The Shards of my Existence

Unveiling

“Fear not the pieces of darkness and evil.
As the fire causes dross to surface on the silver, so your past horrors appear in your mind and dreams as you rest in the fire of truth.”

The unveiling of my past
Yielding to the horrific truth
Of a life devoid of God
Huge hurdle
Crucial step

I’ve asked the questions and I resist the answers

This is the substance of hell
Hell that must be purged
Shall be

I’ll not take these shards to my grave without my friend beside me
Will you take yours alone?

To the place of revelation
Keen awareness
Total recall
Demise
Resurrection
Rise

Oh! The burden of my primordial soul
Relieved at the cross of Jesus
God’s first and only begotten Son of Earth
God’s whole Word,
Relieved in clear, bright, welcoming light
Cleansing heat

I am ready now
I am home
finally

I see you.
Come
Our hearts are ever linked as one

Myriad wicked perpetrations
Find endless absolutions
In the at-one-ment

Come
Welcome home

Objectivity

“Unless you turn and become like a little child, you will never find heaven.”Jesus

How do any of us believe that we can be objective about life? How does one rise above what one is? How does a thought ascend above the thinker or a thinker rise higher than his thought? At some point we all need a sky-hook or a pair of those magical bootstraps. 

Even God is subject to his “isness”. The divine says “All things are possible to God” and yet “God cannot deny himself”. Even God says “I am that I am” possibly admitting that there is no possible alternative to his being and no possible objectivity either. So I am made in this image too. I am that I am. I am subject to my being. At my core their is pure, refined resignation to the fact that I exist. So after all, in my effort to be objective, I have arrived at helpless subjectivity.

So what is left? Relationship. Since there is no final, all encompassing objectivity to set me free from the shackles of existing, my only hope is to find companions in my journey. “Everything is relative” is my answer to “Nothing is objective”. Just as objects dissolve at the speed of light so they all appear when their speed is relative to each other. 

When objectivity dissolves, relativity manifests.

It’s like one of those paper placemats at the diner with an elaborate puzzle maze printed to occupy the kids while waiting for the meal to arrive. I followed the corridors of objectivity hoping to arrive at fulfilling life perspective but ended abruptly at the wall of my own being. Fortunately I found another track: relativity. Like a rumba vacuum bumping against a wall over and over, for a while I kept banging into objectivity with faithful abandon because the alternative seems so undignified. The alternative is relativity where one cannot rise higher than his fellow. There, one is subject to the same things as everyone else. One is as objectively blind as the next guy when it comes to philosophical matters. One is left needing help and being needed to help. Relativity leaves me vulnerable and in need. But on this trail of life my waxy little crayon has made it to the goal. I am content with my subjective living because I have discovered family and camaraderie both physically and spiritually.

The 50/50 Gospel

Takes Two to Tango

First, it’s good news that I was wrong about the terrifying aspects of existence and about God. Jesus brought a message of hope to throw itself against all the lies of religious terrorism. His life ended the reign of so-called “meritorious justice” and substitutionary blood sacrifice. He assured everyone of salvation through the fatherhood of God, the sonship of humankind.

While I was busy reveling in the relief his message brings, I was missing the other half. What I mean is, God, my father in heaven was also receiving good news. The good news to me is that God is my Father! The good news to Him is that I believe I am his child. It takes both parts to make the gospel complete.

Transcendence

Waves

Beyond all perceivable reality is the creator. Within this existence are cycles within cycles of being, streams of consciousness, birth and rebirth over eons of time. If I can perceive it, then it is not really supernatural. So, trying to make sense of eternity from a purely sensory-intellectual context is vain. All turns back upon itself in apparent futility to despair and endless oblivion.

I do, however, have a path of connection to the “other”, a salvation from “fate”. This comes via my deepest need for a father. My need is not only a spiritual yearning but just as importantly, a spiritual sign post pointing to a transcendent reality. I experience the want of a caring parent and coupled with my belief, it is a viable promise from beyond.

Sonship is the Father’s message to me, his child. Jesus is the voice of my true father who is the progenitor of my being, saying, “You are my son.” Among all the spiritual claims of all the religions of millennia, this one is unique. It transcends all the ideas based on my sensory perception. When I have exhausted all possible esoteric scenarios, my sonship to God remains like a glistening gemstone washed clean.

Through this relationship my consciousness is sustained in eternity. I am born from beyond that which is created. I can “sleep” without fear because my Father does not “sleep”. I will no longer awaken to my former “lost” status to encounter again the agony of becoming. No matter my incarnated form, I (my life, my specific personality, the one here writing these things) will be permanent, immutable and indestructible because my life is also the life of the eternal Father, my Heavenly Father. My being is fathered forever by him.

This facet makes my existence complete. It concludes my search.

The Mind Without the Body

This is the great lie. Every philosopher ends up here. When I came here of course I was terrified, like everyone who has ever arrived at this end of the line. It seemed to me that my mind could exist without my body. For whatever reason it just seemed logical. I guess it stems from the idea of a master mind. That if such a one exists, then what a terrible circumstance that is! To exist without recourse of non existence. To be without end. The ultimate dilemma. The mother of horror. Fortunately someone reminded me that I have a body. Unlike what I perceived the Great One to be (a bodyless mind), I had a body to retreat into. And my body had parents. Therefore my mind had a beginning and someone else to be with. I took refuge and great comfort in that. In this place of respite I reconsidered the idea of God, the master mind. Someone was providing me with a residence in which I felt safe. I called out to God as to a father and I was delivered from the lonely torment into a comforting communion. Pure mind was abysmal. Having a father and mother of my mind, ones who have provided me this body (and, by extension, I mean humanity here and now, where and when I am living) was and is such an exciting prospect! Believing this has led me to consider that they also have made bodies for themselves. Bodies are the comforts of minds. God’s body are his children, his family. I thought of believers being called the body of Christ. We are his “temple”, his holy temple made of living stones. I think I realize now how valuable the body is to God. It is God’s essential comfort, joy, and I would even risk saying, salvation. With this understanding, if it is true, then accepting a separate, embodied existence is a crucial responsibility that has ramifications way beyond my personal life. Accepting this reality is both a high honor and a vital obligation. Being a child of God means taking my place in the family and doing my part in creating and maintaining a body for the mind. The great lie separates the mind from the body and the body from the mind. The materialist denies that mind exists apart from matter. The esotericist believes only in spirit, that the body is an illusion. If my understanding is correct, the great truth is that this wonderful world of minds in bodies is real, complete with faith, hope and love!

My family

Glass Bird

Sunlight doesn’t shine

Bird’s beaks never speak

My skin can’t feel and

Sugar isn’t sweet.

It’s not hot or cold

Steak ain’t meat

Skies are never grey and

Night is just a shade of day.

Don’t need your money

Don’t need your ham

Don’t need your lovin’

Don’t need a hand

Don’t need your glory,

It’ll cost me all

Don’t need your sorry

Don’t need your basketball

Glass bird standing on a man made stone

Doesn’t think at all and she’s not alone

Dogs do not bark and graves hold no bones

Truth isn’t real when you’re on your own.

Why you lookin’ at me that way

As if you don’t know the time of day

You think it’s raining but you don’t know

Why you sayin’ my name so slow?

I’m not a glass bird on a man made stone

That doesn’t think at all and I’m not alone

I just heard a dog bark and I saw some bones

Jump up out of the the grave and run on home.

Why don’t you jump up out of your grave

and run on home?

Sunlight doesn’t shine

Bird’s beaks never speak

My skin can’t feel and

Sugar isn’t sweet.

It’s not hot or cold

Steak ain’t meat

Skies are never grey and

Night is just a shade of day.

The Terror of Truth

Underneath all of the business of practical living and all the distractions, are you as terrified of reality as I am?

I first saw this painting, “Study after Valaquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X” by Francis Bacon, in an art history class back in 1977. The professor told us that it represented Bacon’s belief about the terror inside all of us. The disturbing image became an indelible symbol for me of my own ultimate fear. Through the years this eternal, unsettling premonition of terror and oblivion that began with night terrors as a child and continued in my acid trips in the early 70s, has surfaced time and again in my conscious, waking thoughts without the former catalysts. I was always afraid that would happen, that the veneer of my temporal, material activity, my normal life, would wear thin and the fearful, raw reality of existence from my unconscious background become permanently exposed with all its terror. I now understand the painting vividly. I have come to realize that my childhood terrors, my elucidating drug trips and their foreboding prophesy are very real and portend a most unimaginably horrific final end. But I couldn’t always admit this. That it was true, was way too traumatic to believe, that is, until it broke through into my conscious reality in a permanent way.

It was 1992. One of my former art students and I were traveling to Bowling Green State University to visit another former student enrolled there. Somewhere along the route it happened. In an instant, the veneer dissolved and existential reality and accompanying despair was exposed. While I managed to keep my outward appearance normal, my mind was enveloped in terror. We had our visit during which I tried to share what was happening to me but the experience was and is still far beyond human words to describe. Returning home I got my friends to pray for me, a lot. I was able to resume what looked like a normal life and my art teaching position but my inner life was in constant terror. I felt completely beyond the reach of anyone, even God, knowing that my final end would be complete catatonic paranoid abandonment. But that would not be my end.

I remember clearly the beginning of my deliverance. On a walk a short distance from my house, the Holy Spirit rose up in me with fiery indignation. In my mind I turned and confronted the terrifying and fearful reality. I “looked” it fully in its face and began aggressively speaking in tongues with a very considerable sense of power. For the first time in about a year, peace returned and relief flooded my spiritually drained soul.

From that time on I have had peace concerning the existential fear. Yes, existing is scary. I think our worst fear is being alone with no companion and no guide to show us how to do this thing we call “being”. There is nothing more frightening than thinking you will have to exist forever on your own. Well, I have come to know that the God of all “being” has created conditions to alleviate this fear and has provided us with a meaningful and joyful existence. Through what I have experienced, I know that God is absolutely above all and God is more than enough to address our fear and meet our needs.

You?

Do you believe in yourself?

Can you see yourself?

How about your thoughts?

Can you see them?

Who are they coming from?

You?

Who are you?

Are you something?

Who says you are?

You?

Do your thoughts tell you you are you?

Are you a person?

What is a person?

Something that thinks and knows,

Thinks thoughts no one can see and knows knowledge no one perceives?

Are you more than a puff of smoke?

Are your thoughts more than shadows that disappear at dusk?

Yet

Sex belongs to Marriage

You raped her gleefully

Violent

On the naked concrete

You brutally beat him to death

With your fist

And stomped their children’s heads

With the heal of your foot

You seethe

Repent

Your Maker

Hasn’t forsaken you

Yet