I know a lot of spiritual practitioners who speak often of 'non-duality'.   I'm no stranger to the concept, having studied and sort-of practiced 'its' realization for many years.  But,  over those years I've realized I was barking up the wrong tree-  I still don't really have an actual, living relationship with non-duality, which of course is far from saying that I'm ultimately a dual creature.  But duality and non-duality are both experiences that are both, in their true nature, non-dual.  It's the ground on which we figure. Awareness itself is non-local- it cannot be found, anywhere.  So, all there 'is' is duality.  The 'isness' itself is non-dual.

But I've been getting into duality, 'coz it's sexy.  Am I being seduced?  I hope so, by Divine Love anyway.  I discovered I was a far more devotional, feeling oriented individual underneath my conditioning, and that my quest for the 'non-dual', for me, only heightening my headiness.  I grew subtly snooty through favoring higher chakras and the head.  (Why call it 'non-dual'- a negative?  What does the mind do with 'non'-anything.  Deconstruct?  Sounds like that's the purpose, but contemplating 'unity' seems a more intuitive and effective tag.....)

For more on non-duality, check here.  Totally profound stuff, and the central path for many sincere practicioners. 

But 'higher' , or more absolute, is not necessarily better, as I have discovered.  Spiritual, or and kind of development,  is a ladder; each rung important, and 'spiritual bypassing', wanting to skip rungs because the notion that  it's better at the top (ah ego always wants it!) is rampant.

For me, learning to feel love, the tender kind that the head either idealizes (castrating it) or just ignores.  And I have so much resistance- not to the idea, but to the actual surrendering to.  I do feel that for most folks, learning to feel, and rest in, that loving joy that is right there, if you would feel it is the best medicine for what we are going through, the changes, the anxiety, the groundless uncertainty. 

Right in the middle of our chests- such Gold and Higher Pleasure.


Also- here's a gem that most people simply won't believe, or trust- but times are strange and the power plants have so much to teach.................

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/07/02/hallucinogen-gives-lasting-spiritual-boost.html

It's really strange,  being caught between eternity and the next minute.  Oh..........tick.  There it is again..................tick. Right when you think tick, well, then you'll get tock.

Fucking tock............a sarcastic tick, reminding you that that there is no end of endings in this Endlessness.

Is this a good thing?  I will cry out such a question to the Godhead Itself.  I will tear the answers from my own breast at times, leaving me bleeding and unable to move or even blog.

There's an exquisite pain inherent in all this- not the terrible agony of actually wanting to know, or control even worse..........

...............but a beautiful pain that says that you're alive and that you mean it.  You'll climb up on a cross and nail yourself snug if it means the Love and Power that grows impatient for Herself might be hurried towards a fuller Birth.

........................and maybe you already have.

Wanna glimpse of.....................Whaaaaa? 

Do your brows meet in the middle?

Middle meeting brows buckle under the brushy for two reasons- grandpa or grandma. 

Grandpa kept a sharp eye out and about.  Grandma loved without a doubt. 

Another Middlebrow:  Love and wisdom- a little girl befriending a serpent.  Without that snake, we'd be Children of Love, pure light with no shadow.  Is that what the universe has in Mind?  A basin of attraction without a lot of action.  No orgasm without friction.  No fact without fiction.

So go ahead and lie- the truth will imply.  But for this, you have to lie with total honesty and good heart, the Heart which lies in the Middle, way underbrow. 

In the Bon tradition, (and many others) we all have a Central Channel running from our crown right on down, straight into the Ground.  A gap that opens sharp and gentle.  It can cut anything that needs cutting,  a simple sword that never dulls-

But can we bare it? 

Man, it's a hot sticky night here in Appalachia, and the katydids are falling in and out of group rythm, cranking up the darkness.  I don't know much more than these basic facts. I like being later and later in Summer all the time, and all that goldeningnow and to come.  Slowing down, Late Summer coasts along towards now, frictionless in the heat and slipping through the heart into all the summers you've ever had, stretching back and back............

And sideways- all of us having our own summer, at once. Many millions of summer days all days of summer................

Here's a pic taken yesterday- the flowers are fresh.

Come with me, dear reader, while we walk with care into a typical summer garden.  Things growing under leaves that you have to watch out for- snaking along,  (especially if it's an actual snake) measuring the sun' leaning once again to the south.   Soil and rain just bustin' out melons.  Bust me out some melons please.  LIfe and death there too, a struggle over zukini.  Zukinis often win, by the look of  them- I won't eat them because I don't eat things that big and scary.

But there's more on my mind than cauliflower and the like- vegetable as photo shows above.  Tastefully uncluttered with the usual crayonillia excess- no sir, I'm going to be strictly tasteful here on out.  I'll photograph only the finest, organically grown produce that mankind has come to grips with.

"Harvest" is the first album I ever bought, age 13, and sunk into my outstretched soul like a golden stone.  And Neil's never let me down.  Must be strange, people you don't know but they do- they know you-

Everybody knows everyone in a garden. 

Hey- don't get me wrong here.  It's not like the Earth never does anything bad.........

Sometimes it gets out of line with the other planets.  Sometimes it pulls sort-of weird things into it's orbit, like the Moon- which is, strangely, older than the Earth by a goodly measure. And looks it.  Could of been a prettier celestial object, Earth.   A Moon that is hiding- something.  Never lets us look at it's dark side, Pink Floyd notwithstanding.

Sometimes it doesn't look both ways before crossing the Universe.  Sometimes it lacks gravitas, and doesn't play in the press.  Seems passive, only throwing a tsunami around every now and again.   Sometimes it hires the wrong God to watch over it's forests, cliffs, brooks, otters and so on.  Like Jehovah- Jesus, what a God that motherfucker was.........  Sometimes it spins too fast.  Other times it just sits down and says fuck it- pops a stone in your birkenstock, just like that.

But all in all, the Earth is pretty freakin' good.  If the Dead were right, we are the eyes of the world. 

I can see that.