August 29, 2016 - The Scent of Change

The Sun King is still flying high in the sky and has not noticed that something has changed.  The brilliance of his own ways often blind him, but this is the nature of the sun.  Every day he and his court dance happily across the sky, and the merriment can be heard and felt all around.  His subjects bask in his golden light, and who can blame them?  The energy is nearly irresistible.

But down in the forest under the canopy of leaves, the drumbeat has already begun.  I have been hearing the pulse for a while now.  Sometimes it’s more of a feeling than a hearing, but maybe that’s because it takes place as much within as without.  In walking by a tree, I wondered if it didn’t look just a bit different.  Those leaves didn’t look quite so green.  Or maybe it wasn’t that.  They were green but they were something else, too.  Or maybe it’s because the hermit thrush cannot be heard anymore.  I’ve searched for him in vain.  Or maybe it’s a slightly different scent to the morning air.  Whatever it is, if you have to ask yourself if something has changed, then something has changed.

The signs continue beneath the canopy, unnoticed once again.  But the squirrels know and have spread the news to all the other animals.  The hermit thrush always listens; the deer, not so much.  Yet the drums will grow louder, and soon they will all have to listen.  The old oaks are smart, though, and they don’t need the warnings from the squirrels.  They already have their own knowing, and they have begun to drop their acorns, which can be heard everywhere as they loudly crash to the forest floor.  Woe to anyone directly beneath them.  Sometimes it is like an obstacle course.

Steadily, the drums beat—at first so faintly.  There is a certain rhythm to them, and this rhythm is known by those who cannot gaze directly at the sun.  Every night, the beat grows a bit louder and a bit longer.  Somewhere deep in the Earth, a secret meeting is taking place.  Already, I can hear the hoof beats of the horses as they nervously paw the ground in anticipation.

August 26, 2016 - The Word

What sets us apart from the animals is our thoughts, I think.  I have always believed this, but there is a missing piece.  What good does it do us or any other creature to have thoughts without being able to share them?  A thought that cannot be expressed (if desired) is a closed circuit.  The voltage may circulate perfectly when applied, and that certainly indicates safety, but that’s now how life works.  Life is governed by the Law of Growth, and no man may escape it on any plane.  But something more was needed for the separation of man from the animals.

A catalyst.

And then came the Word.  The thought—ethereal, invisible, weightless—becomes clothed.  Now the power that was once in the closed circuit receives a garment that wraps around it and creates a form, still ethereal but with a measurable existence.  Words are the clothing of thoughts.  They define and explain and express thoughts.  With the word, the closed circuit is broken.  What existed on a spiritual plane only now arrives on the physical plane, although its nature is still transient.

The next layer added is sound.  And now the thought has motion through the word, which sails on the waves of sound.  It can travel on these waves, which we cannot see, but make no mistake that they are there and very real.  The waves carry the now clothed thought.  This new added dimension can garner attention from others, and with sound the thought can travel from one mind to another.  The more minds the thought can reach, the more places on the spiritual plane it can inhabit simultaneously.  Never believe that something cannot be in more than one place at the same time.  The energy I’m talking about is not limited by the physical plane.

Yet another layer is added, that of the word being written.  Now the thought has become concrete.  It has solid form that exists on paper or screen or rock, etc.  The once invisible thing of which only one mind could conceive now has physical form.  Now it can travel over great distances—across the globe electronically or carried in the pocket of a traveler.  We now have the first true solidity—from nothing, something.  Now more minds can be reached, and the spiritual plane of the thought grows exponentially.  The more minds that contain the thought, the more powerful it becomes.

And finally, if it was the original goal of the thought in the first place, the written and spoken word takes a further concrete form.  The idea, the description, the discussion is fashioned and takes on a physical existence of its own, subject completely now to the physical plane.  There is not one thing in the world of man—not one thing—that exists which was not first a thought in the mind of someone.  Whether it is a tool or an article of clothing or a building or a car, it first had its origin in the invisible unmanifest.  Everything first had to be conceived in a realm completely separate from the physical world.

It is in this way that the origin of everything first occurs on a nonphysical (spiritual, if you will) plane.  Without a spiritual beginning, there can be no physical.  This, then, shows the importance of the Word—and this astronomical importance cannot be overstated.  It is the Word and man’s ability to harness it that transforms man from an animal into a Creator with abilities that mimic his own Creator but on a lower level, the difference being one of degree only.

It is how the unmanifest becomes manifest.  That man himself was at one point just a thought in the mind of the Great Alchemist should be evident.  There is nothing in the whole of creation that was not first a thought.  Out of nothing, something--on Earth as it is in heaven.

August 15, 2016 - The Transformers

The transformers are busy now, working nonstop and furiously.  They reach their arms out toward the Sun in a fiery embrace that might burn more delicate characters, such as yours and mine.  We certainly couldn’t fly into that flame, and yet the grasses and the weeds and other plants do it almost offhandedly.  For as mighty as we might imagine ourselves to be, we cannot approach the ultimate source of power in this solar system but must receive its blessings secondarily.

The transformers hard at work.

It is the transformers that have the honor of meeting with the King.  They dance a secret dance we cannot know about, with music we cannot hear and caresses we dare not even think of.  To think of such things would be death to our kind.  Surely, we would burn.  No, we cannot take in the fiery energy of the Sun.  We cannot transform it from active energy back into passive, potential energy.  We cannot store the source of life the way they can.

But we can steal it, and steal it, we do.  We must approach the great fire in the sky through the transformers.  It is through them—through the consumption of them—that we may partake of life’s energy.  Yet we have our own gift.  We know how to open the secret box where the transformers hide the energy.  We know how to release the power and burn it up.  We know how to use the energy of the Sun to sustain our own bodies.  We know how to manifest potentiality into actuality.

The animals know this, too.  They also cannot have an intimate relationship with the Sun God as the transformers do.  Like us, they must steal the energy after it has been transformed and then unlock it, making it into something they can use, something they can be.  But they complicate the cycle.  Through them, we are introduced to yet another stored form of the King, now twice removed.  The passageways are different, but the prize is the same.  We know how to unlock their secret box as well, freeing the energy for ourselves, continuing life.

Can you see the magic?

The Sun is the ultimate source of power in this solar system, and it powers everything.  Absolutely everything.  There is nothing living in this world that has not in one way or another learned how to incorporate this power.  We are stardust, after all, just branches on a golden tree.  The Great Alchemist is unconcerned with the ingredients, as all roads lead to the Sorcerer’s Stone.

August 8, 2016 - Panem Et Circenses

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that there was a certain rhythm to life, one that was reliable and could be counted upon to show up faithfully, to guide us on worthwhile paths.  I’d see the tides come in and go out and come in again, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say that they were following some greater cycle.  I’d say that they were experiencing a pull and a push and a pull again, and I’d wonder what else was feeling that constant pull and push.

If I didn't know better, I'd see patterns everywhere . . .

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the many opposites I see and feel have a meaningful purpose in my life.  I’d compare the heat of the summer to the cold of the winter, feeling that push and pull again, and I’d wonder about the middle ground.  I’d see the brilliance of the day and the intrigue of the night, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say the two might mirror my own states of consciousness—the clarity of the objective and the delicious cloaking of the subjective.  I’d wonder if there were some sort of connection between the patterns of the day and night and the patterns of my knowledge and my intuition.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Mother Nature was farming the Earth during the fall as well as the animals during the rut.  I’d see the lifeless seeds tossed about haphazardly, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say there was a deliberate method to the chaos and mad abandon of the proliferation of life.  I’d marvel at the seeds having landed upon a fertile field, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say the fields of the Earth and of the female animals were ploughed by an unseen hand.  I’d wonder about my own plans, my own ideas as seeds, and if there were some sort of connection in the planting of them.  I’d wonder if I were a farmer, after all.

If I didn’t know better, I’d see the animation of life and the disintegration of death as two sides of the same coin.  I’d watch the deer graze and the eagles dive for fish and the people eat their dinner, and I’d wonder which side of the coin I were witnessing.  I’d toss that shiny penny high into the air, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear that it would land heads and tails both up at the same time, depending upon how I wanted to see it.  I’d see the existence and the nonexistence of all things simultaneously, each alive and dead at the same time.  And I’d wonder about the mirage of difference.

Thank goodness there are so many rules and regulations in our society to help us figure it all out.  Otherwise, we might be seeing things we shouldn’t, things that surely aren’t there, things that are the talk of conspiracy theories in dark, smoke-filled rooms.  It would all be so confusing.  Thank heavens for rational thought and a ready-made list of rules to follow.  Otherwise, there’s no telling what kind of mischief we might get up to upon witnessing the familiar patterns of the natural world and feeling their rhythm in our own bones.  Thank goodness we can rejoice in our obvious removal from the messiness of the living world.

Or maybe we do know about it, after all, and that’s why the noise and the distractions around us are so loud and garish and all-consuming.  Whir-whir-whir goes the flying machine in the sky, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with bread and circuses for all.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.

August 1, 2016 - Bethiah Curtis

There’s a rickety old wooden gate in the front of the common burying ground and an ancient old stone wall in the back.  The gate goes “clap clap clap!” in the wind, and the old rope fastener flies this way and that, trying to catch the gate post while it sails back and forth in the relentless wind on the coast.  At night the old boneyard keeper comes out and locks the rope gate quietly.  He slips the old boat rope around the post and looks around furtively to make sure he isn’t being watched.  But he is being watched.  I watch him from behind a tree sometimes.  He doesn’t know I’m there, but then again, he does know.  So he keeps looking around.

Bethiah Curtis, in residence.

Mrs. Bethiah Curtis is there, too, and she also watches the boneyard keeper.  The wife of David Curtis, she was born 314 years ago but doesn’t look a day over 25.  Come to think of it, none of the residents in the village of stones look their age.  Only the old boneyard keeper does.  His back is stiff and bent and looks a bit like one of the forgotten stones in the back, crooked and worn away.  Funny how the living keep aging, but the dead are chiseled perfectly in stone.

She knows I watch him from behind the tree.  She has seen me there before.  Not far from where she rests is the old pastor himself, the man who built the church and commissioned the boneyard.  The old keeper is a direct descendant of him; he told me so himself once when I was wandering around during the day.  He has the eyes of another; they are not his own.  I can see the old pastor in him.  Bethiah sees the old pastor in him, too.  In any event, the keeper certainly belongs here.  I’m the only stranger.

Bethiah rests in a country built long after she died.  There’s a woman from that new country who walks in the village of stones, taking photos as she pleases.  Bethiah doesn’t know what a photo is, but she knows that the woman writes stories about the old residents of the boneyard because sometimes the woman comes and tells them the stories.  Sometimes she chats up the old keeper and has a look at the old historical papers of the town, hidden in a vault in the old meetinghouse.  She’s a bit odd, the woman is, and comes and goes on a whim—for now.  One day she may finally earn her keep, chiseled in stone.