Strands of Consciousness

Days of writing in my head, coming through air streams while I drive, or walk, or eat, or shower. Literate strands and seedlings of insight float through in-roads of attention. Truths and tenets, teachings and trajectories, connect by shades of light, and I ponder how to put them all on the same line of logic.

That, perhaps, is reserved for the great thinkers and writers. Those who are able to remain in one incredible state, while all other states weave to transcribe words to match. Can't really do that when you don't stay on any one topic for more than a few minutes. The gift of motherhood. Thoughts begin to mimic minor tasks, a constant picking up of things, bits here and there, quickly, and then the return to do it all again in successive rounds by the hour and day. All your wonderful previous philosophies funnel through like laundry; grand tomes reduced, sadly, bite-size.

But if I may, one strand was about shifting consciousness. Memory wants me to see, serves images, death-like, of crossing over, when it's conscious, into another territory - be it in rising or sinking or expanding states of meditation, or by way of plant medicine, that visionary induction into realms of indigenous wisdom, vast super highways of information - and how if we want to go there we must agree to die, let go, relinquish the egoic grip on the space/time rope, surrender, willingly transform. Or maybe we are delivered through sex. Have to stretch to remember that one. We might also be taken and transported through trauma, a direct and unflinching route. We don't get to watch ourselves shift in that one, we are here and then we are not here. Like that.

The next strand was about language, communication, dimensions of cognition. On the radio today the announcer reports that we still don't know how animals communicate, how birds know where to fly, how ground hogs warn each other, across distance, of imminent danger. I immediately remember years of visionary witnessing, whereby I was shown directly, by a plant spirit, exactly how plants communicate with plants, animals with animals, and how we do so on a completely different (though wired for accessibility) channel. So much of what is confirmed by science is already experientially known by yogis and shamans - they learn directly from the plants and animals. We can, too. But not before agreeing to die.

Gradations of spirit/soul/heart/mind merging with surrounding realms of cognition. I look at all this - look with that eye that remains constant while everything else shifts and changes. This is how life touches me when I'm not attempting to master domestic life. While this comes with ease, organizes itself into rows of internal files, book shelves full and resplendent, a perfect home. That's the internal life.

Follow the lens, view from the moon, descending through the atmosphere to the Pacific NW, down through the clouds above Portland, just south a bit to my house, and you will find me standing alone in my hallway, blank walls, utterly confused about which room to enter, where to begin to clean, just how to clean, just where to put things, just what to do about dinner - this is the great perplexing equation.

And while I stand perplexed, I swivel on the axis which inspires all the heady discourse...

Potentially pregnant, probably not. In between, thoughts of birth and death. I planted red flowers by the front door the other day, in case I'm in that latter boat.