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"Is the voyage worth making that does not enhance awareness of our shared humanity?"
--D. Milburn.

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114  115   116
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108  109  110
2006:
106  107
103  104  105
100  101  102
96  97  98  99
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2002:
58  59  60  61
54  55  56  57
50  51  52  53
48  49
2001:
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41  42  43  44
37  38  39  40
33  34  35  36
31  32
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      02  03  04


The Blue Book
8-21-88—3-3-97
including the original notes for Tree Talks,
and the beginnings of Saltlick.

Douglas Milburn

88082101 Clouds are psychic raw materials, sort of. (We don’t have the vocabulary or the concepts to perceive and discuss their nature.)
88101501 Explanations which omit the heart are either dangerously limited or wrong or both. Milburn’s Razor.
88110301 Provincial onto-centrism. We share existence with multiple entities and "realities."
88110401 The intense specificity of this reality tends to blot out even the possibility of other realities.
88110402 The unbidden guest comes, offers gifts, expects nothing. The Magi.
88111601 At root’s end
the very microscopic tip
how do you tell
where tree stops
and earth begins?
89032801 There are differing degrees and qualities of separation and distance(expansion? extension).
89032802 Empathetic congruence as a means of tuning.
89071001 Those burdened ones, they are donkeys who see big loads and who believe big means heavy means important. So for them, the loads are heavy, and as years pass, their backs sag, their faces are etched deep with care and exhaustion. Truly, they hoard their share of the countless burdens which pass onto and off of their backs, and thus are metaphysical Republicans all, cherishing the gold that is dross.
89071002 A butterfly dreaming she’s a man? A woman dreaming she’s a butterfly? Either, both, neither. Change the fucking channels, Chuang-tze, or turn off the TV altogether.
89071101 Somehow from the rowboat, I design and build an ocean-going cruiser. Other continents await. I set out, only, after some years, to shut off the engines and drift, and drift.
89071102 You have a thousand audiences: clouds, trees, even the stars. Ham it up.
89071301 Though many come, few enjoy.
89071302 Every age has a powerful vested interest in its own barbarism, of which it is childishly unaware. Reagans we shall always have with us. Both of them.
89071701 How do I learn to listen?

By being silent.

What of my chatty Western birthright (I think, therefore I am)?

89071702 The familiar waves enter my feet, move up, perform an unexpected arabesque, then begin to spin front to back around the crotch. I start to interfere. Chou-Yi comes, draws my attention away with a full embrace and kiss, held, as the spinning accelerates. He is never forward in this manner. I understand the important of not interfering. Only when the spinning light is self-sustaining and very rapid does he let go. I resist writing this—trivial, uncommercial, obscure, silly—and see not capitalism or Marxism but consumerism as the real cancer.
89071801 It is not I that dies, but the world. It is not I that you kill, but the world.
89071802 Lao-Tzu: "Stealing the light."
89071803 The center is here. The center is elsewhere.
89071804 The doors are unlocked. Always.
89072801 China doesn’t need much. One thing that would help is less fucking and more sucking.
89072802 Art is metaphysical travelogues.
89072903 Science tries to outwit nature. Philosophy tries to out wait it. I, to wait it out.
89080701 Balance. Balance.
89081401 There are ten thousand kinds of fucking. Our barbarous animalism, our vaunted, flaunted materialism makes us think there’s only one and it’s cock-cunt.
89081402 Semele is not a good role model.
89081403 They’re horny too, the "gods". Frightened, desperate, jaded.
89081404 Are we, to some, objects of arousal?
89081801 There are roads. Others have been this way.
89081802 Congruent realities.
89081803 And of course I am metaphysically puritanical.
89081904 Irony is metaphysical erotic play.
89082001 Intimacy varies inversely with distance (in case you were wondering about God’s seeming absence).
89082002 Nature = unedited TV.
89082301 Mass art = clabbered cum.
89082302 Those who really know really are talking, not because of some Big Secret, or some Big Conspiracy. Just because really knowing is really knowing.
89082303 Our landscapes are littered with the ruins, often well-kept and even revered, of our ignorant theophobia.
89082400 It starts in the mind.
89082401 It continues with knocking at the door.
89082402 Or peeking out the window.
89082601 No matter what the mechanism is (or what you think it is) that is dragging you down, you can still, almost always, turn your attention away, toward natural symbols, where true, timeless power lies.
89082602 What do you gain from your daily rounds that is so valuable but that you could spare an hour doing better, doing within?
89082701 Pain is the teacher of last resort.
89083001 The illusion of discontinuity—between us and them and it.
89083002 Wisdom: to be bemused only by outrageous fortune, and identity.
89083101 Every investment in the invisible pays off big, often, usually, in ways you, in your surface-sightedness, don’t notice.
89090601 Receptivity. One makes—and declares—oneself ready. (Rapes do happen [Semele], but not often.)
89091101 Theosex. We want it, but are afraid. The flight is not from the body but from the mind. From knowledge.
89092601 Someone touched the middle of my forehead with two fingers as I fell asleep. Was it you?
89100501 No healthy revolution is possible with clothes on.
89101201 I don’t know why my pain is less than yours tonight. It may not be tomorrow. While it is, I can say: you’re time will come. You’re time will come.
89101202 Trees are our best teachers. The extent to which you find that idea ridiculous or irrelevant indicates the extent to which you are immersed in and controlled by the idols of the age and place.
89101203 As a child you swung and jumped, hurtling forward in a flying arc. That freedom and more is available and accessible. Neither I nor anyone can give it to you. The way can be pointed at. Love, power, money, piety, knowledge, wisdom—none will take you to or along the way. Only the naked, gentlest you can find or walk it.
89101204 Knock loudly and persistently. I will answer eventually. (Analogy, not megalomania.)
89102201 How we still praise and reward the students of behavior, old and repetitious as it is, inside the zoo. Same old zoo. Same old tricks. Same old Nobel Prizes.
89102301 The issue, the way is far more dangerous than that of any drug, and far, far gentler.
89102302 Unlock the pelvis. (Reich was right). All else follows. There are of course ten thousand other ways. (Reich was wrong.)
89102303 Our beautiful friends. We are so lucky they share the planet with us.
89102304 Think of a tree. Only think of it. Don’t worry about visualizing it. Just think of one specific tree. They speak, you know, but oh so softly, oh so leisurely. Oh so patiently.
89102401 Art is mimesis of the repeatability of the records we make here.
89102402 Trees are a key, possibly also a door, to the earth, and to the heart of the earth.
89102501 The body is a tension battery. Meditation helps, but slowly. Yoga is better. Rolfing is too fast and teachers the body that only external agents really work.
89102601 We can (have the ability to) also be an ecstasy battery. Slow down, plug in.
89102602 Trees shelter birds, squirrels, and an occasional snake. So do we. So do we. (Our belief in our existential "purity" is primitive and simplistic hubris.) Mobile trees.
89102701 Acculturation = metaphysical disenfranchisement. Learning to refocus one’s attention = metaphysical re-empowerment. Not paradise regained. Not childhood regained. Shackles dropped.
89102702 Tree porn. The image of the Great Tree.
89102703 We are, laughably, in our scientific and linguistic playpen, nominalists manqué. The spirits do have names, and wholly proper ones at that.
89109301 What will be the new recording medium? "Ether"? "Plasma"?
89110601 Meter stick. You can measure your progress by the accuracy and frequency with which you can keep track psychically of the comings and goings of those you care about.
89110602 Through our mindlessness, we turn the body-eden into a prison, shackles, a rut. Ease out.
89110901. Nature nurtures. Subtly, slowly, quietly, gently, powerfully. Tramping and camping about is not the way. The ego walls must come down, and then you must be still, gain and again. And again. Sustenance flows through.
89110902. There exists a ground of being where, with perfection, your pain and you pleasure, your lies to yourself and to others, your false efforts and your true, your honest mistakes and your dishonest mistakes are in some way known. A balance, fair beyond our perceiving and merciful beyond our best hopes, is always struck.
89111201 During drought, does the earth stop being earth? Do seeds stop being seeds?
89111202 Your muscles, all your organs are starved for prolonged mindful, heartful attention. Not of the artless, heartless calisthenics, aerobic variety. Yoga, tai chi.
89111401 Isn’t the road better than the bushes?
89111402 Road signs? Yes, many, usually felt, not seen. They are known as "heart’s desires."
89111403 View your circumcision as a battle scar, if you like.
89111501 Congruence, existential congruence is possible. Between "entities," between sentient systems.
89111502 Road signs: resonances from possible futures.
89111503 Mutual purification through congruence.
89111701 Isolation is in the eye—and skin—of the beholder, and the beholden.
89111702 Symbols of empowerment. Numbers, words.
89111801 I sought solace. This is what I found. It helped. I don’t know what it means.
89111901 Do not take pride in any of your accomplishments. They have all been injurious. You have no way of knowing how injurious and to whom.
89112101 Go gently along the path. There may be other effective demeanors. I am doubtful.
89112102 One day your pelvis will feel full and you will know you are pregnant.
89112205 Either we enter new worlds and find new cultures, or we stultify, as did the Chinese behind their many walls.
89112301 The trees have been lonely even longer than we have.
89112302 Without frequent, regular, mindful balancing, growth old and new will continue warped and stunted. The tree grows with the prevailing wind, weather, soil, and friends. We can choose to grow straight.
89112303 Joy trickles briefly through a tiny, fast-closing hole in my joy-resistant armor. I am left awestruck, hopeful.
89112501 Meditation by analogy. Trees. Swans. Rocks, even. Put yourself in their place.
89112601 The east can learn something from the west about the metaphysical value of the bowed head. A valve opens.
89112602 The law of equivalent communication: Nature speaks on a level and in a language equivalent to the emotional content of your questioning.
89112603 Emotion is our flat-earth, our uncharted sea, our mis-apprehended reality. They, remember, watched shops disappear at the horizon but ignored the obvious implication. What is the equally obvious, equally ignored implication of laughter?
89112604 Science. "Science." As primitive, narrow, and distorting as any organized religion. It succeeds and replicates because in an age of instant gratification it produces instant, repeatable results. How quickly it could be healthily displaced and superseded!
89112701 Playground, not prison, always, when you choose, always.
89113001 Not tests, not burdens, not punishments, but opportunities for growth.
89113002 The communion and fellowship of things.
89113003 It would be difficult to overestimate the comfort Houston has given me.
89120201 Trees: The half which brings and supports life is not visible.
89120202 You do not learn a language in a day but in 10,000 days. Daily, Incremental exposure: the habit of learning. Quantum leaps occur, rarely. Between them, progress is gradual.
89120401 We belong not only to (and among) people but to and among everything. We profit from contact, as do they, the 10,000 things. They miss us.
89120402 "We leave before the saw starts a cut. It’s O.K."
89121801 Infinite fields of flowers are there for the taking, but they show themselves only to gentle seekers. The heavy-handed find only weeds and nettles and poison ivy. Hence their angry trampling.
89122301 Above, below, above, below. One gives language, purpose, inspiration, respect. "Water brothers pass along the always singing song."
89122302 We come back every morning. But from where?
89122501 Breath empowers. Re-empowers. Enfranchises. Re-enfranchises. Free, and necessary.
89122601 Never, never be ashamed of love.
89122602 Inter- and intra-planar pedagogy: Present and make clear the choices and potentials. Then, step back. No interference. The occasional gift, a reminder is O.K. (but be prepared—it may be rejects [Gandhi, etc.]).
89122701 Reading Lao-Tze is like know Algebra I and being given a book containing all past and future mathematics: errors, blind alleys, blinding insights, and all.
89122702 Those who rule feel put upon and underappreciated. Thus do they justify their appropriations, exploitations, and violences.
89122801 How many minutes since you did yoga? A million. One.
89122802 Tree time. Leave messages. Interspecific communication requires reciprocal chronographic adjustments.
89122901 Emotional involvement links one to (creates?) a "telepathic" network. Given our short emotional attention spans, the connection is usually primitive and brief. How to gain access otherwise?
89122902 There are National Enquirers as well as Atlantic Monthly’s out there, Home Shopping Networks as well as Discovery channels.
90010101 Though not knowing the source or purpose, a wise recipient enjoys and uses a gift. Who gave me trees? I don’t know.
90010102 The wisdom of trees is small but pure.
90010301 It’s a long way across the Pacific. As if the Straits of Magellan weren’t trouble enough.
90010302 Yoga: Release, not ritual; then maintenance. Do what feels good (release, relief), then do what keeps the release open. That’s all. The rest follows.
90010401 Like animals, we do not know what we look like. (Torus?)
90010901 Every kindergarten has its screamers who provide a challenge to those trying to pay attention to the lessons.
90010902 Natural signs. We are immersed in extra-human languages. One’s life my be profitably judge by how far along one gets in reading readiness.
90011101 Sleep is when we shit, shower, etc.
90011102 We choose where we die—mountain top, plains, seaside, swamp.
90011601 Our roots, like those of the trees, are not visible.
90011701 In meditation: Theoreticals and practicals (yoga and healing).
90012301 The call is silent, subtle, and gradual. The answer is silent, subtle, and gradual.
90012302 Remember to bathe also the invisible body.
90012501 Now is as fragile as it is strong.
90013101 To attune with, to join the communion of 10,000 things living and dead, seen and unseen.
90013102 Life is worship. How was church yesterday? How will it be today?
90013103 Each life has its own rhythm. Find it—gently, like looking for a tiny diamond dropped in a bed of violets.
90020601 It is possible that the pattern of life is preparatory for some caster malaise (suffering, not punishment) at which we can only guess. (Büchner’s rip in the cosmic fabric.)
90021201 The sun is calling—roaring!
for messengers. Thunderous
music rolls across the sky.
Does no one hear?
I hear but I don’t know what to do
but listen and feel my happy heart.
90022001 Change time, as needed.
90022001 Generally, reading ahead in the program guide should be avoided.
90022101 Those who came before are here. They came, went, go, come, will go, will come.
90022102 Beware of planets with no sense of humor.
90022103 There is nothing but this. Growth is discovering new parts of this. That’s all. All parts are open.
90022104 Now is then, except when then is now, in which case all is over.
90022105 Decay turns stone to lust. From lust to lust.
90030701 Find a wise tree. Become its friend.
90030702 Neither the desires, the ambitions, nor the possessions of the rich or the famous have value. Those lives are profoundly and dangerously misdirected and misleading.
90030802 We are sculptors of time, witting or unwitting. Your choice.
90030803 The shape of the inner door signifies what you find on the other side. The square door leads to a desolate, rocky passage which gives way to a vast, rich jungle valley of organic potentials.
90032701 How we cherish the illusion of continuity
90052201 No communion, no life.
90052501 Less lying, more communion.
90052501 New knowledge. (Who is the barbarian?)
90052601 New land, new language, new customs. The border crossing’s a bitch.
90070601 Which is worse: the student who does not recognize the teacher, or the teacher who does not recognize the student?
90071301 Continuous showings on all screens. Choose a door. Walk in.
90071302 All is seeds.
90090301 The point is not pain, or pleasure, or the avoidance of pain or pleasure. The point is integration. No walls.
90090302 Even our slowest learning makes the gods happy. It reduces their loneliness, and reminds them that they too are not incorrigible.
90090303 The gods are not omniscient and thus have to take us on faith often, as we do them. They too are absent-minded.
90091010 Even on the darkest nights, it moves.
90091401 One door opens into 10,000 rooms, each of which opens into another 10,000 rooms.
90091402 Teach the hear.
90092101 So, little man, you think you can figure it out.
90092201 Though you would deny it, you think your actions make the sun rise.
90101401 "Flying saucers" are hardly the only form of visitation.
90110501 You want to receive? Well, first you need a receiver, then an antenna, then you tune around, with patience. Oh, and don’t forget to plug it in and turn it on.
90110502 Moral acts become almost impossible for those with money.
90111501 Oh what a lovely and terrible prison we have built for ourselves.
90111502 To regain the mobility of consciousness is the goal of the new pedagogy.
90111601 A balance is always struck. (Primitives seek it through punishment.)
90120501 A unique gesture. A key to lucid dreaming.
91030801 Intentionality. Your body is at least as smart as you are. Either by commission or omission, you communicate to it your intentions for you and it. Your choice.
91031101 The spring trees sing. Go among them, then within, and learn to hear. Birdsong is but a tribute and imitation.
91031102 Toward the light: here, even the shadows are sweet.
91042105 There is music in the very air.
91042301 Your body is stiff. Your mind is loose.
91052501 The trees like my visits, but they say, "Why don’t you fly? We envy you your wings."
91062801 A tree stole my soul today and took it straight to its dark heart. Spring is here.
91062801 Socially, politically, women as a group have tremendous unused leverage: that of mothers. Patriarchs beware, if they figure our how to use it.
91062802 Modern? Post-modern? Self-inflating nonsense. The 20th century was Baroque II. Re-baroque. How dull.
91070701 Any century that starts with Beethoven and ends with Wilde can’t be all bad.
91070702 Any century that starts with Picasso and ends with Andrew Lloyd-Webber is in serious trouble.
91081901 The center which is everywhere.
91081902 Recreate the scene of the ecstasy.
91090101 If you can’t see the light, the fault is in you, not the light. The light is always there—here—not there—not here—not not there—not not here. Certain of your reactions to this— create fog, cataracts, cloud cover. How? Failures to sustain faith, hope, charity.
91090102 First learn concentration, then meditation. Beyond meditation lies hope realized (for want of a better word).
91090601 We now know pretty well just how bad we can be. Next we learn how good we can be. We’ve had glimpses, some short, some not so short, but nothing like what’s to come.
91121101 We are naive in unguessed-of ways. Art secondarily imitates nature. Primarily, art restates nature. The dog howls at the moon.
91122201 The playpen is much bigger than we think. Much bigger than we can think.
91122202 Relaxation also means un-focusing, diffusing the mind’s point-of-attention.
91122203 The tree.
The sun.
Not two.
Not one.
92010201 The choice is not nirvana, samadhi, rapture. Those appear to be matters of grace. The choice is: how will I walk through this day? Gracefully, stumbling, creatively, clumsily, helpfully, stiff?
92010401 Choices now: not the dancer, not the dance. Only how.
92010402 Meditation creates an island of serenity to which you can return momently. It doesn’t vanish. And only the most extreme pain limits access.
92010601 The Buddha is still sitting under the bo-tree. Remember? Remember.
92010701 My tree.
My sun.
My two.
My one.
My none.
92010792 Winter birds
tickle me.
Sometimes
I come
in the cold fog.
92010801 Bilateral meditation: one visualization for the left hemisphere (my tree), one for the right (my sun). Eventually, then, a third, centered.
92010802 Not the dancer, nor the stage, nor the audience, nor curtain-time. All incomprehensible (though one has suspicions). Only the dance.
92010803 You can create an island of serenity in time (through relaxation/meditation) to which you can return by remembering, in situations of stress.
92011001 Breathing is life in more ways than science knows.
92011002 Interference arising from desire produces catastrophe on catastrophe, as the phenomenon Jesus shows. Nudge only. Only the gentlest perseverance really furthers.
92011101 Grace = Tao.
92012101 Does it help the dance? That is the only question.
92012201 The loving emulation of the other is mutually, mysteriously beneficial. Hence the yoga postures. (My own: "Tree.")
92012801 Surfers who can’t fall off the wave.
92012802 Why did you give up the quest for beauty?
92031101 The self that is not the self. It is afraid of being turned off. HAL.
92031102 Choose, at every moment, what you pay attention to. Or the computer-self will choose for you. It will even nudge you hard if it doesn’t like your choice.
92031102 Energy to do the choosing: prana. Or just: breath.
92032001 Gods in training? More likes god manqué.
92041301 Massive wisdom [drawing of free]. Trivial wisdom [drawing of book].
92041302 Ah. A part dies, does die, stops, ceases. A part lives, continues, exists outside time.

Thus, the internal and external confusion. The mortal, through the immortal, is (or may be) aware of its mortality. It responds in any of a thousand, a million ways ("teeming humanity"), positive, negative, creative, destructive, loving, hating, supportive, cynical, democratic, republican, socialist, fascist, communal, individual, etc. At home with the body, it almost always dominates, especially in a materialist culture. And many a life is but a prolonged tantrum as the mortal part feels or denies in way or another the terminal self.

The other part? No angel, it, nor devil either. But oh so gentle and patient (to its mortal twin, maddeningly, coldly, cruelly patient).

Both dream. That is, each dreams. Thus the confused material-metaphysical mix of dreams recalled and studied.

The immortal part can (and does nightly) leave the body. The mortal part cannot, cannot, cannot, and is nightly hurt and terrorized by sleep and the other’s departure which sleep brings.

(And possibly. you, the unspeakable you, are neither. If that is so, there is no reason to close the parentheses, nor reason to end the sentence

92041303 The bliss of trees. It’s free for the sharing. Go to it.
92052201 We co-create the future. The Neanderthals are overwhelmed, left behind, throwing fits.
92052202 We are eternally empowered, every moment.
92062701 There is resistance (to going within). Habit, entities?
92062702 Nightly, we go to the edge of all maps, forget, then splash about at the edge of all oceans. Canoes? Compasses? Not in this culture.
92070201 Read translations of a work as seemingly ambiguous as the Tao Te Ching has an advantage: ones gets to see how many possible reactions and (mis-)interpretations there are.
92070202 I needed 53 years to translate the first word of the title. How long, then, for the entire work?
92071801 We need emotional, psychic baths as surely as we need physical ones. We are splashed by anger, begrimed by tension, dirtied by competition, soiled by envy and ambition, daily, hourly, minutely.
92101005 Do not mock the angels Inept or not, they bruise so easily.
93030407 Es nähert sich was schöneres.
93031401 Where’s the darkness, where the night?

Which the switch that kills the light?

The madman’s hand, stray atom’s jump?

93040901 Stop the words. Stop the words, at least occasionally. Enable perception of the 10,000 things.
93041101 Breathe.
93041201 He says, "Do not eat." But the very purpose of his rearing is to teach us to eat. Defenseless, we are all cast out. What child can resist such seduction?
93041701 Do you think they wanted to create this world?

Are we paying attention differently now?

93092204 We are shaped by invisible weather.
93101501 The field has lain fallow for a long time.
93101901 The universe, as it is, whatever it is, whatever you do or don’t do.
93101902 To go outside, one door is enough.
93102201 The trees also sleep (not only in winter). Focused intruders not welcome.

The sun is always there, its door open to all comers.

93102401 The gates of Heaven are open. Here. Now. Always.
93102501 Be patient. The older you are, the thicker and stronger the rigidities: mental, emotional, physical, metaphysical.
93102701 The ten thousand things, the ten thousand universes. All congruent.
93102801 The wild horse, the chattering monkey. Be still, be quiet.
93102901 Learning to turn off the computer also means learning to turn it on.
93103101 The three rules are: relax, relax, and relax.
93110101 Are you ready to listen?
Are you willing to listen?
Are you able to listen?
Then:
Are you ready to speak?
Are you willing to speak?
Are you able to speak?
93110301 To build a small, fertile island.
93110501 24-hour delivery,
93110601 Acolyte? No.
Apprentice acolyte? No.
Apprentice acolyte applicant? Yes.
93110801 Other spectra are also chockfull of broadcasts.
93111201 Abide with them.
93111301 The great mystery: redundant actions. (Lao-Tze 24).
93111501 The ten thousand things, the ten thousand teachers.
93111502 Do this, and much is possible, much is bearable.

Do not do this and nothing is possible, nothing is bearable.

93120201 Other baths are available for the taking, of other body odors offend.
93122601 Make your breath like that of the tree: what does the tree inhale?

Make you mind like that of the tree: what does the tree think?

Make you heart like that of the tree: what does the tree desire?

94010101 Out of words, into symbols.
94012501 Texas + America +_ Germany + China = Me.
94012502 Truant Thoughts on a Favorite Meditation Object

Lucky rock.
Lucky me.
Lucky we.
Lucky me.
Lucky lucky.

94012701 My little package of treasured fears: how much we prefer the fear-filled known to the fear-free unknown.
94022004 Go fishing with your mind.
94043001 Tyrant ego, centered here, strengthens with age, blocking more and more one’s access to there. There, with its seeming sources:

1. Repository thinking.

2. Resonant thinking: order, creativity.

3. Resonant thinking: chaos, destruction.

We unconsciously participate, constantly. We praise the "creators" (Mozart), curse the "destroyers" (Hitler), and puzzle over the "shuttlers" (Nixon). Is it not time to learn how to learn how to make our participation conscious?

94061001 Which room?

Which window?

Which door?

94062101 The self-aggrandizing we shall always have with us. Deal with them at your own risk.
94091901 A medium is a message.
94092401 Who (or what) is writing poems to, from, and about this tree-me?
94092401 Foolish feats. We pride ourselves on the results of our pointed acts, unaware of their true sources and true results. What does the rain know of the flood?
94092403 Professional success in academia is largely a reward for being blind to—or choosing to be blind to—the beauty of one’s students.
94092404 Then: Vulcanism in art, science, religion. Dualism, conflict. Not: Neptunism. Immersion in nature. Ambiance.
94100901 In my 58th year it finally occurs to me: I should be famous because Ruth loves me.
94101901 This cursed language: I am: not merely an active verb, it is the only active verb.
94101902 Meditation: un-reading readiness.
94103001 For all its good, acculturation, unfettered, leads to paralysis of the mind (Reich). Unaware, the West resorts to short-term relief (art, science, alcohol, Sunday religion, calisthenics of various kinds, etc.).
94103002 There is much to be said for the reality hidden beneath the trappings of the East’s various rituals of ancestor memorialization. The grateful living as well as the grateful dead.
94111601 [Symbol: prohibitory circle with "2"]
94111602 Semele the seductress.
94112601 I am tiptoeing around the outer precincts of Heaven like an AA member in a ginmill.
94112901 The usually silent, rarely visible audience. Except at intermission. (And, of course, intromission too.)
94112902 Children, pressed, leap toward appearances. Ambition, a childish mis-reading of the world.
94120701 The body as emblem and emissary of nature. Thus to love.
94121201 From ice and snow to water and warmth.
95012501 Well seen, any object is the door to the self.
95030401 Art, like all else, succeeds to the extent that the acts honors Tao and exalts Teh.
95030402 We live in an age that thinks the work’s title is "Tao Ching."
95033101 Even the most trapped escape into the freedom of the night. Hitler also slept.
95051201 If you believe in the lost, the found has little meaning.
95052701 What have you done today to please the invisible audience?
95053001 The internal classroom. The invisible classroom.
95053002 Metaphysical health, disease. Our tantrums, many of which we call "success" or "failure." Our pouring silences, many of which we call "war" or "art". How many of us dutifully attend class every day even when our progress is slow? Our psychotic episodes, many of which we call "religion" or "business" or "education." Our childish, fear-filled, self-centered fantasies, many of which we call "science."
95060101 We are such metaphysical litterbugs.
95070801 The blind leading the deaf leading the lame leading the paralyzed leading the leprous leading the rational leading the rational leading the rational.
95071408 What you need to give up is the habit of needing to give up the habit.
95072101 In whose time do trees grow slowly?
95072201 If this is the dark, think what the light must be like.
95072301 Paralyzed by culture, we, incredibly, sink and drown, sink and drown, in this rich and buoyant sea.
95072501 If this is the light, think what the dark must be like.
95080701 We are metaphysically starved, starving.
95080702 We are adults still listening to metaphysical fairy tales. Here, science is no better than religion.
95081501 What is the opposite of gravity? Joy.
95082901 Go to school. A system of protection is in place there. Crossing guards exist.
95082902 The good news is that things are mute. The bad news is that we think they are therefore dumb. Free, infinitely patient, incessant teachers. But so subtle.
95083001 The ego at first fears it is presiding over its own funeral.
95090301 All this even, especially, in sadness.
95113001 Today I opened a window on infinity