[FOREVERLOVE has arrived! Or, at least, this version of a Foreverlove, which arrived on the 8th, and yet has always been here. I have been courting rest the past couple weeks—often unsuccessfully. However, I feel like I might have landed in a rhythm at last. I ended up pushing myself past my boundaries into “overtraining”. This was a profoundly unrestful state. Elevated base heartrate; no breathing techniques work to slow the heart. Irritability always at the base of the teeth, the tip of the tongue, racing to be let out. Why is rest so difficult? Or, no; it is not rest that is difficult. By its nature, rest is one of the very easiest things! However, it has come to be laden with all sorts of awful heavy hard things. And yet, as Missive #41 reminded us, all blessedness does come from/through rest. A true gift given to us, to rest. To learn how to rest, regularly and reliably. A gift and a challenge.
Where are we now? We are ripe in the temptation of “Now what?” Spring has bloomed in all its pink and yellow and magnolia white force. Yesterday was an impossibly lovely day. We went and sat by the ocean, in the sun, and listened. Transmitting~Receiving. I later left the house at 8:20pm and it was still light enough to see. I thought to myself: how can days get longer than this? We are around two months to the day of longest light. And today, we are right on the cusipice of Beltane. May Day. The one year anniversary of Little Cosmic Missives! I am so grateful to you all for being here, with me, with the world in all its wonderhorror. There are more announcements to come. After rest comes meaningful reflection. And after reflection, fortuitous action~] Received 4/11 & 4/30/2024 | 3:18-4am (4/11) & 3-3:23am (4/30); opening lines received coincident with Missive #41 - REST AND BE BLESSED (4/11 & 4/18)
Listen to the Recitation:
FOREVERLOVE
The two participants of a union are not separate
Nor are they separable; but they are distinct,
The individual instinct preserved and precipitate
In the dull murmur clauses between breaths
Between betweenlinesses and terralous timelines
An opal hewn into the face of the moon
And sewn into a ring, a pair of rings, bejeweled
And carved with waves and lines and sphurana
Vibrations in rigor mortis, vague feelings of one
Crying nearby, a woman, a mother, a child, a son
Lost in the echoing halls of an underground altar.
"Shock makes the heart vibrate more forcefully"
Ramana Maharshi reminds, laying peacefully
In content contemplation of the self, "Who am I?"
Who am I? Who am I brings us back to the self,
To the source, to the one at the rootfringe of it all;
So reliably this question works. Try it one day
In meditative sitting, "Who am I? Who am I?..."
When an obtrusive thought comes: "To whom
Is this thought occurring?" To me. "Who am I?"
Focus on one thing can not be held for very long
And so reminders to come back are the mass
Of any substantive practice. How do we find
Our way back? Back to ourselves. We get lost
So often, so easily, carried away in the play of
To and Fro, blame of you and shame on me, who
Is to blame? Who are you? "To whom is the
Thought of You occurring?" Yes yes, me. And
Who Am I?? Again the question takes me us you
Into the toroidal axis heart running through one
Self, updown the 32-step ladder, inout the double
Headed snake serpent, each head a gateway into
Outof itself onto itself anew; nothing is new
Under the sun, shining white gold, palladium hue.
If the moon is opal, then the sun is gem of pure
Starlight, every color scintillating. In the body,
There is a center of experience, physical and
Subtle, conscious and unconscious; movement
And pure consciousness are one in the same,
"The mind is rendered sensitive by calmness—
Become aware of it, gravitate towards it, and
Finally plunge into the Self." Confounding and
Co-founding the entire body of experience,
The great cosmic body which is the one body
Unifying the farthest reaches of inner and outer
Space, the tiniest subatomic pseudovibrations
To the midsized macromolecules, to the just
Beyond of the distance light has traveled in
46.6 billion "years", even if light may have only
Traveled 13.8 billion years; the cosmic horizon
Is much stranger than it may seem at first.
What is the universe? Or, should I say, Who?
Bell-shaped, or egg like, or as a sphere, or torus,
Infinite or bounded, perceivable or imaginary,
Which faction sponsors which perception into
Bonafide fact? Withdrawing and projecting,
Creating the world and the subject's pleasure
At watching, at unfolding, being the screen and
The image, and the audience, and the critic
Who pans the whole show as "Derivative" or
"Homage"—what a delight to dread! To disrepair,
Leveled up razed to the ground countless times
Each time a tragedy, an unimaginable violence
The city is rebuilt, only to be flattened again,
Whether Baghdad's House of Wisdom, or
Lush Hyrcania's Zadracarta, sparkling jewel of
The Caspian Sea, a sea of untold sparkling jewels
Hidden in its kilometer of depth, the largest
Enclosed body of water on earth, slightly saline
And wholly sentient. The greatest and most
Beautiful cities rise and fall, lost to the sands
And soils of earth's tempestuousness; we remain,
Watching the "appearance and disappearance
Without any perturbation to the Self." The seat
Of spiritual experience is not the physical heart,
But the heart's reflection of itself: not beating,
But powering, heating, holding nonetheless.
Ahad is "One without the concept of a two".
When the concept of two is born by one, creative
Projection is withdrawn by way of union. One sees
Itself in Two, and each return to One within and
Without: the dual participants join to inseparate,
Distinction becomes their via regia, their royal
Road to remembering their respective all-oneness
In the eyes of the other, reflected; the joy
Of re-discovery renown; Who are you? Who am I?
To Who are we? The organism of two and one
And three spirals in onto themself, multiplicity
And unity, solidity, comfortitude in resolace.
All gather in the round, 22 all told, with 3 more
In the center, 2 facing eachother, and all beneath
The eclipsing sun, an aura of bright subdued
Gold wreathed around the snowcapped mountain,
Crowns as those worn by the humans in the center
A center of the experience, physical heart and
Spiritual Heart, humming vibrating as one,
Ghostly sphurana hinting just on the other side
Of the cosmic edge of the moment, where a moment
Cannot be a moment, and cannot not be a
Moment more; we remind ourselves to return
To what had just passed, but has not yet left:
A circle of words, circumambulatory, sent in
To the root, to the network of centers joined
Into one whole world, constellations lighting up
In the sky around us, within us. Each shares
Of themself wholly, contributing to the chorus,
A new facet added to the cutting gem, a new
Possibility emerges from the shell of a mouth;
Every mouth a mountain, every word a river of light.
As the moon crosses into the direct path of the sun
One word is planted, at perfect depth.
A word for the moment: "Foreverlove."
All love
is Foreverlove.
This photograph was taken in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India. (Arunachala is the name of Shiva in both the temple and the Hill itself, which is an embodiment of Shiva in the Tamil sastras.)
The camera was set up in the Old hall (where Ramana Maharshi lived from 1927-1950) with light from the only eastern window flowing in. Sri Ramana, aware of the dim light and the challenge it posed to the slow emulsion and large camera asked G. G. Welling [the photographer from Bangalore]
"Is there enough light?"
G. G. Welling, moved beyond words, replied
"Bhagvan, you are the Light".