Conversation Over A One-sided Smoke

• Why do you always smoke that pipe?

• I once tried cigarettes, it didn't agree with me, it wasn't my...idiom.
• And you can't stop smoking the pipe?
• Certainly, in fact there's nothing like a good, pricey cigar. Except a good clean pipe tobacco.
• Why don't you quit, though?
• I started when I was 17, see...
• ...and so you're hooked. That's...40 years of your life!
• 40 years and many more to come. It's not 'hooked' if you in-joy it.
• Sure it is, you're addicted, you couldn't stop if you wanted to.
• I wouldn't know, never wanted to.
• I dare you to quit.
• Don't dare!...I don't. But I have taken long hiatuses – or hiati...ever been to Haiti?
• Make good cigars there?
• Wouldn't know, never been. I have taken long breaks from smoking, never with the 'intention' of quitting however – or rather, of no-longer-smoking, I don't much like the word 'quitting' or 'giving up' – it sounds like capitulation to all the ex-smokers.
• You're ruining your health. You're a ticking time bomb for heart failure or lung disease. Have you ever once thought of just quitting, just hanging it up?
• Thank you. I won't mention your health, though I wish you much of it of course, but yes – for one tiny little moment - I'll tell you what happened when I was about...say, 53. I had just gotten off the 120 bus at Paracelsus-Bad, where Roedernallee crosses Lindauer Allee. It was winter, I had my winter jacket on and my pipe had slipped out of my pocket onto the seat. As I reached for it and found it missing I realized what had happened, hammered on the bus window before the driver took off. But he had just edged from the curb and they can't stop once they've done that. He did understand what I was hammering about but pulled out anyway, what could he do, he had rules to follow. And I had no pipe.
  

  
  

  
• So? Dja go after 'im?
• Without having done much in the way of 'exercise' at that particular time of my life, and wearing this jacket laden with gloves and other stuff, I stopped and considered for one long quarter of a second: what if it's really a sign, a message from the universe to let it go and never smoke again. I really gave that a thought.
• And? Made sense?
  

  

   
• Hell no, I took after the bus and chased it to the next stop. He got there about a quarter of a minute before me, and actually waited for me when he saw me tearing the sidewalk up in my big jacket. He couldn't legitimately wait all too long, but he did it and I think if he had had a stopwatch he'd have been timing this. As I got to the door of the bus, which he'd held open, I saw my pipe in the driver's hand, extended to me, and his smile was classic.
• Did he say anything?
• Yeah, 'Good work' and a nod. Not out of breath but excited and relieved, I thanked him of course. He drove on and I walked back with pipe lit, picking up my fallen gloves along the way. But of course, I was 53 after all.
• So that makes it 'alright'...?
• No, it means I was less in condition than now.
• At 57?....Hright.
• Well, if it were today I'd have been waiting for him at the next stop.
• You're addicted.
• My name's not Ted. And you're being a dick-head.
  
  

  

Pulse and Breath

Take two fingers, either hand, and place them on your neck, either side. Right there on your carotid artery. Feel something? God is closer to you than that – every beat.

Now take a breath, inhale once, hold it for just one second, and exhale. Easy enough? God is closer to you than that.

Need I say more? Good - I'll hand this back over to Kabir, version by Robt. Bly:

"I laugh when I hear the fish in the water is thirsty.

You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is
inside your own house;
and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: Go wherever you like,
to Calcutta or Tibet;
If you can't find where your soul is hidden, for you the world will
never be real!"

Carpe Diem

I am reeling with gladness without reason -
in me is a king rising to his feet to receive the Guest in woolen robe;
I am smiled upon from unseen lips
and I sniff the scent of incoming life.

Friend, you've flown by day at altitudes well above all clouds,
you know that the sun is constant, indifferent to climate -
and ceaselessly sourcing in its giving.

Clouds are beautiful, fluffy or dark – and they come,
and they go, joy or bummer – like your moods.
Don't be the clouds, be the sun!
And Friend, may that light ever shine within your heart,
even as you shine within mine.

The Ball's In Your Court

Oh Friend, sit on the ground!

reach forward and place your hand firmly

on the bare earth . . .

And now:  reverse the question you've wasted

countless lifetimes asking.

You are not here to challenge or to prove

whether God exists or is real.

God by whatever worshipped name or form -

God exists, and alone is real.

So what is left?

You are here to challenge and to prove

whether you exist, whether you are real.

And the pain therein is really poignant.

When the ego becomes selfless,

through love, through grace:

the Self which remains will be the answer

which uproots the question.

You will know without effort

who exists and what is real.

In the meantime you meditate in action,

growing consciousness.

Have fun with it.

C-Food

Contact what you love and hold That in devoted focus.

Carry That which you love every moment in your heart,

on the breath current, in your step;

That will be with you now and in the hereafter.

Come-Union.

What you name "That" or "some other" That, isn't what matters;
let no one dictate to you what "That" is or in what form.
Digest the C-Food and leave the shells behind.

Reflection

I speak to my impatient, righteous indignation
as to an anguished mother:
You are not here to make the world better.
You are an agent of kindness, of light,
of ineffable joy, of God's Pleasure,
a witness to the day here and now, and hereafter.

You are an agent of awakening consciousness,
of surrender.
Don't be the pray-er, be the prayer!
Be what you would have, and you are that.

You are here to love without hope, giving hope;
without recognition, giving succor.
Be the light from which you came,
and the world will be better for it.

Source

To a trickle of water I spoke,
a droplet thereof I addressed:
behold the vast ocean, great river – and sea!
That all is there, in you, you're wet with That:
lifetimes and generations, form after form,
in all that you've weathered, your Father/Mother - and whether
you grasp this or not, it Matters not:
in every atom reeling, molecule, and cell is the genetic image
of your very Source -
(O Human, being – try seeing yourSelf in this droplet)
...so be great, or don't, it's alright,
a wave – a rave, a steam – esteem, a body Mass or a pearly drop:
you came from There, you return There, you are There -
so water you thinking?