Godself

What if in every self, there were a Self,
a divine yet unique expression of a person,
like a titanium crystal snowflake?
Super strength and brilliance to Infinity,
with real personality attributes and feelings,
brazen power encasing vulnerability?

What would my Godself be like?

Solid, steady, illuminated,
pulsing in perfect rhythm
and singing in perfect harmony
with the other Godselves.

Creative, passionate, nurturing,
seeming at times capricious,
effusive and obsessive and gentle,
given to sudden destruction
of the sickly, stale and staid things,
sometimes a creator,
sometimes a sustainer,
sometimes a destroyer,
like You
and Me.

Godself, by Alex Grey

alexgrey.com

Amoureux

Imagine intimacy 

with the vast universe.

Envision engagement

with the fabric of time.

Suspend substantiation,

allowing truth to materialize.

Touch tentatively

what lies beyond birth and death. 

Be bolder

and see with closed eyes.

Acknowledge affection

from your most loving friend. 

Prioritize presence

with the omnipresent lover. 

Entirely envelop

your being in love. 

Elements

Let the soft water
meet with a yielding body,
nothing to resist.

Welcome the warm fire.
Melt internal resistance.
Unfold into bliss.

Sitting on the ground,
root into abiding peace.
Surrender to earth.

Step outside the door,
greeting wind's inspiration.
Ride the currents, free.

Enigmatic realm,
a universal matrix,
ether permeates.

Bypassing

What can't you accept?
Identify your taboos.
What if they show up?

Don't try to banish,
simply let them go away
without wincing or bracing.

Don't try to avoid,
pretending they are absent.
Meet them at the door.

Look them in the eye.
There is space in you for all
you think you can't face.

Critique and reject
and scrub away the dirty
bits and pieces of your life.

Call out bad actions
and bad words and ideas:
watch them reappear.

All that you reject
lies dormant in your psyche
just waiting to reemerge.

Judgment and dismay
become your mode of being
so you are depressed.

Then you turn to God,
your idea of Perfect,
some future reality.

Doing rituals
which make you feel protected
from the things you hate.

You say lock the doors,
keep all the windows covered:
bad people outside!

You criticize all,
working towards your Heaven
some Hell lurking within.

You hate in others
what you reject in yourself.
Try to be open.

It is not too late
to soften your perspective
finding a new way.

Faith is seeing love,
embracing the possible,
releasing strictures.

I can't make you see
or make peace with your demons.
You gave birth to them.

Instead of control,
let all the chaos inside
the sanctuary.

Flesh

Straight lines could live inside,
but I don't know where.
I can't find anything else
besides gentle slopes and curves.

I love it all now,
peachy and ruddy with spots,
and shades of brown and gold
with a touch of blue.

Mellifluous qualities emerge
with patience applied,
nothing is metal or rubber
or battery powered,
we're more complex and beautiful.

Weekend

Hazy, indescribable, purplish sensations descending steadily through the spiral, 

lit from the bottom and radiating up and out to all sides,

feelings I am seeking to extend indefinitely,

so I won't have to turn them off and on. 

Recreate some experience I can't remember, that's what I want to do on a weekend night,

find a little rabbit hole to plunge into,

so I can engage my mind in stimulation

and my senses in pleasure. 

 

                                                 Sexy Slime, from theblogofbaphomet.com

Eight

Yama
Niyama
Asana
Pranayama
Pratyahara
Dharana
Dhyana
Samadhi

Treat others with respect and conduct yourself with the highest integrity,
Amen.

Apply effort to self-cultivation, going within to find your divinity and bring it forth,
Amen.

Find peace and good health through mastery of inspired movement,
Amen.

Develop a sacred connection to your breath to harness and sustain your vital energy,
Amen.

Retreat into your inner self becoming free of external distractions,
Amen.

Learn to focus your mental powers towards ultimate freedom,
Amen.

Establish your foundation in perfectly balanced and unchanging truth,
Amen.

Experience the state of everlasting bliss,
Amen.

Rescue

Tiny tweaks, tinkering a little bit
this way or that way,
like moving a lens one millimeter
to the right, or focusing the lens
the smallest amount,
will dramatically alter experience.

Habitual attitudes and opinions,
clung to like tattered life rafts
in a hurricane,
can mean living or dying,
sooner or later.

Rock hard or malleable,
proud or humble,
unyielding or surrendered,
fully ripe or still growing on the vine?

What will it be for you?
Restlessness, pain, discomfort
can be harbingers of growth,
or predictors of impending death,
not only of the body,
but of the soul,
your soul,
which you know you have.

It matters. You matter.
Start piecing it all together
and find a way to stay

with Us.

Open arms are always waiting.

Rise

Root down into the firmament,
and lift up your spirit!
Do your practice.
Meditate, or contemplate, or pray,
or sing, or run, or dance, or paint,
break through the trance however you can.

Do this in your way
on your terms
in your time
in your space
in your body
in your mind
in your heart.

Where is God? In you.
Behind you,
in front of you,
beside you,
above you,
below you,
sending power to you
and through you,
propelling you forward
on your course,
through your orbit.

No matter
what power hungry leaders
and groups
tell you about how you
Should think
Should speak
Should act
Should earn your money
Should spend your money
Should spend your time
Should say
Should do...

Sink to your depths and rise to your heights,
you Gods and Goddesses of Humanity.
We have held back our own power for too long.

Ancestors

Making me think of my ancestors' ghosts,
on the edge of sleep my heart was aware,
what had gone missing was what I missed most,
would their lost hopes for me yet still be there?

The faith that I had two decades ago
that the path I was on had been chosen,
and that I had divine help here below
lives inside me somewhere, it's just frozen.

Most of my formative conversations
centered around the unknowable God,
and how to resist so many temptations
so I could receive their approving nod.

What here was just rote and what was inspired?
This end result might be what I desired.

True

Your truth is yours alone.
When you are in your own presence,
fully aware of your body and breath,
inhabiting your space
and paying attention,
you know it.

You can seize it. It's yours.

You don't have to do what someone else
tells you to do,
in that moment.
You can hear them.
You can honor them.
But in the deepest honoring
of yourself,
you can comply
with your own truth.

Go within and ask yourself,
what truth could be so bad
that you would reject yourself,
banish yourself, punish yourself,
like an angry grandmother or father
or uncle
who saw what you did alone that day
and shamed you to your soul,
with dirt on their own hands.

What is that truth which would keep you running away?

Who loved you, who loves you?
Is it unconditional? Can you feel
unconditional love?
Can you give it to yourself
so much that
you can tell the truth
to yourself?

Then you are undivided.
Then you are strong.

Man

I feel you, man.
I know where you're coming from.
I think I get you, you know?

It's what it takes
to get you through the day,
bro. I got you.

You're awesome.
I'm serious.

I hear what you're saying,
and
I am sorry it feels like that
some days.

But fuck that. Fuck those thoughts,
and what somebody said,
some person who doesn't have
their shit straight themselves.

It's all good. Feel that deep,
man,
deep in your cells.

I really feel you, man.
We've got each others backs,
you know it.

I love you, man.

Hate

Hate
is the flip side of
Love!

Cherish your strong emotions.
Know that how you feel about others
Transforms you in the end.

Use your inclinations to
Progress yourself and
Others.
They are the flip side of
You.

People annoy me,
People annoy my son,
People annoy my husband,
People annoy my father-in-law,
We say we "hate"
We laugh about this,
But I know,

Hate
is the flip side of
Love.

Indifference is
Evil.

Bodies

Eyes beginning to focus,
zooming in on fingers, a hand,
what's this? A foot! Toes!
What can the baby do with her body?
How does she love it?

Watching infants and toddlers
move and navigate space,
is a study in how
we move
as we feel, according to our needs,
according to pleasure and pain
and natural balance.

Keep watching, keep asking, keep moving
with Respect
and Awe
and Love
love love your body.
Your heart beats out the Rhythm
of your Life.

Admire, immerse, luxuriate
in your bodies,
Appreciate the beauty and
Strength
of all bodies as they perpetuate
Us.

Remember the first times you noticed
the Glory
of the body
of the Other,
on the subway seeing a muscle flex,
a shirt lift,
watching a boy
or girl
do a pull-up
and play
moving freely and with ease
and Joy.

Bodies are a source of
Life
and
Joy.

Present

I feel finitude. The fragility and priceless poignancy
of this life,
with every indication that it has always been
so very good,
And I don't need to detach from everything
or rise above or keep trying to climb levels
to see over some imaginary fence or wall.

For me there are no barriers
other than the End which is coming for sure,
I know. And this life is Holy, I am indeed
this body, and the mind, too, and the
Consciousness is in all of it, but I can be
all of it,
without having to shed anything.

I wish that I could be at once in many places,
so just maybe that is a future which exists
for me and you.

We are here for each other,
all of us.

I wish that I could comfort everyone who needs it.
Some people who have needed comfort from me never got it,
and other people,
I want to go to them and say,
"let me help you with this,"
but it's an imposition.
And so we are all here for each other,
with choices to make in our precious lives
as to where we spend our time and who we are with,
who we think about and who we let in,
into this finitude.

In that future beyond the End of you and me
maybe we will be We and everyone is comforted
and no one has to ask or impose or say,
"hold me" or "let me hold you now."

Don and Maxine Simpson, married 62 years, died on the same day