I’m typing now from a coffee shop in San Diego, visiting with a computer friend I’ve known for years, but never met face-to-face. How nice computers allow friends to meet despite physical boundaries.

And such a lovely city; its fine breezes and candied lights under the night sky, waving palms, the ocean’s subtle, salty air. California is a magical place.

After all these thoughts on ego, I ask myself: Of what can a man be proud? In answer, an analogy comes to mind:

Consider I find a piece of metal, say copper, lying on the ground. This was not uncommon several millenia ago.

I take this simple lump of metal, and start pounding it into a flat sheet. Then I take sand and scrape the surface flat; then silt and other materials, working it down to a dull gleam. After that, I buff it with coarse animal hides, using to finer and finer materials until I can polish it with leather and ash.

In the end, I have a crude mirror, in which others can look and see shapes that were not visible before.

Now, as the one who did the work, I can take pride in: my choice to work the metal, my time spent doing it, my craft in producing a shine from crude metal. However, I take no credit for what other people now see in the mirror – the shapes, colors, or play of lights. I may have perfected a certain form, but it’s the agency of other forces that make it useful as a mirror.

I think about this in terms of writing poetry, because although I take pride in the work of writing poetry, I cannot take credit for the feelings of beauty the poem inspires. You might call poetry a kind of “beauty catcher”, where I am the fisher that casts his line, but what is caught comes from another realm entirely.

I think the ego always exists because of two things, because while definitions and ideas may refer to realities, they cannot fully describe them; yet it is too easy to mistake the ideas for reality.

Since my own being is real and interacts with this world, there are countless definitions that will refer to it. My name is one example. Yet my reality is undefinable. It can only be experienced in the moment of its existence; and since each moment is new, I am always a new creation.

These infinite instances of myself roughly correspond to particular ideas, resulting in statements like, “John is such-and-such”. I hear it said, and remember what I was called; or maybe I even call myself a name, for the sake of mentioning what is otherwise unmentionable. We do it all the time because language helps us to focus in the midst of a world of infinite variety. If we didn’t discriminate, it would be very hard to find direction in life.

Discrimination is thus very practical, meaning language itself is not the problem. The only problem – and strictly a matter of spiritual maturity – is the confusion of one for the other. What I think about myself, and who I am, must always be completely different subjects. It is OK to think things about myself, because sometimes it helps make me aware of things; but it is always a mistake to imagine I can know myself through ideas. This is where the ego lives – and thrives if I support the mistake.

To clarify these two – to recognize ideas as functional and reality as inexpressibly alive and always new – is quite a challenge. I am constantly making errors in this respect, and have to remind myself to “be nothing then, and walk upon the waves.” Communing directly with life is not difficult, but reaching it means letting go of ideas. Ideas help me reach a certain point, but I cannot dive from the shore to the ocean if I hold onto them:

The story is told of a mystic knower, who went on a journey with a learned grammarian as his companion. They came to the shore of the Sea of Grandeur. The knower straightway flung himself into the waves, but the grammarian stood lost in his reasonings, which were as words that are written on water. The knower called out to him, “Why dost thou not follow?” The grammarian answered, “O Brother, I dare not advance. I must needs go back again.” Then the knower cried, “Forget what thou didst read in the books of Sibavayh and Qawlavayh, of Ibn-i-Hajib and Ibn-i-Malik, and cross the water.”

Paradoxically, nothing inflames the ego more than trying to be good. I say this because the ego is our definition of self, and is always separate from the reality of our self. Why would a person prefer a definition to reality? Because he doesn’t like the reality. So nothing drives a person into the arms of ego more, but attempting to escape reality by becoming something else.

This is why I like Krishnamurti’s philosophy so much, because he emphasizes this point over and over again. To escape the ego, we must love reality, whatever its present condition. By that love it can grow; but if person spends their time with definitions, no fundamental change in reality is possible.

The paradox is that we only strive to be good if we think we are not. And if we don’t like who we are, it is only natural to prefer fixing our attention on who we hope to become. Maybe we are petty, and we want to be magnanimous. It is painful to see ourselves as petty, since this is what we want to stop. So we dream about magnanimity, practice it, focus our attention upon it. Which is not itself a bad thing.

But we are impatient to become magnanimous, and cease our pettiness. If anyone praises us for a noble act, we think, “Have I made it yet? Am I no longer petty?” Our hope for this to be true is so strong, we begin to ignore all evidence in favor of the dream. We start to see ourselves as magnanimous, even before we are.

If another then comes and shows us how petty we are, it hurts badly. The ego cannot survive in the face of reality. This leads to a situation of avoiding reality, and trying ever more to live in the world of ideas, which are easily controlled. Casuistry, self- deception, willful ignorance: all are signs of trying to reject reality for the sake of an ideal.

This engenders the conflict we feel when we strive to improve. And it never lets up. We continue to see-saw between painful acceptance of reality and hopeful illusions. Our emotions plummet to the depths when we see how little we’ve advanced, and rise to the heights of fancy with every hint we’ve succeeded. It is truly turmoil! And it will ever end, because we can never be as perfect as we’d like.

But there is a way out: a way to approach life in terms of its reality, and to relegate definitions to the status of mere tools. In this path the ego is not lost – it cannot be lost, as long as ideas of self exist – but it is no longer regarded. It has no more power to command our emotions than another person’s ideas about a film can decide whether we like it or not. This path is the way of love.

To love our reality – meaning our pettiness and other bad attributes – is the only way to stop tearing apart the fabric of our being, by which the ego hopes to flee into the realm of ideals. I have to know my desires, and understand them, rather than fabricate a new set that bear no relation to my heart. Instead of wanting to want, I must acknowledge what I do want, and then honestly pose the question, “Do I really want that?” And if I really do, I have to pursue it. If I don’t pursue it, then who am I? “Say: What manner of man art thou, O vain and heedless one, who wouldst appear as other than thou art?”

The mystical component in all this is that love transforms things without wanting to. If one love another, so deeply that changing them is an abhorrent thought, that very love will change hearts. It happens mystically, without plan; whereas projects of self-perfection often to go nowhere despite the greatest of plans.

So I think that when I feel conflict within myself – and call it the “ego” – what is really happening is quite opposite: It is not my ego frustrating me, but my real self wanting its desires acknowledged. In fact, it is the ego picking the fight, out of its desire to be “other than thou art”. When we try to be good but feel an impulse to evil, this is not the ego; the ego is our “good” image of ourselves, blinding us from the evil of our nature. That blindness forces our awareness of self into unconsciousness, where it acts out in desperation, to make its desires known to consciousness. This creates the feeling of being beset by our own selves. But it is the ego creating this severe barrier between the two halves: the wish to see ourselves as purely good, when that is never who we truly are.

It is odd that the ego is what we think of as our best part. For the petty man, his ego is his idea of being magnanimous. Yet he remains petty, mostly because he no longer pays attention to it! How can we improve something we no longer pay attention to? Without loving the petty self, it can never flower under the rays of loving attention. It cannot become what it might be, since the ego suppresses all awareness of its reality. Like a pathetic seed stored in a cave, it will never grow into the rose of its potential, for the ego is too busy painting roses on the cave wall to allow it freedom to develop.

Love of reality is our only escape from the oppression of the unreal, the ego. When the petty man sees that God created pettiness as a thing to test his capacity for love – and that love is the water of life causing the humble seeds of the lower self to germinate – then the need for ego can slowly fade away. The petty man must be petty, in order ever to be anything else; but the magnanimous man who is not magnanimous: what type of new being can come from a one who had no being in the first place?

A mystic, perhaps, is no more than a linguist.  
He hears the sun's soliloquy in a language of light,  
and the cloud's quiet mourning whenever it weeps;  
the sea tells her stories in murmurs and roars,  
and the sky regales with the secrets she keeps...

He gives up his ears, the better to hear  
his hands speak of love as he caresses her cheeks.  
For when he rests his head on the loved one's chest,  
her soft breathing, heart beating, gentlest sighs  
are one with the mysteries of the fathomless deeps.

I have arrived safely back home in San Francisco – where it is much warmer than New Jersey, though still a jacket is needed. In a few days I’m driving down to Los Angeles and Arizona, where I think I can catch an early glimpse of summer.

It has been a long day already and I am heading to bed now, but first a poem, written to greet the welcome sight of a rolling ocean outside my window.

poem.to.the.sea

I watch you, my friend,  
your vast belly  
undulating in rhythms  
to some mystic dance;  
your gentle suspirations  
and balming murmurs  
that leave the heart entranced;  
your cold and watery hues:  
now green in the shallows  
now black in the depths --  
where uncounted fathoms  
halt the light's advance:  
I call you the sea --  
but every moment you change.  
You defy my conceptions.  
You swallow whole  
my ships of fancy --  
as you wash away the words  
I write upon your sands.

When I fall in love, I notice two things happen: First, I begin to sacrifice myself (time, energy, health); second, I become unaware that I’m doing so. The deeper I fall in love, the more and more pain tastes sweet when suffered for the Beloved’s sake. “… sweeter than honey is his venom on the lover’s lips…”.

This dying from self, for Him, offers only euphoria and light. The lover is unaware of pain or difficulty. “Thou seest him chill in the fire and dry in the sea.” His only concepts are remoteness and union.

As for connecting these ideas with The Seven Valleys, I believe that the ending of pain through love, by transmuting it, concludes the valley of Love. It proves the lover, in the sense of: “The true lover yearneth for tribulation…”

Victory over seeing imperfection in the Beloved’s will (i.e., this world), happens with Knowledge. This relates to a story from `Attar about a lover, who one day asked his beloved about a mote in her eye. “When did it appear?”, he asked. She answered, “The day your love for me began to cool.” Because love cannot see defects in the beloved, nor in whatever she does or allows.

In Unity, the isolation of self relents, because the lover’s heart is now located in the Loved One’s breast. When she smiles, he suspires; whenever her lids begin to droop, he takes his rest. For all people, all things, are “the fashionings of the True One” and reveal His light. Thus distance becomes an inconceivable thought: “they see neither beginning nor end, and witness neither ‘first’ nor ‘last.’”.

Contentment will then bestow a surfeit of wealth (the meaning of “istighna’”). True sadness is forgotten, and cannot be recalled. “From sorrow he turneth to bliss, from anguish to joy. His grief and mourning yield to delight and rapture.” Since pain is sweet, and the joy of “the least of these My brethren” is one’s own, what remains to want? “He burneth away the veils of want, and with inward and outward eye, perceiveth within and without all things the day of: ‘God will compensate each one out of His abundance.’”

All of these stages are the natural result of a lover falling rapturously in love with his Goal. The more he offers up his heart, his substance, his soul, for His sake, the more fully love transforms him into a new creation. He begins to glow, to blaze, to shine out – until his reality is utterly changed. He has been touched by the true Philosopher’s Stone; the lead of his being is transmuted into purest gold. He transcends the confines of his puny form, and finds himself reflected in the hearts of all people, everywhere. “He beholdeth in his own name the name of God; to him, ‘all songs are from the King,’ and every melody from Him.” He could lay on the dust and call it a throne, or suffer every affliction and claim it the greatest fortune:

The friends of God shall win and profit under all conditions, and shall attain true wealth. In fire they remain cold, and from water they emerge dry. Their affairs are at variance with the affairs of men. Gain is their lot, whatever the deal. To this testifieth every wise one with a discerning eye, and every fair-minded one with a hearing ear.

Today a poem, using the well-known metaphor of The Candle to depict the heights of mystic love – in which the lover becomes as nothing in devotion to his friend. Or as Bahá’u’lláh words it in The Seven Valleys:

For when the true lover and devoted friend reacheth to the presence of the Beloved, the sparkling beauty of the Loved One and the fire of the lover’s heart will kindle a blaze and burn away all veils and wrappings. Yea, all he hath, from heart to skin, will be set aflame, so that nothing will remain save the Friend.

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The candle is a master at love.  
He stands tall, and presents himself  
before his lover.  
He kindles a divine spark in the heart  
and sets the core of his being  
ablaze with devotion.

The temperature rises:  
it burns him with sweet fire.  
He begins to melt away  
in thought of her;  
he sighs in hot wisps  
that rise on the air.

As he thinks of his beloved  
he weeps away precious tears,  
for he soon comes to realize  
one of love's mysteries:  
that truly to love,  
the lover must disappear.

Thus, his hardened self yields to liquid,  
then to fire, then to light.  
He brightens her face by his feeble flame --  
and she calls it romantic;  
he grants her a moment's peace  
in fighting off the shadows of the night.

And though he burns his life away,  
what he is now, is his lover's delight --  
for he has found the immortal Way:  
her happiness is his happiness.

The past few days I’ve been musing on a psychological mechanism not unlike a “collective consciousness”. It deserves mention because it has genuinely affected me, and contributed to my sense of well-being.

This consciousness is like a single identity which all elements of creation participate in. When I see someone happy, it makes me feel happy – as if that happiness were my own; when I see the excitement of an achievement, it is as though I had achieved it. The same with sadness and sorrow.

An implication of this is complete freedom from the need to be “best” in a comparative sense. As long as anyone, anywhere, excels in their life, I excel also. I can pursue what is best according to my own moral understanding, without needing acceptance or recognition from others. It is my joy that contributes to the human welfare, more than the products of my labor.

If each person did this, he would naturally seek what makes him happy, and his happiness would contribute to the happiness of all. It ends comparisons between high and low, because what matters is that happiness, and not the place one carves within the social echelon.

I reflected on this while opening doors for people at the conference, since although I’d chosen to occupy a low role, I felt as if I shared in the magnificence of the highest there – because we are all part of one reality. And if what we feel is the sum of all, none should be left out. The feelings of loneliness we experience, perhaps, come from the ego wishing to stand apart from this collective unity, in the same way that the desire to own will reveal the extent of one’s poverty.

As I watch the cars and drivers during my trek to Connecticut each morning, a strange vision comes over me: Whatever imperfection I see in others is my soul’s justice arraigning imperfection in myself. It indicates the extent of my understanding that all things are perfect (see earlier entries), for hatred of imperfection proves the belief that it is real.

Since I am part of this mysterious creation, my faith in its Creator must define the nature of my relationship to it, and thus to myself. That is, if a genius infinitely beyond me claimed his invention to be perfect, that my own eyes saw as flawed, ought I to accuse its flaws or educate the deficiency in my vision?

If I can accept the flaws in my own being as beautiful and beloved within a greater scheme, suddenly everyone seems dear to me, and when I look on their bizarre activities, can only think to myself: “Yeah man, I know just how it is to be.”

But in case anyone thinks this love is a wish for stasis, the result is quite the opposite. It has been my experience that when you love someone enough, that even in your heart you don’t ask them to change, the power of such love causes all involved to change irrevocably.

For you, my dear, the best alone  
is good enough:  
only the purest, only the true:

So each kiss I steal from your lips --  
like Robin's gifts --  
I add to your spirit's few.

The worldly hold you  
in such regard,  
you're wealthy from all their praise;

But to touch you not is  
to touch your soul  
in still far lovelier ways...

How many are those who would  
stay their hand  
to hold what cannot be reached?

Or speak with their silence --  
their honor's voice --  
whose call even angels beseech?

I know the distance  
can seem so far,  
those times when bodies are near;

But the truth is mystical,  
magic and fey:  
that souls make love when they fear.

lazily drifting on the breeze  
scents of summer, jasmine and orange  
the sun tinging all with gold  
beneath skies of spotted blue  
the music of leaves, of crickets  
of midnight frogs in the trees  
soft grass between my toes  
the cool touch of the lake  
and ringing tones of laughter...

whatever season it may be  
summer is in the heart.

Wrote up a list of my favorite movies. If you have recommendations for ones I may have missed, please send me an e-mail (see “Send comments” link in the sidebar).

I’ve also put up my playlist of favorite songs.

And one more favorite, a verse from the play Agamemnon:

Let good prevail!  So be it!  
Yet, what is good?  And who  
Is God?  How name him, and speak true?  
If he accept the name that men  
Give him, Zeus I name him then.  
I, still perplexed in mind,  
For long have searched and weighed  
Every hope of comfort or of aid:  
Still I can find  
No creed to lift this heaviness,  
This fear that haunts without excuse --  
No name inviting faith, no wistful guess,  
Save only -- Zeus.

I am fond of the sun.  
It reaches rays of light around me  
and gives the warmest hugs;  
it beams at me with smiles  
that light my world;  
it leaves me each day,  
to my quiet thoughts,  
but returns to wake me in the morning.  
What lover's know --  
perhaps they learn from the sun.

Wealth is sometimes presented as the accumulation of riches. When we ask, “Whom do we consider a wealthy man?”, one often thinks of a man with a lot of money and property. This implies that riches equal wealth; or, that if one acquires riches he will be wealthy.

But even those who have money do not want just bigger numbers in their bank accounts, but the things money can do for them. They want the freedom that comes from wealth. So perhaps a more correct statement of wealth would be: Wealth is when all of our needs and desires are met. This phrasing implies two factors: The range of our needs and desires, and the means needed to fulfill them.

Since there are these two parts, it is not true that riches equate to wealth, but that wealth is the balance struck between our desires and the means to achieve them. Therefore, wealth could be increased both by increasing our means, or by decreasing the scope of our desires.

Imagine a free university, in which anyone can attend the first level class of any subject, without registering. There would have to be multiple sessions of the popular subjects, but in general everyone could come and listen to a professor “teach all in mediocrity”.

The purpose of these classes is not to instruct, but inform. Those who are interested will listen, and those who are not will move to a different class. In this tier of the university there are no grades, no examinations. People just come and listen, if they want to.

The second tier of instruction would require that students to pass an examination to enter the class. In these classes, a different kind of professor (and likely, a different person) would begin instructing his students in depth – knowing that his classroom contains only those interested in the subject, for whatever reason.

In this way, teaching in mediocrity serves the purpose of revealing interest – both for the academic institution, and also for the students themselves. People would be exposed to everything, given a taste of every flavor, so that they can discover their natural aptitude. After all, studying a beloved subject is a true joy, and I’d hope that even the student’s parents would allow each child to pursue whatever was his greatest interest.

Having found that interest, the student will naturally want to go into greater depth: just like your interest in English grammar. In this case a special professor is needed who loves to talk about the subject in great detail, and wants to take the students fully into that world. Now it is a joy for both of them, since the student wants to learn, and the teacher is excited to teach. This is teaching “a few but well”.

And there will be some who don’t like learning at all, who could pursue vocational opportunities. These would employ a different kind of teacher, more of an old world “master taking apprentices” – so that the same structure of learning takes place.

I think the dichotomy of “all in mediocrity” or “a few but well” shows a flaw in our current educational system, because we think it must be one or the other. Perhaps society itself is not ready to admit that some of its sons and daughters are not suited to study the more lucrative subjects. When there is greater respect for interest and love – and how profoundly these contribute to one’s capacity to learn and perform in society – then perhaps there will be room for both kinds of instruction, and the dichotomy will disappear.

Love loves because it is love, this is the way of the Tao. Just as water flows, ice hardens, rocks abide. When life is like this, there is no conflict.

When we see others as children of the same God, our true brothers, there is no more “us” and “them”, “serving” and “not serving”; to serve is living and selfishness is death.

The Tao is motion and stillness together, striving and resting as one. We inhale and exhale, eat and defecate. When a mind seeks knowledge, give it; when none does, don’t.

I have been thinking about poetry recently, and how the experience of writing it has changed for me over the years. These thoughts are condensed in a brief essay: Adventures in Poetry.

I lift my pen, my wand  
and conjure fair spells  
to entrance the heart,  
granting it power to fly...

Love is a doorway to impossible lands.

Liberty means being free. But for the lover, this can only mean freedom to reach his Beloved…

Whither can a lover go but to the land of his beloved? and what seeker findeth rest away from his heart’s desire? To the true lover reunion is life, and separation is death. His breast is void of patience and his heart hath no peace. A myriad lives he would forsake to hasten to the abode of his beloved. – Bahá’u’lláh

To find the Beloved, the lover must follow a Path toward his Goal. Is he not free because he must travel a certain direction? Is he not free because there are disciplines in journeying? Excessive liberty is wanting to be free from the Beloved as well; but this only proves an ignorance of self. The true lover sees servitude to Love as paradise. “Give ear to the sayings of the Friend and turn towards His paradise.”

Liberty alone grants sorrow, because the lover knows he is separate. Thus, the whole purpose for every attribute, principle and capacity, possessed by humankind, is to sacrifice them all in pursuit of Him, our true happiness. When we finish playing a game, do we pine for the points we earned while playing it? Rather, victory is all we aim for, or remember.

In all these journeys the traveler must stray not the breadth of a hair from the “Law,” for this is indeed the secret of the “Path” and the fruit of the Tree of “Truth”; and in all these stages he must cling to the robe of obedience to the commandments, and hold fast to the cord of shunning all forbidden things, that he may be nourished from the cup of the Law and informed of the mysteries of Truth. – Bahá’u’lláh