This Terrible Love, a journal of nonduality

In the middle of the night, waking up to the sound of wind and some animal howling in the distance, not one usually heard. Waking up and somehow there is this perception or awareness that even that most obvious story is made up; how could anyone be waking up, how could it be the middle of the night, how could it be anything at all? The animal call sounds plaintive, like a lonesome howl in the darkness. But no doubt, whatever it is---could it be the elusive wildcat? ---is not at all lonesome, and being nocturnal, it is quite at home in the darkness. The Miranda thingie also seems at home in the darkness; she loves the night, along with the grey “dreich” days, more than the bright sunlight. Maybe because in her story she is from a place without a lot of sunshine. I notice an email from my teenage cousin, a girl who also went mad and suspects this is genetic. But she will agree that genetics is only a story, and words can never even express what is felt and seen, especially as feeling and...

A million words float against the backdrop of an endless empty sky of dreams. The dance of life appears, and sometimes it is heartbreakingly beautiful and filled with truly inexpressible emotions that people divide and label. Unspeakable sorrow and suffering, momentous joy and euphoria, all the states of what is called “mind” that are like changing patterns of "weather," also a name that divides what is simply the inseparable flow of what could not be named unless thoughts tried to separate it into discrete pieces. The highs and lows of the life that humans seem to lead, where every day is a kind of baseline mundane boredom with hopes for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Where each action and word is filtered and interpreted and judged as if passing through some elaborate computer app with an algorithm that is called "me." My life, my love, my world. And yet life no more belongs to any “one” than an app on your phone or laptop. And what is it like when that...

  There is a term called “wild camping,” which I suppose means camping away from regular campgrounds. It’s funny how we define every permutation of every apparent activity. “Did you go camping?” “No, I went ‘wild’ camping.” There is also something, I learned, call “glamping,” where you camp but with all the luxuries of home. This is already a camping trip. Life. And it’s always and only wild. Untamed, Unknowable. And not even that. Since this group of three retreat guests and Fiona and me are not under restrictions of silence, but silence is “recommended” by our retreat owner, there was a discussion of whether to be silent or not. The retreat owner, who I’ve nicknamed the Lord of the Manor but may just end up calling the benefactor as he does pay everyone’s way, wants my opinion. Fiona says he has told everyone I am “enlightened.” I have to be careful to say very little so as not to expose myself! I tell them that silence will bring you no closer to life or love or whatever you im...

   photo by Inna Darda, Odessa, Ukraine I don't have a story that there is something a few can discover that is not what already always is. Sometimes it may seem to manifest as a being that sees through illusions or beliefs, but that is the very same thing as a being with illusions and beliefs. Illusions and beliefs are just ideas, and that is also only an idea. Whatever I see is simply felt as what has always been here, just like someone walking down the same street everyday and never noticing the graffiti on the wall. Once it's seen, they realize it was always there. But the one who sees it and the one who doesn't are the very same, no separate one at all. I can't separate the world into parts. Sometimes it's sunny, sometimes there is happiness because life appears the way you imagine it should be. But sometimes it's not safe for the body, sometimes you hurt, you are hungry, and there seems to be suffering. 'What is' seems to change, but not really...