A Thought That I Once Had

I bring this up to let it go. I'm learning that if I hold things in they get toxic.

I have always tried to be a light. Just tried to make things ok I guess. From the time I was young, my role was shinning the light.

"You have a bright torch, and steel toe boots."

That's what one of my barista's recently told me after thanking me for being his mentor in coffee. 

bright torch, steel toe boots.

I guess the earliest I remember was when my parents got divorced. I remember  everyone having such a hard time with it, but I don't really remember me having a hard time with it. I just remember me watching everyone have a hard time with it, and just trying to see everything as ok. Because everything is ok. Isn't it?

Really, it makes since. My composition is almost entirely fire. Fire burns, and illuminates. Does this bright torch burn too bright? Does this bright torch use its fuel too soon? How often does the brightest torch burn out the fastest?

I have many successes, and perhaps just as many failures. I could tell you two stories of my life, and one is successes, the other is failures. But I would tell you one or the other, based on how I was in that moment. 

Is either true? Can't be. Life doesn't fail or succeed. It just lives.

I told the free student counselor at my college that I was depressed because I could no longer bring joy to people. I could no longer shine my light. I could no longer make everything ok. For others or for myself. I continued moving through life having successes and failures. Everything seemed lost, though. 

I held a knife in my hand. I saw it sink into my wrist, my abdomen, my neck. I saw pools forming beneath the body. I saw that body grow cold. I threw the knife across the room. All was dark.

Death is a part of life. Death feeds the circle of life. Without death there is no life. To live is to die. To die is to live. So be. Regardless of life or death.  Indeed this is all that is true. So hum (I am that). This is the only truth. So hum. 

Right diet. Right exercise. Right... Is this true? Does this point to truth? 

So hum so hum so hum so hum. I am that I am that I am I am that.

I left all of it. Liberated by a 26 hour bus ride. Denver. New air. New seasons. New people. New city. Mountains. Freedom. Nobody knew my story, nobody knew a story to justify me. What story could justify me? I cannot tell one. Nor can you. All that can justify me is so hum. The story is not true. So hum is true. For a moment, so hum.

Lonely. Sad. Exhausted. Lost. I felt these. I believed this story. I learned to hate this identity. I shut it up. I severed the connections. I felt nothing. I believed this story. Nothing I became. 

I left all of it. Liberated by a 15 minute car ride. Capitol Hill. New apartment. No phone. Alone. Insomnia. Yoga nidra. 

Lonely. Sad. Crazy. Lost. Light. Just a little illumination before darkness. Again, darkness. I believed darkness, with some light. Darkness with some light, like dusk or dawn I became.

I left all of it. Liberated by being dropped on the front porch. A friend's place. People there. Same story, different setting. A little more light.

Moved again, this time to stay for a year. Depth. Peace. Love. Destiny. Craziness. Harshness. Jealousy. "I can't". "I can". This time I did, and I took my whole self and my partner with me into the wild. Freedom. Peace. Stillness. Healing. 

Now I'm back here in Denver. It's been messy, but this life is a balancing act. The pendulum swings, rajas (active), tamas (destructive/regenerative), rajas, tamas, and only passes by sattva (clarity). Awareness of this process brings sattva more into focus, and begins to find longer pauses on sattva. 

For now, loving the journey. Loving the process. Thank you all. Thank you so much.

Namaste.

Benjamin

Born Again

Benjamin Ripley. Born of a mother and father, became very ill. This being an ailment of memory. From perfect vibration descended spirit into form, and upon descending into form, spirit forgot of its nature. For spirit looked, spirit felt, spirit heard, spirit tasted, spirit smelled, and for all of these gross senses, spirit believed it was that which it beheld.

In this confusion, spirit believed. And in believing, spirit clouded truth. For belief and truth are incompatible. Belief led spirit, and spirit followed belief on a path away from the great experience, the great communion. After believing many things, spirit believed the ultimate belief of fog: that separation is possible, and is true.

From union, spirit came into form and believed in separation.

Benjamin Ripley learned suffering, and spirit believed suffering to be true. A great fallacy of the mind; the great drama of ego. But something persisted in the beliefs. It was an echo, for spirit knew truth all along. Spirit communed with truth all along. This echo sounded as this life being meant for more. This life is not just another life. This time something... anything significant was to happen.

Spirit pursued this echo in the realm of belief that it was form. Which led to more suffering, more dead ends. Spirit at times wished to end form, to plunge steel through the neck or heart and be done with form. Spirit, in its grand delusion would have destroyed this form with violence and hate.

But then grace.

As form fell into stillness, spirit felt its nature returning. Beliefs fell away, and spirit felt suffering ending. Form bowed to spirit, and spirit realized truth. Now form is dead, and daily it dies to allow for spirit to reside in its truest nature. A new name, it would seem is necessary to describe this spirit embodied in form. To speak to form, may the name Benjamin Ripley be spoken; to speak to spirit residing in form many names may be spoken, but for now spirit will allow itself to be called upon by speaking the name Evan Rise.

Evan Rise describes the echo of truth which spirit communed with along the path of worshiping form. Evan Rise describes the state of spirit descended upon form. Benjamin Ripley is still here, still becoming spirit. Evan Rise is here now, as communion with spirit.

Thank you. I love you.

-Evan Rise

A Thousand Thoughts Later...

And I wound up in the same place. I thought and I thought, but this thinking does us no good. In fact, it could very well be the root of all evil. So it is that I have began uprooting the thoughts I have thought, and have even began uprooting the patterns that cause me to think more thoughts. In this way, the faculty of thought will be seen as it is, the proprietor of Maya, of the cosmic delusion.

Would not only a crazy man murder himself? And would not only a delusional woman steal from herself? Yet the more that we thought, the more that we enabled all of this craziness and delusion. Even the one who asks "what thought must I think to end all of this thinking?" asks the wrong question.

It was thinkers who nailed Jesus to a cross.

It was thinkers who spread the fires of war.

It was thinkers who attempted to exterminate entire races of humans and animals.

It was thinkers who enslaved the Africans.

But none of these will tell you what the greatest sin is. No, the greatest sin is not to think, for a master may think without even sinning. The greatest sin is to create separation from God through ignorance. The most impossible thing that can be done is separation from God, but it is when we think that we create a deep fog in which we can no longer see God. This is the great delusion. This is the great sin. This is the cause of every time we suffer.

The thinking mind is not big enough to understand God. One must slow the thinking mind, let go of the thoughts, and just be with what is. You'll never believe what you will find there.

Namaste,

-Ben