desire to be loved, or perhaps more succinctly, the desire to feel as if we are loved. feelings are only a partial source of information, and using feelings to map reality is like trying to sew a wedding dress with one's teeth.

love is not a feeling, but an action - this is a cliche that you may already have heard many times. we do not truly understand the implications of what being truly loved is - if we did, not only would we lose completely and permanently all illusion that it is possible to not be loved, we would be consumed by the fire of love that is more ubiquitous than air.

the desire to be loved causes sorrow. it is an unquenchable desire.

the only liberation from that pain is to realize that it arises from an illusion - that we are not loved. still, it's easy enough to talk about abandoning illusion, but every human being who has ever lived has struggled a mighty struggle against their own illusion, as a hunter with a broken spear might struggle hand-t0-tusk with a wild beast.

the only proven way to liberate oneself from the illusory, addictive desire to fee loved is to love completely and totally without seeking to be loved in return.

some confuse not seeking to be loved, with rejecting love. but the rejection of love is also an illusion, like a fish rejecting water. does the fish welcome water? the fish does no such thing. the fish abides in the water. so do we abide in love, whether we see it or not. to love selflessly opens the heart to receive love more completely than any other pursuit.

to fully see reality as it is, may possibly be a great burden. but those who dare great things may dare to see beyond their fears to an underlying reality.

the reality is not simply that we are loved, although we are. the reality is not simply that to love the other is the only way to open the heart to receive love, although that also is true. the reality is not simply that we are surrounded by love everywhere and in everything, although that also is true.

the reality that holds all of these things is that everything is love, and that there is nothing that is not love. the only reality is love. everything else is illusion.