Nations

The motive of a nation, its reason of being, is to provide a coherent container for its inhabitants. To consolidate the myriads of humans, households, and communities, as well as their resources, needs, objectives, and efforts into one composite unit with a comprehensible identity and direction. Physical stability, safety, fluid commerce, the wide distribution of arts and expressions, and the many benefits arisen from nations, are but side effects of what they essentially provide: coherency among a container of human units.

The solution of the nation arises naturally to solve the problem of scattered focus and wasted effort. It is but a relatively stable or congealed level of the iterative grouping which results in the natural hierarchy observed at all levels in nature. As such, its identity stands on its own, and does not depend on its environment or on its circumstances to be defined.

Its identity is however often conflated to introduce elements of competition, or of juxtaposition, with other nations around it. Having grown mindlessly, often greedily, to the point where their borders clash against each other with force, nations all around the world frequently, and almost continuously, divert their attention from their own well-being towards the aggression that one or more nations insist on pursuing towards each other.

The identity of a nation is composed of the identity its inhabitants assign to it, and thus the identity of a nation will only be as coherent and strong as that assigned by them who populate it. A nation divided truly is like a broken bottle or a cracked pipe - it is unable to serve its purpose, the contents that leak through the cracks spill out and are wasted, and if its inhabitants do not realize the waste of their nation is induced by their own ineptitude, they will attempt to appropriate the resources of another, either by force, coercion, or deceit, and only exacerbate the friction and the lack of internal awareness needed to truly heal their own problems.

It is helpful to any citizen, then, to ponder the motive and identity of his own nation, and of nations in general, so that they may realize the true dynamics, complexities, and needs of their own nation and community, and to observe where in their own life and environment, in his every-day life, has his lack of awareness caused unnecessary waste or friction. Then can he truly contribute to the betterment of the society he inhabits, and by doing so, to the growth and betterment of himself.

Abrazarte

Quiero abrazarte
No sólo buscando tu calor para alimentarme
No sólo para nutrir mi sed emocional con tu cariño
No sólo para sentirme aceptado en este vasto mundo

Sino para sentirte, saberte, y recordarte
Como otro reflejo de Yo.
Para escuchar el canto de tu cuerpo
Con voces de geometría, calor, movimiento, y textura.
Para escuchar el murmullo de tu sentir
En el rubor de tus mejillas y el brillar de tu sonrisa
En el olor de tu piel y el sabor de tu aliento.
Para escuchar los impulsos de tu mente
Que suspiras con suavidad
En nuestro espacio de íntima verdad.

Quiero abrazarte
No sólo para sentirme querido
No sólo para extraer dulces placeres
De nuestras llanuras cóncavas y convexas,
No sólo para validar la autoestima
De nuestros niños interiores.

Sino para acercar nuestros seres
Nuestras energías
Densas y sutiles
Descubrirnos, abrirnos,
Capa tras capa,
Momento a momento,
Caricia tras mirada tras revelación
Fluir en baile armonioso
Hacia una deliciosa y eventual unión.
Reunión.

Me ayudas a conocerme
A través de tu plena Verdad.

Makeshift

Laws and restrictions and contracts

One atop another atop another atop another

Piled up so high we don't know what lies beneath

We don't remember

Or dare not look, for it might disturb

The tower of cards and paperweights

We have come to adopt

Out of which we have carved our houses

In which we live

Around which our routines cling like vines

Artificial rooms and ladders

We dare not disturb

Nor we care to turn away from

These laws are the patches

That cover the pipe leaks

The contracts but zip-ties

To force flow together

We clamp with restrictions

Where the pressure is mounting

To avoid those unseemly leaks

To appear like our machinery

Is correct and proper and clean

Yet what truly underlies us

Is rarely what it seems.

We place bucket excuses where we can't

Avoid the over or under flow

To collect it or feed it.

Delaying and ignoring all along

That the cause of the misflow

lies deeper than we've known.

Like a lazy mechanic, we patch up the gaps

We tighten what seems loose and move on.

The buckets we litter our floor with

Every once in a while

They fill and they spill and they fall

Or the channels that carry our life flow

They burst or they dry or they break

And then we feel and we cry and we curse

All the flow we had so long ignored.

Tis then a fair chance to remember

We're meant to actually fix these flows

By looking and seeking inside

Through deeper understanding.

If awareness gleams out from the dark

Veil of our forgetfulness

If curiosity sparks within

About the dynamics and mechanics in us

About what we truly are

If diligence rises from the squalor

Of our own self-contempt

If we glimpse the light of care

That lies in the core of our being

We may then choose to turn inward

And see. And feel. And trace. And understand.

And accept.

Our flow, our misflow, and its cause.

Then but trust that the light of awareness we have shed

On the ailing cause or wound

Will gradually and stepwise help heal

Our inflamed and dry channels

Our gappy and patchy pipes

Beyond what we've known

Then the patches fall off, obsolete.

Then the clamps and zip-ties that

Were meant as arm cast and sling

Become handicaps, straightjacket and noose.

Then the buckets are naught but obstacles

We can pick up and drain out and let go

This turning inward and exploring

Becomes then invaluable method

Of the experienced mechanic

We can again and again turn to

To find the cause of an ailment

Of a misflow, mispressure, or leak.

And slowly, and gently, and suddenly,

We'll find we can mop up the damp floors

We'll again walk where there were old puddles

We'll rush to and fro less and less,

Not needing to reinforce the patches

Not draining the filled, littering buckets

Not avoiding the slippery floors

Just being. Just flowing.

Just breathing. Just seeing.

Then softly, then brightly, then soltiduminously

We see the fullness

The eternal spectacle

Of what is Here.

Of what We Are.