(Words from within recorded in real time on the top of the Magic Mountain in Baie du Prony New Caledonia)
It's the presence of technology that brings to mind all of the other people that contribute to our thought processes. And as we bring to mind all these other people, they occupy us. They move in, wrapping us in our shirts and pants, surrounding our feet with socks and sneakers. Separating us from the earth and the air. From the sunlight itself. As if in some kind of magical transformation, language itself becomes technology, guiding us, saying for us what we wish to say, putting words into our mouth that we ourselves did not invent, with meanings we're not really sure of.
How then, can we learn to speak those inner thoughts that hide deep within us in the early morning hours, just before we open our eyes and begin to absorb again, humanity upon the face of the earth.
How do we find the blend between inner thought, and the movement of our lips and our tongue and the phraseologies and the complexities of speaking our mind? How indeed? And yet, once the process begins, it flows with a certainty and dynamism we ourselves can only marvel at. And a splendor as deep as this hole in the ground that I see before me.
At some time, in the long distant past, humans walked here; dug that hole, stood and bickered, and cried and fought here where I stand now on the top of the magic mountain in the Bay du Prony.
As I look around myself at the clouds and the plants and the mountains in the distance, as I listen carefully to the song of the birds, and hear at great distance, with a softness I can barely discern, the sound of the river floating up out of the valley, I turn my eyes downward.
At my feet, a pit, square, dug deep. What was it for? The earth still piled in mounds about it. Why did they dig here? Who was it that stood where I stand now and watched others sweating down below to create this pit. As far as I can see, the pit has no purpose other than housing some slipper plants, busily waiting in the morning sun for some ants to come by and drop in.
Straight sides in hard earth, dug with a great deal of effort. Maybe three meters deep.
So too, it is with our language. Strange, unknown people toiled down through the millennia to construct, for whatever reason, a system, a way of digging deep into the earth of our mind. Creating here sharp edges, there piles of debris flung from the depths of mind into the air by a million million tongues.
Each and every moment we try and speak what is in our inner heart, we must shift and shove and rearrange these well worn words so that somehow, miraculously, out come the thoughts, the mind images, the understandings that we wish.
Little wonder that it is hard on a day to day basis, surrounded by people and places and technology and things, to say what we think and what we wish to say. To voice the knowledge from deep within us. Knowledge of inner positive truths.
Out come all the banalities, the cliches dug from within by all the sweating efforts with the shovels of the past.
Further and further into the distance, as we walk through life, our attachments to that hole in the earth, that well from which sprang our first words and all they meant to the people who created them, become looser, until finally, like an illusion, they vanish into a hyperspace of history while we ourselves are surrounded by confusion of the mind.
Must it be so?
We do it to ourselves, that much is clear. As clear as the people who dug that pit, once were here on the top of the magic mountain, sweating, digging with shovels, hard muscles pounding into the earth, with words, no doubt in French, proclaiming what they must do. And perhaps, on some deeper level, even knowing why they had to do it.
We arrive back at the center of the magic place that is within us, that we create by our own being.
Walk right into that center and stand there looking into our own history, turning this way and that, from within this deep and powerful vortex of being. And from within we see a pattern, an unfurling that spreads out in harmonies like a fractal design, ever changing, ever rearranging, forming beautiful patterns of life and awareness, everywhere that we look. Fractal patterns drawing the within and the outside together. And we find words to say this pattern, as we stand here.
It is the drawing into - OM
The weaving together - Mani
The unfurling - Padma
The Hum - of harmony as we observe the world around us together.
It is, in Christian mythology, the Lord Jesus flowing into me
Uniting with the breath of Father God to create me
Expanding out from my heart as the Holy Spirit to do God's work here on earth.
It is the moment of harmony as I observe the work of God.
It is drawing into - love, wanting, bringing together, breathing in,
It is weaving together - the joy of achieving love, what you want, what you need
It is the peace that flows outward from you as from that achievement
It is the harmony of knowing that you can achieve it again
And you will. For the cycle continues. Love, joy, peace, harmony.
And from what source in the deep Earth do we find the words for all that ancient and Christian mythology, for all that human emotion?
It is a drawing together of the sunlight and the elements of the earth, the drawing in of the power of being.
It is the mixing together of the energy of the sunlight and the elements of the earth with ancient memories of becoming.
It is the unfurling of this becoming as awareness here on the surface of the earth.
And it is the propagation of that awareness down through time.
It is the OM, the drawing together of the elements of being, the memories, the sunlight, the oxygen, the food and drink.
It is the mixing of these, the Mani, the precious jewel of creation in the fusion of these within our focal point of being.
It is the Padma, the awakening of awareness in the joy of becoming and the expansion of this joining into all the forms of awareness that flower upon the surface of the earth in every form, as plants and animals, as our sight and mind and our awareness itself. It is all of the avenues awareness walks in its cycle of eternal awakening.
It is the Hum that propagates awareness through time to become the future and the past.
This natural pattern, this bringing together, this mixing, this unfurling of awareness and this carrying on through time, becomes a series of loops and counter-loops of thoughts deep within us, weaving together every aspect of its own creation. Touching each other as individuals touch their fingers, as man touches plants and makes them grow where he wants them to grow, in patterns he wants them to be in. As nature itself touches the plants and blows the seeds on the wind, carries them in the stomachs of birds and clutched in the feet of insects.
Here is the pollination of creation, the constant cycle of bringing together, of joining, of unfurling and propagating.
And thus the words reveal themselves, emit themselves, spread themselves out upon the planet as the very plants and animals, as concepts of awareness threading through time in delicate, glorious orchids of conception.
Yes, we wish we could speak these words with each other, that we could bring them forth and somehow harmonize, join together, as a common thread of awareness in chaos.
How we wish we could harmonize that thread with the words themselves; speak them and hear them so that we might walk out upon the earth upon the magic mountain at the head of the Bay du Prony, look out over the valley of life and see the river and see the trees and see the clouds in the sky and know that from the deepest levels of being to the words I speak into the dawn sky, that I am the power, and the glory and the way.
To be the consciousness of Earth come alive and standing here admiring itself in all of its glory and all of its beauty; a tapestry of becoming of which I am is the fiber and the pattern of being is created by my passage.
As words create a tapestry of understanding down through the ages in every language in every mind, so too, they reflect the beauty and splendor of the natural words, of natural phraseologies, of natural understandings.
The presence, the form, the distribution of each and every plant, and every rock, and every grain of sand, is itself an expression of the language of becoming, the revelation of the thread of awareness as it moves through chaos.
No chaos as I run to the very top where I have my magic center. No chaos here, but a pattern of being reflecting all and each of every interaction down through the ages. And from the center of my own magic mountain, from the center here, upwards through the sky and the pattern of clouds that spread out around me in all directions, and below me to the pattern of the earth and the magma as it moves beneath my feet. From this crustal being, from this interface, we create and are created by the thread of awareness as it loops again and again through the infinity knot of Om, Mani, Padma, Hum. Love, joy, peace, harmony. Wanting, achieving, unfurling outwards in all directions, harmony, carrying on to the next infinity knot.
Thoughts woven into knots that weave into fabrics that clothe the Earth in new patterns of awareness.
So I call out my words from the center of the top of the magic mountain. I say, to the sky and to the Earth, to the river and all that I see, "speak to me, that I might understand, once and awhile, in the great confusion of words in my mind, in the great technology of language, help me then to understand once and awhile, what I am and where I am going and how I have come to be here. Allow me just a few moments in my life to stand upon a magic mountain and look out and be the planet aware of itself."
Only through my language can I achieve this splendid and wondrous sensation. Truly, I doubt that the plants and the birds can understand or feel what they are. That they are the thread of awareness in chaos unfurling itself upon the planet. That they are awareness itself. I don't think they can see themselves the way our language can see us.
The reason I think this, is not through some deep mythical union between myself and the birds. It is the realization that I myself can't see it almost all of my waking and all of my sleeping life. Yet I know it to be the truth for I have seen it myself, here on my magic mountain.
Soon I will be back on the Moira, sailing away. But I will know the magic mountain is here, and the secrets it has shared with me will remain. One day I will return and put my feet, again, in its center one more time.
So it is that I know the other creatures can't formulate this deeper vision. This vision is a creation of something outside of it, something that can leave and return, moving through time to recreate itself in words. It is a vision created on another layer, another level.
It is the language mind of man. Able even to step aside and record itself. It is the language mind of man. It the formation of words. It is the mysterious tunneling through time of phraseologies and meanings and understanding and sentences, and fashions of thought.
As that pit in the ground, far behind me now, was constructed long ago, so it is this structure of words, dug into the deeper realms of knowing long ago, that enables us to perceive from another level, the thread of awareness in chaos.
It is concepts, transformed from birds and orchids, into words and measurements of places and things. It is these we use to survey ourselves and our own awareness from afar. Words and measurements and illustrations are survey points that allow us to look out over the textures of our lives and provide such a delightful complex and confusing panorama that is truly unavailable to the other creatures.
Sometimes we speak of God, and follow him. But God is a word. We speak of the word of God, but the word of God is defined as a book of words called the Bible. It is language that is evolving and changing us - as we were once changed by the myriad forces of becoming - unseen unfelt, untouched - vectors of evolution.
And now, our own tool, our own language, evolves at the speed of light all around us. We sense this with awe. Yet we have such a difficult time perceiving it.
I descend from the mountain into the valley, into the real world of technology and social complexities. I sense myself leaving this higher understanding and knowing it is right to leave it.
One cannot dwell forever in the center of being or on the top of the magic mountain in the Bay du Prony. For the heat comes up in the middle of the day and there is work to be done.
We follow along the pathways we ourselves have created, creating more as we go, yet not realizing in our pain, and our torment and our grief, that it is we ourselves who are creating these patterns of awareness. Not realizing we create them with words with our language.
That it may, like a magician, befuddle us as well as lead us on.
The mysteries we create are the mirrors of our own minds, creating their own confusion. We hide what we already know - that we are awareness walking on the face of the Earth. We hide this snugly between the gilt-edged pages of black leather bound books. And between a vast puzzle of words and concepts. Hide ourselves from ourselves; the father the sun the holy ghost - the awakening spirit of the earth.
We create myths to mystify ourselves, to suffer them for our own entertainment, for our own learning.
Are we masters of our own destinies? Yes, but masters of OUR destinies - those we create together. You and I as individuals are no more able to escape the technology of sneakers or shirts, you are no more able to escape the technology of culture than you are able to escape the meanness and the beauty of your own words and the thoughts that flow through your head and the images imprinted on your mind by each and every action you experience.
You and I follow the paths as they are laid out because they are more convenient than stumbling through the brush. Why go to the bother of climbing a mountain through the underbrush when there is a clear path to the top, made by people who have come this way before?