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Author Archives: colettekelso
Prism or Prison
Where does your attention go? Out there to see the occasional happy rainbow of experience, surrounded by the possibility of grey and darkness?
Turn around and let the Source, or presence, turn the lens into a prism, coloring everything in experience. To let the light in, you have to pay attention to it. Light glows brightly when you attend to it.
A diagram is helpful, but it’s not enough. Like an inhabitant of Plato’s Cave, turn towards the light rather than reacting to shadows on the wall. Is your perception true? Is it a world imprisoned by and through a glass darkly; a world of shadows? Or is it shot through a prism, a colorful refraction of the light within; darkness dispelled? You cannot serve two masters. Pay attention to the light, the Source of illumination. Check it out, over and over, like a lover.
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The Lens
Pay attention to the lens (yellow line) through which you perceive/limit life. It makes the difference between what you think is happening and who you think you are. You are the white blank zone creating a world of colors and feelings. The light is within. Suffering is inevitable on the experience side. Decide accordingly.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference“. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
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Miracles
Lately, there’s been a kind of crisis going on here. Doesn’t matter what it is, but suffice it to say when something seems seriously wrong there is an extreme narrowing of vision. A miracle is a shift in perception, an opening of that constricted capacity to see. As defined by A Course in Miracles:
“A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to truth.” ~ A Course in Miracles
And in the midst of that crisis, at least 3 miracles happened, and they had nothing to do with the crisis itself, but with a whole new way of seeing and being. One of those miracles was from the most worldly source–the Grammy Awards show. Seeing Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman perform “Fast Car” destroyed so many boundaries, and crossed so many divides, that I know I was not the only one who got choked up watching the two of them sing that song. “Fast Car” drove straight across often seriously polarized lanes of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and generations–and since it was the Grammys, one has to mention–and otherwise fractionalized genres.
“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
That was a miracle that cut through so many strange distortions.
Another miracle was a dinner invitation I received from a neighbor. I didn’t really want to go–crisis, you know, gotta stay tense and focused. My neighbor is a Catholic missionary, a consecrated woman, as she refers to her station in life, who works with the homeless in Denver. For her sake and mine, I won’t go into details, but this one, this miracle of sight, blasted away any pretense of division between secular and sacred, and of anything I thought I knew to be true. I have said and understood that no opinion is true, but in the peeling away of those presumptions, those blindspots, removing the log in my own eye–the thing that is true is just there beyond words, beyond what anyone thinks or says. It is always here, only obscured by that which I believe and think I see. Literally, “I was blind but now I see.”
No, Christ did not become my savior. Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna dissolve and become indistinguishable in this light. The crisis is still not resolved in the form it appeared in or as. But that which is far greater, or greatest, can be glimpsed regardless of circumstance. And in the midst of crisis (etymology the same as cross, crucifixion, crux, etc.)
I’m wishing everyone the gift of miracles today, the gift of sight. You are that. All of this is that. Miraculous.
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Begin again
After some time away, it seems auspicious to return again to participate in the universal dialogue upon which the title of this blog is based. One thing I know for sure after all these years is that this peace we’re talking about has nothing to do with any conceptual framework, spiritual or otherwise. In fact, the frame is most often a serious distraction from what it is meant to display.
In my experience, the teachings in many ways are the obscuration of what we are seeking, a cul-de-sac of sorts. Conversely, the errors in the teaching–as in what is seen when Toto pulls the curtain aside to reveal the smoke and mirrors of the powerful illusion–become the pointer to what is true.
In a kind of coincidence that in many ways defines what I’m talking about and what is always available, I was driving around thinking about what I was writing here, and a song came on, “Old Shoes” by Sean Rowe. I had not turned the music on, or iTunes, nor had I connected it to my car for some time, the song just started up about 5 minutes into the drive, seemingly out of nowhere. The line “I intend to find you on my own,” is key to where I’ve been, and to understanding the last 3 lines:
In this moment we’re alive
by Sean Rowe, sung by Sean Rowe and Markéta Irglová
In this moment we can die free
How can I make you, make you understand?
Please visit the Sessions page if you want to continue the discussion. Thank you to all who have shown up over the years.
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Seeing/Seeking Error Everywhere
The ego, which is really nothing more than a pattern, a dramedy of illusions, is an error-finding mechanism. That’s it. That’s the whole ballgame. Seeing right isn’t given to the dummy, so seeing wrong, or not at all, is all that’s available.
Seeing error everywhere is the survival strategy, the one-direction, of the oblivious false self. The sound of silence cannot be heard in a head full of complaint.
This seemingly entrenched tendency could be utilized in the way of lucid dreaming. A recommended trick to become lucid in a dream is notice the errors. A light switch doesn’t work, a hallway that leads to nowhere—something isn’t quite right. What doesn’t look right is the prompt to wake up, and become lucid.
I had a dream the other night that students were dressed in rabbit suits and lobbing snowballs at each other across a walkway on campus. I knew something was funny, and creepy, about the situation, but sadly, did not wake up. I did think, “…this looks like a trap,” and wisely took another route, and so escaped without harm.
So yes, there is something wrong. It’s only natural a contrived character would suspect as much. But it isn’t the rabbit-suited students, or the snowballs in July. It isn’t “others” or the scary circumstances. I wasn’t on any campus.
What could it be?
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Scarcity?
Since asking for a little help, it seems only appropriate to write about the concept of scarcity, the imagined abode of the imagined self, in an imagined world of things and others.
First, thank you to those who chipped in. One cannot donate from a sense of scarcity, but from the wisdom that is abundance, from that open place of giving.
From a sense of nothing here, something was given and received here. Gratis, as it were, leading to and arising with gratitude. Which is to give thanks. According to the online etymology dictionary, thank “is related phonetically to think as song is to sing.”
So it is like the street musician who sings and plays his guitar, with his hat out, or guitar case open. Does he/she sing from a place of scarcity? Or does the voice, the music, come from the same source, the communion, from which the coin or bill is dropped into the hat?
What is being expressed but gratitude all around?
And so I sing for my supper. As my grandfather used to conclude grace before the meal, “…and give us grateful hearts. Amen.”
Scarcity? I think not. But I thank, too, the friend who gave me two bananas and 3 lemons. From that sweetness, I will make lemonade.
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Why Not?
Why can it not it all be viewed, perceived, as the One Creative capacity interacting with Itself, appearing as others and/or things? Why not start there…now?
If Source, God, the Tao is the singular creative capacity behind all that appears, is it not simple to see expressions of such in a different light? As inseparable from, and reflections of, that infinite creative capacity.
“You,” as a lens are the backpacker in the illustration, creating/observing the infinite possiblities. And what is creating/observing you?
Your objection to this perspective would be…what?
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Look your brother in the face, Stand by him,
Emancipation
By Priscilla Jane Thompson, from Gleanings of Quiet Hours, self published in 1907.
‘Tis a time for much rejoicing;
Let each heart be lured away;
Let each tongue, its thanks be voicing
For Emancipation Day.
Day of victory, day of glory,
For thee, many a field was gory!
Many a time in days now ended,
Hath our fathers’ courage failed,
Patiently their tears they blended;
Ne’er they to their, Maker, railed,
Well we know their groans, He numbered,
When dominions fell, asundered.
As of old the Red Sea parted,
And oppressed passed safely through,
Back from the North, the bold South, started,
And a fissure wide she drew;
Drew a cleft of Liberty,
Through it, marched our people free.
And, in memory, ever grateful,
Of the day they reached the shore,
Meet we now, with hearts e’er faithful,
Joyous that the storm is o’er.
Storm of Torture! May grim Past,
Hurl thee down his torrents fast.
Bring your harpers, bring your sages,
Bid each one the story tell;
Waft it on to future ages,
Bid descendants learn it well.
Kept it bright in minds now tender,
Teach the young their thanks to render.
Come with hearts all firm united,
In the union of a race;
With your loyalty well plighted,
Look your brother in the face,
Stand by him, forsake him never,
God is with us now, forever.
Thank you to Poem-a-Day, at poets.org, for the poem and link to the book online, Gleanings of Quiet Hours. And the audio recording of Emancipation.
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I’m Only Sleeping
What is outside cannot be known, only projected and interpreted. “Be still and know that I am,” is a pointer to what is behind consciousness, the experiencing capacity. Experience is the dream; the dream is experiencing. Identity erroneously comes from experiencing perceptually from the POV of a seer, experiencer. Behind experience is the true identity.
There is an underestimated reason why meditation is helpful. It is a break from perception, from engagement with the world as subject/object. Perception, as it stands, cannot be anything but a separative perspective. In one sense, it is the basis of experience. Which is I guess, why we’re here, why we’re dreaming. On the other hand, it divides what is seen from the seer, necessarily. And therein lies the “problem.”
This is all rather dry and in some ways, the scientific rendition in that it is an attempt to explain, which is useless if not lived. You learn about gravity by learning to walk, not be having it explained or understanding the concept.
What is lived, emerges in childhood, is a sense of guilt, a loss of innocence. Because we are pretending to have separated from our source, and somehow become split off, individuated, and autonomous, like Pinocchio going off on his adventures. But there is a conviction, a knowing deep down, that we have fallen from grace. Yet it’s impossible.
Coming out of innocence, as a child begins the conditioning of separation, we start to think we are inherently bad. I am a bad girl, or a bad boy, is what is internalized. Not intentionally or maliciously, but in the inevitable sense of pretending to be something we are not. We didn’t really pull this separation thing off; we are only pretending. But the pretense has become so real that we are frightened, and feel guilty.
This is not what a child does, it is what Mind does. It goes out to explore and become and experience. That’s all there is. All mind; only mind. Yet somehow it gets lost in this adventure and believes it is truly here as this character, surrounded by other nefarious characters.
“There is something wrong; I need to do something,” is the alert that drives everything we do, in the dream. And it is true in that there definitely is something wrong. I am not this, and not here. I’m only sleeping. The only thing that needs to be done is to see this, and stop pretending, become unmesmerized by the dream. So this feeling of wrongness, of sin, and the hope for redemption looks like crazy cartoon characters, continuously and repetitively, trying to get something, to achieve something, to prove something, in the dream. But like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, it is all in vain. And no one ever really gets hurt, or dies.
If you’d quit trying to fix yourself for one minute, you’d see this as false programming for a false sense of identity. The wrongness is not in you. It is in the game of pretending to be something you are not. Pinnochio is not a real boy, independent of his father’s carving a puppet from a lump of pine. The Coyote does not really want or need, or ever capture, the illusive Road Runner. It is all a fiction that can look pretty crazy and make you laugh when truly seen.
You are neither the Boss of Everything, or the Hapless victim. The world is not as it appears. Nor are you. Wake up!
When I wake up early in the morning
Lift my head, I’m still yawning
When I’m in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream (float up stream)
Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me
Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping
Everybody seems to think I’m lazy
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
‘Til they find there’s no need (there’s no need)Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away
And after all I’m only sleepingKeeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my timeLying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feelingPlease, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away
And after all I’m only sleeping
Ooh yeah… ~ John Lennon & Paul McCartney
The Deepest Peace 