When I worship, it is not for any god. It is for us. Godness is the worship and the worship is my religion. I can return to its feeling, trusting “us” whenever I like. It is fortifying. Though, from time to time, interrupting my seamless movement from this faith is a healthy skepticism tugging my shirt: But. What if you trust it and then it dissolves like all the other religious beliefs you’ve held before? Those times of dissolution are difficult, so perhaps it is wise to prevent such a time, give way to cynicism and to not trust in anything.
I answer: Every belief I have will change, will transform and will end. If I lose You, I will refinde You. Not define. Refinde. It’s not from our definitions of Godness that we find Godness. Finding Godness includes the difficult times of transforming my beliefs, and those difficult times have proven to be the richest.
On noticing the inevitable location in which I find myself in the journey of the ghost in the machine today:
I am 48. It got here so quickly. Inevitably I feel like I need more time. I could continue to “wake up” for the number of days that humanity has existed (and will continue to exist) as a creature that is waking up to our humanity, to my own humanity. My fraction of existence is scant. Even so, now I feel I must begin drawing up; the time for pure observation is over. I must make a sketch of a foundation that might describe what I pull out of this journey as useful and thus begin the creation of my memorial:
Nothing matters except the great motion (everything is part of the Great Motion) and what I can contribute to this motion; and what I can contribute are my beliefs, which are the fertile plains ushering forth my voice and my actions. They are not Truths. My beliefs are handcrafted stories for the Great Motion. What story am I telling through the tapestry of all my beliefs woven as this life we call kjirsten?
To notice.
That is the post-contemporary direction. To notice. To notice what we are clinging to and why. And if our findings edify us (“us” as the world with humans in it), add them to the Great Motion as our offerings, our gifts. And here Godness and us unify. These offerings are for all the usses that are of the Great Motion. And for the Godness that all of us together manifest.
I use Godness instead of goodness because I do not see Godness as pure goodness. It’s too simple. Godness is the composite of all expressions, manifest and unmanifest. Godness is everything AND, necessarily, less. Godness is everything and less. It’s the unendingness of two mirrors facing each other with the unequationability of life itself spotted in the center of each. It cannot be known when it arrives, its arrival can only be recorded as Godness.
I can no longer believe the supreme mystery is pure goodness. “Everything” is our word to symbolize all the nuances of being alive. We, as different bodies, exemplify how vast the nuances are. It’s up to us to deal with it. Not to make it perfect (which is at the unobtainable “end” of a process), but to face up to the moments in the now which is and are unending. These moments are formatted according to our attention and our inattentions (everything and less).
And while we are flighty herd animals, we are also taking in the journey differently than one another with the radical face of our souls doing the recording. It ain’t “all pretty” because there is no such thing when we are talking about the human us. What is pretty to me is not to someone else, somewhere else, somewhen else. Necessarily. Because the universe expresses in multiplicities beyond current imagination. Unmappable coordinates. There are patterns and there are surprises. The two co-exist. We coexist.
Recursive and rhizomatic are my models. And they themselves are mutually necessary. Rhizocursive? Every view is possible. Every view is infinite and timeless. Which all views that we remember and discuss through generations are. And even within a generation each view has a timeless quality in the moment called now.
I don’t feel finished. But that’s the conundrumical paradox. There is no finish. So we won’t feel finished. It’s divine; this unfinished feeling is reminding us that that is indeed the case for the ghost in the machine. This I speaking, this ghost, dies, “drops out” while the world spins and weaves. This ghost that erupted in space with your eyes and voice pulling I-kjirsten into existence moment by moment. This kjirsten will end. Lucky am I that I feel a raw love for her, for this project called kjirsten. A love that has taken decades to cultivate and sprout, fertilized continually with the humility to forgive within and without. I feel my fortune.
And from that fortune, I find myself more capable of seeing you along with You, of loving you along with You. And from that love, I find myself in Us and loving us, allowing the becoming of us in all our divergence and dissonance.
To my reader:
How sublime that we get to see and feel our own existence and our interwoven selvings! What a gift. What a trip. And I find myself grateful for you; this ride would be lonely without you. Love comes from us being in it together. I have found that I prefer the terror and joy of unpredictable human behavior and the terror and joy of your witnessing my buffoonery over a “cleaner” isolated existence. I bow my head to you, thank you and ask you, do you feel that raw love for yourself as well? It takes root from the stillness deep within.
