In-progress...


getting’s not possible here
where getter and got are one impermanence
 
losing’s not possible here
where loser and lost are one impermanence
 
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calories produce all your notions
until you, in turn, produce notions
 
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the freedom to be miserable
the freedom to suffer
the freedom to be wrong:
self-help 101

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​
toss some letters on the rug
 
if they throb with meaning that’s just your pulse talking

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you study the dharma then you try to live it
but you only live your own confusion-dharma
you're a master at it
welcome to the club
 
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there’s a death-map on your helmet
 
you’ll have to take it off to read it
 
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false doctor treats the obvious poison with a less obvious one
 
but the most obvious poison is its own cure
 
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when the dharma is digested by the brain, words are...
 
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not really a breakthrough
not really broken through, this absent barrier
 
the breakthrough experience is just open eyes​
 
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brainstem as periscope: which end are you peering through?

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​
thinking, inverting...

every window's a mirror 
 
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horizontal mind—one of many
 
vertical mind—just one
 
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you can’t do anything about the zero-dimensionality of...everything
 
even though you return to the river and it’s still a river
even though you return to the flame and it’s still a flame
even though you return to the self and it’s still a self
 
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bodymind as fear-greed is the accidental teacher
 
what is its lesson?
 
everything it misses
 
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not who but what is a thinker? an explainer?
 
flashes in the pan
 
pan?
 
buddha 
 
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tangential thinking—being lost in thought—is a fleshless lidding of the eyes
 
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like a pack mule you’re carrying a heavy load
 
precious baggage strapped tightly to your mule-self
 
the straps are held in place by pins
 
the pins are forcefully held in place by you
 
even though you’re home already
 
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nonduality as duality:
 
ineluctable victory for sore winners like you
 
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light-doubt itself is a molecule of light: light doubting light
 
(just because it’s dark doesn’t mean it’s not light)
 
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even a devil’s eyes can open—right now!
 
like flushing a toilet
 
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first read between lines
then think between thoughts
then gape at gaps in your solidity
 
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‘form is emptiness’ means an object is its context
‘emptiness is form’ means a context is a contextualized object

tedious
 
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‘true entrusting’ is here, floating our doubt
 
isn’t the goal to eliminate doubt? 
 
‘true entrusting’ is the goal that presently contains us
 
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the sage didn’t say: give up learning and there’s nothing you won’t be able to know
 
he said: give up knowing and there’s nothing you won’t be able to learn

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not: separating what you like from what you dislike is the disease of the mind
 
rather: separating what you like from what you dislike is...mind
 
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where do you live?
 
in ataraxia
 
but you’re agitated!
 
I’m a human being living in ataraxia
 
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eyeball to eyeball dependents and adversaries with mutual tracking beams lock onto their shared horizontal frequencies, grow blinders like aluminum fins, grind their teeth and sharpen their narrowing appetites—all while vertical light paints them with blush and with grandmother’s laughter (an equalizing constant they seem to want to die to)
 
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the Healing Power is oblivious to your wounds
 
it’s as if they don’t really exist
 
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is money involved? business? hierarchy? careers? bureaucracy?

is tomorrow important? process? effort? merit? accomplishment? time?

are ideas sustained? budgets? buildings? leaders? practices?
​
practice freedom, practice quitting

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​bodymind pours all its juice into getting
 
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everything in the room
is in place
 
when you move something
you move it into place
 
you were in place and then you moved
into place
  
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suffering without label is just heat
 
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one thing is dependent on another horizontally
but vertically all you find is noncontinuity:
 
thought-stream as raining evaporation
 
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the answer is: there is no answer
 
the one who says ‘the answer’s here’ is the devil
 
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every moment lost in words is necessary blindness
but that’s not the bulk of your reality
 
you squint out between eyelid words
to find that bulk staring back like the sun
 
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if you think peace is within
you'll invert, painfully

if you think peace is without
you'll hope, painfully

if you think

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note the compulsive effort to improve 'me' and 'mine'

how does that effort feel?

(unimproved)

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there's a life-saving pocket of air inside despair!

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non-forgiveness is recognized repeatedly

and a spacious, boundless embrace metabolized through breath...

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many people counseled him against happiness
not in so many words but somehow the lessons he retained were on the negative side
 
the unspoken messages were the ones that really stuck
the only thing he did was criticize and self-criticize 24/7
 
then a really odd thing happened
or it happened, in a way, without happening
 
without any actual changes to his fucked-up self
he opened his fucked-up eyes
 
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charismatic people are the devil
whole thoughts are the devil
wordsmiths are devils
success is the devil
conclusions like these are the devil
 
what is not the devil?

failure
stumbles
mumbles
incompleteness
death
 
what about anger and hate?
​
very, very complete, successful, well-rounded things
perfectly articulated
breakable
 
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nonduality is reality

this is inconceivable but livable, a liberating paradox

nondual truth is everyone’s unmissable truth

not an idea, and neither religious nor secular, it is inherent and foundational, internal and external, subjective and objective life itself

synonyms are: impermanence, boundlessness, dynamic emptiness, spaciousness, natural perfection, equality, freedom...

it is what is prior to thought, and it ‘contains’ thought

it is discovered, or more accurately, acknowledged, negatively through the felt recognition of its apparent opposite: the presumption of duality and the consequent effort toward egoic self enhancement and self-protection…

dualistic, persistent fear-greed is instinctive and learned—it’s a lifelong habit

the good news is, when this contracting, self-caused compulsion-in-action is noticed, it becomes the primary teacher!
 
recognition, not belief, is key; effortful practices are redundant; character, behavior, intelligence, success, failure, personal merit, external conditions—are irrelevant…

words always miss the mark in this unmissable realm, but dialectical discussion exposes an open secret in the space between fixed ideas

we learn from dialogue, we learn from experience, we learn from the Ashtravakra and Avadhuta gitas, and from radically free thinkers like Longchenpa, Shinran, Nisargadatta, Huang-po, Bankei, Seng-ts’an, Krishnamurti, HWL Poonja, Tony Parsons, ‘Sailor Bob’ Adamson…

nonduality is the timeless, unconditional, unhindered context and essence of apparent duality; it is the impersonal, undeified, undignified, undefined (by any of this) magnificent vertical truth of all time-bound horizontal beings

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according to the senses there’s a big world out there 

when the chronic inversion (me, me, me) is noticed, its boundless context is noticed 

dear bothness 

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exhaling our thoughts leaves us in the middle of everything

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that breath you took and gave back:
singular sacred object and gesture
in a choking ocean of superfluity

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​that’s a thought
thoughts are self-power
self-power is what we are, what we do
and nothing
 
thoughts are ‘karmic’
both cause and effect
and nothing
 
as something, they make poets and liars
as nothing, exbuddhists
 
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what you call transcendent is transcended by more drollery— 
the morning after, the walk of shame...
 
your next transcendent fixation is a fix
that fixes all prior fixes until fixed
 
go slow fellow fixer
let’s not wake the dogs
 
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​the incorrigible refuser finally at death sighs: oh
 
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the equality found at the moment of death is present now between words
 
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they mistake emptiness for aloneness but it’s oneness
 
only the self is alone were it real
 
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when you criticize the failure called ‘attachment’
your self-loathing registers in the guts of the addicts near you
who then redouble for your sake!
 
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the hopeful praise the successful

in the two-tiered cemetery

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​
impermanence: can't get it, can't miss it, can't do it, can't not be precisely it

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the 'no problem' state is not a state at all
it's the realm in which the bodymind burns
and that tiny heart-lamp conflagration

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aphorism-as-thesis composed of bright contradictions deletes itself

antithesis-as-aphorism decomposes itself at the speed of light

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the number of events composing a single event is infinite
which is scored zero, as in:
no problem

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​
the biggest chakra is always wide open
and always just outside the alleged bodymind

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this is not cured
head-to-tail: the bodymind
 
except — except! — by awareness
of the effort-to-cure
 
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the psychotherapeutic journey is a journey into self but self is a myth and psychotherapy is a self-generating myth
 
the spiritual journey is a journey into self but self is a myth and spirituality is a myth-generating vortex of self
 
the journey into self is a self-stirring/shit-stirring storm of incoherent myth: the ‘problem’ is a myth, the ‘cure’ is a myth, but ‘myth’ is also a myth…
 
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sliced up: the mundane/horizontal into vertical strips
time into timelessness
salvation as essence
 
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beginnings and endings are emotions that begin and end

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whenever emptiness clings to or repels emptiness a 'me' is born

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desire for something other, something else, runs in a constant stream beneath your feet
 
you can straddle that stream without getting wet
 
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repressing fear makes it real
confessing it shows its contextual irrelevance 
 
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helpful oppressors and exploiters would have us believe
that we must produce our own value through effort
 
but our inherent value makes effort and oppressors and exploiters
 
optional
 
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panic at exhalation’s tip is instantly replaced by greed
 
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ego-self (historical self, self-identity) has zero interest in this-here-now
 
nothing's enhanced by it
not the species, not the wallet, not even the mood
 
this-here-now is non-success, and life
 
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you forget, you lose, you fail, you hurt, you return to dilemma, to doubt, to the No
 
how funny to discover that this failure is gold!
 
no external figure prompts a surprising belch of laughter
​
just one’s own digestive processes
 
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abandon imagination only when it abandons you
 
until then, the theme park of self and mentation shall remain 'as is'
 
(on the ghost ship, the thought-hating mutiny fails)
 
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pulled up out of the mystical muck by the ear

wacked a few times against the wall, teeth knocked out

but do we really need to articulate this anonymous freedom?

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a fanatical goal of 'no suffering'
or a violent ideal of 'peace of mind'
would postpone the inherent and universal righteousness of being
 
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tragically?
happily
this (impermanence-truth)
will not be reduced
to an artifact of language
or memory
 
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the alchemy of anxiety-into-freedom has no element of continuation
and no patent
 
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notice a fearful grasping sensation in the gut
 
it radiates to the limbs
 
notice how breath stops for it like waiting for a bus

no bus
​
breathing ... resumes
 
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happily infected by all sales pitches
return everything
 
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mindfulness? mindful?
who? of what? when? where?

in this gut-instant
zero-dimension pops everything like a bubble
 
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'no' = 'yes' = 'crazy wisdom' ...
 
simply note the internal 'no' (of which the external 'no' is a mere echo)
 
and note its voidness
 
and quit kissing ass
 
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the coddling industry is for the unweaned and self-coddling in a no-self realm is degenerate
 
but self is self? persistent fear-greed? a verb really: fearing-grasping-selfing
 
incurable, never grown out of
​
but — but! — devoid of quantity
 
(“pay me” says the Coddler, high-living wet nurse in the geriatric ward)
 
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the bound person is the free person

the free person is bound

don’t follow
 
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we are composed of not-us
sustained by not-us
surrounded by not-us
absorbed by not-us
so in conclusion not-us is us and we are not ourselves
 
which makes us omnipresent in a comprehensively unhelpful way
 
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the book is here
the teaching is here
the lesson is here
the truth is here
the destination is here
 
bondage-liberation, the ordinary-extraordinary—right here
 
pinpoint location: where feargreed coils and recoils in the head-heart-gut-groin-footsole
 
conveniently where you always land

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one barrier: one gate

celebrate
 
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there’s been a misunderstanding
 
there will be no correction
 
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to whom do you owe deference in the present moment?

to what?
 
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this has nothing to do with your behavior
 
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the snake swallows its tail until it gags awake
 
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