Post-Breakup Pomes

STATIC ON THE LINE

Static on the line
crackling in our last phone talk,
there between us still.


HE IS SLEEPING

Though I shake him,
I cannot wake him,
for he is sleeping.
I sang a song he used to love,
I stroke his face so tenderly,
but silent is he.
Even the leaves of the cypress tree
are still in the breeze.
How can he abandon me,
ignoring my pleas?
Bound together,
he said we were,
forever.
Though I shake him,
I cannot wake him,
for he is sleeping.


NOT YOU

It was a stranger
who called me up
and spoke those words with intent
of dividing you and me.
An impostor, an intruder
in the house of love.
Not you.

The words that stranger spoke,
without hope, or love, or truth--
words of contempt,
hateful, ungrateful--
they did not come from you.
It was a stranger's voice
that spoke to me.
Not yours.

I just wanted you to know
about this person
who called me up,
pretending to be you.
I don't know why
he wants to hurt me
and spit on my heart.
I just take comfort in knowing
he's not and never could be
the one I love,
the one so close to me--
the real you.



THE WINE OF LOVE

Pour more wine for me
and my companions, too,
we're mourning love's brevity,
and, oh Love, I am missing you.

That day beside the river
when you leaned on me, tired one,
I wished to be
your resting-place forever.
So soon, too soon our love was done...

Roaming the field with you at night
I marveled at the beauty of your face,
pale in starlight.
Magical, that time and place...

That night we danced together,
fast and slow,
you too were enamored and entranced,
and now that is gone...

One more glass--enough, just so--
I'll sit here til nightfall,
musing on its ruby glow,
lovely as our love,
before we drank it all.


THE CANDLE

You asked me to hold
a candle for you,
to bring you luck,
to light your way.

Then we parted
and you are gone
from my life,
but in my heart
the candle burns still,
flickering low,
sometimes almost dying out,
but always flaring up again,
high and bright,
that infinitely stubborn, momentary,
immutable love light.


LOVER'S REPORT CARD

Feh! so
Fickle--why did I
Fall for him in the
First place? Why should I give a
Flying
F--ck about that
Flimmer?*


*Fake name
For him


POEM'S PROGRESS

"Poems are never finished,
only abandoned," I told someone today.
So it is with us, confrere--
we've left off writing our love poem
and we'll get back to it,
someday, somehow, somewhere.

PRESCRIPTION

Just
trust

the world in me

My world is the world within me

where all dwell in peace and love.

Where the nightingale's song of desire

wafts through our dreams,

where we are awakened to live those dreams

by the birds of the morning,

where I behold

fields of rich harvest,

green growing forests,

the deer and rabbit treading in safety,

and where cool streams caress our toes.

Here, we know we are citizens

of untold universes,

and we venture forth into them

seeking and experiencing

like the heroes we are.

I am the singer and the song

of this vision,

I am the seeker and the sought,

I am the change I want to see,

I am the world inside of me.

The Primeval Hammering

Do you know what it is to be an artist? To have the Creator at work in you every moment of your life? Perhaps you will argue that the Creator works in every man, and that is very possibly true. But he works in the basement of the house (like a middle-class man who has installed a craftsman's bench in the cellar, while his wife keeps the upper floors in order). A fussy housekeeper rules the upper levels where the world is entertained; but the Creator goes downstairs to work. In the silences when the street-door is closed, the tapping of his hammer may be heard by the listening, receptive one.

The more stir above stairs, the less the primeval hammering can be heard. Most people seal off the cellar of their house at their childhood's close, and the hammering is never heard in them again throughout their life. They have walled off their Creator in the days of their youth, and He who called the universe into being has died in them. Occasionally the walled-in workman, too vital to die, sets fire to gunpowder, blowing up the established order, the parliamentary procedure of the parlor floor.

-excerpt from "God And Puppet" by Irene Orgel

SANTA CRUZ REVISITED

I've seen you immortalized

in a black and white photo,

running, dancing with the waves

in Santa Cruz long ago,

I see you now as you were then,

I see the child still in you, shining through

in your lovely sea-green eyes.

Come with me again to Santa Cruz,

our love resounding with the sea

as we walk upon the shore.

It's time to make new memories

and make the old ones new again,

something we'll never lose.

When clouds darken your sky,

when the world seems untrue,

recapture the rapture

of the sun blessing you,

the sand caressing you,

close your eyes and you'll be there,

one with the seagull's cry.

And then at sundown on the pier

I see and know what's real

in the twilight soft and clear.

The Ferris wheel lights up the sky,

your silence tells me all you feel,

with all my heart I'm here.

I've seen you immortalized

in a black-and-white photo,

running, dancing with the waves

in Santa Cruz long ago,

I see you now as you were then,

I see the child still in you,

shining through

in your lovely sea-green eyes.

Now I See How I See

(Painting by Angela Ferreira, http://www.magicpaintings.com/)

Now I see how I see
is what makes
new world, new me.
Come with me now,
the rules we'll bend,
we'll transcend
and make our own,
hear the tone,
come today, come today,
we'll make our way,
again we'll play
upon the shore,
that joy we thought
we'd feel no more,
we've come so far
yet no distance,
it's been so long
yet all transpired
in an instant,
let us be, running free,
new we, new world,
literally.

Atlantis and Japan - Learning From The Past

A friend posted about the Atlantis/Japan connection at his blog, newearthlight.blogspot.com. I am grateful to him for connecting the dots there, here are my comments to him interspersed with quotes from his post.

His thank-you in the beginning refers to my posting his article at a message board that I frequent.

Hi Jen,

Oh, thank you my friend for appreciating and sharing the post, I don't know how my writings get known but through the word of friends, and I do want these insights to comfort and guide whoever needs them.

Hello Carl, yes, your post is very thought-provoking. I feel there is indeed a connection between the Atlantis story and the events unfolding in Japan. Ultimately, of course, there are no accidents (though the events transpiring now may seem to contradict that), and it is a huge sync and sign, that as reported by Reuters news service, the ruins of Atlantis are emerging at this cataclysmic time in our history.




This for me was the crux of your article:

We must debate the folly of a short-sighted greed-driven civilization that enjoys powers it cannot control but which it knows full well can turn incalculably deadly.

Why did Japan, the most earthquake prone nation in the world, rely upon nuclear fission, the most dangerous power source ever professed to be harnessed? To concentrate chemicals whose intensely poisonous effects can kill millions for centuries, in facilities that require constant flawless attention or else risk run-away meltdown scenarios with the potential to destroy all life on the planet (yes, in a worst case that burns and spews radiation for years), all the while inviting the vulnerability of theft by stupid evil for deliberate destruction in terrorist devices, and all just for the convenience of a large heat producing capacity that can drive some turbines to sell electricity to a culture hooked on consuming ever more resources, is insanely immoral. The human ego’s thirst for power has long outpaced the will to live in humble harmony with nature, as evidenced first by the devastating pollution of the fossil fuel driven industrial revolution, and then by the atomic age of exponentially expanding information castrated of any real wisdom.

So already, countries are reacting to Japan’s misfortune by inspecting and shutting down their own nuclear power plants, and this alone is an expectably desired outcome. Experts are emerging to denounce the obvious greed of a corporation that maximized storage of spent fuel, insufficiently prepared for the truly inevitable worst case scenarios, and continues to under-report the dangers of a burning nuclear facility to a public whose trust is rightly broken. It is very sad when it takes a tragedy to motivate humans to do the right thing that they had previously hoped to avoid because it wasn’t the most convenient for a short-term gain. God is not uncaring and the universe is very wise and good, but disasters are primed when humanity does not take the earlier benign indications for a safer future and instead keeps banking upon a mistake or failure never happening.

From financial bubbles bursting to naturally triggered disasters for which we can only speculate the preventability of damage had we been a more intuitively guided society, innocent loving people will continue to bear the brunt of nightmare scenarios to remind us that sustainability and harmony with divine principles called us to greater wisdom long ago, only we did not listen.

What comes up for me in contemplating all of this is precisely what you say above, in effect, that this was "an accident waiting to happen." Apparently we had to get to this point before starting to wake up in earnest to the dangers and insanity of this approach, especially when we already know there are safe, alternative energy sources that have been repressed due to financial interests. Can we afford to drag our heels on implementing those alternative sources any longer?

I'm reminded of these lines from Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking-Glass:

'I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear.'

Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, 'I wouldn't have been the messenger for anything!'

The events of Japan are screaming loud and clear in our ear. And it is pushing us out of our comfort zone (to put it mildly). Hopefully we are being roused from somnolence into action. 'Action' can also mean simply doing what we can in our own sphere, including holding the vision of positive change.

As Daniel Jacob aptly says in his remarks on the events in Japan:

http://eternalgodliness.punt.nl/?id=541021&r=1

Who would have believed that it would be MOTHER NATURE, in the pangs of Her PLANETARY BIRTHING.......that would push us to the brink of HAVING TO DECIDE.........Do we continue our flirtation with this Dangerous and Wonderful Lover.......Nuclear Power........or do we take the "blue pill" and wake up in the morning, as if it was all a bad dream?

Jacob also makes the point that: "NUCLEAR refers to something that is going on at the very CENTER of a situation or a person." We are now facing the implications of nuclear power in a big way, and facing our core choice as a species: sustainability and thrival, or tragedy and unavoidable decline, as evidenced by the catastrophe in Japan.

The myth or fact of Atlantis is that a high civilization developed based upon incredible powers, but too many people given power were not in their hearts sufficiently advanced to be responsible for the blessing that is the God given opportunity to live and love together upon dear Mother Gaia. The Atlantean technology drew upon vast Earth energies in ways so elegant that we cannot now imagine, simply because many of the abilities of natural crystals to tap into geomagnetic and nuclear forces have been excised by the collective unconscious to prevent another Atlantean disaster. Today we use electronics based upon vibrating quartz crystals, silicon, and semiconductors precisely aligned down to the molecule, in order to summon electromagnetic and nuclear forces, so in essence we have reinvented the wheel again but with new devices.

What happened in Atlantis, as best as various people can remember across the thousands of years and lifetimes, is that rival groups abused the powers lent them to advance personal short-sighted gains, to the point of upsetting deep natural forces and triggering the earthquake and tsunami that cataclysmically destroyed and buried overnight that pinnacle of human civilization which included great arts and sciences of love and spirituality. The tragedy was so shocking to the evolution of humanity that, like Nazi Germany, it can never be forgotten; Atlantis is encoded in our DNA for us to remember and prevent from repeating. We have come perilously close, by the evils and ignorance of the 20th century that will continue to haunt us for generations on so many levels, and yet in the 11th hour we keep saving ourselves. Thus we must take heart and let God speed, for this time is deadly serious, and yet the hope of life and love beyond all threat is real.


The 9.0 magnitude quake of Japan is among the greatest in known history. The island of Japan is now 8 feet wider, with 250 miles of eastern coastline 2 feet lower. The Earth is shifted slightly on its axis and the day is slightly shorter. Precedents are few. In 1755, Lisbon in Portugal was destroyed utterly and suddenly by a massive offshore quake and tsunami that affected millions all along the coast of Europe. This came at a time of great Enlightenment thinking in Europe, and reactions were varied and extreme. Was God mercilessly cruel, what did it mean, how could this happen? Everyone must wrestle with their inner demons at a time of great wake-up call and choice. Because of the experience of Lisbon, French author Voltaire became disgusted by the optimism of German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and famously ridiculed his view that "this is the best of all possible worlds", by describing a parade of horrors in Candide which are ever glossed over by the blindly faithful Dr. Pangloss.

The reference to the Lisbon disaster in 1755, its link to Candide and Voltaire's deriding of Leibniz' philosophy that "This is the best of all possible worlds", is very relevant. I was inspired to review my understanding of Liebniz at Wikipedia, here are a few excerpts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz

The Théodicée[21] tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws...Leibniz then approached one of the central criticisms of Christian theism:[23] if God is all good, all wise and all powerful, how did evil come into the world? The answer (according to Leibniz) is that, while God is indeed unlimited in wisdom and power, his human creations, as creations, are limited both in their wisdom and in their will (power to act). This predisposes humans to false beliefs, wrong decisions and ineffective actions in the exercise of their free will. God does not arbitrarily inflict pain and suffering on humans; rather he permits both moral evil (sin) and physical evil (pain and suffering) as the necessary consequences of metaphysical evil (imperfection), as a means by which humans can identify and correct their erroneous decisions, and as a contrast to true good...The Theodicy was deemed illogical by the philosopher Bertrand Russell.[24] Russell points out that moral and physical evil must result from metaphysical evil (imperfection). But imperfection is merely finitude or limitation; if existence is good, as Leibniz maintains, then the mere existence of evil requires that evil also be good. In addition, Christian theology defines sin as not necessary but contingent, the result of free will. Russell maintains that Leibniz failed logically to show that metaphysical necessity (divine will) and human free will are not incompatible or contradictory.

I feel Bertrand Russell nails it here. Along these lines, another wise teacher, Adamus St. Germain channeled by Geoffrey Hoppe, postulates that "All is well in all of creation," which is in sync with the New Age aphorism that "It's all good." Another valued spirit teacher, Bashar channeled by Darryl Anka, recommends that we develop the habit of seeing all events as essentially neutral, containing no built-in meaning.

Bashar:
The meaning, the feelings, the reactions you have are already built within your consciousness, based on the definitions of life you have been taught. Learn the new habit of letting them go, and not automatically assuming that those definitions are definitions of an absolute reality, for there is no reality except the definition you give it, and that's what reality is. So learn the new habit, it will serve you, day to day, in practical and
pragmatic ways. And we will remind you of this as many times as is necessary for it to become a part of your daily behavior and personality, and when it is, I guarantee 100% you will see a difference in your lives. And you will see that you have more ability to determine exactly in what direction your lives ought to go and what it is you are capable of believing, that is possible for you. And also, simultaneously, in looking at circumstances neutrally, you will become more capable of understanding how it is you may be of assistance to others who may be caught up in their own definitions, and unable to see a way to break out of the situation and circumstance, and unable to understand that it is their own definitions that have made the circumstance seem so iron clad, when in fact it is made of nothing but tissue paper definitions.

Learn that reality is only the product of your strongest beliefs and that is the only thing that makes it seem so solid and so immutable in that sense. Transmute these things by changing your definitions, by changing your awareness. It does not necessarily mean that you have to see cosmic consequence in every thing that happens to you, though on one level, of course, there always is. But nevertheless, it will give you insight, like what you would call an x-ray vision, into the nature and structure of synchronicity and circumstance and will give more ability to understand how circumstance hinges upon the strongest definitions you have been taught to believe are true.

Yes, we hope for the best for Japan, while honoring the soul-choices of its inhabitants to experience these apocalyptic events echoing the story of Atlantis which is being excavated now, literally and figuratively. There is meaning and purpose in these events. Let us send care and compassion to all involved, and use the events constructively by staying aware of that meaning and purpose, while lifting our vision toward transcendence and renewal. In the words of George Santayana, "Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it."

When we see the good inside to which our souls were always committed, we make this the best of all possible worlds from which we have already entered the bliss of manifesting heaven.

Absolutely, and I agree that Anne Thomas' Letter From Sendai is a beautiful example of that.

Blessings to you Carl, and thank you for this exchange.
Jen

Book Review: End Your Story, Begin Your Life

Review I wrote for Vibrance magazine:


In Jim Dreaver's new book End Your Story, Begin Your Life, he gives the key to inner peace and eventual enlightenment: dis-identifying with the "stories" that we think make us who and what we are. The basic practice, which keeps us grounded in our true state of being, is stepping back with our awareness. This reminder is given throughout the book in various forms, i.e.: "Do it now. Step back with your awareness...Stay in this place of pure, witnessing awareness, and the story loses its power over you."

The litmus test of awakening or enlightenment, he asserts, is in how we deal with
life's difficult changes and challenges--what Hamlet referred to as "the slings
and arrows of outrageous fate." The mantra given in the book when facing such
difficulties is: "Ah, I welcome, or at least accept, the presence of this conflict in my life. It is showing me where I am not yet free." As an example, he relates his own experience of having three strokes within several months (which according to him, came out of the blue), each worse than the last. Rather than allowing himself to fall into fear, he was able to retain his stability and inner peace, as he knew himself as pure consciousness that is never born and never dies. Secure in this understanding, he was able to marshall his energies and focus them on his healing. The book itself is a
testament to his success.

In the chapter on love ("Each Day Becomes Rich In Love"), Dreaver also shares
his journey through pain and anger after his girlfriend left him for another man. She had lied to him about her affair, and he felt betrayed. But with time and focused
intention, he was able to let go of his story about her and their relationship. He moved on, having reached a state of peace, understanding and acceptance.

Our suffering becomes something useful to us, an "agenda for being present," as he puts it: "The power in adopting a truly welcoming attitude is that it indicates that you accept where you are right now. You may not like it but you accept it. Acceptance, in turn, brings an immediate relaxation, an ease of being and an allowing that may then open the door for the shift in perception called awakening."

Dreaver studied with the Advaita Vedanta teacher Jean Klein, who he frequently
refers to throughout the book. The ultimate teaching of this path is that there is
actually no individual "person" or independent self. "The psychological entity we take ourselves to be doesn't really exist, except as an idea, a story, a fictional creation between our ears. " According to this teaching, up until the age of two we were psychologically free; the "fall from grace" equates to identifying with and believing in our "self" and our stories (including our belief systems). Suffering drops away when we return to our natural state as pure consciousness; in that state, there is nothing in us to resist the flow of life, and there is literally no "person" that can suffer. It all comes down to freeing ourselves from duality and experiencing our Oneness on a deep level. He quotes Kunihiro Yamate on our oneness with all "others" who are "actually mirror reflections of our own self."

Indeed there is an "own self," an individual and distinctive self, albeit one that is in a state of constant change. I feel we can release attachment to the stories, while still experiencing them as real in their own right. That's part of what makes life interesting, I feel. At the same time, I agree that for many, perhaps most of us, the ego (the face we show the world) has become a "counterfeit self" and should never be taken as who we really are.

Jim Dreaver's vision is that connecting with our essence, through disidentifying with our stories and our egos, will ultimately lead to the much-prophesied shift from separation to unity consciousness, from conflict to peace, from fear to love. I fully agree with this perspective, and I am sure that those who embrace the teachings in the book will be among those leading the way in this transformation.

Translating Lao Tzu

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42


Lao Tzu:
The "parent of all teachings"
is that "the violent man will come to a violent end."

Jen:
First Cause, or "parent of all teachings",
is that what you put out is what you get back.

L.T:
The Tao begot one.
One begot two.
Two begot three.
And three begot the ten thousand things.

Jen:

Zero begot one, One begot Two, Two gave birth to Three.

Infinity and individuality, synthesized,
brought forth exponentially increasing expressions.
From this trinity came all else in existence.

LT:
The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.
They achieve harmony by combining these forces.

Jen:
We and our world are a blend of opposing forces.
We find resolution and peace, inner and outer,
through balance and synthesis.


LT:
Men hate to be "orphaned," "widowed," or "worthless,"
But this is how kings and lords describe themselves.

Jen:
We have mastered ourselves and our world
when we understand the true riches are within.

LT:
For one gains by losing
And loses by gaining.

Jen

We gain by losing our identification
with things of the world,
and lose the real treasure
by increasing that identification.


LT:
What others teach, I also teach; that is:
"A violent man will die a violent death!"
This will be the essence of my teaching.

Jen:
As many sources have said
in different ways:
What we put out is what we get back.
This is the ultimate teaching.

No Time Nor Place

I move through my mind,

the only place to go

when I need to unwind,

want to take it slow,

I can close my eyes

and see the swaying trees,

I can see the sun rise

over distant seas,

sometimes I'll see you

on the left or on the right,

mingling with gold or blue,

then you're gone from sight.

You're whispering there,

in the trees, in the grass,

your closeness everywhere,

a glimpse as you pass.

Just stay in one place,

give me a chance with you,

just to look in your face

is like a dance with you.

There's no map or chart

to show me where you are,

you're the wish of my heart

I will follow far,

through fields of pleasure,

toward a sea of grace,

where joy has no measure,

love no time nor place.

You're whispering there,

in the trees, in the grass,

your closeness everywhere,

a glimpse as you pass.

Cyber-Connecting

spirit to spirit
we meet on computer screen...
inner senses bloom