Recovering Your Bewrongings in the Cosmic Lost & Found

When last we spoke we were wandering through the bewilderness, trying to make our way up the sacred mountain. Signs of human presence are growing increasingly sparse. Perhaps because the air is so thin, our shrunken judgment is not everything it could be and should be, because we just rashly threw our map, compass, knapsack, provisions, and troll repellant spray into the the brush. Now what?

Three apparent options present themselves: The Yes, the No, or the obliteration of their difference. "The Yes is a dictum, and the No a contra-diction." As such, "they become entangled with each other, and in the end they both lead to the abyss." The third option is to "throw yourself into the depths so that your own being and limits will shatter.... Your eyes will be opened and you will be like God."

But then you remember your buddhaflaw correction: "that you have loved your creatures' limitations and that you descended into our earthly valley to dwell here among us until the end of the world." The suspicion begins to dawn on you that the only thing many of the so-called ascenders "had encountered in their ecstasies was the masked phantom of their own nostalgia." The thought of Deepak lovingly gazing at himself in the mirror! The horror!

No, it is a certainty: "they must have been deluding themselves who pretended to know of a way that bypassed your humanity and went beyond it." Especially after Christ, human beings are the last word of evolution -- or can at least participate in the last word, the Omega. Yes, not even the distance from me to You was passable if it had not been trod in advance by You. You are the way. You are the trail guide and the trail. And the trail mix for when we get hungry.

But what kind of way is this? It seems indistinguishable from the bewilderness where we started. And yet, you say it is a Kingdom. "It is distant and not of this world and has nevertheless come close to us to dwell among us." It approaches us when we are far away from it, but seems to recede as we approach. What to do?

We are "like the bowl of an impetuous fountain, under the downpour of so many mysteries" -- mysteries of existence, of life, of consciousness, of beauty, truth, and virtue. I say "let it gush! By letting it gush you will grasp what you can, and what you can is to be a bowl for the flood."

But you must also let it flow through you, not just into you: "Open up heart and brain and do not attempt to clutch tightly," for the flow is also a kind of purification, or a defense against stagnation -- the latter of which is a lifeless accumulation of the waters where parasites breed.

Yes, this strange substance "that flows through you is precisely the meaning you seek." Could anyone have given this to you? No, of course not, because the more you let go, "the richer your wisdom becomes."

Truly, it is a bewilderness adventure: "Everything wants to bewilder you so that, out of the abundance of bewilderment, you will know the superabundance of love. Everything wants to empty you out, so that you become a hollow space for the superabundance of faith" (in my book the symbol [o]).

In your emptiness is your potential fulness. Only in your bewilderness is there the possibility of being perpetually found. In being found by You is our own finding of You; the eye with which You see us is the eye with which we see You: I once was lost but now am found / Was blind, but now I see.

Or, put it this way:

Now, if you haven't got an answer
Then you haven't got a question
And if you never had a question
Then you'd never have a problem
But if you never had a problem
Well, everyone would be happy
But if everyone was happy
There'd never be a love song --Nilsson

In your faithful unknowing is your death, and death is the possibility of resurrection. "Everything must die in the death throes of unknowing, for it is only out of perfect impotency that the royal garment of the World Conqueror can be woven. Everything must enter this current..." Yes, some disassembly is required...

But surprise of surprises, "this movement is produced by the heartbeat of the Center, and what appeared to be a chaotic impulse is the blood circulating in the Body of the cosmic Christ." Systole -- life. Diastole -- death. But the heart keeps pumping. What, sixty or seventy times a minute into every artery and capillary of this living, breathing cosmos.

As above, so below. This body is your body, and vice versa. "In this circulation you will experience both the futility of your resistance as you put up a struggle and the power of the muscle that drives you forward." For your blood flows away from the heart, only to inevitably return after its circuitous journey, "a closed circuit of endlessly flowing love."

This is the eternal journey, is it not? Outflow and inflow, exile and reunion, expiration and inspiration. "Slowly you will master the rhythms, and you will no longer grow fearful when the Heart drives you out into emptiness and death, for then you will know that that is the shortest route to be admitted again into the fulness of delight."

As the Son was "sent away" from the Father, you repeat this journey to those "remote places" of the cosmos -- not the least of which being yourself. But the Son's going out is his coming back, and in his "fall" from heaven is his return there. It's just a round trip "to the furthest shore, where the Father is invisible and wholly hidden." The ocean's wave casts itself out to the shore, but draws everything back into its own secret heart.

All-embracing secret center of depth, the meaning of Within, the realization of Being, O first and last truth of self, knowing without knowledge all that can be unKnown: existence to the end of the beginning. --The Coonifesto

(All quoted material playgiarized from Heart of the World)