I appreciated the note. Thanks a lot for the encouragement. Some day I hope to live in a "state of mind" that the poetry suggests. Until then I'll just keep plugging along. As you indicated the other night, surrender is tough and some of us are more ready then others (the gap between "knowing what's real" and "being real" can be quite large, though bridged in a moment). Anyway, it doesn't matter much once the time variable is removed.

 

Enjoyed the company and the conversation quite much and hope we can both keep in touch. Sometimes it takes another to see and show us things in ourselves that we didn't know were there. Russ is a lucky man! I've got a fairly short list of people I feel close to (although it seems to be growing, or perhaps it is I that am growing) and you're certainly one of them.

 

I've included the poem I wrote to Sandy for Christmas. I think it may express how a lot of husbands feel about their wives -- at least the thoughtless ones. I thought you might like it. In truth, I do believe each woman has "all woman" within her and only needs sufficient love and attention (which is just another way of saying love, for when I "attend" to anything by focusing conscious attention, I am giving myself as a fundamental state of "conscious being"; am giving myself in the truest sense of the word) to bring it out.

 

Alternately, I might say that to see the potentially limitless facets of feminity that any one woman has the potential to express, I must look with eyes no longer blinded by thought; eyes no longer clouded by preconceived images and notions about who and what she is. For such eyes are always dead, seeing only that which was, or projecting that which may be based on that which was, and never seeing her as she is, here and now -- in truth , rather then in thought or idea.

 

The trick thus lies in seeing with "fresh or newborn (perhaps reborn) eyes", not only in terms of the ones we love, but in terms of life; to "look without the word" -- without any thought, symbol or idea as to who, what, when, where or how -- and just look. We must learn (rediscover is better) how to see without judgement and so, once again, come to see openly and completely -- "directly" rather than "reflectively" (as reflected images, be they of the mind or in a pond, are clearly subject to all manner of "self" distortion, and even beyond that, inversions, reversals and negative images of that which actually is).

 

We can't change the world -- it is what it is and that's all that it is -- but we can change the way we see it by simply adjusting the manner and mode of our looking. We can come to see it in other than "ego-centric" terms; we can come to see it without "ourselves" as a central referent to all that we see, as the "fundamental context" of everything that goes on in and around us. For therein lies the miracle that with a simple opening of our "self-blinded" eyes -- in the "twinkling of an eye", so to speak -- may we once again come to see life (and so ourselves, for am I not, at my most fundamental level, my life?) as it truly is and not as the dim and faded shadow that thought makes it. 

 

For what it is worth, and what it is worth is definitionally beyond measure and conception -- cannot be contained within the meager limits of relative, reflective thought -- and so "unknowable" in terms linear mind and consciousness. Though it can be known experientially; can be experienced and seen directly, when ones consciousness becomes "undivided and non-dual" (unitary and non-linear; whole, complete and perfect, in and of itself; pure, undivided and so fulfilled, etc.).

 

The metaphysicians call such a state of mind "Cosmic or Universal Consciousness"; the mystics call it "Christ or God Consciousness" . Interestingly enough, a consciousness of Christ and Christ's consciousness would have to be equivalent, or the former could not contain and so comprehend the full extent of the essentially "limitless nature" -- in all time and space -- of the latter; could not know it "totally and completely", if it did not have the same fundamental characteristic of "boundlessness" at the root of its own nature; could not know it perfectly, from the inside-out, from the stand-point of "perfect knowledge", from -- in the final analysis -- the stand-point of identity, which in itself, is a necessary precondition for "perfect knowledge", the knowledge of "oneness". For only that which is infinite at root could contain, and so know perfectly, that which is by definition a boundless state of mind, consciousness and being).

 

The Zen Masters call such a state of mind and consciousness "direct seeing". Intellectually, it's a state of "perfect knowledge" in which the "subject" becomes one with the "object"; the "knower" one with the "known". Some have also called such a state of mind a state of "Perfect Love", and so too selflessness, in which the "Lover" becomes one with his "Love" -- the Two become One, become "One Flesh". Call it what you will, it's a state or condition of consciousness that can only be known when "self-thought" ceases to divide ones original state of mind and being as non-dual, non-linear and so non-relative (they all say the same thing) consciousness -- a state that cannot be stated or said, but can be experienced and so known directly.

 

An alternative way of seeing this phenomena describes it as a state of non-moving, still, silent and empty consciousness; a condition of mind and being in which the movement of ones consciousness ceases totally and so becomes able to see itself; a state of pure consciousness, clear, undisturbed and undistorted -- undivided into the relative states of positive and negative being suggested by a sine curve. And by virtue of such "nothingness", will such a state come to (already does is better) interpenetrate all things, in all time and all space, and in so doing come to feel all such relative states of consciousness and being as its body.

 

You asked for it! You shouldn't have encouraged me. Oh well, "back to earth". I'm running out of time to get this to you. Bye for now and God Speed. 

 

Rich                   R.F.Hay c 1985