I am sitting on my bed, amazed. This amazement has been flashing for weeks, maybe months, and is becoming ever permanent. Its not like a new understanding, which quickly fades in intensity and becomes stale, or a new experience that soon loses its shine.

It an amazement at the miracle that I am here. I am amazed at the process which is me, which is everything, that has created life, that has created this world. I look at people on the subway, I look at birds and animals and insects, and I am astounded that creation produced this. Sure, things like computers and airplanes are technological marvels, yet we are still have no clue how to create life, yet alone turn that life into anything as seemingly annoying as a mosquitoe, which can feed, reproduce, fly, lay eggs, die.

The miracle of creation is astonishing. More astonishing is this is all me. I have gone through a deeper series of realizations, and I see the body that I arise in as deeply impersonal, as just a perseptive that sees and experiences this world, yet also as being made of the same fabric, of the same essence, as all that arises within and without me. Its a sense, a knowing, that no thing is seperate from being, from essence, and that essence is my identity.

Its an identity which existed before I popped out of my mothers womb, before I thought I was Bruce and nothing else, before I became obssessed with my seperate self and which I recognized after I finally undid this seperate self obsession.
Eveyrthing is alive; left for long enough, the airplanes will break down, Spirit will breathe life into their metallic dust, and life will climb out of the rocks. Where did it come from? The mystery is too stupendous to even try and understand. All I can do is enjoy the show, and do some good.

Love
Bruce

Its up to us to bring the kingdom of God into earth, through good works. First, we have to bring the kingdom of God into ourselves.

I was listening to a talk today, about the difference between self inquiry and narcissm. My experience has been that intense self inquiry and understanding is essential as a phase in the journey, and then it will give way to a desire to do good in the world. I feel that. I feel that I have much less of a need to always go inside, There is not much difference between inside and outside anymore; it is all experience arising. If I watch my thoughts, I realize that I want to create good in the world.

This is not some idealistic fantasy. I have fallen into idealism before and its a trap which seemed to often inadvertently create its opposite, to strengthen darkness. This is heaven coming into the earth through this body.

My journey has been a long journey of healing and opening to Spirit. Slowly, my negative emotions have been increasingly transformed, and I am more and more positive, at ease, accepting, understanding, and balanced. I feel love. I notice the content and emotional driver of almost every thought. Inside me, there has been a hard fough  revelotion against addiction, doubt and fear,  that, through the grace of God, has been won.

I have been asking myself what world I want to create. I read somewhere that before you change the world, change yourself. In the moment to moment of my life, with colleagues, students, friends, I have been opening, laughing, bringing in positive energy. I have made repeated attempts to understand more, listen more, accept more, and if I have a reaction or aversion or obsession, to find that seperate thing within me, becoming more and more free in my inner world.

I have been receieving more and more unsolicited compliments from more different people recently, of how people feel comfortable and understood around me, how they like my positive energy, and how they enjoy my presence. This makes me happy; I am happy that love and goodness is flowing into the world through me, and I am grateful for that. The compliments are important as feedback from  the world is important, and for me it is a sign that finally I am creating good.

The point is that the good is in small places, in flashes of laughter, in a compliment on a friends nails, in the stepping aside and helping an old person. Simple moments, this is where it matters. This is what I suspect we ought to strive for, and that is the transforming of our inner world, irrespective of the conditions around us, and then the joyful expansion of that inner world into the ins and outs of life. This is how good is created. This is how God loves Its up to me to create the world I want, First, I create a beautiful inner world. The outside then follows. .

Love
Bruce

I Realized something last week. Something that perhaps has been staring me in the face for as long as I can remember.

Its been an interesting few weeks. A couple of weeks ago I started to sense that my body was disposeable. I also started to wonder what needed to exist for everything else to exist.

I slept with a woman in whom the Holy Spirit is alive and well a week ago. That night, the kundalini process quickened. I had intuitions which are indescribable within my dream states. I slept 14 hours the following night. It started to dawn on me, that God has been there for eternity, and its God who illuminates my experience. Awareness, as Gods presence, is primary, and experience secondary, yet God is the experience. Its as though everyything is turned inside out, and experience arises within awareness, and experience is both cognizance of inner world things like thoughts and feelins and percieved outer things like sights and sounds. Inner and outer dont seem to matter anymore.

Awareness has this body, and not the other way around. This realization, where I finally seemed to have realized what is going on, is very simple, very obvious, nothing to write home about, yet also profound. I feel a little like an idiot; how could I have not realized this before. Its the same awareness that illuminates and powers everyones experience, and this body is siimply a perspective on a dream of Spirit. Yet, all is Spirit, dreaming itself. Spirit is me. I am Spirit. Spirit is everything.

I dont know quite what the implications are. Maybe I will go surfing and sit under banana trees for a while. What I do know is that everyone is running around trapped in a type of optical illusion, thinking   they are seperate from their percieved world.

There is nothing to get, really. Nowhere to go and nowhere to land. My body is adjusting to this and there has been a lot of inner tension as a result.

Love
Bruce

Increasingly I feel more and more intimitely connected to how Spirit is speaking to me. A wise friend of mine suggested I pay intricate, ongoing attention to what is happening within me and without me, and make a note of it all. 

On Wednesday night, I went to a bar to meet a friend of mine. I didn't feel comfortable in the bar, and my friend had a grasping, male hunting, almost aggressive energy which I didn't enjoy. A plate of food was almost spilt in front of us. Soon after, two people next to me, in a strange accident, spilt their beer on me and broke a bottle on the floor. I met another friend shortly after and chatted to her for a while. Standing next to her in another spot, another drink was spilt on me. It wasn't a rowdy night, it was two unusual incidents. I went home soon after as I didn't feel comfortable.

I wonder, can I take on the Karma of another and that manifest in the field around? I slept with a woman on Friday night. She has a strong spirit, yet is also dogged by an inner conflict. This was the second time we slept together; the first time was a beautiful, intimate experience, which created some inner shifts within me. This time she had been drinking, was angry with a friend of hers, and carried the anger into the room with me. She was still angry when we made love. I couldn't get an inch of sleep that night. She neither, and as we were both restless, she felt it better that she return to her house around dawn. As she was getting ready to leave, I kicked over a glass of water in my room, spilling it on the floor.

She left and I finally got some sleep. Later that day, I went to the gym, and on return, found that I had forgotten my keys in the apartment. I never forget my keys, and so I sat, waiting for my housemate to return, wondering how I was locking myself out of my inner chamber. This was an apt reflection, as I have been engaging in more hedonistic, self-serving pleasure and less noble pursuits such as my bodhisattva vow.

That night, I met a new friend, and one of the topics of the night was surrender. We had a great dinner and good chat, yet afterwards, I was a little tired. This morning, I awoke feeling tired and not well rested. I just couldn't seem to get going. I drew a tarot card for the day, and the theme was ‘Control'. I have never once been late for my teaching job. This morning, though, I knocked my protein drink over which required a fair amount of time to clean up the mess. I had to wait to use the bathroom. The trip to work has never taken more than 40 minutes, and I use the underground metro system, and require two changes. The worst possible option of train catching occurred. I missed the first tube by 20 seconds and had to wait six minutes. I missed the next tube by about 30 seconds and had to wait 8 minutes. I missed the final tube by 15 seconds and had to wait 3 minutes. I could feel the frustration rising, and just allowed it to be there, working with the inner voice of control, and didn't push away or indulge in the frustration, waiting for it to self-liberate. I finally arrived at work 5 minutes late for my class. There was nothing eventful at work. Yet, on the way home, buying some groceries, I picked up an egg carton and it was open, and two eggs fell out, smashing. I called the assistant to clean them up.

It just struck me as strange, things spilling, falling, breaking. There were 5 spillages on me or around me or from me in the last five days. This rarely happens to me, and I wonder how I am perhaps spilling emotional energy (symbolized by the fluid and the water) and by wasting that emotional energy on the wrong pursuits, I am destroying my creative potential (smashing the eggs). By focusing on the external world too much, I lose the key to my inner world, which is the real source of my joy, my creativity, and my nourishment. This seems to make sense in terms of my current behavior, as I have been having a lot of fun in my last month in Asia.

So today, I was having creative thoughts. Tonight I feel a return to writing, to creating things, to putting them together,  to prayer, to inner contemplation and a surrender to the divine once again.