What Is Baneful, As Utter Beauty...

I looked and looked and this I came to see: 

That what I thought was you and you, 

Was really me and me.

~Unknown

Spilt Oil, Rainwater 

“THE ULTIMATE METAPHYSICAL SECRET, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two...

As simple as that sounds, it is nevertheless extremely difficult to adequately discuss no-boundary awareness or nondual consciousness. This is because our language — the medium in which all verbal discussion must float — is a language of boundaries. As we have seen, words and symbols and thoughts themselves are actually nothing but boundaries, for whenever you think or use a word or name, you are already creating boundaries. Even to say "reality is no-boundary awareness" is still to create a distinction between boundaries and no-boundary! So we have to keep in mind the great difficulty involved with dualistic language. That "reality is no-boundary" is true enough, provided we remember that no-boundary awareness is a direct, immediate, and nonverbal awareness, and not a mere philosophical theory. It is for these reasons that the mystic-sages stress that reality lies beyond names and forms, words and thoughts, divisions and boundaries. Beyond all boundaries lies the real world of Suchness, the Void, the Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman, the Godhead. And in the world of suchness, there is neither good nor bad, saint nor sinner, birth nor death, for in the world of suchness there are no boundaries.” ~Ken Wilber, No Boundary 

Poulnabrone Dolmen

Poulnabrone Dolmen
Portal Tomb in The Burren
County Clare, Ireland
August, 2014

The Numinous

The Numinous. It is the most brilliant, brightest light and it is the deepest, darkest depths. It's the subtle hum of the entire Universe, at first most recognizable in the beings like ourselves~ the animals. But then too, if looking with the heart, the plants we are also. And the inanimate rocks. The land, the rivers, the mountains, seas and winds. And the discarnate. What Grace in me, inherent in the very atoms vibrating, composing my own body; calls me to remember this kinship. 



nu·mi·nous [noo-muh-nuhs, nyoo-] adjective

1. of, pertaining to, or like a numen; spiritual or supernatural.

2. surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious: that element in artistic expression that remains numinous.

3. arousing one's elevated feelings of duty, honor, loyalty, etc.: a benevolent and numinous paternity.

Origin:  1640–50;  < Latin nūmin-  (stem of nūmen ) numen + -ous

nu·men [noo-min, nyoo-] 

noun, plural nu·mi·na [noo-muh-nuh, nyoo-]

divine power or spirit; a deity, especially one presiding locally or believed to inhabit a particular object.

Dictionary.com Unabridged

Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2014. 

numen  (ˈnjuːmɛn) — n  , pl -mina

1. (esp in ancient Roman religion) a deity or spirit presiding over a thing or place

2. a guiding principle, force, or spirit

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition

2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 

Foreign Object~

The latest collection of short stories from author Jeremiah Phin's horror series Before You Go To Sleep is now available!

Photography and design by Norm Halm.

Available at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J2G6JFS/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

Because one day, I won't be able to...

Barely a month and a half into 2014 and 6 friends or acquaintances have died.

Not just in the last six weeks, but before now and beyond, everyday for me there is a practice:

When I eat food, I say to myself, "Delicious! I feel so glad to be alive!" because, you know, one day… I'll be dead and I won't be able to.

When I feel the sun (or clouds) and the moonlight on my face, I conjure a surge of joy and gratitude in my body because one day... I won't be able to.

When I drink the waters or feel it on my skin, I'm so glad to be alive because one day... I won't be able to.

When I have sex, I'm pretty damn happy! Because one day... I won't be able to.

When I inhale the air deeply into my lungs on purpose, I feel so glad to be alive because one day... I won't be able to.

When I exercise my body, even when I know it will be sore the next day, I am so grateful because one day... I won't be able to.

When I hold my partner's hand, I purposely manifest an upwelling of Love in my body and pass it on to him. Because, you know, one day... I won't be able to. (Chances are, if I'm hugging you, I'm doing this then too. Also always towards plants, animals and other spirits.)

Everyday.

One day, this body of mine will stop pulsing and then disintegrate back into disparate bits of earth. So now, even when things are shitty. Even when I'm frustrated, have too many other things to do or I'm thinking too much about some unimportant thing, I make sure to create moments like the ones listed above; deeply aware of being alive in the present. Feeling the emotions fully and taking responsibility for them & my words and actions too. Gratitude for the entire thing; All That Is. The "good" and the "bad", within and without, above and below, the light and the dark. Every. Single. Day. Because I just don't know, maybe tomorrow or maybe 70 years from now, but one day I won't be able to do any of it anymore, ever again. Blessed Be. 

While loss does make me sad, death itself is not a sad event to me. It's simply what we do; we live, we die. It's not helpful to dread or fear it, because that's really to dread and fear life itself. Life and death are one and the same and it's going to happen either way. It's beautiful even. In the end, death levels the playing field; we are all going to do it. And no matter how much we do or don't acquire; no matter how loudly or quietly we affect the world, no matter how well or poorly we treat each other, no matter how fearfully or lovingly we live our days and nights, no matter how many people remember us, or forget, we all go to the same place in the end.

Fog Spirit; Anima Motrix~ Goat Rock State Beach

"We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human."

Fog Spirit in the golden autumn sunlight. Lichen growing on quartz laden rocky outcrops drinks from the fog rising, twisting, whirling, dancing up off of the sea, speaking to us of the terroir's aliveness and offering to make its personhood known... Beings other than human call us to fully realize our humanity.

"Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy to forget our carnal inheritance in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth--our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human."

~David Abram from The Spell of the Sensuous 

His Eyes Like Fire by Jeremiah Phin

Ready for a good scare? Check out His Eyes Like Fire, a new collection of short stories from author Jeremiah Phin's horror series, Before You Go To Sleep.  At a special price for the next two weeks.  Click on the link below to purchase...if you dare. (Photography and design by Norm Halm)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G6BLRW2