Look inside your own soul. There’s no clock in there!

There is no other in there!

 GROKKING

Excerpted from Mr. Tambourine Man:

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

By Bob Dylan

This might be interpreted by interpreters as a drug song or it can be heard as a song of deep meditation which honors the listener by providing no method at all. In my own case I feel I finally invented my own world by the grace of a love that is beyond love. The word “grok” from the 60’s was helpful to me. It is a word that is to be used in the English language with care always remembering it is not “of” the English language. It’s an invader! An invader “from love beyond love”. You gotta grok It, (Wo)Man.

The informal verb grok was an invention of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose 1961 novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" placed great importance on the concept of grokking. In the book, to grok is to empathize so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them. The simplest way to think of grok is as truly, deeply understanding someone or something. With any luck, you now grok the word grok.

You can appreciate the deeper message in the single line from Mr. Dylan’s song:

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

It goes beyond all limits of ordinary English and points the way to the timeless. Let me discover the gap that leads into timelessness and grok the immensity of a still brain.

THE PANDEMICS

A symphony is playing in splashes of wild, fast colorful motion and when it got dark, and it always does, you once could rely on the ability to smell out in detail what lies before you or be eaten alive from within. But you shoved all this into the background for the power of thought. 

You have given up on the big picture to look at pieces of the picture through the cloudy lens of a confused mind, growing more confused everyday. Many a night will you pretend to be sleepin’.

A confused mind is in conflict and it is frightened; 

both of which 

more thinking 

only heightens. 

It is perfectly all right 

if you cannot please the world.

A TIMELESS PSYCHE

If you walk you want to be centered over two moving feet lest you stumble and fall. If you ride a horse you want to be centered over four feet in motion and so ride upon the horse as one creature.

Upon entering the world of timeless thought through the gap in psychic time one is centered in the present. This is the way to meet all things, not only horses and rockets, even storms and plagues. More than that cannot be told without breaking the spell.  It’s for you.  It’s for you.

All there is to be done by each of us is this-have the patience to await the Lord’s perfect timing in all things and this you will never regret. When your friends remark, “Oh, that’s terrible” reply simply- 

“Maybe, maybe not.”

p.s. You will fail to do as you promise yourself to do, of course, but learn that it will take a personal touch. Call it mercy. Find the Lord of your own heart and you will fall deeply in love.

I am a human being. As one, I have knowledge of my own existence. Existence is Lord. All things true arise from existence. I can forget. If I do I become the slave to non-existence. Knowledge of existence is like a pitcher of a precious fluid.

 Everyone alive has such a pitcher.  A pitcher that something fills with precious fluid.  I keep pouring mine out on the ground, leaving me holding an empty pitcher in wonder.  The pitcher is refilled for me.  I do not know what the fluid is for.  I want to do something with it.  I pour it on the ground and wonder.  This has been going on for more than forty years.  I am no more aware of the purpose of the precious fluid today than I have ever been.  Still, the pitcher is refilled.  It is not refilled because of any merit on my part, I know.  I continue to pour mine out on the ground and stand holding an empty pitcher wondering what this has all been about.  This is my story.  And still the pitcher is refilled. 

I have learned this much.  Each time the pitcher is refilled  I feel the fullness within it, how complete it is,  and that feels good,  and I know it.  It is satisfying, and I know it.  It took a long time for me to understand this much.  I lived many years ignorant of the feeling of satisfied contentment available at such a trivial price and with so little required of me.  Nothing.  How little is that, Friend? Those years were chaotic.  I lived in dread much of the time.  I was trying mightily to achieve some goal or other that might bring me satisfaction and peace.  Nothing I tried brought more than a fleeting feeling of excited pleasure that seemed always to dissolve even before the goal was reached into another faraway goal to be reached.  All the while,  this feeling of satisfaction was lying inside as a refilled pitcher of precious fluid, refilled for me time after time by some unknown source that must have remained interested in me even though I was pouring the precious fluid out on the ground.  

In truth, I have explored possible ways to use the precious fluid and none have seemed to be anything other than simply pouring it out on the ground and standing rather foolishly, embarrassed, in apologetic wonder.  I have heard of people who are able to do something worthy with their pitcher of precious fluid.  They use it to grow some lasting fruit trees that continue to produce good fruit.  I must admit I  do not have evidence of it.  Only stories. Whenever I have attempted to locate one of these people they elude me.  Like smoke they elude me.  So, I am left here holding a pitcher of precious fluid that has been refilled by grace without my deserving a drop of it and , not knowing what else to do, am pouring mine onto the ground to stand again in wonder.  No, this time I will not fail to do something worthy of the pitcher full of precious fluid. I will use it to reinvent my world.

 Come see us at Swan River Playhouse when it opens.