Following are two poems written by Joseph Rubano that beautifully capture the reverberations of this work.
Get Closer
I am giving up listening for you
taking off my rabbit ears of hiding
throwing off the startled cloak of flinching
slipping out of my family coat of armor
Go ahead
sneak up on me
tear away the coverings
Whatever I was hiding has already
scattered and run outside
Get as close as you want.
Get closer.
My senses turn inward now
whatever else I see
is moving around me like an echo.
I have discovered this great big Belly of Being
this Vast Sky of Yes.
Be what you will:
Sweet nectar dripping
Sharp clawed wild bird of spirit
I have caught a glimpse of the fire in your eyes.
I hold in my two palmed hands
a full bowl of devotion
and bow.
I once told you how alive I am
how there is a feather of joy
that tickles me from the inside.
What I didn’t say was that
you are the wind that moves the feather
and still, even with no wind,
the movement does not stop.
Go To The Edges
There is a Self you can find
by going inside,
but don’t go only there.
Go to the edges,
stretch it thin like the skin of a drum.
Give up making only dull thuds
give yourself up to singing.
Go to the edges
thin like the strings of a lute
where whatever you know begins to vibrate
begins to dissolve into laughter —
crazy and bizarre, mindless laughter
begins to dissolve into fears and tears
at the edges
there is a wild witch waiting to be released
waiting to twist the crooked finger
of your being into shape.
There is a lover who yearns to burn to the edge
where the sweet juices rise
and eyes blossom into light;
to the edges
where the unknown world of the other
waits to greet you and welcome you home.
Don’t worry if there is no tea and cookies.
Don’t worry if there is tea and cookies.
Go to the edges
where a dessert you never imagined
is longing for your tongue.
***
Here is a deeply felt account of a direct experience shared by my colleague, artist and poet Audrey Kral. Perhaps you’ll feel the vibration within her telling as I did.
Note: When one is contemplating the question What is Another?, “another” refers to anyone other than oneself.
Feb 16-20 2024 Inquiry = What is Another?
I am truth, love, the beloved and I know it. This knowing allows me to “slip” into and out of recognition of truth. I practice recognizing truth as this helps me to Be the presence of truth.
“Direct Experience” of truth Sunday morning–it simply slammed into “me” while drinking coffee in the morning before dyads started. Simply and all pervasive, I was in total contact with Truth. Then I slipped into laughter, full and with abandon. It was not an experience, per say, but since it appeared to happen in time, it also appeared to be an experience. Rapture was the “result” not the experience.
Truth is Always. I know this in my being.
I wrote this to permeate Truth into living experience:
Absolute is here, now, always pervading everything. I am everything and everything is me-another is everything. Another is Me and I am Another “in” the all pervasive Absolute. Me and another is presence which takes form as unique expressions, subtle (such as energy or thoughts or emotions) or “solid” (form such as a body or tree) as mind body spirit complexes which then get names–”me”, “another”, tree, etc.
This is relevant for love to “grow,” to expand as entities contact and encounter another; this is a field of contact in which the unique qualities of one mix with another. And this contact and expansion is happening all the time on all scales and this is Life. The unfolding of occurrences and the effects of unique expressions of the One continuously creating more all within the One. Total expression and potential within the One and because of the diversity of expressions.
Some time ago I had a realization that has these words attached to it: “I was never born.” and this is the One in which all things are created. The one is not born, the unique diversity is born.
There is a difference between Me and Another yet no separation–all is connected, all created from the Absolute which is not created. Is, Isness, I Am is created…Exploring I Am is exploring creation–yet, what I am is not created, it is the Absolute, Love, Truth, no named, no thing, the One.
I Am is a pointer, not reality itself.
There is no sense to be made of this.
One way I communicate it is that all beings have a point, a viewpoint in eternity from which to view the entirety. We are “located” as humans and other creatures of the Earth, in space/time, so we “see” from a located viewpoint. This enables us to share from various viewpoints and this adds to creation as we connect and contact each other, experiencing, expressing, and expanding. Even violence and pollution and the result of human creativity (plastics, etc.) are an expression of the One and are included in the diversity and accepted.
How does this “affect” “my” world? My world is a co-creation with others, with anothers. Pure Love frequency is always available. Always available love. On a walk in nature, I made a commitment to embodying pure love frequency–to embody the reality that love is everything including whatever my world/life/body/mind expresses and shift into the always available, always pervasive, always present Love, Truth, Beloved (no name reality.) This is accessible to me, I can do this, I know and trust this.
No matter what anyone is doing, no matter what the news says, no matter what someone else’s frequency is, I can choose what is already always free, “beyond” the circumstances, evidence, occurrences.
In the last dyad of the retreat, the thought or vision came to me, “what if everything is meaningless?” This is an uplifting thought–not meaningless in an apathetic way–meaningless in a pure way. Essential, pure, not held in the tension of the distinctions the mind creates and the resulting emotions and the proliferation of thoughts and emotions. All diverse creations of the One are essentially pure and meaningless, that is to say, without judgement. Still with viewpoints yet Without the opinions that creating meaning adds to them.
There is a renewed knowing of the fact that Truth is, Love is, everything Is. To see another as Divine, as Truth, as the Beloved no matter what form another shows up in, is a gift I can give back to Truth, to others, to myself. Now into “life” to practice what I most sincerely know.
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