From an Upper Floor

A Different Reality

I have read Michael Talbot’s book called The Holographic Universe and in it is a different way to explain reality.   It is what the theory of quantum physics is about and I was surprised that I have been living this physics.   In rereading journals I have found much that I had forgotten and much that I have integrated all the while as I was conducting my life in the best way I could.   In retrospect, it has not been a walk in the park.   It has been a journey of note and a hard one at best.  I came across an entry I would like to share.  This entry is longer than my usual 400 words,  but bear with me while I try to explain what that unruly, really different child is trying to do with his or her life not quite like other children.  Their intent is not to drive you crazy.

December 12, 1993

(For most people the connection between the past and present does not exist for them;  that today is what they concern themselves with thinking it is standing all by itself.  How best to explain this continuity that those like me know?  That thread which is stitched throughout our lifetimes?  That carries the past into the present and borrows on a future already in progress as we race to catch up with it?  It makes no sense to linear thinking, and yet to me is as real as real can be.  It comes with a sense of feel that is as ephemeral as a snowflake, yet as real as a coal that burns with a hot fire and the ashes that serve to fertilize a world yet unborn, but still as real as the one we think we inhabit.

It comes with the ability to place myself within time, sitting here in front of the monitor knowing the outside of me is part and parcel of what it is I sit in.  I breathe the air that breathes me.  I see my surroundings as I am seen by my surroundings.  I hear sounds that are as conscious of me as I of them.  I blend, I multiply, and I yield.  And am blended, am multiplied and am yielded.

I reach out and reach in and find that I am reached both in and out.  I think my thoughts and find that my thoughts are thinking me.  I cry my tears and find that my tears are crying me.  I no longer am separate and no longer find that my world is separate.  For I am whole and my world blends and multiplies, breathes in and breathes out, and there is a depth that no longer escapes but permeates.  The past is still happening, the present is now and the future already lends its essence to my now.  I race like hell to catch up, try like crazy to mend the past and work my fingers to the bone mending and rectifying the present.   To enlist some meaning to the now, to create within its moment a depth that will give it substance, that will not be lost somehow to a meaningless present.

I fear I speak a language escaping those about me.   That it is with a foreign tongue I speak.  Not the vernacular that would tidy up the present.  Not with a meaning that would challenge the thoughts riding within heads like mine.   Or looking like mine.   For I fear I am out of step, that I have not the words that connect my world to others.  Or my worlds to this one.  I fear that what I present would be territory foreign to the present mind, to those whose only hope is the restoration of their childhood feeling of excitement in the holiday season.)

This was written in December of 1993 when I was 62.  Seven months earlier I had had two cardiac arrests. There was no one who understood the context of what I tried to explain. And yes, not even the doctors.  I ask that in reading this, for the child whose behavior is different, for the adult you cannot understand,  whose language you also find foreign,  that perhaps there is something to learn.  And that something might yet be a light in some way for all of us.  There is always that hope. 

photo by John Holmes

For at least the last half century I have been involved in what would be called a study program.  My intent and intensity was brought about by my need to know.  I wanted answers to my why’s.  When what I was taught,  what I learned and read and what I even invented did not work, I needed to know why everything was so very wrong.  It was of no matter that my yearnings were not for this world because here was where I was.   Because here is where I am.  My ordinary life began with my books and when my household in my part of the world slept I was working the books.  I pursued what I did not know but what I did know was that I could not continue in a world where I was so wrong.  Books were my companions and continue to be, but a mental tsunami opened a heaven of teachers whose thought matched and sought out mine.  The cosmic experience is a real one and does happen as it has throughout human history.  The science doctors have had their  day telling us all that only what we touch and see is real.   There is an inner life even more real at times and sometimes presents as many obstacles as our so called reality.   There have been writers who say that all the words are right up there and all you have to do is reach for them.   I did not know about this then but I  pursued because I needed words that had  to fit the highest and best I had in MIND.    I want to say to my loyal readers that when I am given praise for having the right words to say,  I do  because my heart is in tandem with my God Within.  When the New Testament reads that if someone says there he is when speaking of the second coming,  do not believe them,   it speaks true.  For the God Within is already ensconced  waiting to be acknowledged.

The fear of embarrassment in my generation has been difficult to overcome.  My intent and my intensity were my calling cards for what has happened in my life.  Upon reading my manuscript called Cactus Jesus and The New Wine an English professor called me an anarchist and his anger was manifest.  I went home and researched anarchist.  One who overthrows.  I was overthrowing exactly what.   The professor said he had never read work like mine.  He said other writers lifted man up.   But what did I do?  I brought the heavens and my god down to where I was.  Imagine that!    He said no one had ever done that!   I do so with my God’s Grace.   So when you read my poetry,  my work, know it has taken  a lot of footwork to get here, over a half century of footwork.  It has been an extraordinary experience,  and perhaps my gift to my readers is one of hope.   The heavens listened to me, an ordinary person  and though not able to spare me heartbreak,  still gave to me acknowledgement of our kinship.   And that has been a priceless gift.  It truly is the pearl of great price.

(this particular journal entry spoke on what I have just written above.  I had to learn that all time is simultaneous and one of the premises of quantum physics.  It was written,  note the date,  April 21, 1993.  It was little more than 2 weeks before I went into cardiac arrest.  Events then were not too different than today.)

The Teachers Speak. . . . . For within each is a core of values built on centuries of discernment.  Why does it not seem feasible to the populace that muses sing, whether a song or an elegy?  Why not a sordid novel as well as a philosophy of order and dedication?  Are we not to suppose that the earth reflects heaven and heaven earth?  What exactly did the Jesus mean when he said as on earth so in heaven?

It seems there is a volcano erupting somewhere on the earth every minute of the day in the form of psyches going on the rampage.   Why then do we not suppose the muses sing to the poet, as visions are envisioned by the artist ?  That too,  those who carry out diabolical and life threatening edicts are also a product what for centuries has been within the universe?  And in them as souls on a path?  It would seem then that the purpose of education would be to increase the caliber of education of the children to one of high motivational purposes rather than rehabilitation  after the fact.  And remember that unless the lessons are learned on Earth,  before reentry again into a somewhere and a sometime there will be little accumulation of knowledge tantamount to giving life instead of taking it.

There are as  many ways to interpret the Bible as there are people who read it and as many ways to apply what one reads as the mind is able to accommodate.   All within the frame of reference.

 Jesus said  that to follow him was to adopt the precepts such as love one another, etc.   We have Buddha and Allah all preaching the search.   And the search is Within.  None teach violence.  Violence begets violence.   But when the student is ready the teacher appears.  One does not become angelic overnight.   It is a process.   A process.

And so we tend to those who are crippled and handicapped but in whom the desire to do what is of value appears.   They understand a something and the desire is so great that the heavens respond.  It would seem that those who are richly endowed with good health would be able to carry the messages further and with more intent.   Such is not the case.   Those who are generously given good health seldom sense or have the need to pursue the inner world further.   With them it is obvious that with more power bestowed they would find the going not only easier but more self satisfying.  Those who sense the need for a richer inner world have challenges that speak to the soul.   And these we handle not only with tender mercies but also with gratitude.   In them we know the words will not give them power to enhance themselves,  but give to the ordinary people hope that there is a something more to life and a heaven,  who would, if possible, grant their wishes.

There is nothing given but what something is taken away.   For many lifetimes our planet has given her people lush greens and vibrant blues and a sundry of goods to please the avaricious heart.   We know for a fact who this is among us.   We all participate in the plundering of our Mother Earth;  in the substances thrown away and the largess of her native goods taken and without thought trashed.   There is not one among us free of this greedy behavior.

Now we sit in the arid fracture of the very ground we live on.   The land cries for water to heal the crevices on her  face.   The evergreen needles dry up and crumble.   The forest is now a tinder camp.  Anything will touch a fire unable in this drought to be contained.

What was given with such great promise now lies before us with no life in it.   A doomsday?  It will be on this planet of great numbers.  Arguments will be loud and angry for those who wish to hold their wells for private use.   States with no water will lay pipelines to places where this liquid gold was once taken for granted.

How do we appease this Mother to again deliver what was once a luxury but now a necessity to simply stay alive?  How do we define a need and not a want to simply lay color on the landscaping?   We know our penchant for waste.   We know our neglectful habits.   We have tossed our trash to the winds and it hangs like dirty laundry on the trees and bushes and  awnings on every main street.  How can we ask forgiveness when a lifetime of habits show no discipline?   Where a lifetime of habits show no concern to those whose needs were greatest?  Where lifetimes took what the Earth gave with no gratitude for the gift?

This is not a pleasant treatise to read  and neither to write.   But soon eyes will be opened to what a catastrophe this Earth planet has become.  What illusions people harbor that life as they know it will continue ad infinitum.  There is no ad infinitum for this Earth planet.  It is in a precarious position and if we find the heavens playing Russian roulette with people, we have only ourselves to blame.  Live and let live has been the policy at hand.  But with billions of humans starving to death,  with fires starting in every corner of the planet,  with wars engaging the young who have yet to dream dreams,  we should not doubt that the cosmic fist strikes hard.

We will,  all of us, learn other ways if we and our progeny are to grow in this best of all classrooms.  We will bless our Mother Earth with each spoonful of porridge grown on a parched field.   When we will be gratified for just a sip of water knowing that satiating  human thirst is no longer a wish to be granted.

Can it be turned around?  With the Grace granted to the well intentioned soul,  perhaps we have some time left to repair what we have dashed upon the rocks with so little concern.   How deep is our desire to rectify?  Starting now,  perhaps we have a saving grace.   Life is a gift anywhere and we have not been stewards of this greatest gift, our green planet.   We can only hope that our new promises will grant us time.  If our promises are kept, we will know that our Earth Mother takes our promises seriously and she will grant forgiveness.   And  our beloved planet will not become a memory.

 Apologies are only as good as the new behavior that should follow them.

Photo by John Holmes

To Honor Our Earth Mother

Teachers and Students Speak With One Voice. . . There are guidelines set since time immemorial for human conduct.   These are irrefutable.   Such as to be kind to one another.   To love one another,  to do unto others, etc.   These are not premises of a general nature but with a purpose designed for respecting the individual.   The human.   We encourage those.   We would encourage also kindness to the beasts of nature and to the earthly world where nature has a fist raised that might momentarily come down on unsuspecting heads.  As humans we do not abuse the Earth.   We do not abuse what was designed to give us life,  sustain it and bury us with dignity.   We are here as humans designed by whatever god we cherish in our memories to give us a chance to perfect who it is we are.

Man has evolved to the place where consideration for the natural world must take precedence over his comforts.  Too many have flooded the gateway to Earth and have purposely denigrated it.  Abused it beyond recognition.   All in the name of selfishness,  all in the name of progress.   To plow over wetlands that sustain the brush that allows the air to clarify, to whip rain forests to ground level and to kill wildlife that prolong the ongoing force of life has been a sin and an embarrassment.  To have warfare declared on each other as a means of self aggrandizement, to allow man to continue warring with himself as well as his commitments has been a thrust into the face of his god of whatever creed.

And in the heart of the thinking man.   We recommend only that the clearest tenets be set down as education for the growing child to become as second nature.   That not only should kindnesses be primary to them but also to all facets of nature,  from the glass of water to the earthworms that fragrant the soil to the tissue they must dispose in proper receptacles.   Every aspect of life,  every aspect of guarding this planet,  from the waking moment to the goodnight must be done with a respect for this home  called Earth. 

Water your plants, tend your gardens and stay your commitments.   All valuable tenets for saving our planet.   This is what we are here for.  We must not allow the playthings to become competition for a needful concern we must have for our Earth home.  Unless the present newborns are taught blessed and wondrous things about their planet,  their new home,  they might well be that final generation to enjoy this best of all classrooms.   It is time.   Every generation that comes into the physical world expecting the playthings of physical life to be the soul and sole  purpose rapes the Earth in a manner unbelievable.  And those who say that the  Earth will repair itself and god will take care of careless humans don’t know what it is they teach.   They are the ones who will be held accountable.   God is not always merciful.   It is an angry Cosmos that has the power to strike at the core and hit home.   It is a beautiful planet.   It is home to the heart that sees within its square inch of soil the history of the world.

Love it and leave it better than the last one did.   This is an imperative.

Art by Claudia Hallissey