Vanity, choice, majesty and love.  2003 - 2006  
    A narrative (with editing) as it was revealed to me in meditation with Tree.

        I negotiated with a bug that was in my space today.
        Giving acceptance allows freedom to others.  If you find a bug in your house the problem is that you have judged the house yours.  Because I fear the snake I can not accept the snake within my house.  Judge differently and the bug and the snake can live in the house and all have freedom.
        When I do not judge anything mine,    I sit among friends.
        It is a beautiful day.  Yet the beauty is the emptiness.  By accepting but not possessing the emptiness I sit among friends.
 
10/3/2003

        Emptiness is without vanity and sensation.  Yet by naming the place my own self-importance brings vanity to me.
        Before Lao Tsu was asked to write the “Tao Te Ching“, Tao was unnamed.  By doing as described in the “Tao Te Ching Two“, "work is done, then forgotten”, he may have escaped vanity.  Having desire, I do not.
        By being named emptiness is communicatable even though by being named it is lessened.  Reality lies in the named as in “The theory of unity and the axiom of choice “.  It quantifies and qualifies the unbounded Essence into finite subsets of the All.  

10/6/2003

        I am not ready to be holy (or empty called hole or whole) for I desire to express myself. This serves my vanity.
        I am not happy.  I am not sad.  Mostly I am serene.  Yet I have desire, not just for fulfillment, but for self-expression from which would come elation and depression. And this is vanity.
        The tree has taught me emptiness.  The tree has taught me I lack emptiness. The theory of unity and the axiom of choice taught me I lack emptiness by my own choosing.  I choose by naming.
        I come to sit with tree today filled with different food.  I have eaten fats, proteins and carbohydrates rather than fiber.  I witness a change in my whole body.  I feel bloated (bloated lies between pain and comfort).
        It is my responsibility to pay attention to my body.  Responsibility is a desire to please myself. It is a vanity. I live in vanity.  I live in the all.   

To be part as in love or part of it all?

        I came to tree with an agenda of peace and negation.   Vanity was interfering.  To add to it people appeared. The people were like the worm that frightened me by its presence.  I could not move them aside with a stick like I had done with the worm.  My communion is fragile yet my witness is real.
        I recalled last Saturday asking a friend (who also is a priest) to touch me on my sore neck and feel grateful.  I recalled that I prayed for a friend under the knife on Monday afternoon.  I recalled Tuesday afternoon telling a friend (who also is a shaman) that I was putting aside developing my healing skills (for now).  I recalled that healing and miracles were in the Tao group conversation.  I have witnessed a series of low probability events, this after putting aside the desire to heal.
        Through my vanity they are related. Through my vanity I see them as beautiful. Through vanity I view healing as moral.  Through spirituality I view healing as amoral.  This is one small part of my vanity.  

Choosing my groups

        There are two choices upon which I place importance.  They are myself and everything. The essence of everything and the essence of myself are the same. The path from myself to everything through the manifestations is of my choosing. Then the path of all manifestations is circular connected through the essence.
        One continuum between everything and myself is the human path. I make judgments at every subset.  That which I do not consider I exclude.  This exclusion can be overcome by others bringing an excluded people to my attention. Once I judge them as human they become included. I might make a general judgment of the importance of humanity.  I might not.  In my case, I judge humanity important.
         I choose my groups.  I choose real groups. I choose according to my taste.  I choose to promote (a level of influence) the end of killing (a judgment) between people (the chosen group is humanity). This makes me opposed to war and capital punishment.  Because I doubt, I may change my mind.
         I might have chosen to violate (a level of influence) the oppressors (a judgment) of Americans (the chosen group is Americans).
         If I were to choose everything, then living would involve inescapable violation, for by eating the corn I violate the earth. If I hold very still, take the smallest sustenance, do nothing more than necessary for existence and judge nothing then I realize the Lao Tsu sage (as I choose to understand his poems).  I choose to live between the fodder and the sage.  
        The emptiness, the abyss, the chaos, the essence of Tao is beautiful.  Its order, which also is itself, is called random. It is amoral. It is sensed in passing.
        The order of the all is said, manifested, created and always present.  It is the result of a process described in” the Creation of Order“.  It is done using continuum, and betweeness (and more) to separate into finite units from the infinite abyss. The union of all units is the all of Tao. It is the existing world.
        Judgment lies within my manifested world. That which I do, I judge.   It is a character in the all.
        To sense beauty stay in the declaration but keep your doubt.  Declaration is the center.  Doubt will remove judgment from declaration. Then, in contemplation (doing nothing) you will be without judgment/no judgment (called “principle “in “the creation of order”). With question and without the need to judge you will be ready to feel the passing.  You will question without answer.  This is the beginning.

9/11/2004

        With desire to damp my political anger I visited tree.  I asked for comfort and serenity again and again.  But when it was time to say emptiness I said majesty.
        I looked at the growth of tree as beauty and was struck by majesty.  In wonder I asked “is majesty mistaken or true?”
        I noticed that rather than comfort I felt the pleasure of a gentle breeze.  Rather than serenity I was elated by vanity in the ease of which I laid aside my anger. Rather than emptiness my desire was fulfilled by majesty.  I asked “when majesty fulfills desire is emptiness gone? “
        When you have the vanity of an external God, then God’s touching gives majesty.   I touched the understanding of those who strive for peace as fulfillment rather than live within life. Like a drug you quickly lust for more.
        But Tao varies. It is enough to wonder.  It is to be more or less.  

5/28/2005

        I began by speaking allowed.  I knew that by calling I was vain.  I noted that tree may not call.    I put words aside and felt the breeze and smelled the odors. Without calling myself man I was tree and tree was I and we were everything.
        A fly landed upon my leg. I was wordless.  I did not feel his touch.  I was free to be the fly. I freely twitched and moved. I was fly, tree, myself and everything.  Once again I wondered, "Is majesty mistaken or true?"
        When I left I hugged the tree as I always do.  I was hugged in return.
        From this I knew that it was not that I was in love with God but rather that I was living in love.  Only my vanity kept me apart.  My identity, my vanity, may be the only thing that ends with my death.
        Further, I knew that my vanity was the nature of my self.  It was my nature to embrace my vanity for as long as I live in the same way that I embraced the fly, without judgment.

The Grandeur of my Insignificance

        I am everything.  That’s what I choose and that is grand. However, I am the teeniest spec of everything.
        My reality is bounded by the walls of the room (Out of sight, out of reality).  I am aware only of my integration of all the gravitations that are changing within very small boundaries. If you don’t change at the same speed of time as me you are not part of my reality.  Not only that, but the change between us must be different by the time it takes time to get from you to me. That excludes all but the most infinitesimal.
        The only other stuff there is, is my consciousness.  That only includes what I have recorded.  If you walk out of the room you walk out of my reality but remain in my consciousness.  If a particle zooms through the room and I record it through some strange means it becomes part of my consciousness.  If it changes too fast for me I never know of it.
        The question remains, "is majesty mistaken or true?  ".  Is the strength of what I feel a just cause for what I believe?

        I visited tree today. Without words there is only majesty.
        With the sun bright in my face and with my eyes closed I saw red with sparkles.  No words, I felt warm majesty.
        The sun went behind a cloud and I saw blue with snowflakes.  No words, I felt cool majesty.
        As I came back to words I asked tree to speak.  I could not believe tree’s first words and have forgotten them.  There was a second reference to “the green pages of the Bible”.  I have no words to find meaning in any of this.  I know I felt majesty.
        “In the beginning there was the Word”.  Green is the color of the beginning.  It is the color of creation at the time of creation.
        “In the beginning there was the Word”.
        Before words the Word was the word given as covenant as in “I give you my word”. Then in that time before words there was the bond between me as every person and God as everything.  The relationship, the belonging, the bond, that is exactly “Love“.
        “In the beginning there was love”.
        From love each child creates reality by the process as described in “the tools to peacemaking conversation, basic definition”. The child chooses units.  This is where words come from. This is how the consciousness integrates that which is (the essence) into reality.
        The process we call “creation” is the same process as done by a child but credited to the manifestation of everything.  Then to understand how “God” created “the universe” understand how the child chooses his units.  That is understand the axiom of choice and the theory of unity as used by each child as he learns to speak.
        All things (the all) come from the love of God (the essence).  Things are nonexistent.  Love, the covenant between the all and the essence, the Word before words, exists.
        Rather than green pages of the Bible being the Christian Bible it is the relationship, the covenant, love.  It is love.
        The forgotten words of the tree come back.  The forgotten words of the tree were “the Bible”.  Not just the Christian Bible but every bible's covenant.  All bibles as one message.  That one message is love.
        Since in the beginning we belonged, it is easiest to begin by belonging.  This is also the beginning.  

 1/11/2006

        I visited tree today. I was able to empty my mind and feel.  Then word descriptions of my feelings entered me. The parameters for understanding the common usage word “ love “ seem to be, grace(from the essence) and karma(from the all). The independent variables of the parameters seem to be how we choose our belonging and our chosen groups.
        The words were manifestations of my feelings.  They shaped where and how I felt. The process more than required judgment, it was judgment.
         Before leaving I hugged and kissed tree. Being of empty mind, I felt majesty. Then I manifested the feeling by calling it love.
    Is majesty mistaken or true?
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