HEART

The wise man said the answer you seek will always lie inside your own heart.  

Learn to be its closest relative, its servant.

The listeners rebuffed him asking, “Where is this heart you speak of, great 

master? I have no heart to my knowledge. Is it the organ in my chest that 

pumps blood you mean, ancient one? Is it some syrupy sweet sentimental 

notion that is so foolish it is childish thinking that makes wishes that a good 

fairy will save us all at the last minute?”

My master replied so simply to the questioner, “Where is the mind?”

Silence followed.

Then my master spoke again, “You all have a mind you know only too well. 

Where does it hang out?”

Heart is that in you that has always been with you since birth that longs for 

you to actually live your own life while you have that chance. Mind wants 

you to live the life others, and especially those who have hurt you and 

despised you and ignored you, those whose primary, constant chant to you all 

your life has been, “you are not good enough yet” want you to live that is not 

your life.

Heart, like mind, is always present. I tell you heart is with you at your lowest 

moments. Heart is with you in your stormiest hours. Heart is with you on a 

battlefield. Heart is with you at a brothel. Heart is with you in the gambling 

halls on Wall Street. Heart is with you in jail. Heart is with you in the sewers 

of the world. Heart is with you when you think there is no one who cares. 

Heart knows that the same people who praise you when you are up will 

abandon you when you fall. So long as you have a breath, Heart never 

abandons you. For some of us the Other Name for Heart's “The Hole”. That 

empty hole in the chest can't nothin' fill. Not booze, not money, not sex. 

Heart is present with one message, Know Thyself.

I met Townes Van Zandt and I met Prem Rawat. Like 'em both. It seems to 

me now that Townes meets people where they are not even trying to be nice 

or look good, kinda whupped, rather sorrowful; and Prem Rawat meets us 

when our teeth are brushed, nails clipped, pants pressed and we are wanting 

to straighten up and be something better than we seem to be ourselves. But 

both of them are one. Each points to the other. I am not here to tell you 

anything else.

Take A look

Once, following hard fought defeat, a coach was asked, "Why did you guys lose tonight?" 

And the coach was heard to admit, "There is a whole lot more to this game we play than anyone wants to admit".  

We have, for too long, been practicing self-deceit as nations in a win-lose game of competition and look where it has gotten us.

LIFE NEEDS US NOT WE NEED LIFE

It is a mistake to have ever followed the suggestion in the first place that life ought be organized, for, isn't it obvious enough that any efforts to organize such a mysterious and wonderful fact as life is going to be made by incompetent human beings who are its mere servants, and mere beginners at that? The primary hole in such a mad theory is the obvious-it is bottomed in the presumption that life is not well organized as we, the living, have received it! I am convinced by now that those who attempt its organization are those who have failed totally to accept it on its terms, meaning those of life. And are miserable. And, being miserable, want to coerce a crowd of other miserable ones to join them in a foolish scheme whereby they intend to run the show managing all the rest as objects.

I have seen the other side of it. Those who have accepted the terms as presented by the Giver of it are completely satisfied with life and will in no manner consider for a moment any fantasized theory to alter that relationship and will laugh at any plan presented them to outwit life. And the grandest fact of all is these I have met who are content with life, as it is, make wonderful companions who treat each other with respect, interact in peace, and honor each other as if they were meant to do so effortlessly. That is all I wanted to say.

Who Am I?

I am that instrument, finely tuned, which receives signals, turns 

those into a feeling, which feeling then creates something of 

beauty and use for all around me- a phenomenon I witness in 

awe. At my best as an instrument in service to my maker and 

one who registers awe at the experience of being just that.

                                                                        

                                                                         -Jon Harvey Smith,
for Charly

Gotta Eat and Live

(or, A Monetized Way of Life)

So, people gotta eat and live. Is that an excuse? What is it an excuse for? Is its meaning that we cannot expect to eat if we are honest and engaged in some noble work we love? How often has the story been repeated of the young person who confides in his parents his heart's desire to be an artist only to have his heart stomped upon and crushed into goo before his eyes? To be ridiculed as a childish goofball by someone he admires and loves? How does it feel? When done with special vigor is it not obvious the parent is imitating his own parent? And is it not his, the parent's, stored up pain that is being unloaded on the child?

So, people gotta eat and live. If asked, Do you believe in God? Would your answer be in the affirmative? It is for most people and yet few of them do any work that is satisfying to the soul. And nearly all would crush such romantic notions from their children's thinking instantly upon its discovery. Almost none would accept a plan by their offspring that did not include financial security. So, what is a God for? In my upbringing it was primarily offered as a source of forgiveness for the sins which derive from my low base nature. (Which God is given credit for creating in the first place) Seems, primarily, it is a useless thing held out to the neighbors as evidence I am to be trusted. (Since a scheme has been presented for forgiveness one need not seriously consider one's greed, meanness, cruelty, fear, anger, etc. However even a young child will surely wonder occasionally whether his sins are not being produced by the sins of his father. After all, the kid knows he is not, at heart, a base critter, but an enormously creative spirit.) And yet, nobody has met a banker who will lend you money because you are religious or will swear you know God. What is it the banker knows? Knows just how afraid you are of insecurity. The more you are, the more he will lend. Ironic. (So, fearful cowards gain most from a monetized way of life.)

Some people actually crave and adore insecurity for it brings them closer to their God. People gotta eat and live.

You Better Know You Cannot Escape It

Truth is what it is we are locked inside each others arms

if we let one brother fall we are down there with

them all

You better start to believe it

then you better buy into it

you don't have to like it

but you cannot escape it

we are locked inside each others arms

if we let one brother fall we are down there with

them all

you thought you could escape it

DOOR

1 For a long time there were people who depended on God's way.

Then came a strange people who depended on a store.

2 These blind people carried powerful rifles and other things of war

assembled in factories and sold by the store.

The blind ones could see not that the store owned them

and all they once were proud to stand for

were lost to them as beggars who with shrunken soul

knew not life nor what it is for but had weapons of war and the things in a store and a plan which they misrepresented as part of a method they called strategy along with a slogan tell them what you have to tell even if it be untruth and tell nothing more. And never feel inwardly bound by what you have told before. And, sadly, the people of God's way kept not their wits about them that would have warned them to stay away and not trade with these ones who belonged to a store.

3 And no one saw that the art of the blind was also without vision and that it was an art that said as much and it continues to this day to be that same way filled with sorrow and pain and regret and they sing it and dance it and write of it and make films around it and worship most strongly through the things from the store which by now does not have to be a material place staffed by people at all but an imaginary store reached by clicking and robots bring the things from the lifeless store to my door.

4 This is a heartless, sterile way to live I tell you. I yearn to return to the way it was before. My heart tells me to sit with the yearning and let it build to a roar and when it forces a shout leap up and roar! And look for a yet unfound door. And, by Golly, remember where to find what you never lost from the road of before and this time hold tight as a human to the treasure of the heart like your ancestors of forgotten lore written in a forgotten language, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.

Nobody Else Can Do It You For*

A hint: seek and read as if your life depends upon it Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman