Thursday, September 29, 2011

Point/Counterpoint

I emerge from a womb of prayer
into the moonlit night
to find you with me.

Where one had been alone,
now two walk together
over our desert landscape
of being and imagining.

One speaks,
            the other hears
                        and responds—
More and more, call and response
            leads to gentle ponderings
                        and conversation;
a ritual of exploration,
wherein all boundaries shrink—
openings appear and widen,
            inviting entry.

This dialogue becomes
            less about words,
                        more about touching,
            even melding
—an attempt at embracing
the challenge of all openings,
while still finding new entries,
            and deeper meanings,
until finally conversation
            becomes unnecessary,
as our thoughts weave and interleave,
braiding being beyond anything called self.

Ah, what comes after such requiting,
but merging into one,
            again and again,
with equal measure of knowing
            and forgetting
            and discovering
            and remembering,
delighting in the dance of your will
            with my volition,
opposites attracting
            without distracting
from the Truth that is us and All,
            that is now,
                        that is new,
a new birth in Creation,
spinning from withinnerly inward out.

Harmonics rise,
sounding, soaring, celebrating
over our timeless duet;
new music
for a newer dawn.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Save the Post Office -- Write a Letter!

About a month ago, I was helping my parents with the last detail of their move from our town to a town in Arizona: I turned in their Post Office box keys. But, before I could do that, I had to take out whatever mail was still there in the box. A week had gone by, and the box was stuffed to the gills, to the point that there was a half-full overflow Postal bin that I had to collect at the counter.

I sorted through everything at home, after I turned the keys in. Out of that half bin, there were twelve pieces of actual mail; the rest was ads and direct mail catalogs.

I sighed at the waste.

At one time, I worked in the Direct Mail industry at a merge/purge shop. You could add your name and address to the seed names list, and receive copies of any catalog you wanted. (People on the seed names list receive the catalogs, or other mailing pieces from the direct mail campaign, so that they can check to make sure the mailing was done properly.) After a while, I took my name and address off the seed lists, but added that information to the Direct Marketing Association’s Preference File. This file is used to suppress the names and addresses on it from mailing campaigns, so that people won’t get tons of unwanted mail. People might get catalogs from companies they like, but then those companies either sell or exchange your name and address to other like companies—just an extra way to get either more money or more names.

What I found out was that I didn’t want to receive a whole lot of catalogs because I didn’t want to constantly buy things.

There is, after all, only so much room for furniture, cooking utensils and clothes in one’s life. All the things we own, including our image, require care and upkeep. And there are catalogs that sell products and implements to handle the care and upkeep of our image and our stuff. Of course, this all adds up to more stuff and things and gewgaws and wobbity-wobbits and round-to-its and widgets and just plain junk.

The other thing that happened, while I was working in the direct marketing industry, was the rise of the now ubiquitous personal computer, followed closely by the advent and eventual explosion of internet. Quite suddenly, it seemed, everyone could get in touch by electronic mail. Wow!

So, what happened? People stopped writing letters and our United States Postal Employees have become slaves who annually shoulder millions of pounds of bulk third-class mail, bills, circular ads and not a whole lot else.

Now the cry is out to abandon our United States Postal Service, opting instead for all mail being handled by privatized services. The claim is that this will cut bureaucracy and save the taxpayers and the government millions upon zillions of dollars.

I say that this is a bad idea. The US Postal Service has been one of the longest running services that people have been able to depend upon, often when there was nothing else to depend upon. Because the service is run centrally, it has established distribution hubs, transportation routes and flight patterns. There are regulations about what is proper to mail (nothing liquid, perishable, potentially hazardous, etc.) and there are regulated postage fees. You generally have an idea when your mail will be delivered, and you sometimes really count on that!

The privatized business community claims to know better how to run just about any enterprise. But we all know that serving the “bottom line” would require cost cutting in areas ill suited to cuts. I would not be surprised to see disrupted and irregular service, no guarantees of arrival time for time-sensitive material, along with no recourse for disputes. Workers rights would undoubtedly be infringed upon and there would be sharp rise in worker’s compensation claims, due to workers having to deal with irregular packaging and potentially dangerous packages. This would lead to sharp rises in insurance premiums and health care. A complete dismantling of regulated pricing would be a detriment to the public. In short, dismantling of postal regulations could pose potential danger to the public, as well as anyone working in the postal industry.

The business side of mailing aside, I would like to say a few words about history. One of the reasons we know so much about life and thought in previous generations is because of two types of artifacts: letters and ephemera (all those little bits of paper that have doodles, drawings, notes, ads and other things printed or hand written on their surfaces). Since the invention of the telephone, everyone has been writing and actually thinking less. The invention of the typewriter, eventually morphing into what we now call keyboarding, has had the mixed impact of allowing more people to communicate by means of clear and even text, but to the detriment that few people are able to write legibly by hand.

When people talk to one another, the tendency is to think less before speaking. Letter writing takes more time and thought put toward a flow and organization of ideas. Because so much of our communication is ephemeral, dissipating into the ether either by digital deletion or by vocal immediacy, it goes unrecorded. What record will remain of the existence of this generation? Ephemera in the form of catalogs? A few poorly edited newspapers? How will people know what YOU thought about LIFE? Will it be as if you never existed, after you are gone?

Oh, no, no… That is unthinkable. But I want you to think on it.

I am advocating a year (or the rest of your life) of less distraction. Don’t give up your computer, don’t stop social networking or blogging. Do take the time to think, and to organize your thoughts. Do write a letter to someone you love and appreciate. Share your struggles, your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams.

History, and the United States Postal Service, will thank you.

Meanwhile, if you want help the environment by receiving less mail, register your preferences here:

https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/home.action

Saturday, September 24, 2011

If You Will

the patterns,
they circulate and collide
rendering new designs
attracting, seemingly
calling my name
and waiting for my response.

I find myself unable to speak,
moved as I am by
the confluence of Kosmos
and the weight it places on my soul
a gathering
and a challenge
I must meet with
every atom of my beingness
and aspect of my being.

inertia has been my state
but I find that this is not allowed;
despite my resistance and fear,
I am pulled thither and into the midst.

how shall my voice sound
from within the Withinness?

shall I sing or shall I scream?
shall I be kinged or creamed?

laughter erupts from an interiority;
apparently it knows no inferiority,
nor apparent authority:
it is all a case of simply Making A Start.

From where one Starts is up to you alone,
the words form in my mind
and on my eyes
and in my heart
and bleed into my soul
and through the cellular level
into that blessed confluence
of all that is known and unknown.

But you shall not be alone,
nay, but joined and rejoined in harmonies,

if you will give us the melody.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Friday, September 23, 2011

Innerly Within


Fuelled by the hum of infinity,
mind engages, body joins in,
opening the heart out into the soul,
then becoming the song.

Strands of resonance,
spinning threads of light,
weave a sonic tapestry
that shelters dream-time.

Caught up from within to within,
willingly caught innerly within,
dream-time is the ever-growing realization
that here is where life begins and never ends.

Emerging from this music
into music, from being into
newness, next and beyond,
the song of life finds its wings.




© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Monday, September 19, 2011

Volition


within the stream of consciousness,
contemplation flows
—about and through,
even melding together—
so that all local molecules
shimmer with union and integrity;
a music of central calm and silence,
of gratitude for being.

all at once,
the call comes down:
the Gentle Whisperer is thirsty,
but the river is dry.

what to do?
            barren clouds and angels
                        whispered amongst themselves:
who will go for us?

which query unraveled the silent music,
faltering the molecular dance,
tearing at the seams of togetherness,
halting flow and thoroughgoing of contemplation.

the crisis registered to one-mind as a challenge.

having returned to now from Now,
i can say i am in this place,
and i will gladly go for us
—quick pour me in!

and so the challenge was answered:
mindful contemplation restored
the river of life
by pouring in the stream of consciousness,
the new water of thanksgiving.

in the way of weather,
the river was drawn to the clouds,
which grew heavy with joyful tears,
and celebrated with a watery dance.

the Gentle Whisperer tasted the libation
and pronounced it good.

the drought was over.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Artistry


body awareness:
ears hear,
eyes observe,
senses absorb,
body reacts.

soon, silent inner-dialogue ensues,
filtering, filtering
light,
thought,
feeling,
sound.

some invisible reaction occurs,
a creation
takes shape
in the unseen world,
in excess of the solitary being.

an overflowing cup
—by way of song,
movement,
sculpture,
pigment on a canvas,
a tumble of words,
thought, printed or spoken
*that is, logos-live*
—makes creation manifest
in the I Am;
a distribution of form
with palpable function.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Dedication or Life After Nine-Eleven

Not the same being
afterward,
except that
I AM
does not change.

Journeys end in beginnings,
which is to say:
the song has no end.

All we see,
feel,
do,
the choices that we make
subtly,
irrevocably affect creation
in ways we can never fully know,
in time or out,
even if time
exists only as an imagining.

The challenge of existence,
of life, of land, of love:
to do what is right
in every moment,
especially in the face of all that is wrong,
especially when right is the hardest choice to make.

Not righteousness,
but rightness and good
demands a continual yielding
to our better nature—
this is the soft and gentle sword
that cleaves all obstacles
from love, land and life.

The song has no end,
but the harmony of peace
shall only be realized
through truth, love and beauty,
in life lived with honesty, grace and
dedication.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Saturday, September 10, 2011

At the River

For the healing of the nations,
and for the gifts of trees, spirits of the air,
and birds that take to flight.
Join us here,
join us at the river,
the river of life
that flows through our veins
and out into our words
in the music of language
in the geometry of thought
in the beauty of color
in the mystery of dimension
over endless expanse of possibility
of thought and imagining
of fixity, flexity and fluid infinity.

Join us here,
join us at the river,
the river of life;
step in and submerge and subsume,
surrender and substantiate,
be blessed and filled
of heavenly Being,
the being, the life, the light
that is indivisible from your being and God’s.

Join us here,
join us at the river,
at the river of life,
for you, yourself, are and ever shall be
the music.


© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Friday, September 9, 2011

Social Contact or Social Contract? Thoughts on 9/11


There could have been many titles for this entry, but this is the title I ended up with.

This blog has been quiet for a week, as I took some time for reflection on life, on tragedy, on love and the notion of an everlasting.

I remember exactly where I was on September 11, 2001.

Just the day before, my entire family had traveled home from Seattle by plane, following a cruise to Alaska, the kind of trip none of us had ever taken before. During the cruise, a horrible virus ran its way through the passenger list, and I had been hit hard by it at the end of the journey, while our toddlers suffered mild cases of seasickness. Despite these things, we had all had a wonderful time, but we had returned home late at night, and I was very ill by then.

The next morning, my husband was feeding the children when a phone call came. When he got of the phone, he turned on the television to see the news. He called to me from downstairs and said I needed to come right away, as something very important and very disturbing had happened and the happening was actually still in progress. The repeating loop of the collapsing towers made me dizzy. I reeled back up the stairs to my sickbed and said, “turn it off.” I could not think or breathe.

We all know what that event was, and we have been beating our breasts over it ever since. Arguably, this event galvanized Americans like no other event since the Civil War. It has been ten years, and we still vent pain, rage and sorrow over what took place. We want to lay blame, but I conclude that the blame has mostly been laid in the wrong hands.

We ourselves are to blame.

As a nation, we have traded the national treasure of our ideals in equality for a complacency that looks the other way when it comes to real social justice and equity. We have put our trust in leaders who are just plain crazy and obviously out for all that they can amass for themselves themselves. The leaders have been bought off by huge megalocorporate business entities that promote societal mores of greed and worship of money. The megalocorporate god giveth jobs and then taketh them away when no one is looking, or hideth them from certain kinds of candidates or offshore them. We thought they were working for us, because we are their people and they are our megalocorporations. Little did we know that we were being sold up and sold out, just as is happening nearly every nation in the so-called “third world.”

The worship of money and power is home to roost, and it did not start with that fateful day of September 11, 2001, but it has been a thread embroidered in our national policy, foreign and domestic, for well over fifty years. It started well before Eisenhower’s warnings about the consequences of the military industrial complex, and before WWII. This is a fatal flaw that was seeded well before 1900, 1860, 1770 or even 1492. Indeed, the flaw has existed since before the fall of Rome, before the repatriation of the Jews, before the events detailed in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
George Steiner writes—and these words were penned in those days before 9/11:

Inhumanity is, so far as we have historical evidence, perennial. There have been no utopias, no communities of justice or forgiveness. Our current alarms—at the violence in our streets, at the famines in the so-called third world, at regressions into barbaric ethnic conflicts, at the possibility of pandemic disease—must be seen against the background of a quite exceptional moment. Roughly from the time of Waterloo to that of the massacres on the Western Front in 1915-16, the European bourgeousie experienced a privileged season, an armistice with history. Underwritten by the exploitation of industrial labour at home and colonial rule abroad, Europeans knew a century of progress, of liberal dispensations, of reasonable hope. It is in the afterglow, no doubt idealized, of this exceptional calendar—not the constant comparison of the years prior to August 1914 with a “long summer”—that we suffer our present discomforts.

There has never been an earthly utopia, and we cannot pretend that, as modern Americans, that we are color-blind and truly act with justice and fairness toward all. It is not human nature to be so, and I doubt that the human race can evolve beyond its brutish nature. Is there moral high ground for allowing our own people to be illiterate, unemployed and homeless? How can we talk about leaders in other countries who allow such realities on their own turf?

The events of September 11, 2001 are still unfolding. We cannot claim the role of virtuous victim for those events, neither can we justify those aspects that continue to unfold daily. In our name, our government has done terrible things, including arming our enemies to act against us. Islamoterrorism was created by our government, moving pawns over its giant chessboard.

Our government set this horror in motion. We have allowed our government to do terrible things. We are responsible.

We have all been taught that we have the right to say and do anything we want, and so everyone does, with little or no thought as to consequences. And then we are shocked when something goes too far or the consequences become too great.

People have been taught to talk themselves silly, and they do. Conversely, people not been taught to listen or to hear, or to critically think about their individual choices. The quiet of circumspection is missing from our daily lives.

We have bought into the myth of privilege and elitism. We have bought the lie that we are entitled.

Healing can only come once we understand our individual roles in this great tragedy that is our world. Healing can only come when we agree renew and actually live a social contract, rather than wring our hands and obsess over our social networking and ever-present media.

Healing can only begin when we address the following questions:

What is enough? When is enough enough?

Goethe was a brilliant thinker. And he was being brutally candid when he said:

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

As we remember September 11th, may all that is Divine rain down peace on all who have been touched by violence and all of us who are left to face the events that continue to unfold.

For, those events are still unfolding.


Friday, September 2, 2011

steward at the butterfly's gate

consciousness,
a living record of dreams
and daydreams
and lucid dreaming
that tumbles through time
with seeming coherence,
rhythm, rhyme,
purpose and point.

from the cushion
of my contemplations,
realization flutters
like a weightless butterfly;
i stay rooted,
although i would soar
and have traveled to heights
no words can paint.

my seat is the footstool
at the base of the stupa of my soul,
heights of which—i continue to discover
—rise beyond the skies
of science and religion,
though no full-scale expedition
has been made to chart it,
for dread of the burning bush.

the bush is there, somewhere
high above clouds of desire
and persistent fog of unknowing
—it awaits my pleasure
with simple humility;
i must greet it equally
on the holy ground of being
—the sacrifice is in the meeting.

The call is felt,
within this grounding
beyond all foundations,
as a tension between worlds,
one that allows the heart’s flame
to walk over watery depths
with such peculiar innocence
that it can neither be dampened nor doused.

i sit between these worlds,
between the dawns and dusks of knowing,
holding that delicate balance at my brow,
neither surrendering nor ruling,
a steward at the butterfly’s gate,
with freedom to roam the hill
—so long as i am there to answer
the knock of the weary traveler.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen