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.