It is absolutely impossible to do certain spiritual exercises if you are habituated to an alarm clock. That most insidious of imaginary necessities. And that’s all I am going to say about it…
only a handful know
how to watch
these parts of us
unpeel
onionlike each night
for sleep’s another country
different language
different sense organs
with a hidden waking
all its own
some find it easier
to begin of mornings
to feel their beings thicken
in discrete layers
your broth condensing
into veloute
and thought shapes too
transmogrify
adapting from fluid active spirit
freezing into physical
when our sheath shells
coalesce, reunite
that spaceless
elusive
eternal
instant
before senses re-convene
these transitions
hold marvels
entirely costless
it awaits our deepest asking
much drudgery
would vapor off
and many wonders
invigor us new
could we but inhabit
each molting sacred
like poignant sunsets
or moonrises do
keep still your wits
ordered with reason
let not flaccid fantasy
deflect your reins
but also unseal
your heart’s lid widely
noting all things
as they arise
caring not
to impose thinking
for herding experience
into shoeboxes
(this is how language
kills cognition)
rather let the thoughts
proper to things themselves
light up your knowing
minus all agenda
then you will have it
if but persistent
spiritual portals
come in plain view
concealed by what
you used to be
unveiled by who
decides what’s you
_______RS
[ Image : not 100% sure, but I think this is snipped from an Adam Goldsworthy image, at the very least it is after his style. He takes natural items to arrange manmade art forms, retained sculptures in their natural setting, to startlingly lovely effect. ]
Note: I was going to omit this parallel tidbit, but sometimes you have to say fuck it. 🙂 There is a beautiful point in the Garden of Gethsemane moment when Christ implores his three highest aspirants to ‘remain awake’ with Him a little while longer while in prayer. But they are unable to retain consciousness at the rare spiritual altitudes He is attempting to instruct them in. Taking things too literally is a tragedy with sacred documents, leading to prosaic misunderstandings and confusion. Gardens, seas or waters, mountains, or sometimes clouds, were used to symbolize meditative (prayer) states of higher awareness in both the gospels and the Old Testament. A portion of Christ’s anguish is that they cannot pierce through in contemplation to the deeper meaning of the events which are about to unfold, and thus truly He must proceed alone.
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“Spiritual Threshold”
What do you mean by “spiritual”? How do you distinguish it from nonspiritual? Can you give some examples of both?
This is poetry, Skeezix. Are you familiar? It is not analytic philosophy. More importantly, it is not informed by a philosophical stance of physicalism or materialism. If your ontological realism is, then you are closing yourself off from a great portion of reality.
Answer to your question is yes, I can and I have. Why on earth should I do it here in this context, and to you?
If your question is serious, about myself as a human being, then you can fairly easily satisfy your burning curiosity by reading SWR. Especially the essays, I suspect.
If your question is actually thinly veiling your lust to engage in rhetorical debate about your philosophical stance then hunt elsewhere. There is nothing which is ‘nonspiritual’, so it is you who would carry the burden of defending your concepts initially, by the shape of your question, hence your thinking.
I agree, forget the alarm clock!
The best thing about sleep it’s the dimensions that are open to us in it.
And usually before awakening it’s when we have our best insights, or at least the ones we can remember.
True, mon ami. Half of my stuff is as though pre-composed in the twilight morning condition between sleeping and waking. 🙂