Gaia Community: forrest's Blog

Is it Light, or is it Dark?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:53:53 GMT

Everything is light.
I'm living in a dream.
The dream is me.
I think there is a you.
I want to have more.
There's no more to have.
There's nothing to have.

Everything is light.
Then why is it so dark down here?
Why does the Bridge to Ascension
seem like an endless curving children's slide
that ends down in Hades?

Hades, decorated with fluffy clouds, New Age harpists and channelers,
all proclaiming the great Change is Here!
Amen, no more growth needed,
grace will tap you on the head, and your heart will burst open
and all hell will break loose.

No need to plant the sugar snap peas this year, they will
burst from the ground when your fifth dimensional consciousness
brushes ligthly over the clay soil.
No need to touch your lover with the gentlest of touches, and rouse her with a shared sense of ecstasy,
we are barely in our bodies anymore anyway.
Who needs this recycled bags of bones, and this soul that's been here
ten thousand times before?

Down the street at the motorcycle shop, the enlightened ones
are chatting about the new bike that roars down the road so fast
your head is spinning and the ego is left
behind in a puddle of tears.

It's all good, the teenagers say, it's all good they text to each other
and laugh at the charade that the adults take so seriously.
We might have built that golden tower one day,
we might have healed the earth.
We were too busy watching Oprah today,
listening to Suze Orman tell us how to handle our precious money,
and Wayne Dyer like a tent religion revivalist lets us know
that we are made of stardust, and the physicists tell us we don't know who we are until we look at ourselves.

As if we can ever know.
Stopping the endless ancient violence of the
Real and the Ideal.

Tags:

The soul stands ajar

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:49:18 GMT

Some moments the speed of life is like a movie

and I eating popcorn in the back row
absorbed, yet I know

it's just a movie.

what is the soul?
There is the running commentary,
perhaps that is what they call the ego
There is the yearning that exists below
That seems the spirit, wanting to lift off,
transcend the limitations of this personality.
Then, the soul…
what's left, not words, and not the urgent yearning spirit,
but the darkness and depths, eons of human striving
human loving, human dreaming, and human endeavor.

The spirit wants to build something new and grand
the soul wants to wind down the ways of Orpheus
and find out where this all went so wrong
and as we stand before the ruins of society
that has poisoned the air and water and left human beings
to suffer and starve,
while we worry about the next tank of gas
and slap each other's shoulders, congratulating each
other on the shoulders for the great Golden Age
that somehow despite all the madness, is surely
right around the corner.

I believed that once. Now I believe nothing,
but the rainbow, brilliant in it's detail, standing
with shameless color against the rainy mountains,
is a reminder that belief is not necessary.
No matter how we tell the story, close to the final destruction
or poised on a Golden Age of love and light,
the rainbow pierces the veil of conceptual fantasy
and kills the story of past
and the hopes of the future.

Who really knows? What is the soul?

Tags: soul, golden age, spirit

Do you believe honesty is always best?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:56:41 GMT

what is honesty? When I tell you the truth, do I do so because I want you to know the truth? Or do I tell you the truth because I want to affirm my correctness and my righteousness? There is also timing and context. If you are a parent and something doesn't go well with your parenting, it is not appropriate for me to tell you the "truth" in that moment. Maybe another time. And the truth I tell you, my intimate partner, is different from the truth I tell a stranger. The truth I tell a child is different than the truth I tell someone on their death bed. Knowing my self, I can speak the truth, and speak compassionately as well.

Tags: QaR, honesty, truth, honest

What belief would you like to give up?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:59:28 GMT

Many of them, especially the unknown ones that drive my behavior unconsciously. There seem to be some useful beliefs, like, "the sun is coming up tomorrow". But even with that one, what if i lived as if I weren't sure if it would come up tomorrow? How do I live today when all my beliefs are surrendered, and I live contemplating what is real. As Buddha said, "Let reality be your teacher."

No beliefs. No dogmas. Is the world one? or many? is love real? or is the selfishness that seems prevalent the reality? All beliefs prevent me from being truly alive today. Is Obama fulfilling his promise? What do I believe his promise was? Contemplation and comprehension of what is, just as it is.

Tags: QaR, beliefs, life, letting go

One way or another...

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:28:59 GMT

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

-TS Eliot

Oneness exists whether i am aware of it or not.

We embark on our voyage.

Over there, the Buddhists are getting into their rowboat.

Over here, the Sufis paddling a canoe.

"Look at the pretty sails of the New Age schooner!"

And when we arrive Home, we scuttle the boat.

Oneness exists. The natural state is not something I can achieve.

And whatever ship takes me across the seas of selfish madness,

doesn't so much matter.

Someday perhaps we'll all meet again at a oneness celebration.

"Hey, weren't you a Buddhist, sitting on your ...... all day?

I remember you, whirling your self into peace.

And you with the bleeding heart, isn't that where Christ stabbed you, and left you to dissolve into eternal love?"

Someday, sitting around a nondenominational campfire of love,

singing songs of merriment, of love, and songs of grief,

and trying our hardest to remember,

"What was that thing we used to call oneness?"

I've waited a long time. And i've looked into my soul and seen darkness.

Little failings that seem magnified, by the urgency of our Mission.

We only want to save the world. We only want to share love and bliss until

all identities dissolve in holy water.

The jackals of selfishness yap wildly all around us,

the angels soothe us with songs of heavenly peace.

One flower child dancing in a field of flowers, mesmerized and delighted by the sight of God's beauty.

Two, three, four flower children become a cult, a movement, a religion.

All human endeavors are imperfect. All groups become political.

We thought this would be easy, to return to the belly of the beast,

put our hands on wounded hearts and heads, and let the bliss rain down.

No one has a copyright on love, and on the depths of Being.

Yet in this world of commerce and politics, we pretend it's ours to sell.

The light of love shines outward from our hands, and inward into our hearts.

We can't run. Love is stalking our imaginary identities,

and will catch us in our lies, in our falseness, and our imagined spiritual magnificence.

Only when no identity is left, and no Movement is needed,

will the final explosion of love and bliss descend.

We are the walking wounded, those who have agreed to feel the depths of sorrow,

dragging the past along with us, unable to see the Dawn, sometimes getting lost in the darkness.

Especially when we build an edifice of Oneness prematurely out of our imagination,

and believe in our Dream of Love.

Oneness exists whether or not i am aware...

or not.

Love exists whether i feel it...

or not.

We embark on our voyage.

We arrive Home, and know it for the first time.

Tags:

Swan Dive

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:12:22 GMT

Orpheus returning from Hades.

Orpheus comes to the end.

He has killed Eurydice with his glance.

He has encountered the underworld and now is surfacing again.

What now?

What shall he do?

Can he find in himself another song, and what shall that be?

A song of mourning, of grief?

A song of love? (He has destroyed the object of his love, he has killed his partner.)

A song of hope? (What hope is there?)

A song of the shadows? (He has left the shadows in Hades, been there, done that.)

Enough of the self introspection.

Enough whining, and navel gazing.

There is no bottom to the pool of sorrow, no end to the

vastness of Hades.

When we die, we will die forever, unfathomably dissolved into the darkness or the light, as you wish.

Either way completely gone.

I hear the voice of my father, the voice of my grandfathers, and they urge me to action.

Not the confused action of Orpheus before the descent.

Not the search for meaning and love somewhere else,

the desire to be saved.

Chop wood, carry water, let the heart and it’s mourning dissolve in the daily work.

Tears and laughter coming and going,

cleaning mirrors, washing floors, making food for my daughter.

The journey to the underworld is necessary.

It’s also necessary to return.

It’s necessary for the worm to become a chrysalid.

And of necessity, become a butterfly.

A few days of flying free, and then

the darkness will engulf me once again.

There’s no need to worry that i’ll forget how to die.

Tags: orpheus, love, work, singing, mourning

Walking

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:10:46 GMT

walking down some dirt path, with nowhere really to go
barefoot, kicking the dust, and watching the sunset
paint a little glory before the night falls.
What happened to the Grand Dream and the
Very Important Agenda???

Simply, walking, meeting a friend, drinking a cup of tea
or sharing a glass of wine
as the sun sets
on another completely
unique day

What is sadness and joy, but the colors of the rainbow?

Tags:

The fox goes home

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:14:35 GMT

This used to be a fox....or maybe it still is a fox, only in another manifestation.
I used to be a spiritual person.
I used to know who i was.
I used to consider myself a failure at times.
And sometimes a wonderful caring man.
And sometimes a pitiful neurotic basket case.
Brilliant, intelligent, far seeing and wise.
Short sighted, lost in momentary pleasure.
I’ve been it all.
And a lot of it i’m not proud of.
Some of what i have been proud of seems about as solid as this fox.
I’m disintegrating.
I’d like it to happen before, i return to the earth,
fur and bones.

Tags:

How would you define success?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:27:20 GMT

(I have written on this topic several times recently in my blog. But definitions change as i change....)

Success.
The concept requires that i step out of this moment, and away from my current situation, and compare one picture of success with another.
This is the very slippery nature of this concept. And i can pretend to be spiritual and beyond notions of success...

But i am not. I still want success. So what is it that i want?
And what if my life so far is a failure? By whose standards is it a success, and by whose standards is it a failure?

For the cockroaches, success is measured one way.
For a stockbroker, success is measured by money.
For a farmer, harvesting healthy vegetables and fruits.
For a lover, a kiss.
For the paratrooper, jumping invisibly behind enemy lines, without getting snarled up in the lines.
For a singer, a song that lifts the soul.

The root of success is to leave all notions of success behind.
And when one of my personalities craves success, to kindly humor it.
Success is leaving this mad talk inside the brain, and surrendering to the love that manifests
as squash and computers and cleaning floors and spider webs.
Loving lovers, and being alert on the highway.
Forgetting success, and remembering who we are,
moment by moment,

success is a fantasy, and which of us can speak of success
when we are living in a dream?

Tags: QaR, success, successful, life, world

The Worm comes into the Light

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:10:28 GMT

My soul knows this place.
It wants comfort. A hand, a caress, a kiss,
but i know that i too
did not come into this world to be comforted.
Work is at hand, floors to be cleaned,
old junk taken to the dump
dust bunnies swept from closets.

I am not the beautiful man i imagined myself to be.
Just ordinary, full of pain, neurotic and wounded
Yes, light has penetrated, and blessings have arrived,
for that i am eternally grateful.
And i am even grateful to see the places that have gone unloved
and the work that has gone undone.
The emerging Self is grateful to feel this writhing and moaning
worm make itself visible.

For how else can this old parasite
be convinced to leave for good.
If not for the Light, i could stay in the damp dark basement forever.
But the work that needs to be done, it is not for me
but for the children and the flowers,
this ancient Worm was not my creation
and the songs i sing are not mine.

Let this be done.
Enough tears have been shed, and enough whining and self pity.
It's nothing really, in a world of horrors, and children being bombed.
Nothing to speak of, when all hell is breaking loose
And the Light of the earth herself,
breaks through all of the basements of the world
And as the old structures give way, built as they are on foundations
of greed and selfish madness,
there is yet a moment where all seems possible
and the destruction of the world
a necessary sorrow
to allow the flowers of light
to shine in new meadows
where love and love only is worshipped
and each gesture to each other
is made from the purest of hearts
with no agenda, hidden or otherwise
other than to meet
my Self,
dancing in a World of Light.

Tags:

What gets in the way of us connecting with others?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:34:43 GMT

Being enamored of my own self consciousness...thanks to my zen friend Seiju for that little nugget, when he said it, it just rang true. Observing this endless stream of commentary on what is actually happening, at times i forget that the Source is endlessly bubbling up, and showing up as different people in my life. Enjoying the relationship with life as it walks in the door of my consciousness, in whatever form it arises. What gets in the way is me...

Tags: QaR, community, connection, relationships, understanding

Happy Mother's Day!

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:16:31 GMT

My mother loved me and still loves me unconditionally. It is amazing to know that someone in the world cares about me in that way, for most love is conditional. She had a passion for the rights and well being of all those who are less fortunate. When i was young, living in a small town in Ohio (Woodville, population 1700), there was a divorced woman who lived by herself, and few people paid attention to her. My mother invited her to our house for Thanksgiving, although we kids frowned on it!
My mother gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching when i was a teenager, even though she didn't understand it. She kept an open mind to the explorations of her chilldren, and supported whatever direction we wanted to go, as long as it was a path with heart.
She was devoted to her Christian faith, and walked her talk, living a life of Christian service to people, treating others as if they mattered.
I am very grateful in many ways to my mother. May the rest of her life on this planet, and her journey out of this body be free of suffering, and may she realize in her own heart, the gifts she has given to others.

Tags: QaR, mothers, motherhood, learning, inspiration

Success III

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:05:19 GMT

(my note: I wrote this for my friends in the local oneness group)

So much is happening in the world, and so much is happening in my own heart and my own life.
What i want to share with you is my musing on success, and peace.

Success: What is success for you personally, and how would success show up worldwide?
What would success look like in the oneness movement?

We usually have a picture of success. In the political arena, it might be that our party wins the election.
I'm thinking that a President who honored people, plants, animals, and the whole planet: that would be a success.
Personally, I would have a deep, intimate partner in my life. And a successful music career.
The oneness movement would be sweeping all around the world, and people would be receiving the blessing
and having big parties of groovy loving energy.

I know that it is popular in the New Age to take these kind of dreams and make them into affirmations.
But affirming something that exists in some other time and place, can be a sure route to suffering.
The divine grace that has brought the Oneness Blessing into my life, has made no promises as to what my life
will look like, and no promises about whether i will achieve "my success". When i was in India, I asked Amma for a successful music career,
and she tapped me on the head, and said, "It is done!" But she didn't say what that success will look like...

Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Despite the seeming imperfections of my life, Grace has descended into this very moment, into this
slightly dysfunctional, living, breathing, mistake making human being.

Tying our happiness up to the Dream Making Machine, tying it up to whether or not we are successful,
it will drag us up and down. Today it is sunny and warm and calm, but tomorrow the winds may blow dust all over town.
Maybe my allergies will kick in, and my daughter will be grumpy.

Grace is alive in all of that, too...

It is not to say i don't want to be open for change, or have goals and projects. That is human, we have work to do,
and sometimes we have real fun...But don't wait for oneness, don't wait to be successful, don't wait for enlightenment,
or the New Age house on the hill. It may never come, and if we die tomorrow, would you want to say,

it was all a big mistake, i never got what i wanted!

Grace descends into everything right now, just as it is.

Peace is calling our name,
for we all come from nothing, and are returning to nothing all the time.
Grace, falling like a gentle rain, awakening the peace that is already in our hearts.
It was never anywhere else.

Tags: Grace, love, oneness, success, enlightenment

How do you bring out the greatness in others?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:58:47 GMT

Until i have learned to bring the greatness out of myself, how can i truly bring greatness out in others? So one way is to strive for greatness in my own life. To never settle for being in my own complacent bubble, but to continue to grow and expand. Modeling a way of being...
The other way is to pay attention to others, and listen to them. Each person's path is so unique, there must be a unique way to encourage others to their greatness. For one, it may be a hug, and encouraging words. For another, or at another time, a slap on the hands, and strong words might be the right remedy. The right action shows up when i am in the flow of the Way.

Tags: QaR, greatness, potential, others, support, encouragement

Success II

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:56:09 GMT

So, what is success?
Is there a universal concept that has meaning?
Or is it entirely a personal matter?
My success, different from your success.

Following the trend of new age network marketing new thought
the secret is that we think our world into existence
buddha said the same two thousand years ago

and certainly it is true...

but why do i think what i think?
What is in me that sabotages "success"?
Do i know what success means?
And do i know who wants success?

Is success getting what i want?
Wasn't Hitler successful?

Is success being self actualized, manifesting my True Self
and not being identified with the ego and it's identities?

Is success knowing love, being loved, and being loving?

Is success my daughter, intelligent, clear and compassionate,
finding her way in the jungle of modern mental madness
and being happy?

Is success being happy?

Is success accepting what is as it is, and not wishing for change?

Is success changing things so that the world more accurately reflects
my mental image of what it "should" be?

What is success?

And why do i care?

Is it in the future?
Or can i be completely succesful right now?

What is success?

Tags: success, the secret, happy, love, new age, buddha

Success

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:48:07 GMT

Success for me presently is cleaning my house consistently and thoroughly.
I suppose that's not very exciting.
Across the world in India the Oneness Temple is opening.
Oprah is on TV with Echart Tolle.
Songs are being sung, painting painted, skyscrapers are built.
And i'm just cleaning.

Both inside and outside, cleaning starts with seeing the dirt.

Living in the concepts of what i want the world to be,
what i wish it was,
and how it has not allowed me the "success" for which i have yearned.
The world does not follow my script, and hence i am unsuccessful.

Cleaning house inside is seeing the concepts that color my perceptions,
and letting them dissolve in a solution of love* and Presence.

Cleaning house outside is seeing the condition of my house,
and the condition of my friendships,
and the condition of my working life
and recommitting to being clear and present.

I'm walking through the cobwebs of the internal dialogue, explaining, yakking about this and that,
"making sense of it all"
and just doing the work that needs to be done, with less reference
to the non stop chatter of my mind

Seen in this way, my mind is both pitiful
and funny!

And matters less and less every day.
Clear mind, clean house,
nothing to do, nothing to say, not waiting or expecting anything

open, ready,
like a tiger ready to pounce
a tulip enjoying the spring breeze.

Tags: success, love, cleaning, Presence

Cleaning house

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:26:53 GMT

Cleaning house, inside and out.
Down there, on the ground, beside the bush
next to the board that separates the concrete
sweep it vigorously, the dirt resists cleaning.

Some vestiges, some memories,
identities.

Places i have been, the man i thought i was
When i look more closely, it's dirty, it's musty,
it needs to be swept clean.
Not that it is bad, not that it is good,
it just needs
cleaning.

Tags:

True Love

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:19:47 GMT

what i do when
i can't do
anything.

who am i when i forget
who i
am.

what is left when
the poem is
ended.

what is felt and not
described.

what is known
but not said.

I once thought it clever to be clever...

love is never winning
and never losing

love is the moon that
remembers who it is
again
and
again.

love
remembers
who
we
are.

Tags:

Me and You

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:13:52 GMT

What i want and what i don't want
musty stories from "before", and gilded dreams of future
bodies in union, minds in separate worlds
or is there a moment
when all is one.

everything i remember, is laid before my feet
hits the floor with a dusty bang

everything i wish for, creates a tension
tears me away from this
pulsing moment
that has no meaning
and the words we play with
just for fun
or do i really want to say something?
and what exactly happens
when my words enter another world
enter “your” world.
Who are you
and who am i?

Rushing streams of energy and thought
flowing between two worlds
I never know
when i speak
what you hear

and that is the delight
and the mystery

Tags:

What is the best way to show someone you love them?

http://forrestevans.gaia.com — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:02:49 GMT

Isn't it all speculation?
Sort of like Hints from Heloise, a Martha Stewart list of
ways to show you love someone.
Mind like water, heart as open as the sky,
I am present, and in that presence respond to whoever i am relating with.
Sometimes strong words, sometimes kindness, sometimes a kiss,
sometimes washing the dishes.
Anything and everything can be an act of love.

Tags: QaR, love, caring, loving, expression