February 23, 2024 – A

Projection is perception,
perception is projection.

In order to see,
we have to see our seeing.

In order to hear,
we have to hear our hearing.

Everything we have ever seen/heard
interferes with our seeing/hearing
by creating memories and expectations,
making it difficult to separate here/now
from then/there.

It all carries over,
stirring up the muddy water
even as we wait for the mud to settle
and the water to clear.

We produce our own blindness/deafness
by straining to see/hear.

And so the essential need
for the right kind of emptiness,
stillness
and silence
on a regular and recurring basis.

Indigenous wisdom declares
that ceremony is essential to balance,
but not the kind of ceremony colonialism
(If we are not indigenous, we are colonial)
produces/creates/perpetuates/imposes
with its memorized phrases and route rejoinders.

Leaving us to create our own ceremonies
out of our own imagination.

We will have to sit with that
in the right kind of emptiness, stillness, silence,
waiting for the mud to settle
and the water to clear.

Listening to our nighttime dreams
and our daytime flights of fantasy.

We might also take up listening to the trees,
and to all forms of nature.

We have to learn the spiritual languages
of intuition, telepathy, awareness, trance,
meditation, realization, enlightenment, knowing...
by being with and listening to the natural world
with wonder and respect.

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