I am nothing, and everything

Ego has me convinced that 'I' am a discrete, tangible being, separate from the world around me. But this is illusion. I am the sum total of sensations, feelings and thoughts which have occurred since I was born. I will cease to exist when I die. There is no 'I' separate from these streams of experience. In other words, I am what I have perceived, felt and thought, and those streams of consciousness are rooted in my physical being - they are in fact three aspects of the Tetrahedron: the Physical, Emotional and Intellectual.

What then of will, the very essence of ego?

Will has to do with the fourth node of the Tetrahedron, the Spiritual. In short, will is the movement of the eternal and infinite - or the undefinable - spiritual force within me. Will responds to and interacts with the sensations, feelings and especially the thoughts that are generated in the physical me and in-so-doing shapes the person I become and the types of experiences it will encounter. In other words, will is to some degree self defining.

So how can I even use the word 'I' in this context. This is the dichotomy or contradiction that is ego. Spirit cannot manifest except through what is called 'incarnation' in some traditions. Incarnation occurs in the form of discrete, physical entities. So spirit must take on finite forms in order to exist, but in doing so it never loses its connection to eternal and infinite reality (again, the undefinable from the perspective of 'I'). In other words, spirit does not exist outside its incarnate forms, but the incarnate forms do not limit spirit except in an illusory way.

Does this view lessen my appreciation of self? Not at all. Individuated spirit is God expressing him/er self and experiencing his/er world. God does not exist without the illusion of individuated spirit, which makes each and every one of us a miraculous spark in his/er eternal state of becoming.

Teach me how I have sinned

~
Show me the errors of my ways.
Trace my footprints in the sand
back to that place where first
I tended in the wrong direction,
the waves crashing at my back,
your wind propelling me on a course
I mistook for fate.

Help me understand my sin.
Train your mighty microscope
upon the elements of my soul
and find therein
the seeds of my distemper.
Call it dirt, or grit, or dust.
Call it what you must.
Point to it at the same time...
with that crooked finger
that points at every thing in every way.

Please, I beg you,
show me the nature of my sin
and I will confer blessings
upon you and all your kind.


flickr photo by ezioman
~

What is Spirit?

~
Spirit is:

• Indivisible
• Inherent
• Eminent
• Uncreated
• Dimensionless
• Timeless
• Glorious

~

Deep Humility

...
If the sun
warming this spinning globe
is but a glowing atom,
what, then, am I?

If the comprehensive ocean
lapping every shore
is but a dewdrop
squeezed from the reeling cosmos,
what, then, am I?

And who am I to even ask,
my brazen shout reverberating,
less than the intimation of a breath
in the chorus of wonders?