written february 25, 2008 at 9:33pm

i have been reading philosophy in the dungeon: the magic of sex & spirit by jack rinella.

i met jack recently when he came to town to talk about the section of his book on altered states of consciousness.

a couple of sections this week caught my eye, and i marked them for later perusal. the first one isn't even actually his, but it's there in the book, and in the context presented, caught my attention:

anybody who is awake to the human predicament of being lost in separateness starts to yearn for the truth that they are not separate, since then they are back home - they are in harmony with things rather than always being alienated and outside. once that awakening occurs, then it's a set of inevitable steps before you get to the point where you see your incarnation as a curriculum. you see that the ways in which you're suffering are good things to work on in yourself. in other words, you begin to understand that suffering is grace. ~ mark thompson, interviewing ram dass for the book gay soul

this is so much like what i have been saying for the last couple of days about the journey i took on thursday. yes, the dark comes sometimes. yes, i could call it a "bad journey". or i could accept that there is darkness (or something i perceive as being dark) within me, and that when i seek to accomplish spiritual growth and insight, that perceived darkness is going to have to be part of the process.

for at least a dozen years now, i've been dealing with the ideas of duality. first i thought embracing duality was the thing to do. then i realized that duality is a false concept. multiplicity, infinite possibility. that's what we have. not duality. life is not either/or....it is all/and. the idea that the "dark" within me is somehow at odds with the "light" is missing the very idea of what i am, what is within me.

why either/or in this culture? why can't we accept the concept that we don't have to choose, that there is no right and wrong...merely different? that life is not about binaries?

i am neither male nor female.
i am neither het nor homo.
i am neither vanilla nor kinky.
i am neither parent nor child.
i am neither top nor bottom.
i am neither dom nor sub.
i am neither light nor dark.

i am all of these things, and more. and none of them.

release duality. release expectation. simply be.

from the amazing shimshai:

we don't have to be this and we don't have to be that, now
just be for eternity

we don't have to do this and we don't have to do that, now
just do whatever happens to be

we don't have to think this and we don't have to think that now,
don't think, but do it consciously

we don't have to love this and we don't have to love that, now
just love for eternity

even out, and open up
be here now.

i am right here.
i am right now.

lift up your consciousness
raise the i level
lift up your awareness
to a higher level

the more conscious is the i
the higher the i is
the higher is the i
the closer is the i to jah

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