The Two Sides of Presence

Luke is a musician who was part of the 5th Swadharma program. He has been traveling around the world for two years since, making music and learning from each experience and place. Besides music, he is interested in poetry, language, shamanism, farming, and spirit.

The coming passage is written with 2 hamburgers and 2 beers in my stomach. Broken commitments on my mind and roads not taken heavy on my soul:

The glory of God is drowned away into numbness with each sip of alcohol. The bliss of presence evaporated with each puff of smoke. Just as committing to a healthy diet pleases the body, holding commitments pleases the soul. Each time I reflect upon myself in an inebriated state, I feel the ‘disappointed parental frown’ looming over my shoulder. Past the days of being angry at myself, I now have arrived at a slow burning disappointment.

There are the things the soul wants to commune with amongst the sky and angels, and there are the things that the mind would like to romp around with in the mud pits of the Mitote. As we till the dry soils of our mind, longing for the grasses within Eden, I wonder why these verses are just inspirations and not dedications.

(Mitote: “Your whole mind is a fog which the Toltecs called a mitote. Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same time, and nobody understands each other. This is the condition of the human mind — a big mitote , and with that big mitote you cannot see what you really are. It is an idea introduced to me by Miguel Ruiz in his book The Four Agreements)

The following is written by me, now delightfully sober in an airport reflecting upon the past month I spent in Germany. I had goals to go to university, learn a new language, start working in film scoring and make an album with only real instruments. Now I am flying back to my house for the comfort of family and familiarity have called my heart.

This month was an intense time filled with new adventures like being responsible for my own housing, learning lots about love and the multi-faceted beauty of relationships and forcing myself to be responsible and fulfil my own goals.

Although amongst all of that, I have discovered that the most important thing for me is connection to God. I feel grateful to be aware of my need for this and be able to actively pursue it in each moment. I remember the most fulfilling moments is when I could stop the world and truly be in communion with the supreme.

Here is a moment that was truly sublime for me, this is what song was playing at this moment and time.

Abrasive cawing of crows fold into the washing traffic and lapping of the river ahead. Caged in by buildings, still foreign design to my eye, the river flows me into the distance. Pale yellow light sifts through the grey sky as I, standing on this bridge am transported from time… Dancing on currents that so recently touched my back, shifting figures of black… they mix and wash together against the sky. Blank, grey, and yellow from time to time my mind is sunk into the depths of what to find. Sounds of serenity swoop around a unique sight saying ‘hey, this is you’.

Who is who when nothing is new? I have left that world, of me and you, become the dancing, flying, swirling figures filled with light. The sweet yellow, so sublime, warm and kindly wrapped in no mind I find theres nothing to find. It is.

The reason I have added my tipsy rambling at the beginning is to portray two sides of one coin. One that is sad and longing for change, away from the present moment and lost in the thick fog of mitote. The other side of the coin is one of deep, calm and joyful presence. Even thick grey clouds become rolling songs of silent joy within the sky, one can recognize the stars within eyes.

Although each of us would clearly like to exist amongst pillow and blankets of bliss, what we have known for most of our lives is a thick fog of mind games. We only have dreams of our potentialities and they fade away into the mornings of mind.

I, however am deeply encouraged, because the mountain that we climb is false! I have already scaled the greatest of mountains, it is just a matter of looking up away from my feet and up towards god, toward the ever looming views of love, beauty and all that ever will be, towards each moment filled with a nectar so unique one becomes speechless in awe. One just needs to be here and now.

So simple right? Thank you for reading my ramblings, I find words a very excited and playful way to describe something that is indescribable.

Here are some words that have resonated deeply within me, I hope they do so as well in you. In Saint Isaac of Nineveh’s On Ascetical Life he says :

“This is Virtue: emptying one’s mind of the world. As long as the senses are occupied with things, The heart cannot stop imagining them. Passions do not cease nor evil thoughts come to an end without the desert and solitude.

For until the soul is intoxicated with faith in God, thus receiving a sense of its powers, the weakness of the senses will not be healed and the soul cannot trample down visible matter, which is a screen against what is within and not perceived.”