softness

When transitions of consciousness are edgy, the flow is disrupted, and turbulence is induced. It takes an act of will to guide the awareness back to a smooth, continuous flow.

Thus a practice of softness can help the edgy individual. Softness with our choices, with our actions, with our emotions, and with our thoughts. Softness on the inside, and softness on the outside- softness to allow the motions a smooth transition. The one's curve of consciousness can become a smooth (infinitely-derivable?) manifold, and then one can be said to live with grace.

Alwaysness

The always-ness of the Now makes it unnovel, uninteresting to the unstable mind. It knows and assumes It will always be there, and decides instead to focus on the opportunities of escape purported by the tantalizing future, by the known masticated past, or by the immediate fancies of fantasy. Yet even in success, comfort, and achievement, these do not - can not- satisfy wholly. For whole satisfaction is found only in wholeness, and all of these temporary means foe scape (if we could only remember!) are but incomplete fragments of the Now.

Doubt not what you do. Heed only that your consciousness is open, whole, and awake as you do, live, and are.

Continuous, unholding, bright Awareness. Of all you perceive.

Soft, joyful, regretless Choice. At each fluid step.

Live. Whole and True.

outbreath

Sometimes I write with the intent of inducing a reaction.

Of having others observe my experience

And agree with it.

Of finding support in the readers

in the hypothetical future of my fancy.

But then there are other times

when reception is not the aim

when the written does not need a reader

to accomplish its intent.

These are times when the written

has no goal but itself.

The expression of a truth within

allowed to bloom as a mere outbreath

of the complexity I've become.

Reproduction.

Those times the written holds truth

and need not be read nor remembered

yet exists

as an outgrowth of my being.

Seeker

if you wish to know the truth of this world,

you must come to know yourself.

For there is no seeing without the seer,

no knowing without the knower,

and even the purest lens cannot remedy

the vision of a distorted observer.

Take your unhappiness and ponder, whereby does it come?

"Is it really mine if I never accepted it to be?"

Why feel so much struggle, distress, and frustration

for something that is not of your own creation?

Take your happiness and ponder, whereby does it come?

"Is it really mine if it cannot stay with me?"

Why feel so much pride, attachment, and greed

to achieve an emotion that always recedes?

See the animal you inhabit, consider its shape

its organized tissues in form incarnate.

Are you its desires, its hungers, its needs?

Do you wish to be ruled by this living machine?

Look in deeper and ponder, what steers its actions?

"Am I just a wondrous Rube Goldberg contraption?"

Is the choice I experience a constant illusion,

and if so, what's the goal of such needless collusion?

Sink deeper and wonder, what is this existence?

"Does the flow of pure Being need my active assistance?"

What matter if my hopes and my path diverge,

if all possible roads eventually merge?

Be still then, dear seeker, and merely allow.

What you feel and see is the Truth of the Now.

A gift of experience for you to observe

what occurs when the world tests your strength and your nerve.

A chance to take on the hero's stride

and save yourself from a dreary ride.

Act yet allow, therein lies the key

that opens the door to a life full and free.

Pristine

In her tiny newborn body,

in the mechanics of her unwilled breath

in her tender reactive spasms

in her immediate responses to minute details

in her frequent frustrations and discomforts

in her unfiltered coos and cries

in her unpolluted nature

I see the gift and plight of humanity.

Absolute sensitivity.

Continuous stream of senses and consciousness,

All of it queueing to be seen, to be felt

To be digested and assimilated,

Incessant, relentless,

very often overwhelming,

and thus much of it ignored.

And initially uncolored.

Merely swaths of data looking for some organization.

Then the new vehicle, this body of old design,

identifies what it knows, and evokes pleasure and pain.

Pleasure towards what helps it grow,

and pain towards what hurts it.

The conscious self then, instigated by these inner forces,

shapes its own mold from the body's opinion.

Thence comes the polarization of experience,

the separation onto the good and the bad.

And if this duality the mind is allowed to believe,

it yields its authority to the happy and the sad.

And in this fall onto desire

due to a lack of mental fire,

lies the crux to the wealth of lamentations

that have lived alongside humans for many generations.

For then one assumes that one's consciousness becomes aware

to serve and fear and slave away to our body's core alarms,

when in fact it is but our vehicle, and though it needs good fuel and care,

Its outer details are minor, like its pleasures, pains, and harms.

And in this newborn's nature, and what I feel her rile in me,

A fractal-like reflection of the human self I see.

When she feels any kind of pain, annoyance, or commotion,

the unfiltered feeling expresses through her coos and cries and motions.

And somehow I, the father, feel pulled to appease her dislike,

much like her hunger was my hunger and her discomfort my own plight.

And if I neglect to first think of why she might be feeling this way,

Inner chains pull at my instincts and coerce me to help her right away.

But if I pause and consciously choose to first think,

I train my mind and will to override that primal link.

To firmly hold the reins while handling her with care,

just like one can feel one's urges, yet walk through life aware.

My newborn manifests in flesh my own inner child,

her body an innocent automaton, unfiltered, raw, and wild.

Her pains and desires I feel just like mine,

and they pull me to attend to her every little sign.

Yet her wellbeing does not always lie in the utter negation

of her every itch, ache, pain, and little frustration.

Her mission in life now is to simply explore,

and my role is to help her without overriding her will,

or to take away from her changes for exposure

to the effects of her actions, to deprive her of closure

for her own choices, for her highest concern

in this life she came into is to gradually learn.

So her body, emotions, and desires, just like mine,

are in perpetual flux, unpredictable in time.

And though it is prudent to heed their signs,

what should best hold the reins are our will, soul, and mind.

Birth

We all come from blood, pain, gore, marrow, and void, 

All of which most humans prefer to avoid.

Perhaps because their first entrance was not soft or clean, 

But felt rushed, unwelcome, tossed, or demeaned.

The essence of newborn is soft and simple,

New body absorbing every tiny speck and wrinkle.

Each whisper, each light wave, each friction on skin

Vibrates the pure white slate of consciousness within.

And just like our own selves when we listen and stop, 

The gentle is pleasing, the rough sudden is not.

Laying down in dark silence with her, I learn to observe

How many mean sensations I've grown to tolerate.

Quick zippers, rushed footsteps, sudden clacks and bangs,

Common plastic rustling, loud voices and fans.

Even soft rustles of sheets and sheers

Can be jagged prickles to a newborn's tender ears.

Each flicker of candle, each unaccounted lumen

presses unto the eyes of this new sensitive human.

And just as our smell carries subtle detection,

She too feels fear, anger, joy, and other affections.

The vast of the world she's thrust into is overwhelming

And her first need, once she breathes, is observing

The myriads of new inputs flooding her brain

And training to deal with her sensorial pain.

For the suddenness of birth can be a trauma

From a dark, red, warm cave to a sudden flood of drama.

One's body is helpless, strange giants are all around,

And the world that was home is nowhere to be found.

So when a new human first comes out to the light,

We ought to imagine that we share her plight.

To pay the utmost attention, and like her become pristine,

So her entry is seen, soft, careful, and maximally clean.

merged

she and I have grown. Deep and softly. Inward and outwardly. I tell us at times: we are one. We have merged into a literal being we call our relationship, our partnership, and now we are learning the art of loving ourself with the help of loving one another.

Subjective or metaphorical or fantastic as it may seem, I feel this is what is really happening. Loving myself has been reflected to me over and over again as I engage with her, and then loving her has been reflected to me as the Love that I can give myself, and that I sometimes deny.

In the One being that we have merged into, I see complementing attributes arise out of each of us. In her I perceive our sensitivity, and in me our... Activity? I don't quite know what I bring to the our being, but I do feel that we balance each other. In more than one way. And sometimes when she falls out of balance, I help support her. And when I fall out of balance, she helps support me. And step by step, day by day, we grow and learn with ourselves and with each other. Day by day, event by event, fear by fear. At the pace of nature - one step at a time.

Libido

I wonder at times why

my libido has diminished bit by bit

since finding the prize of my desires.

Day by day and night by night,

my enthusiasm for sex is not quite as bright

as I had known it to be

as I had suffered it to be

as I had assumed it to be

as I had needed it to be.

Twas always my experience

that the chance of female liaison

would drive me to great lengths

would lure me to real risks

would move me to long journeys

would have me dream great plans

just for the chance to share

that

look.

to touch

that

hand.

to smell

that

breath.

to feel

that

warmth.

to live through that alluring

dancefloor strobe of enticements, one by one.

her eyes

her hands

her hair

her smile

she laughs

she plays

she is glad

I am there.

her feline walk, her playful lure.

to play that game with a willing partner

is all my child desired to procure.

that ride of seduction, the waves of desire,

that prize was the explosive

fuel for my inner fire.

It made me cross countries

It made me traverse

new journeys I otherwise

wouldn't know were there.

My life line drew richer

as it explored new paths

and the fuel that prize gave me

took me long, far, and wide.

Then one day, unwitting, a partner arrived

and our partnership lasted unintentionally.

And as night by night, we'd seduce us and fuck,

my girl-hunting psyche realized its luck.

That sweet prize, adored and sacred

was now with me each night.

And if my past goal was now a given,

what use was the fire without the fight?

So little by little, and naturally,

my libido decreased for the sake of efficiency.

Her allure still attracted, and though it felt very nice,

more and more would I think about doing it twice.

My mind began drifting and wandering off

and I seriously wondered, "what's going on?

My energy is dormant, my playfulness is subdued,

Do I, wretched ungrateful, now dislike my own food?"

"Her sweetness is real, my prize is finally here.

why doesn't it shine as bright, now that it's so near?"

I'd heard people say when man settles, his belly expands,

concordant with less energy from satisfied glands.

It wasn't inevitable, there had to be something more,

and I dove in to ponder into my core.

And in there, I realized the problem was straight.

No fire need burn to reach my current state.

What I missed was that power, that passion, that fire

that propelled me to places farther and higher.

As on this I pondered, I realized the truth:

I could not the same thing possess and desire.

I suspect that others, when reaching this state

are perplexed when their drive gradually dissipates

and may then, if hungry once more for desire,

seek other prizes around them to kindle their fire.

A woman, a mission, a shiny new car,

an office that's bigger, a journey afar.

More money, more power, anything that sparkles,

and lets the hunger for hunger continue its cycles.

I think, though, that that path is but a distraction

that repeats old paths through unconscious reaction.

I suspect the way out of such doomed iteration

is to transmute base desires into aspiration.

That is, to observe that the desired was obtained,

and that through it nothing of essence was gained.

The hunger was sated, the rush is now quiet.

Can we hear the silence, and sit calmly by it?

Deep down in the silence, one can only accept

one is neither good, bad, better, worse, or correct.

For any such judgment tips the scale at the center

and deviates pure Being onto the Presenter.

And if one attends to that silence inside,

one can also feel base desires fly by.

Attractions, repulsions of body and mind,

tug at one like magnets many-a size, shape, and kind.

And as they fly by, the astute observer

can see that those urges are not truly theirs.

They only concern the body and mind,

while our essence is of a subtler kind.

So when one is no longer glamoured by desire,

what then is there that can light our fire?

This question I ponder, and so far I surmise

one can still dance with attractions

and not fall for their disguise.

We can harness their forces to our ideal

rather than fall slave to their appeal.

Having then seen the nature of desire,

one can turn to the Self, to fully aspire

to Truth and to Love, which reside higher

than the goals and prizes many yearn and admire.

Breadcrumbs

February 25, 2025

Flowed have I here. Not run, nor marched, nor coerced. Flowed. On waves both strong and calm, in skies both stormy and clear. No plan my mind designed wove my path, and no built-up expectation found here its satisfaction. In a place of flowing surprise live I, and bit by bit, day by day, my mind and nervous system learn to trust that the flow of the seemingly random waves leads us true. Gentle, sudden, resonant - the waves bring me the full extent of their spectrum, and I learn to listen. Day by day by day.

I find myself the steward of a large villa in the mountains on an island in Greece, together with my wife Tilda. We learn to live in flow together, and we share the fears and the delights that we experience thereby. I find this experience is truly that of love. That of which gradually bonds two human beings into a larger being. We share our fears and we no longer hide them, we share our joys and its brilliant flow courses through us in resonant delight. We share our habits and we learn from each other. We share how we feel and think and act, the tiny details in our consciousness, and we realize how similar, even identical, our life essences are, and we see in each other the mirror of ourselves, showing us in full display what we are like when we feel worthy, when we feel insecure, when we feel joyful, when we feel vulnerable. I see my own needs and desires and insecurities reflected in her, and I know them to be the same as mine because I feel resonance when we connect at that depth, and she allows herself to be seen as she is - raw, true, unhidden and fearless to be seen by me, and the clear lesson I listen from Life itself is "Love". "Love". "Love those needs and desires and insecurities in yourself as much as you urge to love them in her, as you desire to let her have an open space to shed her tears and speak her words and yell and laugh her emotions out, as you desire to allow her to BE who she is, as you feel compassion for her, guided by this game of human mirrors... Love. Love yourself just like that too. For she is you, fashioned into your partner so you may help each other and play".

Day by day our habits dance with one another, as strands and shards of us are slowly revealed - even to ourselves. Through knowledge of the other we grow bolder, through recognition of ourselves in the other we grow kinder. Step by step we align our purposes, as they meld to become one. The purpose of the both, the purpose of the family. Our family. Together we grow a family, together we welcome a child. And I understand now (more) the importance that the family holds in our human race. Honored by society and revered by religions: the family manifests the creation of the new life from the union of opposites. It expresses the critical recursive step of that literal fractal of which humanity is but one branch: the Tree of Life. Creation. Generation. The offering of oneself and of one's body, skills, presence, and purpose to the building of the new, which like the partner, also reflects to us more of what we are. Or so I surmise (still).

Our unborn child is truly our guiding star. It guides us to find a country to travel to, a house to live in, the people to connect with. It guides our actions and it guides our priorities. And along the way we see, once and again and again, breadcrumbs we feel are left for us to follow the fortunate path. That gently reminds us that there IS a fortunate path, and that we need but listen and trust the wisdom of the self, the quiet certainty of the heart, to guide us true across our meandering, surprise-sprinkled path.

We see the crumbs in the little girl's sweater on the street as we came back home to Ellikon. We see the crumbs in Tilda's sister's baby gift. We see the crumbs in our doula's rag doll. In a perfectly-timed shooting star. In my sister's oblivious congratulations note. In a leftover soccer ball in our new house, on the used pink play rug we bought second-hand, on the walls of our new house's bedroom wall, and today on our midwife's sweater. Clear as crystal, our child's mark again and again, inspiring both slight disbelief and laughing smiles in us, for we do not seek them; they merely show up for us again and again and again. And we are re-fueled with joy and with laughter, and are glad to take our next steps with trust in the life that we dance day by day, that we learn, which we meld, and which we create out of ourselves. We are the flowing, growing, seeking, consuming, melding, spawning, recurring Life. Unrestrainable Nature. And the method whereby it aligns, joins, grows, and creates itself is Love.

Re-Mother

If I knew that you were like my mother,

my path would've very likely been another,

For fear would've caught my attention

and told me you'd bring me too much tension.

A voice within would've told me "don't bother,

do you again want to be ruffled and smothered?

Your voice once more trapped and imprisoned

between walls of 'should' and 'don't', unreasoned?"

I would've recoiled with forgotten horror

from the times of mute and pained sorrow

when I wished that her care wouldn't reach me

for I felt her distortions when she tried to "teach me".

But no, when I met her, she accepted

all my quirks, tastes, and unpolished bits

laissez-faire, untroubled, easy-going,

I thought that being with her,

I wouldn't need to change any parts of me.

But today as we arranged furniture

in the upstairs of our new house

I realized, one year forward,

that her patterns do follow my mom's.

They both have numerous sharp preferences

she hurts if we do other than what she asks

and I've gradually, always willingly

tamed my own choices to fit with her tastes.

And a part of me feels shocked and affronted,

even actually, ashamed and betrayed.

How could I have given up my pure freedom

and have my shape dictated by her space?

But my conscious mind knows with clarity,

(for each choice that it took, it did with care)

that each single change I allowed had a reason,

I knew the how and the why, and accepted the hence.

I know the things she cherishes,

I know what brings her fright.

And since I continue to choose to be with her,

I prefer that she feels safety and delight.

And I understand, over ten years later

past my mother's body decease

that her smothering and her overbearing

were but distorted expressions of love.

Discomfort is contained in this path I chose

but also in every possible one.

For the pain need follow the pleasure

as the valley comes after the hill.

And as I've learned this geometrical theorem,

I now seek neither pleasure nor pain.

I follow my truth at each moment

and expect neither success nor gain.

And my truth at this moment is that with her

I feel a resonant connection of soul

our hearts say a silent "yes" to each other

though we know not any definite goal.

I cherish the truth that her eyes speak.

It inspires the truth that lives in me.

So regardless of the old fears she spurs in me,

I choose her daily, uncoerced and free.

So though now I know that she is like my mother,

I realize the gift is that we can now love one another.

Meeting the fears and pains misunderstood in years past,

Life now invites me to heal them, so that love can last.

Motive

We all die. All of us - whether we rise to be sublime poets, powerful financiers, acclaimed celebrities, prosperous family founders, or whether we merely float our whole life as wisps of dust. Kings, merchants, laborers, paupers - all of us death sweeps away eventually like the wave destroys our sandcastles. All our glory and worries and fears and comrades and treasures - naught but recycled sand in the great void.

So what is it we do here? Why do we birth and grow and learn and build and love and care and strive and CARE? What role is it we fulfill in the order of the cosmos? And why should we care at all about fulfilling it?

Materially, the fruits of our collective lives and toils would seem to be the building. The history that we have inherited back across the ages, the knowledge that our forefathers have cultivated, grain by grain, is a mountain of structure and wisdom, some of it more nebulous than other, that each generation inherits, tries for itself, and builds upon. In a word, the fruit of our effort may be SOCIETY - the collective material remnants of all that previous generations managed to keep alive for those born after them. Like a tapestry - it is a collective weaving of stories, languages, customs, science, technology, and insights, including sections for the various races, nations, and groups that have contributed, upon which we continue to weave on and on.

But all these fruits matter not to he who dies, to he the I within who is swept away from this world by death and oblivion. What gains the soul from this creation and decay? What fruits does it reap from the buildings that break, from learning that stales, from partners who die? What is the role of the "I am" being that inhabits this very body that coordinates the typing of these words? Why is this intangible conscious I included in a system where only matter appears to matter?

Nature obviates the unnecessary - no pebble is forgotten and no thread is left unwoven in this vast jigsaw puzzle we inhabit. What are the motive and purpose, then, of this consciousness that we are and live and feel and exist as, day by day?

I posit matter alone does not build these structures of earth and water and flesh. That the deterministic effects and diagrams now long stale in physics textbooks are in actuality choices - a continuous stream of choice emitted from within every vibrant particle in the universe, at times called "Brownian motion" or dismissed as randomness. This stream of choice is emitted from the soul within, seen from above as disordered chaos, as one would expect from an uncountable throng of atoms. And yet from such choice emerges cohesion when groups are formed. Atoms combine to form molecules, molecules to enzymes, enzymes to cells, cells to organs, organs to plants, animals, and humans. Plants onto forests, animals onto packs and ecosystems; humans onto families, tribes, and nations. Nations unto mankind.

As a billion trillion water droplets combine to form cohesive clouds, flowing rivers, and level mists, so do our atoms combine, find each other, and weave into the cells and organs and bodies that we inhabit and use, day in and day out. The consciousnesses of the myriads of servants at our disposal care for the continuous maintenance and the minutiae of their own tiny domains, so that we, the cohesive consciousness behind our individual conglomerate body, may materialize intelligent and directed choice, our words and our actions, onto this buildable, malleable, and ever-receptive world of matter.

What for? Whence comes the choice, and towards which purpose? It comes from our essence, and it seeks satisfaction. Satisfaction of equalizing the inside with the outside, or finding balance between the intrinsic and the expressed. For with each choice we follow our urge to express who we are in one way or another, in one or another of our many dimensions, to flow out our essence, to imprint our relevance, the WHO of our ARE, onto the world. In other words, to eventually see out expressed in the world the essence of WHAT and WHO we are, in our complete and refined glory. And the answer to that universal mystery of ours is yet to come (if it ever can be fulfilled) only eons after all the bodies and knowledge and structures we have built have been discarded as mere scaffolding along the way to our final epiphany.

Thus Life flows, as us within it.

Who are you? Exercise

Who are you?

I am me who feels, who plays, who enjoys the pleasures of thi world, who dances life. The world is around me and it penetrates me, and I feel as its waves course unto me, splash me, and flow through me. The sky and the sea andthe life are mine to dance with, to feel, to sense, to dive in deeply through with my whole being.

I am one who lives in the eternal void, forever shifting and waving and cresting and troughing through peaks, voids, spectres and rainbows, symphonies and swamps. And all of it is mine, and in all of it I delight. I am one who lives. Who Lives. Regretlessly, undoubtedly, unerringly, whichever my steps and attempts and results may be.

I am one who Lives. Who Loves. All that I feel, for it is all the same essence as Me.

I am Me. The One Who Lives.

I  am. Am.

I am the One Who Delights in that I Am. I am one who enjoys the creation of the sea and the destruction of the fire. Who flies the freedom of the Wind, and walks the Foundation of Earth. I build upon myself to feel myself in all my dimensions, to know myself all that I CAN.

Who are you?

I am one who learns. Who observes, who experiences, and shares. Through sharing I grow, through feeling I know I am one link in the chain of the Life that we are. Linking and weaving our knowledge, our histories and our lessons, decade to decade, century to century, with kindness, attention, and leave? I knit carefully, conscious to pierce the needle with kindness and with consent, with their knowing that this web connects them to the rest of Life. To their origin and to their Future, if they so wish.

Pinprick

Always through the pinprick specific

do we penetrate into the general abstract,

into purer, ideal substance.

As the needle breaks into the skin to find the bloodstream,

and the specific problem situation calls upon

the help to learn the general knowledge that helps thereward,

(Necessity is the mother of intention (invention?)).

and it summons helps from others around oneself,

thus penetrating into deeper knowledge,

a deeper meeting point,

and deeper interconnection.

Thus do we live. To penetrate from the surface matter

into the knowledge of the essence.