Mani-Fiesta-Oh!

My heart took over from 
the Staid Old Dude
and showed the way
beating exuberance
and wildness
and no confines.

The S.O.D. died and
exuberant wild openness 
was born.

"I ain't gonna work on
Maggie's farm no more."

Time to shift gears.
No. To throw away all gears.

What does this mean?
No meaning at all.
Meaning is Maggie's Farm.

Resilient rhythmic resurrection.

Meat Heart

What is Heart anyway? Are we not cosmic creative energy "stepped down" into the wonderment of the physics of meat? 

I have been called a meat head before with evocations of laughter all around. I will add to that. Not only am I a meat head but a meat heart. 

My meat heart yelled at me and would not stop yelling. The docs went in there and calmed it down. They used meat techniques to calm my meat heart: cuttings and machine insertion and long term (life long?) medication. 

So far, so good. But what of my cosmic creative energy Heart? They never dealt with that or spoke of it. Not their job. Meat mechanics. Good people with good skills but meat focused.

The Cosmo Heart I must deal with myself. Or rather, continue to become Its Energetic Flow. It's the one that is going to win out in the long run anyway. 

Interflow. 

Each of us has our own Interflow path. I don't want yours. I love the one continuously opening for me. 

I do believe this though. The cosmic creative energy that breathes us, that breathed life into us when we were born, will receive our last outbreath when this meat ticker stop ticking and this machine they stuck in me stops recording data for my meat doc.

My meat heart is my sweetheart but not my Sweet Heart.

Do You Stay The Same Old Clod?

The heart has its contraction and expansion. So do we. The ongoing rhythm of this beat is important, essential to Life. Condense, expand. Condense, expand. 

Our breathing helps us form the proper beat attitude. Breathing in allows us to expand, though it is also possible to condense with breathing in. Breathing out is our usual mode of expansion, though the obverse can be true. Determine which is your usual way. Or do you just stay the same old clod regardless of your breathing?

Perhaps you have fallen into the practice of taking only small sips of air as if it costs $10,000 a sip. You breath miser, you! Breathe fully and deeply! Invigorate your cells with oxygen. (It's up to you. No one can do it for you.) 

You are just a big old heart, you know. You are an energy heart, a spiritual heart. Spiritual refers to breath (spire, inspiration, aspiration). We do not breathe ourselves. Try it. You won't last long. No. You are being breathed. So accept it. Breath and heart go together. Love mates.

Knowing and Loving

The breath is love; the heart is knowing. Love is given and received through breath. The knowing of God, the knowing of others is through the organ of the heart, not the physical organ but the subtle organ. We have/are a subtle body, you know.

The heart knows. The breath loves. Prayer is the breathing of love. Knowledge is the awareness of the heart.

Though our physical heart may have difficulty, our awareness heart continues to function, can function even better than before. We continue breathing love while opening to ever new knowledge.

We are not heart patients. We have heart patience.

Photon Notes

Waking Dream: Sky Black touching up a mural with his paint brush. Immediate thought: Is this the way a photon refreshes its creation? Does the Creator touch up the image we are via photonic energy? Is this the way all in existence is brought into being and sustained while transforming?

Robert Gilmore says a photon can download new electrons. Our body parts replace themselves every few years. Is this a photonic endeavor?

Becoming Photonic

I look to operate from the lowest common denominator of existence: the photon. Though I enjoy humor and regard the cosmos as a highly humorous place, I do not need to make light of the matter. It is already happening, has been happening from the cosmic start.

My goal: To understand the photon. To identify with the photon. To become completely photonic.

It should not be too difficult. The photon is of what I am made, my basis in being.

I tire of the human species (feces), wish to clean up my act, and the photon is Total Action.

There is nothing anyone can say or do to dissuade or persuade me. I'm on my way. It's a done deal.

First step: Studying "The Foundations of Science: The Missing Parameter" by Arthur Young.

Sliced and Diced and Still Rolling

Though they had their hands inside me, there is something that the doctors never touched: my soul, the soul that is me. (At this point I will use the word "I" to designate the soul that is me, that is the center of this being continuing to follow its destiny, not this physical corpse-ulation that continues to motor about, not the ego that smacks its lips in continuous consumption of self-display.) I was never touched by the physical manipulations, though extensive.  I was touched only by the energetic auras, the souls of those around me. And even then, I remained unswayed.

It was my physical body that felt impugned upon, sliced and diced. And still does, though that is receding. I am soul that is embodying. Not body that is ensouling. I have my priorities straight. And clear.

Four times this past year, for several days at a time, my body was held captive. My soul remained and still remains free. No one can capture the soul of me unless I imprison it myself and hand it over to a jailor. Hasn't happened yet and won't happen. The Baptists could not jail me. The Marines could not jail me. Societal norms could not jail me. Academia could not jail me. Jobs could not jail me. Chopping me open gave me pause but could not jail me.

On the road again. Where I have always been. And ever will be.

The Mended Hearts

Nine of us were at The Mended Hearts meeting at the Taylor House in Flagstaff this morning. Being skittish of joining any group (I follow Grouch Marx's advice of "I wouldn't join any group that would have me for a member"), I was ready to buck and run. Good people. Older as you might expect. But lively.

Strong assent was given to the body's feeling of betrayal and other subtle and not so subtle responses to having your chest cracked open, your heart messed with, and machinery lodged inside your body. All eight understood exactly where I was coming from. Why? Because they themselves had been through it.

No one gave me any "there, there's" or attempted consolation, for which I was grateful. No one told me to buck up and live with it. No one hinted that I had to be a good Buddhist or a good Christian or a good whatever. They just listened, heard, and understood. I heard their heart-scarred journeys too. Each one was different, yet told with simple directness.

We had some laughs about some doctors' insistence that we follow their way and not our own way. Glad I'm not alone there. Stubborn survivors not easily fooled.

They meet only every other third Saturday. But I have some names and phone numbers of some vibrant real people and an invitation to give a call. Plenty enough for me. 

the Brute

This irritation I feel is from the Brute. It's a continuous underlying flow, an irritation irrigation. The Brute is wounded and upset, like all brutes when off balance and not themselves. When heard, it is a low rumbling sound inside. When felt, it is a slow motion movement of cooling lava.When seen, it is red and black. When displayed, it can erupt at anything. It's fondest expression is "Fuck this shit!" usually muttered under its breath. 

the nubbin called the head

The nubbin called the head is an extension of the heart. The eyes are the heart's eyes. The ears are the heart's listening posts. The nubbin called the head is an extension of the heart. A protrusion of the heart into the external world.

The nubbin called the head is the heart seen, the heart scene.

The nubbin's facial expressions are the display of heart emotions, of heart feelings, of heart's ongoing stance and dance. The nubbin gets all the glory and the heart does the work.

The nubbin gets painted, coiffured, bedecked; a ventriloquist's dummy wearing its latest fashion.

The nubbin sticks its nose in everyone's business, but the heart knows.

The nubbin called the head is an extension of the heart.

What is the sound of one nubbin nubbining? Ker-thump ker-thump.

Incarnation

It has been brought up more than once by a fellow warrior friend that my heart surgery chest scar is a reminder of a previous life time when I was split open by a sword on a battlefield. It rings true. Except this time I survived.

To me this explains why a sweet little Christian small town Georgia boy felt a compulsion to join the Marines and Marine recruiters appeared at the door at the exact opportune time (his mother and four siblings were elsewhere) for him to join (with the spontaneously arising caveat that they send him to Japan). This explains why on Okinawa I added to my Marine combat training the killing and severely injuring methods taught by Tatsuo Shimabuku, founder of Isshinryu ("One HeartMind") Karate. I was continuing my karmic unfolding as a warrior. Except this time I turned it to peaceful means (teaching the application of martial art principles to daily life). I must have learned a little something from that first chest split.

What am I learning this time before I take the big dive into the beyond? I certainly have not learned evasion. I continue to face life directly. So that is not it. I think it is my attitude that has changed, is changing. The practice is "face and deal but with no harm to you while (hopefully) allowing no harm to me." I seem to need more practice in the latter.

My heart is telling me that I still have a certain amount of belligerence. Part of me still rises up ready to smite. Lovely word, smite. Old Testament in flavor. As my Mama used to say "Sometimes, if I were God, I would reach right down and pinch their little heads off." I understood exactly what she meant. Of course, our little heads would be pinched off too, but neither of us thought about that at the belligerent moment.

Help me to continue to be straightforward but while doing no harm and the healing of this heart continues. Amen.

Uncovering

In uncovering (re-covering is not the word; no covering over again) from this past year's heart surgery and complications, I open to the urge to make life simpler. For example, in the external "objective" world, a monk's bed is replacing the queen.

I have no desire to "lay up my treasures on earth" though I must admit that has never been my goal. Worldly honors and recognition have always been worthless illusions. As for money, I tried to eat a dollar bill once. It gave no satisfaction, even with salt.

This chest scar gives me even greater understanding that I am not my body. My home is elsewhere, in the invisible and the dark (which are increasingly visible and light). The physical body fails, falls, and rots away. So do the social body, the economic body, the political body. Repair of those particular bodies will not come from themselves, but from our living as the invisible visible and the dark light. "In the world, but not of the world."

I have decreasing interest in the affairs of humans. I live more and more within the heart, the core, of my heart. Oh, I will continue to "do stuff" but only as it arises in the natural unfolding. Wu chi ku, baby, wu chi ku. Uncovering. 

Heart of My Heart

Though all of us live within a world of imagery, we also materialize as a physical body. How does the saying go? We are "fastened to a dying animal." Some of us believe that is all we are: animals making our way through a brutish life. Others of us place our eggs in the basket of imagery. As we imagine, so we are. (The case can be made that even those who believe they are only a compact form of meat that dies are succumbing to a particular set of images.)

Another saying that has been repeated in different ways, the wisdom of our ancestors, is "as a person thinks in their heart, so are they." I have long been aware of the fact that the heart is a much larger brain than the head meat. We think in our heart. As I recall, the heart is measurably 40 times greater in radiant energy than is the little head brain. (See HeartMath.)  The two, head and heart, are connected with information and understanding flowing back and forth. They make one unit.

Thus, intellectual cha-cha-cha by itself does not cut it. As a Ph.D. in psychology, a phenomenologist who is a veritable mass of intellect, emotion, and imagery, I can attest to that. Ratio logic (ratio-nality) is only a small part of our intelligence. 75% or more of our intelligence exists in the nonverbal realm.

What happens when our physical heart betrays us and surgery is required? My contention is that our spiritual heart is undaunted and continues on. That has certainly been my experience during this past 12 months. 

Mongo Lives!

My body was slammed to the mat for several months and I found it hard to breathe much less stir around. Now the magnificent beast has risen and is moving around the house and doing house chores. Mongo lives!

Dear Journal

I am coming back to life but am not sure what my (personal) life means. All these books around me want to bring me into their shape but I will not conform myself to their molding. Other people also have expectations, mostly subtle in nature yet still quite obvious. Somehow I am expected to be an extension of their world. Whoever reads this will no doubt try to do the same. It is a human characteristic. Some want to do that judgment thing called diagnosis (die-a-gnosis. killing through not knowing). I resist them as I do the moldingness of books. My life is open and free now. I have gone through a death and am being reborn. I do not wish the forceps of anyone to clamp on my head and in their well-meaning missionary-like efforts drag me kicking and screaming into their world. I am free now of human artifice. My way is open and unknown. Quite satisfactory.

Post Heart Surgery Recovery Center -- Dream

Sunday 5:30 a.m. Dreamed last night of a post heart surgery recovery center -- though it bore no resemblance to such a dry dull hospital name. It wasn't about recovery either, getting covered over again. Nope. It was about transformation: physical, emotional, mental, interpersonal, spiritual.

Not a single completely enclosed space in the whole place. Each space led naturally and curvaceously into another, sometimes indoors, sometimes outdoors. A person was in each space to assist the heart wounded into the transformative actions for that area. You could freely wander from space to space. No being stuck in one dang room. "Staff" stayed still; "patients" freely moved. 

Joy was there. No greater motivation than joy. And the joy was infectious. Don't get me wrong. Folk weren't sitting on whoopee cushions. Some were running (along a flowered outdoor path). There was even a large praying space. 

Okay. I have the vision. Now to find the names and phone number of those two people who visited me at FMC last March when they split me open and said they led a "post-heart surgery recovery group." Makes sense to link up with those already doing something.

Heart Surgery Aftereffects

Aftereffects of heart surgery that I continue to combat:
-- Feel like a different personality (hard to describe)
-- Irritation (at nothing in particular)
-- No desire to see people
-- Feeling of betrayal
-- Loss of sharp and sustained ability to think
-- Loss of balance
-- Feeling of being old
-- Loss of motivation
-- Dizziness
-- Sense of being enclosed
Not all of these happen all at once.
Some of it may be due to the sotolol medication but most of it feels like the body's response to invasive trauma, similar to PTSD. No one on the medical team speaks of these things. Their concern is to make your physical heart behave. Dealing with your psychological, emotional, and spiritual heart is up to you.