Puzzle

A 4000 piece puzzle sits atop a glass table… this large, flat, rectangle is the fruit of a summer of labor. A scene from the middle ages has sprung into creation. An alchemists chamber, with charts and tubes, globes, and powders. Thousands of small pieces have created this scene, tiny jigsaw shapes that all share the same darkened hues. Each small shape, with jutting sides and liquidous forms, each one varies just slightly from the others; like flattened cardboard snowflakes.
But there are some pieces missing, at least a dozen pieces are gone. And in their holes, a transparent shape rests in the color of nothingness. Perhaps they were never there, never made. A slight oversight in the maker. And now, this image is incomplete. It wrestles with itself. Gropes for unity and form.
Like my puzzle, my many shapes disguise themselves as beauty and caring. In here, when I truly look in, when I see the many egos dying for attention, when I feel jealous rage bite through words and pleasant smiles, when I feel with the compassion of a young, tender woman, when I kiss with the desire of a chained woman on her knees…I know that all of these share the same bed. These, and many others. They work together to form the image of this Lydia.
Missing pieces, dark shapes, curvy little chips of colored cardboard that manifest the strangeness. I feel them all. With the same breath I utter hopes and suggestions while some small part, barely more distinguishable than a cool breeze, but slightly darker in hue, whispers, almost inaudibly, for the worst.
It does not want hope. It does not want contact. It is out for itself. It wants control. It does not care, does not understand, not for a second, what we are trying to do. It lives within the darkest folds of my flesh, yet it springs to life, feeding off sparks of negativity. Enlivened by tears and sadness.
And while a part of me Works and laughs and is smooth and attentive, this other me watches with eyes slightly squinted. With ill intentions and ulterior motives barely passing unnoticed. And it is me. Not totally bad. Not completely good. Jealous sometimes. Ugly sometimes. Helpful sometimes. Joyous sometimes. Awake for slight moments.
They leak out like perspiration. They cover your fingers in clear love. They dribble from my eyes each morning. Asleep, I see only the good. Asleep, I see only the dark. Like a fucked up puzzle, I am many without clarity. Capable of beauty, capable of torture and brutal killing. Capable of infinite love and the sweetest of kisses. Dark, light, gray, green, red, yellow. It is all here, seeping out like poison on the wind.

Pressure

Sometimes all it takes is a little arm twisting, a few spanks, or applied mental teasing. A little bit of stress to bend the machine into working a bit faster, a way that moves more smoothly, more unexpectedly than the pseudo-intellectual frontal cortex.
In the front, the intellect rests in a silver throne and red satin pillows, relishing its command over all organs, cells, and movement. But it is truly a blind king, with only half witted subjects duped into its madness. The real king is the force and energy that stems from the back, from the unencumbered place of deeper, quicker, more intuitive knowledge. This is the domain of clarity. The movement here is quicker, faster than the pompous king can comprehend. It moves faster than doubts and rationalizations. So fast that the pseudo-intellect can have no hope of catching up.
And it comes from pressure. From need and urgency. The Urgency that exists in the dominion of chaos, where everything flows, where creation leaks like golden life sprung from slimy cracks in ancient stone.
In our endless sleeping state, all we see are comfortable beds and leisurely walks. Slow cooked dinners and hammocks in the sun. Every minute that makes its rounds around the endless wheel…a measure of movement. They are all lost…an endless march towards all and none.
A march in place, a march to the left, to the right, moving to the center and disappearing. Going to the dimensions of mathematicians and shamans, tasters of fruit and fungus. Dwell here, within this space of shifting lands.
The space without words.
There are no second thoughts. There are no worries about syntax and ego. It comes. It spills with urgency and purpose. Need. Black rivers and red skies. Laughter thunders in the distance, rattling clouds of moving sunshine.
Captured in a bottle, my love forever stays upon your shelf. Take me with you to the other side, where your secretive dreams are recorded an dissected. On nights covered in black and moist air, you searched for water within rooms of neon and beer. Stale everywhere, but within your red sphere. The moment had begun. With quiet. With the hush of observed holidays and empty streets, we began.
I began.
You opened the door, holding it like a gentleman…into the garden of kingdoms and blue glory…I went with eyes half open and holding your soft hand, poised to catch me falling. A forceful tug pushes me back to center. To the razors edge I walk without finesse. Marked hands and feet dirty the path.
Although it is laid with fine powdered gold, I constantly spit on it, a testament to my zoo-like tendencies. Like a monkey in a cage, I scream and fuss, waiting to be noticed and ogled. A little push, a forceful yank. A bit of metal pain to get it started.

The Brotherhood of Making Butter from Air

There are fast-food wrappers on the ground, their streaks of red and orange lettering attempt to capture the hunger triggers in this mushy substance. Grey buildings capture the acoustics of tapping horns, manifestations of taxi drivers and supped up caffeine addicts.

Click, the imprint of the sky against the towering rectangle, sheathed in reflective blue glass. Click, I snap that bit of trash, forever ingrained in strings of numbers and letters.
Code.

Captured and framed. The grass, towards the upper left hand side, the wrapper, crumpled like a misshapen origami piece dashes across the canvas of nothingness, leaning towards the lower right side of the space.
It is done. Soon, the wind will come. It’s journey is far from over. I have but recorded a moment in its existence, like the old snapshot of a girl blowing out the candles from a Barbie-shaped ice cream cake. Forever still.

Organized with intent, unified by movement, thought and action.
It is form.
It is a form.
A particular shape from an unorganized collection of debris and urban relics. Scattered by the winds of chaos, its shape is unified, forever lasting within another form.
And then there is more, more noise…wind, horns, laughter, shouting, a jackhammer. Shapes, an endless variety, unclassifiable. Torn bits of leaves, sparkling cars, a plump white woman in an orange dress. The bicycle chained to the stop sign, the man with a white beard that holds his Styrofoam cup out to unblinking passersby. Red bricks, plate windows. A girl, dressed in black from head to toe, her gold earrings wink as she turns to answer her phone.
Click.
Mouth open, seconds away from animated speech. Eyebrows furrowed, one slightly higher than the other, her red straight hair, practically a mile long dangles over her left shoulder as she cradles the phone between her shoulder and ear.

Code.

Form.

Unity.

Structure.

An endless moment, yet invisible to so many. To me, when I sleep. And it swirls. Boundless, stretching beyond the reaches of my comprehension…this chaos, which I am, which I come from. I will always be.

It Is.

But for moments, for stretches of time and space, another shape may emerge. Brought forth by the brotherhood of those with intention. Carried from the womb of scattered sounds and shapes. Licked into existence by the mouths of chanting girls and ravenous shamans. Unearthed and cherished.

You, sacred form.

You, sacred structure.

You, the memory of my intention.

May I always remember, may I always Work.

Distractions

"Rrrrhhhhhhhhhhh," he screams with the cry of a gutted animal. He has been screaming like this in intervals all afternoon, an emotional reaction to the interactive video game he plays with his friends. They all shout and yell at their chosen 2 dimensional characters on the flat-screen TV, but one has far superior lungs. I can hear them laughing, I can hear the joy in their voices as they collectively identify with their games of war and strategy. And yet, each shout, so loud that it reverberates in each room of this small house, is enough to make me cringe. As much as I would like to concentrate on my writing tasks at hand, I find myself preoccupied with their assembly. Instead of focusing on myself, I sit here, tense, waiting for another cry…the moments of silence are thick with suspended animation…and when the "rrrraaaaahhhhhrrrrr" inevitably comes, my body contorts, my face scrunches with the guttural squeal. I think about marching to the living room and asking them to maintain quiet, I find myself getting angry, coming up with excuses why I can’t seem to write, why I can’t enjoy space or complete my task. And my machine says, "It’s because of them…their noise, their presence." And perhaps, a small glimmer of this is true. But true freedom comes from being able to Work within any setting, to maintain composure and control my machine and its reactions within any setting. There will always be places, forces, and people we can consider obstacles, annoyances, and distractions; but inner will is developed by remaining steady and following through, despite the things that will work to distract you. Sounds and people, weather and mood…so much stimulus comes from the outside, but it is truly OUR reaction to these things that matters. We can chose to either use these sounds and people for our practice or chose to identify with them and lose focus. Distractions flow like a torrential river, moving unabated through our physical and physic realms. THIS JUST IS, it cannot be changed…it can only be escaped by isolated living in the mountains or monasteries or creating sound-free chambers…but even these would do little to stop the distractions of our own minds. These forces all come from within. We allow ourselves to be annoyed, we allow ourselves to become identified and preoccupied with the person laughing loudly in the movie theatre. We allow our nice dinner to be spoiled by the table of semi-drunk middle aged women in the far corner of the restaurant, oblivious to evil eye stares and exasperated sighs of those around them. These people are not there to harm you, however clueless they may be of their effect on others in the same space. Our goal is not to change others, to show them how to become better, more aware people. Our objective is to work on ourselves, in every moment we are conscious enough to do so. The shouting teenagers, the hyena laughing movie patrons, they are real opportunities for our Work, opportunities to maintain awareness and steady breathing. We cannot maintain anything outside ourselves, indeed, it is a lifetime of work to maintain the landscape within, you may as well give up any fantasy of controlling anything beyond the fleshy walls of your machine. Submit to the sounds, sacrifice the twinges and evil looks, they only serve to keep you asleep. It is your Work, your breathing, your objectives that You must focus on. Allow the distractions, and the energy that they evoke, to flow into you and be transformed… use it, allow the annoyances to energize you towards a higher creative state.

Into the Chasm

My white horse stares with me into the abyss. I can see layers of crushed civilizations mixed with the silt sediment. The color of decaying bricks, once the structures of great buildings, now, mere dust in the great cycle. Nearly pulverized, their color leaches into the surrounding rocks, creating bloodstains on the silky gray stone. That is only the first layer of inner earth. The others are right beneath, pushing and vying for archaeological admiration. It is a hole that grows wider the deeper I look, like an inverted triangle, I stand near the apex, drooling into the widening expanse of colored darkness. I strain my eyes, but there is no bottom. The end I seek is not there.
The source, the beginning? No, just more.
More.
This I sense with every power in me. My horse knows it too, for I feel him shivering, not with cold or fright, but something less obvious. It disturbs our cells. Frightens our skeletal system. What stands before us goes on forever. Deeper and deeper, deeper still it goes. We can begin the voyage through its time, our time. We stand on the ledge, fearful. But the way back, the path we walked to stand at this ledge…that path is blurry. It grows with vines, snakes litter the way. I don’t know where it was, what we were…once, long ago.
Were we ever there?
We are only here, at the beginning of everything.
We are here, looking into the mouth that birthed us. Into the remains of all that ever was. Waves of red translucent air blast my face, like the hot exhaust from a race car. Is this fear? My heart beats steadily, but something inside is in turmoil. What is this? Am I supposed to see this? Should I be here, looking down into this? There was never a beginning, I can see that now. Diamonds leap from my pocket, anxious to stay behind. They depart, hoping to catch a fast wind back to the land of the known. The cities of now, clogged with their dirty air and pearly hands. I look up, this is not the edge of the chasm, for I am merely wedged on the side of a layer, looking into the channel that runs through all our lifetimes.
I look up. There is another, feeling the same moment of red and heat.
Wait… there are sparks of blue. Moving from the center of the chasm in a circle. Counterclockwise, the flecks of blue take a steady course, swirling from the center point outwards…towards me, towards all sides of the Great Hole. They are firm in their flight, as soon as one moves slightly from the center, another takes its place. The lights, no bigger than a small coin, have filled the void, a constantly darting swirl of tiny shimmers. The ones that finally reach the walls of rock and matter instantly burst on contact, a tiny spark followed by a moment of calm, replaced only by another electrical burst as another piece of blue makes contact with the people of stone.

The Space in Between

"He is very interested in class, he pays close attention and seems very motivated. But when class is over, his attention gets completely dispersed. It takes him a while to recover and be able to focus on the next class."
I listen and understand that the little boy gets lost in the Bardo, the transit space between the end of one lifetime and the beginning of another. In his case, he lives through 6 or 7 lifetimes each day in school, and he has developed a strong habit of clear work during the steady space of the class, but after the bell rings a new habit takes over and he is lost, at least for a while, and until the guide comes along (in this case, in the form of a friendly elderly woman) to bring him back to a focused state. How many times has he gone through this doorway and been lost? And what will it take for him to develop a new strong habit that will react to the sound of the bell with renewed strength and focus, and the clear intention of seeking a favorable rebirth?
A basic habit like this is very hard to see, almost impossible. It is easier to spot the others… the constant scratching of the nose, the twirling of the hair, the particular curve of the neck when reading or watching TV, the loud laugh that comes from the father and the soft laugh that comes from the mother, the slight blink of the right eye when something is pleasing, the downturn of the mouth when something is distasteful… all of these can be spotted (with some work) but the ones that hide underneath, the micro fractal structures that underlie all the others and give them their true impulse and force, these are truly hidden, and, as such, they are the foundation of Real Occult transformation.
It has been said repeatedly, and will be said again: The true quest for Transformation is a journey inwards and the dragons that wait in dark caverns are hidden deep within, they are the living building blocks of your consciousness. To continue to attempt to find the answers outside, to look for hidden mystical enemies behind doorways and under bridges, in the realms of the humans, is to avoid the true unfriendly guardian that lies waiting, mouth open and fangs dripping with blood and saliva, coiled around the innermost core of your Being.
How we face the space in between, the Bardo, is completely based on these hidden structures, these persistent and miniscule habits. No matter how much we have read about it, no matter how much we repeat that we know what to do and how to do it, when the bell rings, the basic habits will take over and all the human thoughts and certainty will vanish as if they were never there (and in a very Real sense, they never were.) And there you will be, once again, naked and facing the primordial Chaos with nothing to hold onto and no place to hide… except maybe that little doorway that seems so comfortable and familiar, it seems that you may have been there before, sometime not too long ago.
Thinking about this will not help.
Reading about it will help even less.
Worrying about it won’t change anything.
But you can Work.
First identify the Bardo spaces. Find the moments of death within your day, identify them clearly, recognize them as they happen. This may be the moment that your day job ends, the moment of going to sleep, the moment when your train stops and leaves you at the station, perhaps that moment when you arrive home from a long day.
As you walk through the doorway of death, whatever shape it has taken this time around, invoke your presence and open yourself up to the distinct blurry shapelessness of the Bardo. Recognize that you have now entered a space of transit, a treacherous realm where things are not what they seem and you can’t even trust your own self.
After an initial burst of energy when the short previous lifetime has ended, you will quickly descend into a confusing space where many new doorways offer themselves up. Before you decide which door to go through, give yourself some time to sense the particular liquid space you are in. We have been trained to look away, to not face it. Force yourself to turn back and look, and feel, and sense.
When it comes time to choose, do so from a space of calm detached tranquility… or the closest you can come to that. What do you pick to be your next lifetime? Will this coming rebirth help in your work or will it be detrimental? Does it come from your true inner Will or does it come from mechanical habit? Is it a place you come back to again and again or does it represent a new unexplored area of the Labyrinth?
It is your choice. It has always been your choice. What will you be this time around?
What will you do when the bell rings for you?

Your Discovery

I didn’t discover you…you discovered me. You used me to bring yourself forth, into this space, into the world and time. It is you who are wise, containing the wisdom that I can see only for a fraction of time before I recoil and cry. Colors and shapes warp into faded memories of dogs and purple clouds. The face I have studied in the mirror is soon broken, diced and re-compartmentalized like a Picasso experiment in form. Almond shaped eyes laced with fear and excitement expand with each inhalation, growing until they suddenly burst, releasing themselves into the sputtering open mouth of time.
And in this space, it is you who is in control. The mix if chemical components that plunge its hosts into a state of existence that is beyond the realm of human worlds.
And if I didn’t discover you, then… it is not "I" that does the thinking. It is not "me" who makes the decisions.
The other
The superior force
The other
The unnameable energy
The other
Not me?
Not you.
Something that needs you.
The other
It needs you
It discovered you.
It brought you out,
Made you open your mouth and ask for knowledge
Made you open you mouth and accept its gifts with a wet tongue.
Its horrors that break every concept cemented in your warehouse of fractured goods and tainted beliefs
The sledgehammer that rips the flesh from bone,
destroying all you know of gravity and colors.
Take its gifts with respect and fear.
The other brings it ALL
more than can truly be understood.
More than you think you want.
It is knowledge
It IS the other
It discovered you.
Your concepts of free will are illusions in the fantasy of your existence.
Your breath
Your memories
Your body
They swim in an endless ocean, devoid of any color, but blue.
The kind of blue for kings and gods. The color that is so rich, it holds every other color within its spectrum, the color of pure awareness, the vibrancy of your highest chakra in full awareness.
With this color comes beating drums and sacred round fires. It is not of the sky, it is not of the earth.
It is the other.
In its form without form.
In its colors without colors.
In it lifetimes without birth or death.
In its love without bodies and warm breath.
It is the other
It is this and us
These lifetimes of blue,
These chemicals and body movements that create the perfect tension
Sowing the time for alchemical change.

What Will You Be?

"Who will you be?" she shouts from the sandy beach shore. "what will you be when the clouds part and darkness descends with droves of hungry black-haired beasts?""Who will you be?""who WILL you be?"Implying that tomorrow is the question that needs answering.The looming monstrosity of the future.It reeks and hints at madness.
But soon THEN will be NOW.It is a cycle of concerned predictions and worries, a repeating pattern with an unattainable end, always beyond the horizon.There is nothing to attain.You cannot "be." There is nothing to be.All are words.

Wealthy,
Famous,
Happy,
Content,
Father,
Mother,
Satisfied,
Broke,
Doctor,
Musician...

Words like these can never describe "you."You cannot "BE," for you are none of these, and yet, quietly, all of these.You may have a son, but are you really a father? Is your Being a father?Can you be happy?
A happy emotional state does not continue endlessly into time. The subjection of time and movement will crush all these fantasies. It will all come to change, for it all does. Each second that passes changes us in a subtle, yet deep way.We cannot perceive the wearing of time on a wall, the molecular breakdown is too slow to watch, but after twenty years, the cracks in the paint and the crumbling stone reveal the long traveled path of change upon the buildings’ surface. It was happening all along, right next to you as you ate your morning cereal, it was just moving at a rate we could never perceive in motion.They ask what you will "be."In Spanish there are two different verbs for "to be." In English we say "I am happy." "I am a doctor." "I was born in Mexico." English speakers use one verb to say what and how they are. Within the language, it implies that this "am" is a constant, a non shifting idea. In Spanish, there is a distinction between a fixed and transitory state. The two verbs used to describe these states are "ser" and "estar." One implies that you "are" feeling happy, yet it is not a fixed emotional state." You use the verb "ser" to describe a more permanent statement, like the location of your birth.While this is more accurate than the English language, it stops short of recognizing the impermanence of all states, even the ones that seem permanent. Our language, the way we speak and talk about ourselves and our world has deeply influenced our ability to comprehend other states of being, other realities. The words we choose/speak have influenced our ideas and perceptions, going very deeply into our subconscious realm. These provide the machine with fuel to continue in its current perceptions of "being." We walk around with beliefs in what we are, we hold tight to the ideas of where we come from and where we want to go. These beliefs restrict us and freeze us into repeating activities.We "are" none of these. My Being is not Jewish, my Being is not a young woman. My Being is not a salesperson that likes pizza. These are the roles my machine plays, they are part of the play that this human known as Lydia recreates every day. My Being lacks a definition, it is beyond the temporary nature of earthly roles.

And so you cannot "be," but you can "do."

You can Work, you can push your earthly machine to work for your Being. You can create the discipline within yourself to Work NOW, to use what lays at your fingertips to move your energy and create.