god behind god

“God will not guide those whom he confounds.”
Qur’an: 16:37

Let us now bow our heads, close our eyes, and imagine the ears of an anthropomorphic deity so that we may whisper into them.
Cosmic Parent, who fathers and mothers us from Beyond our understanding,
we bring to you today our demands and our requests, our complaints and our concerns, our questions and our cofusions.
We ask that you guide us on the path home and not confound us and let us lose our way.
We beg you to not destroy us but to create with us a world that will make everyone happy.
do not leave us up shit creek with no paddle, but get us home in time for dinner and prime time, and a good night’s sleep.
But its your universe, who are we to say?
Do what you want.
OK.

WHAT, if anything, is THAT which IS “beyond” our god images? Beyond our pictographs language dogma thought habits? Beyond the idols of our conceptual apparatus -- and out of our minds? GOD behind GOD? Each generation constructs its gods. Collective imaginations create a variety of gods to choose from in the spiritual supermarket, a wide range of Ultimate Realities.
OR do you believe tere is an infinite gulf between human imagination and its divine source? Between the constructions of human consciousness and revealed absolute truth?
Does a scripture stamped in eternal iron cover your sky? Whose poetic imagination wrote this? Who speaks the WORD that both names and cripples you?

We believed that at the END of TIME we would all wake up from collective dream and like a light would come on inside each of us and for the first time in our lives we would SEE WHERE we really are and we would see THAT WHICH IS face to face and we would see each other face to face and we’d be citizens in the NEW GLOBAL CITY of PEACE, man, and the words “Ultimate Reality” seemed to mean something to us. It meant that which we hunger after because we are wandering lost in the shadow world’s dark delusion. So we crawl on our knees, or carry our crosses, and offer our meagre treasures. We wanted to be able to click on the god icon in our brains and be in the Presence, encountering the Eternal.


“Are we to renounce our gods for the sake of a mad poet?” Qur’an: 37

The Lord,
your God,
is One.

Meditate on One.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

“One”

Concentrate, focus, on
One, each one, each
breath is One.
One, only one.
One alone.
Centered on one.
One point at the center
of concentric circles
of concentered con-
sciousness.
A still pool.
The breath of One on the surface of the water.


The human species is a dysfunctional family ripped apart by oedipal patricidal rages and fratricidal sibling feuds
ever since we children of the One were evicted from the garden by the divine landlord and two half brothers started quarrelling over whom Dad chose to sacrifice to God, or whatever started it all millennia past, started the endlessly spinning cycle of retaliations and real estate disputes.

Breathe in
Breathe out
one
zero
one
zero
one
zero

October 5, 1998

Thoughts of salvation or enlightenment:
Zero... the cessation of desire in the Buddhist sense? And exactly what is the Buddhist sense? Recognition that the condition of desire is suffering. Desire gives rise to suffering because its object may be lost, will be lost. "Unconditional love" may be a phrase to describe an acceptance of what cannot be changed. Accept the cosmos as it is, in its beauty and its terror, recognizing yourself in it and it in yourself.

Umbrella 2001

UMBRELLA 2001



I need a new umbrella, not one of those $3 umbrellas they sell on the street that you can only use twice and it breaks, but a really good umbrella for when that hard rain finally falls.

WHERE’S MY FIREPROOF UMBRELLA!!?

Its the New Normalcy.
Nothing has changed and everything has changed.
We get over it, calm down, let down our guard,
and wait for the next attack.

Where do you hide?
Can’t hide under the flag,
stars and stripes are not forever, because
Instant Blowback’s gonna get us.
So be careful on the bus.
But you looked so cute
in your Hazmat suit -
Xanax and Paxil and Prozac and Valium
smallpox and anthrax and sarin and cholera -
wait a minute Mr. Postman!
Wait a minute, wait a minute.

You look for a little homeland security in the midst of a war with no boundaries and no soldiers - just scapegoats, refugees, and collateral garbage.
The real war is invisible - the TV replays the same images over and over - but the real war is invisible, in your head.
World War, but not World War 3 -perpetual world war from now on.
And who can say where it is or when it is or who it is or what it is and
why is it?
Its because it was. Its because an eye must be paid for an eye that was taken,
and 6,000 eyes for 6,000 eyes, and you took too many eyes
and now you owe me eyes,
and soon we’re all blind like that Hindu guy said, the blind killing the blind,
and anyone with vision put in prison.
Where do you hide in an invisible war fought by blind people?
There is no place to hide from a war in your mind.
There is no place to hide in an invisible war.

America, you are paranoid.
America wants to build a big umbrella in the sky
made of satellites and lasers and missiles.
America wants to be safe to attack everyone else.
America wants to be Boss of the World.
AMERICA, CHANGE YOUR OWN REGIME.
America, change your mind.


No Place is my hiding place.
I’m only safe in my place with no place.
Its outside of me, far away
and its inside of me, always near.
So I’m careful to not forget it.
I’m careful not to lose it.
I won’t leave it in a restaurant or on the subway.

My umbrella is a mobile tent,
a tabernacle in the wilderness.
40 days and nights the rain comes down, the flood goes up.
Under my umbrella - dry land,
approximate utopia.

GOD BLESS APPROXIMATE UTOPIA,
global city of peace,
approximately nowhere,
on the best planet
in the best solar system
in the best galaxy
in the most beautiful of all possible universes

Do not fear the Last Day,
it may be billions of years away
before our sun dies
and don’t cry over a spilled Milky Way
The Universe is still my Universe.
My Universe right or wrong, but my Universe.

Osama bin Laden is dead

I think bin Laden stated that the purpose of the attack was to lure the US into a war in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was a bonus. If any "closure," whatever that means, is possible, it would include ending those wars. I'm not rejoicing Osama bin Laden's death, but I'm not mourning, either.