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Michael's
Mixt!
Michaeli
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San Juan: A Glimpse in Time
-By Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut
Seven
Slumber land (from down under)
It's such a crazy world up there. That's why I come down here. I come down here, deep in the resources of the quiet spaces. It is here that I gain my strength. It is here that I know peace. I enjoy the solitude of this place.
I gather in fledgling thoughts like so many chicks are brought back under the roosting feathered body of the mother hen. I rest in this place. Who can dare bring harm to me here? There is absolutely no one who can harm me here.
At first the turbulence of the loud outside world becomes even a bit more nerve shattering than before. That's because the noises, the thoughts, the variations to sanity are clamoring for attention. They don't want to be left out in the cold - they demand attention. But they get attention less and less now. There is, more and more, the sound of less and less.
I might have chosen contemplation, or mantra, or breath, as my vehicle of meditation. Whichever one, they are bringing about the desired response - I am at peace.
I know many who say they personally have no time to meditate. They say their busy lives, with schedules and commitments in great abundance, give them nary an opportunity to bask in such a pleasured place.
I know, of course, that by not going into this deep abyss, my woes only multiply. I can never know tranquility when I try to know it with a troubled mind.
By making time for meditation, I am clearing the way for thoughts to become more ordered, more structured, more manageable. I need that; everyone to stay sane needs that.
All I seem to be able to hear now are faint mechanical noises. I don't even know from where. It's nice to not know that, and to not be on a need-to-know basis all the time.
Amazingly, from this place, I am in a vast and empty room of aloneness. Here in this room, I have the chance to carelessly sashay around a bit, see what I can see, feel what I can feel.
Mostly just now I am at peace. No drug has brought it about - not one from across the countertop, or one from the street. It's hardly necessary to be drugged, for, in this state that I now exist, the effects of a great tranquilizer are steadily at work. I no longer need a drug; my drug is this beautiful process itself.
It's priceless. It's from God.
I have now receded to a place that is similar to the one that I know just before falling off to sleep. I have given up the ghost, given up all ghosts, in fact. I have surrendered to the onslaught of interaction and provocation. I have stepped off the larger path, and on to a singular path. No one now is in sight of me. I am in sight of no one.
This is not to say that I am alone. In the embrace of the Loving Universe, in my extreme quiet and solitude, I am at home now with God.
Eight
The 2nd Night
I have some rather strange thoughts about Jesus in my mind today.
Some days I think about Buddha. Today, it's Jesus.
Did Jesus accept himself as his personal savior in order to enter into the kingdom of Heaven? To me, it never made sense that it could only be a matter of a simple acceptance of Jesus as one's personal savior.
Jesus, himself, suggested he was one with God. In understanding that oneness, we come to understand that we are inseparable with God, from God.
Our Christ consciousness, then, is a God consciousness, and God consciousness is an awareness of our oneness with the Universe at large. Jesus and Buddha both understood that, and taught that. Had they been on the earth at the same place and time, they would have been close brothers.
You don't have to believe that; I do.
I have wrestled with the intricacies of theological religious doctrine for my whole life, it seems. A very small part of it has come easy for me; I have always believed, for instance, that God is a God of love. Seeing lots of love around me, I figured it had to come from somewhere.
The concept of Karma (that the experiences of our lives somehow ultimately balance out) is another fairly simple one to embrace. That seems to shoot out at us, too.
Something, however, such as the idea of a Father, son, Holy Spirit (the Trinity) has not flowed as easily. The distinctions between mind, body, soul and spirit, so misunderstood by most, is another example of a struggle I have encountered.
There are many of both types of the following people in life: those who find no other way of seeing that Jesus was the one special son of God, and that not to accept his offer of salvation spells out a permanent estrangement from a conditional God, and those who are disillusioned by this perceived narrowness in interpretation, and who subsequently want nothing to do with any part of it.
It is clear to me that Jesus was all about helping us see our oneness with God. He was interested in pointing out how our perceived separations that we created did not exist, and that if it did, it was because we chose to allow them to happen.
Our sin in this matter, our error of thinking, was that we should see ourselves not as a part of God. Even Jesus questioned his oneness during his dilemma on the cross when he asked His Father as to why he had been forsaken. Jesus, it seems to me, was like you and me; a spiritual seeker, a profound mystic, whom, upon coming to understand his connection between he and God, lived it and shared it with his small corner of the world.
But this battle of theology and mental rightness has raged for centuries. In the ultimate reality, it is an unspoken condition we arrive to know, one of a personal place of great comfort that gets us in the position to celebrate that we not only in God, but that we are also inescapable from God.
Millions in the human existence demand that we cannot, in any way, shape or form, resemble God; a "fallen man" model predominates our minds.
In it we are somehow not worthy. Buddhist and Christian alike - we do not deserve it.
We're too evil by nature; too bad at our core.
Others of us have no trouble lining up with God. In our arrogance, we exalt ourselves to a high peak of self-esteem, and from there pronounce that we are just as good as God is, and if God doesn't like that notion, he might want to just "come down and fight like a man" if he dares.
Still others see that, as creatures of/from God, it ultimately deems us worthwhile, and that awareness of our oneness is the key to getting there, and also that, while we acknowledge an evil or egotistical aspect to ourselves - and that a lifelong process to tame that will be in order - we can settle into a natural partnership with the Universe which will make the whole of our experience of mortality worthwhile.
Whatever happens, I will not stoop to the fear of God. By that I mean that I will not run and hide and be ashamed of my point of origin. I may not know my place in life (perhaps that's what life is for - to come to eventually know our place) but I know that nothing is that serious, that deep, that life threatening. There are things, to be sure, that are worse than death. At the same time, whatever terrible thing that besets me, death, in the end, will be its cure.
Some would suggest to me that death is just the beginning of my troubles, to which I would suggest that we cannot know what comes then, nor is it in the realm of my concern.
This one life I know I have to live preoccupies all of my living, waking moments.
There is no time or energy left for prolonged speculation beyond it - only just to trust.
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