Nonduality
Message to One Suffering Depression, by
Gene Poole
Poetry,
Hanging Out, Depression, Jesus, and Being, by David
Hodges
Message to One Suffering Depression
by Gene Poole
Thoughts of suicide are nothing more than the wish to escape
one's own
HIGHEST SIDDHE, which is the power of creation itself. Our
culture, which
is the living definition of 'dualism', relegates the power of
creation to
'God'; yet, we all create our own individual dimension of reality
via this
power of creation. I speak quite literally here, NOT
metaphorically. The
'world-dream' gives us the pieces from which we then create our
own
individual 'dream' or story.
Within this self-created story, we then attempt to create a
power-source to
which we then assign the power of creation; this is
"God". Ironically, the
"god" we create is the opposite of the 'satan' which is
the devil of our
own karma. Within this self-created reality of 'dualism', any God
or god or
escape or strategy will and can only be, the opposite of that
which we have
already created. Thus, to escape one pole of our creation, we
create the
opposite. This trap of DESIRE and aversion is the nature of the
BIPOLAR
experience.
There is no answer to this dilemma to be found within the field
of the
creation which is the manifestation of our highest SIDDHE-POWER;
only the
voluntary suspension of creative power will allow the uncovering
of the
underlyiing already-always of that which already is, which of
course is our
original nature. Existing in the trap of our own creation, we
have clear
evidence that nothing will ever succeed, that no plans are worth
the
effort, and that death is the obvious solution to our dilemma; in
a sense
this is true, but there is actually no escape from creation,
except to own
it; to own creation is to understand just how to suspend the
power of
creation.
Remember... just how the past-masters of Nonduality have stated
repeatedly
to NOT become attached to ANY SIDDHE? Well... what I am saying
here should
be obvious; that we create continually, as naturally as
breathing, and as
compulsively and as needily as breathing, also. Our 'attachment'
to
'reality' is what is going on here; we are very deeply addicted
to the
SIDDHE of creation, to the extent that we hide it from ourselves,
and
assign the responsibility to 'others' such as mom, dad, God, and
Satan.
Them, we can blame and scapegoat, but as you know, such is merely
an
ongoing hallucination, a refuge from what we have so carefully
hidden from
ourselves that the acceptance of it is deemed to be the very
betrayal of
the most basic roots of 'sanity' itself.
The absolutey UNTHINKABLE is the oposite of the 'world-dream'.
That 'I am
God' is not true at all; I am not God because my creation of God
is
entirely false. God has been created from pieces of desired or
feared
aspects of the world-dream, claimed as our tribal heritage; and I
am NOT
that God. I am God far beyond anyone's wildest dreams. I am the
absolute
God of my own dimension, dream, or story; I am the only living
Being in
existence in my own dimension. All 'others' are the apparently
living
"interface with the living Universe", which is 'like' a
giant machine which
inevitably obeys my every (conscious or unconscious) whim.
Chief among my 'whims' is the desire to 'fix it' or to 'make it
right'
within the dream I dream, to 'rectify' my own creation, while
persisting in
the act of denial that it is my own creation from beginninng to
end. There
is no remedy for any ill to be experienced within my dream;
dream-diseases
of course will respond to 'dream-medicine', but the COMPULSIVELY
AND
UNCONSCIOUSLY EXERCISED power of the HIGHEST SIDDHE is the actual
disease;
the addiction to the power of creation, the attachment to this
greatest of
all SIDDHE, as warned against be the highest masters of
consciousness, is
the actual disease. Only when this compulsive and addictive power
of
creation is voluntarily suspended, will we understand the actual
mechanics
of intention as the dynamic force which commands the vast living
machine
which is the living universe itself.
As I Am the only living Being within the discreet dimension of my
own
creation, so also are you a lone and isolated creator within your
own
dimension of your own creation. You may feel this; you may also
feel the
strange, movie-like flatness of the presence of so-called 'other
people'.
Both feelings are accurrate; both feelings result from the
cancellation of
the momentum of your own karma. You have a 'hot spot' to dwell
within; this
is a blessed time for you, David. Momentum cancelled, machine
being
revealed, you may now be groping futilly for the continuation of
your "best
version" of your own dimension.
Be advised, that you can go that route. or you can sit still and
hallucinate the actuallity of the 'situation', which is this; you
have been
creating reactively, in reaction to your own creation. That
desire-aversion
ping-pong game will never stop, but it can be made harmless. To
understand
that it is 'all the same thing' may be a good goal or exercise; I
mean that
I would advise you to deliberately suspend any judgement
whatsoever, thus
to allow a glimpse of the underlying mechanism which is the
'instrumentallity of reality itself' which is your will-power
reactively
commanding a giant machine which can do anything _except_ give
you the
will-power to stop using your own will-power.
It is possible to hallucinate 'reality' while we are 'dreaming in
unreality'; do you get this point? It is the calling for a
literal
inversion of the deepest ingrained attachment of all, the
attachmnent to
'making the dream better', which attachment covers-over the
reality of the
creation and the vast living machine which impliments 'our'
will-power. To
literally suspend the unconsciously exercised power of creation
is to allow
'nirvana'; the statements of the 'masters' which state that we '
cannot
directly experience the nondual state' because there is
'literally no-one
there to experience it' are dead-wrong. I have news for everyone,
but
addiction to the highest SIDDHE will always prove me 'wrong',
time and time
again.
I am saying that to suspend the highest SIDDHE is to exercise a
type of
control so rare, so undefined, that it is unknown and thus
unspoken. I
cannot 'uncreate' creation, but I can reveal the underlying
machanism which
supports my SIDDHE. I can live consciouly in my own 'dream',
harmlessly. I
can actually 'let go' of creation to the extent that I am able. I
advise
you to think about this. I do not call for passivity; I call for
abiding,
forever.
I can go about in my story, and I can love the characters whom I
have
created. I can do this in awareness that I am always creating; I
can also
let go of the power of creation. I am aware of the addictive
nature of any
SIDDHE; and I am aware that culture is the living embodiment of
denial of
our own Godhead. To be 'in' the world-dream while not being 'of'
it is the
goal; to impliment this goal, consider that that the power of
creation is
the highest SIDDHE. If we cannot let it go, we are stuck at that
level of
unconsciousness.
Please remember that there can be no 'uncreating of creation';
there is no
'undo' command. But there is an alternative to 'quitting the
program',
which is to abide the program. Please cultivate the awareness
that you are
creating, from beginning to end; and that the puzzle you face has
Self at
the center. Self, uncreated, is the reality in which all realty
occurs. And
the knowledge-context of Siddhe and attachment is quite close to
the actual
context which is the living interface with the instrumentation of
creation
itself. It is big, alive, and friendly. I introduce you to it.
Poetry,
Hanging Out, Depression, Jesus, and Being
by David Hodges
Poetry is a form for the feeling of being alive. The
philosopher Suzanne
Langer said that.
It is a form. Words on paper, lines that stand by themselves,
lines in
stanzas, stanzas with titles. Forms: sonnets, epics, lyrics,
odes.
A form for the feeling. Feelings. Something elusive to capture in
words.
You can’t capture a feeling by naming it. I can name a
feeling: “love”,
“despair”, “praise”, “loss.” But
that doesn’t give you the feeling. But a
poem can.
A form for the feeling of being. Being. What is it that God gives
us but
Being. God. In whom we live and move and have our being. Being.
That which
underlies everything of which we are conscious and everything of
which we
are not quite conscious but which rumbles beneath the surface of
our lives
like a subway train under the streets of New York. That which
rumbles in
our dreams, in our reveries, in our intuitions, our glimpses that
we don’t
quite notice while we are doing something else.
A form for the feeling of being Alive.
We are alive. Life. Life is about Being. Life is what happens to
us while
we are getting ready to do something else (who said that?).
When we are young we hang out a lot waiting for our lives to
start. We lie
on blankets on the sunny field talking and laughing, or reading
books, or
writing in our journals. And someone starts goofing about
something and the
group comes together in a moment of shared awareness hey,
something’s
happening and then it dies down again and someone wanders off and
someone
else arrives and we are hanging out in a group. Or we hang out by
ourselves
connecting to the thing within us that searches for deeper
meaning, for the
shape of something that will tell us what our life is all about.
And meanwhile Being is what is happening and we don’t even
notice what a
great Gift it is. And we read a poem and it tells us what went
through the
poet’s mind and consciousness and awareness while the poet
was hanging out
at his or her desk or on his or her blanket on some sunny field
somewhere
or while the poet was sitting in a café with a cup of espresso,
or while
the poet was sitting with a friend through a long evening of
rambling
conversation, or while the poet was sitting by a lake, a big lake
in the
White Mountains, or while the poet was insomniac in an apartment
in New
York or New Haven or Boston. And we read this poem and we love it
and we
don’t know why and it is because we catch the feeling of
being alive.
And this feeling saves us for a while. It saves us from doubt,
from
despair. It saves us from loneliness and the urge to merge. It
saves us
from the sense that our lives are more meager than our desires
and our
dreams. When we are young we hang out a lot waiting for that
salvation, a
salvation of meaning, a salvation in which we can tell ourselves
that our
lives have meaning and purpose.
And in church they tell us about salvation and they don’t
really tell us
what we are being saved from, they use the word sin along with
salvation
but we the language is too old and it doesn’t resonate for a
lot of us.
And when we are subject to depression we know what we need to be
saved
from. We know it well because it is our constant companion. And
we learn
all the ways to touch that salvation. Maybe it is by reading a
poem that
connects us to the feeling of being alive. Maybe it is a phone
call from a
friend, the kind of friend where you ramble when you talk, each
voice
feeding the other as you drift through a chain of associations
that becomes
the being of your lives, and when you look up an hour has passed,
or two
hours, and you hang up and you have connected to your friend and
you both
have experienced the feeling of being alive and you have been
saved for
that hour, and for several hours and even days to come, by your
friend.
And in church they tell you Jesus is that kind of friend, What a
Friend we
have in Jesus we sing. All our griefs and sins to bear. And when
we are
subject to depression we know about grief and we know what a
friend means
to our grief. And in church they serve us communion and maybe
sometimes
Jesus our friend becomes very real to us and sometimes maybe not,
sometimes
we are more aware of the annoying way someone is coughing, or of
the
failure of the minister to live up to the excellence of the
minister who
left some years ago, sometimes we are more aware of the problems
we brought
in, problems of money and career and marriage, problems of
singlehood,
problems of our own emotions which are like a foreign country to
us.
When we are subject to depression every day becomes an exercise
in staying
alive. Every day becomes a challenge to get through. Every day
becomes an
exercise in lasting until the next day, which seems so far away.
Every day
becomes a series of holes which if we are not careful we can
tumble into.
Holes of loss. Holes of anger and resentment. Holes of despair.
Holes of
emotion. The biggest hole is the hole of giving up. The hole with
the
seductive voice that says, why suffer any longer? Why go on this
way? What
is the point?
Then we know what salvation would mean. Salvation is salvation
from ourselves.
Then we get an email from a friend and we feel connected again.
Or a phone
call. Or a stranger in a store is nice to us. Or something on TV
makes us
laugh. And we connect to being again, God’s greatest gift,
and we begin to
balance out, to find the still center, and our feelings recede
and Hope
returns.
When we are older we don’t hang out like the young ones do
in big clumps.
We don’t hang out that way, we hang out in our easy chairs
in front of our
TV’s. Now that our lives have taken shape, now that we know
who we will be
married to, and what our children will be like, or now that we
know that we
are not going to be married or have children, or now that we know
where we
are going to live and who with or that we are going to live
alone, know
that we know what our work will be, now that we know what has
become of our
youthful dreams and what the ending of that story will be, we
hang out in
front of our tv’s, or at a café drinking coffee, or we hang
out at church,
or we hang out at spiritual retreats, but we are still waiting
for
something, we are still waiting for Being, for meaning, for the
deep
feeling that we are alive, that we inhabit God’s greatest
gift with grace
and purpose and fulfillment. We wait for that feeling, we
don’t always
connect to it. But we can because it is here now and it is always
here only
we have been too busy looking for it to see it. We have been too
busy
searching to find. We have been too busy looking for salvation to
enjoy the
feeling which is always there and always available that we are
already saved.
We already have Jesus our friend. Jesus our friend is the flow of
Being in
God’s universe, and that flow comes to us from inside us and
is nothing but
us only thinking gets in our way. Language gets in our way.
Longing gets in
our way, and feelings of Loss.
And when we are NOT subject to depression we can create a story
for
ourselves that will last for 10 years or 20 or 30. We can live
within a
story that gives us meaning and purpose. I rose to this level in
the
corporation. I wrote this story or danced this dance. I had these
wonderful
children or I did this wonderful deed. Or I didn’t do any of
that but I
made a life for myself and I didn’t hurt anyone and I made
the best of what
I was given. And that story works for a while, for a long while
but there
comes a day and for many it is the day we lie on our deathbed
when we
realize what the real story was, and that real story was that we
had the
great gift of Being and we lived it out.
The Bible talks about dust and ashes. When we are depressed we
know about
dust, and we know about ashes. The depressed person pours ashes
upon his
head and rolls in the dust, in a symbolic way of course. The
depressed
person thinks about dust to dust, ashes to ashes and sees no way
out. The
depressed person is someone whose story has fallen apart. The
depressed
person is someone whose story no longer gives them salvation and
no longer
keeps them balanced and tuned. The depressed person reaches that
deathbed
moment a lot earlier in life than most people do, the moment when
the Void
opens up, when Emptiness is realized, and then Grace happens and
he or she
touches Being, the greatest gift and comes back to life.
I hate to say this but Religion is what brought me to the brink.
I thought
that religion was the form within which I could have my life and
my being
but instead religion took me to my cross and left me there to
suffer. And I
prayed a deep prayer, a dangerous prayer. The prayer I prayed
changed the
direction of my life forever. I prayed for God to take me deeper.
Whatever
the cost. Take me deeper, God, whatever the cost.
Here’s what the cost was: I lost the outward form of my
religion. I lost my
marriage. I lost my career. I lost my innocence. And I was taken
to the
depths. God honored that prayer. And I walked through the valley
of the
shadow of death for many years. I walked through the wilderness
and in a
symbolic way I went mad and went on all fours and ate wild grass
like the
cattle and grew hair and became like a beast. In a symbolic way.
That was the cost but what I found made it worth it. I found that
the void
has a flip side, and that flip side is Being. I found that at any
given
time I could be in heaven, or I could be in hell, it was my
choice. I found
that Reality is not a monolithic Black Iron Prison that
constrains your
every move. Instead of the Black Iron Prison I found that reality
is a
joyous construction of Spirit and has infinite variety and
possibilities. I
found that hanging out is our true condition and that the place
where we
hang out is on God’s back pasture where the sun shines and
the river flows
and people are singing and playing and having fun.
I found that hanging out on God’s back pasture you see life
going on in all
its variety, people being born and learning to walk and talk, I
found
people growing up and learning about the world they happen to be
in, I
found people learning to laugh and love, I found people dancing
and crying,
people getting married and getting divorced, people getting sick
and people
getting well, people dying unexpectedly, people being healed
unexpectedly,
people getting lost and people getting found. And I found animals
there
too, and butterflies, and bees, and fish leaping in the water of
the
stream. And I sat by that stream where I could hear the sound of
the water.
In a sense it’s all a game but in another sense it is all
real. It is all a
vast elaborate pattern taking place in consciousness.
I never would have found my way to God’s back pasture if I
hadn’t fallen
into depression in the middle of the story of my life and for
that I am
profoundly grateful. And I never would have lost my religion and
found God
himself ceaselessly upholding the world with his word, God
himself
ceaselessly being Being.
Such is MY poem for today.