1/9/19
A warrior knows discipline
A cold shower in the beginning
The morning of waking of sixty thousand
Thoughts that thirty minutes later
Are gone.
The warrior knows that feelings
Do not drive actions
That spirit drives for power
And not in the sense of Western success
Rather power that is the ability to be present
To continue to search and seek and write questions
To wonder what made Bill Cosby chastise black people
What made him believe that everything was better back then?
Maybe what makes us all believe in nostalgia
A wavering between past and future, the nature of ego
So he chased his childhood, when in reality
His childhood was filled with some of the same he detests;
He had no father and grew up fending for himself
When Ta-Nehisi Coates was asked what it was that helped him rise
That took him from the pupil that could do no right
To the biggest castle in the United States, he said,
“It was curiosity, a deep wondering, a questioning.”
Children must not be robbed of opportunities to question
Whether what is done makes sense
Whether this world is on a course
They would have designed
Or, for their own concepts, what might be grasped
What are the possibilities, the ideas, the windows and mirrors
What is love but a sort of desire to see the lights come on
In the eyes of a child there is still a mystical smile
A confused but alert state of grace that should be encouraged
Before the beat down of form takes place, before
The underlying ideas and the means of each faction attempt to grab them
The triangle of body, mind, and spirit
And where do you fall this morning that might be described as cold
Though for a salmon fisherman the opposite would be true.
Your perception shapes you and makes you, your thoughts
Are fully capable of being stopped, of being thanked,
Of being used to direct the source that flows
To say within you is miscommunication for that implies
A bundle of separate sources, each flowing within
An animal, man, a stone, when
The great reality is more like a buzzing that hums
And travels at the speed of light, going nowhere
While constantly moving, this source, this contact
This notion that everything is perfect, and this combined with
The ego that works with other egos to believe in worry
To take guilt as an honored tradition
To take being busy as a badge of honor
You hear: multitasking, never stop, morning, noon and...
Night will come regardless of whether you trouble yourself
Night will come to carry you on its shoulders
And before you know morning, you might sit
On a porch in the darkness
The song of chickens, the song of silence
The space between the two, for some of them
Have been trained to call to others, the roosters mainly, for
You as a human present danger, sometimes
Present food, present space, present a window
Air conditioner on which for them to sit
Present the blocking of wind
And take the topic of racism and realize that this
White elephant stands steady in every forum
In every manner we pass along, black and white
And all colors in between, we go on as if there is not work
To be done. There must be a coming together, an opening
A listening to the voices of others, lack of words like
“Must”
For this is what separates us: the very knowing, the false belief in certainty
The need to take what started as love and turn this into gain
The corruption that exists within the nonprofit industrial complex
And the reporting of truths, for this news goes unseen, the uncovering
The discovering, and the discarding of old ideas
How best to take what grows from these discussions
(Even best is not the word to be considered), rather, let
Discomfort become our greatest teacher.
Sit in silence after somebody has spoken. Take a minute
To listen to what he or she has to say, rather than spinning
The record of ego the entire time and missing what is before you.
With the notion of intention, the notion of only what I know
Which is reconnecting to the earth and the world we are part of
I seek that my body and mind align with the source of these intentions
And plant trees and create space and A has found more people
D has family that wish. Think again about a hundred years from now:
This was the question that did not get me hired
After meditation:
The great question of difference between discipline and control
Between the warrior and beating yourself up
Between making mistakes and fitting into the moment
When schedules are set each day see if there becomes more time
More time as a result of knowing when
The thought comes that meditating in the evening and writing
In the evening would take away needed time: a sign perhaps
That the mind is too busy, scheduling moments into planners
Fitting every minute to serve some course
Could source be asked in each pencilling in…
Does this fit with my intention?
Does this lead to the connection between people and land?
Too vague perhaps. The light in the bedroom window
Mr. and Mrs. Lee, both close to eighty, awake
She is half Jamaican and half Native American
and sends you text messages that say: God loves you, my baby.
She is half Jamaican and half Native American
and sends you text messages that say: God loves you, my baby.
It would seem that within this discipline there will come more discipline
Frivolity will fade in the sense that the necessary, the times away
From source will leave, will no longer be participated in
So how to address and determine where everything falls
For so long the answer was to say yes to everything
When your world wasn’t so busy, so full,
There was this possibility
Now you have grown. Now you have done more than just the Vanborghini travels
And there is the need to align God and mind to answer each question
A schedule does not take; it gives
A schedule allows time for you--there must be balance
In the beginning balance might be laughed at, might be misunderstood
Now to reign in the idea of taking everything in moderation
Including moderation. The talk has turned and gone beyond, so let’s get back
The subject at hand, the beginning, the need for discipline and where are you?
Mind is served by the morning writing and meditation, spirit by the connection
To the earth and to the attempts to give to fellow beings
(Here I pause to think: is not being and earth one in the same?)
The body has been forgotten. It could be argued
The least important of the three, but then the very vehicle
For carrying the rest, without health this body will affect the other two
So search today and find a place with sauna and swimming,
Make a schedule that may involve rising at four in the morning, that may involve
Going to bed at nine o’clock at night. This is what the great spirit advises
This is what the day and morning have made, when the chill is outside
There is a desire for comfort and nothing wrong in this
Each morning a desire for candles both outside and in
For more plants in the house for the feng shui to raise the vibration
For the clutter to be taken and hid
Without need for television
Let the experiences of truth of those around you guide
No need for the mechanisms of facebook or the way the mind
Is placed under the microscope
To create algorithms
Make your own waves with jello and let the ego run wild sometimes
On the page. In order to get free from what is not reality
Let divinity underlie all that has been written, even ego
Even lack of vision, absence of inspiration
What some would call mindless typing. A word
That should be addressed: mindless.
This should be seen as a positive;
Mindful, on the other hand, could use investigation.
Go first with the power of language, the power of interaction
The power of trust, and in this find the hearts of children
Let these hearts build strong minds for what I have seen so far:
Hearts crushed in order to control minds, in order to make minds fit in a box.
Every mind is different and need not be exposed to the same things
A tough course when all the world is questions without answers
A tough course when you want what you want in the next second
Change takes time, takes long past your own life
Yet what are you doing right now, in this moment, are you talking
Or building a coalition? Are you bringing people together with the understanding
That what we do now will have an effect on the world in 2120?
This is the question they did not want to answer
This is the question I posed at the end of my interview, when asked
By the head of the gardens for three different schools:
“Do you have any questions for us?”
I asked her, “Where do you see this garden and this program and the effects
In one hundred years?”
She didn’t have an answer. This went far beyond ego. This is a question for spirit
For more than “me”. This is a question that can only be answered
By one that believes that the word human and bird mean the same thing.
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