Still not good enough
Not real not alive enough
Not me and not me
Enough

What am I here for if not for this

But these words don’t share the miracle
These lines can’t clear the cut

You’re still not around
And I’m still never who
I mean to be

I search but find no poem
to mend the worlds living in or out
this rolling husk of dust and bone.
I always wander-me lonelied about
wishing for some kind of somewhere home.

I search but find no poem
to mend the space between our hearts.
Beside the little library lived a hedge
on a grass where one parking lot would start
as the other ended. On this wedge
between asphalts near the shade of the bush
two baby bunnies trembled in the spring sun
And if I may and if I might make-me a wush,
I hope they grew, and prospered in lively fun
there in the world where I was and am young
and sweet — unarmed and unable my soul to defend
from God or devil, from bunny brother or friend
there in the safety of green grass in home towns
where we needn’t search — for love’s already found
and kept
safe and sound.
From the creek to the lake
from Main Street to East Lake
with parks, and bikes to roll through them.
always roaming with a hungry heart I then
I would’ve said

But no
Then I was too young to know
how to feel what I now wish to show

This violence
that rules the day
this cruelty
that holds the roost
this celebration
that hurts the heart
none of it
even kind of real

Enlightenment is when the components of one’s thought-as-a-whole — feelings and perceptions, vague notions, ideas, and the Pure Love that shines through everything (including each conscious moment) — are well-enough organized and relate meaningfully-enough to one another that one perceives what is truly going on and moves in accordance with what is truly going on in a way that allows one to reflect Pure Love in all that one feels, thinks, says and does.

Enlightenment is an accurate poetic interpretation — that is to say adequately Beautiful — of the Love that chooses everyone always forever. Wisdom is an ongoing self-critiquing and -improving back and forth between higher and lower degrees of enlightenment: as you are closer to complete enlightenment, you are perceiving more Reality and less reality and are thus less connected to feeling and thinking. So you have to learn to move up to experience the Truth directly and hag on to some meaningful sense of It as you slide back down to where you can use feelings and ideas to interpret Pure Love in your day-to-day. I don’t know that people ever attain complete enlightenment, but we don’t have to do that; we just have to on the whole get closer and closer to complete enlightenment in our higher levels and keep a better and better sense of the Truth as we slide down into feelings and ideas. In this way we can relate our lives better and better to the Pure Love that alone Knows what’s really what, and thus grow in blessedness.

With a traditional koan, one mulls over it for a long time and/or prepares with meditation and other spiritual practices for a long time prior to hearing it; and then, perhaps in time with enough effort and luck, the koan reveals the Truth and one is enlightened (best case scenario) or has a moment of insight that one can keep coming back to and work with to continue growing towards the great enlightenment (probably a more typical success story).

The wisdom meme is an easy koan: once you are exposed to it, you cannot escape enlightenment. Because the koan is so delicious and yet so wholesome. You cannot shake it and it sinks deeper and deeper into and wider and wider through your conscious space, organizing your feeling and thinking better and better around the aspect of your conscious experience that should rule your conscious experience: The Love that is Reality and Truth and Goodness: An infinite creative compassionate joy in giving.

Yes, Pure Love is the Great God. For what could God be but infinite creative compassionate joyful giving? Is creation itself not an infinite giving and more giving always gushing forth with selfless giving?

Something Deeperismm is the general worldview that there is a Truth, and humans can relate meaningfully to It:
Just not in a literal/definitive/1:1 exclusive kind of way.

After all, the Truth would have to be beyond our self-admittedly fallible feeling/thinking/acting; so the best we could hope for would be to organize ourselves around the Truth well enough that we could — given the continuous gentle effort of calm abiding — poetically interpret the Truth into words and deeds in a way that was essentially true to the Truth.

Indeed, confusing feelings and/or ideas about the Truth for the Truth Itself is a spiritual error, and when indulged in too much (ie: when one is too literal and dogmatic), the upshot is that one grasps feelings and ideas tighter and tighter even as one understands them less and less, and so one drifts further and further from meaningful engagement in the Truth, and more and more into the chaos of ultimately unfounded feelings and ideas. All feelings and ideas that are not rooted in the Truth are ultimately foundationless: They are and deep inside know themselves to be, nothing but the random conjecture of animal hoots and hollers. So to the degree one confuses ideas and/or feelings for the Great God, one inhabits one’s own ideas and feelings less and less even as one tries more and more desperately to be them, and one’s ideas and feelings become less and less meaningful to one.

The only way forward, therefore, is for humans to find a way to relate meaningfully to the Truth (so their own ideas and feelings can be meaningful to them); while keeping in mind that this process must always be an imperfect and ongoing one (because feelings and ideas and words about and actions undertaken for the Truth are not the same as the Truth Itself). We have to keep working with the Truth to relate better and better to the Truth.

Spiritual error is inevitable for humans — since we cannot help but falter into nihilisms (giving up on meaningfulness) and romanticism (imaging we have meaningfulness locked down).

[Please note that it is possible to indulge simultaneously in nihilism and romanticism. Boasting that there is no Truth or that one can know nothing is nihilism because it denies the possibility of meaningfulness; it is also romanticism because it feels like a great Truth to the boaster — at the bar, beer in one hand and cig in the other. Perhaps this is why Epicurus defined radical skepticism as a self-defeating logos. This begs the question why the Academics, being radical skeptics, said they experienced — quite by accident and of course not seeking anything at all — experienced moments of enlightenment while suspending all belief and disbelief. The riddle solves itself when one notes that suspension of all judgement can be a type of meditation. Perhaps with a better surrounding philosophy (one that connected more realistically to the human psyche and human experience), these Academics would’ve been able to grow deeper and wider in wisdom — like cliff dwellers with sturdier and more ergonomic ladders. On the other hand, people can make messes of even the best philosophies. I know a couple obsessive Something Deeperists who often seem to lack even the most basic wisdom.]

The point of Something Deeperism is to try to reduce spiritual error by keeping first things first: We need to seek insight into the Truth; and we need to remember that our insight into the Truth will never be perfect or complete, but must always be an imperfect and ongoing work-in-progress.

Both the impetus and the boundaries of Something Deeperism are spiritual wagers that one must accept and succeed at if one is to be meaningful to oneself.

The spiritual wagers that one must succeed in to be meaningful to oneself can be sketched in different ways. We submit the below as one that we hope is neither onerously complex nor over-simplified:

The Truth must exist. And one must relate meaningfully to the Truth.
[In order to have a firm foundation for knowledge. Because without an absolute standard, one slides meaningfully about in unfounded conjectures that deep inside one cannot even pretend to truly understand, believe in, or care about.]

The Truth must be gentle and kind. It must love and accept and compassionate and love-lift everyone always forever. And one must perceive the Truth as being that way.
[otherwise the Truth is not like what we feel It must be, and we can neither relate meaningfully to It nor stand our lives at all.]

All humans must be essentially the same. And we must perceive that essential sameness.
[Otherwise life is too lonely to bear. Also, if we are not essentially all the same, than all individual and shared human knowledge becomes meaningless mush. How do we learn? Through empathy. My father stubs his toe; he grabs it and yells that it hurts; I map his facial expressions and actions and recreate what he is feeling inside of me and so I learn what “it hurts!” means. If humans are not essentially the same, then what have I just learned? Nothing. All is meaningless noise between humans and thus inside humans as well, since we build our worldviews by interacting with other humans.]

One must feel/think/speak/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, and joyfully sharing and giving. And while growing in wisdom, one must gain insight into why these values are preferable and how to better live them.
[The universal values are all either logically and/or emotionally necessary for us to be able to understand, believe in, or care about our own feeling/thinking/acting. To the degree we do not follow the universal values, we do not meaningfully inhabit our own thoughts and actions, and we are like a ship whose rudder and sails are being randomly tossed this way and that. We founder and sink. Therefore the universal values must segue meaningfully with the Truth: the Truth must explicate them and help us employ them.]

Something Deeperism does not claim that the above sketch of the Truth is True. It just points out that we can only be meaningful to ourselves to the degree we discover that and in what way they are True. Sometimes we’ll try to summarize the general situation with: Our feeling/thinking/acting is only meaningful to us to the degree that we discover that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.”

Something Deeperism argues only that we find ourselves within ourselves in this situation: The Truth must be Real and It must be Kind and we must be able to relate meaningfully to It while following our inborn rules for feeling/thinking/acting; Otherwise, we have no hope for feeling/thinking/acting in ways that are meaningful to us as individuals or as groups of individuals.

For individual conscious spaces, Something Deeperism suggests a non-literal but serious spiritual effort. We try to organize our feeling/thinking/acting around the Light of Pure Love shining through each conscious moment. We try to find and grow our sense of that Love. Through the standard spiritual practices of prayer, meditation, contemplation, study, conversation, practicing gentle loving kindness, humility, and selflessness. Something Deeperism does not tell anyone to give up their religion or philosophy; it just reminds us all that no worldview is meaningful to any of us except to the degree that it helps one better organize one’s feeling/thinking/acting around the Love that loves everyone always and forever; and that for humans that process of growing in internal meaning (meaning to one’s self) requires adherence to and growth within and through the universal values.

For groups of individuals, the situation is a little trickier. Too rigid a shared dogma tempts people to lie to themselves and others about the most sacred things. But too loose a shared dogma and we cannot meaningfully relate to one another.

The good news is that we all must and already do share the ethos and values sketched out above. Because, as we’ve said, none of us can be meaningful to ourselves except insofar as we flow meaningfully off of Pure Love into life while remaining within the psychological boundaries created by the universal values.

The bad news is the same old news as always: We humans are full of shit and will say anything to trick ourselves and others into giving us whatever it is that we want.

Still, we should be able to agree to keep first things first: Let us not abandon Love or the universal values for anything ever. Because to the degree we do so, we become less meaningful to ourselves and to each other.

This is why liberal representative democracy is a spiritual good. In a liberal representative democracy, the many can mostly go about their lives pursuing their own paths while still having enough insight into and leverage over their government to serve as a final check on madness and corruption in government. And to effectively do so we the people must create and maintain fair elections, an impartial and universal rule of law, a transparent system with anti-corruption measures built in — including but not limited to separation of powers and limits on individual powers — , free and open debate, freedom from unjust punishment and other protections of basic human rights: all the goods that we should — in trying to follow the universal values — be working to create and strengthen anyway.

What is madness and corruption? They slide into one another. It becomes difficult to say where one ends and the other begins. And they are the same thing both within individual conscious moments and between individuals: The more crazy/corrupt a mind or an organization, the easier it is for bad impulses, ideas, and behaviors to gain and keep power; and the harder it is for good impulses, ideas, and behaviors to gain and keep power.

For an individual example of madness and corruption in action, one has a hurt in their gut that never lets up a deep emotional pain and one tries to get away from it by drinking and/or imagining one’s essaying is somehow going to save the day (just like how one more drink will save the day, one more essay can make the same claim of salvation) and just generally indulging in momentary rushes / empty distractions; then this corruption inside of one is being addressed with further corruption; the wiser would be to accept the hurt screaming inside bleeding out everywhere and to seek for a way to heal, rather than just ways to escape.

For a group example of madness and corruption in action, a leader tries to subvert democracy by convincing election officials to cheat for them and by encouraging physical rebellion, rather than accepting a well-demonstrated fair outcome and being glad to partake in the miracle of the non-violent transfer of power — regardless of whether one is coming or going from power for that moment. These actions if accepted will corrupt democracy. We should together gently but firmly agree that we cannot allow for individuals to subvert our shared resource of a flawed but still workable representative democracy. Yes, our republic is in need of improvements, but real ones — ones that gently and carefully (that is to say: with shared compassion and wisdom / with one accord) improve our shared situation –; not “improvements” that chaotically smash everything to pieces (what happens when the dust clears? Does wisdom reign? Or rather some strongman who is more interested in maintaining power than using it wisely and to the benefit of all?)

For individuals and for groups, corruptions/madnesses can be moments to stop and gently reorganize around the calm abiding of a gentle and loving resolve to seek what is best for all while remembering that none of us are perfect and we should treat ourselves and others with care, while remaining within the limits outlined by the universal values. Or we can let corruptions/madnesses panic and coral us into more corruption and more madness and more waste of focus, of time, of energy, of material and financial and ecological resources, of love.

Something Deeperism centered around the search for greater and greater meaningful organization around the Pure Love that we sense within to be deeper and wider and more fundamental than any explanations of It or arguments for or against Its Reality is a philosophy that people of all different faiths and philosophies can agree on, because it only says what we all already know: My faiths and philosophies are only meaningful to the degree they help me live aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, and joyfully sharing and giving — better and better translating Pure Love into my feeling/thinking/acting; no it’ll never be perfect and pretending one’s wisdom is perfect is a great way to be less wise; so what we describe here is a process of seeking the gentle kindness that knows and does what is best for all.

But Something Deeperism, for all its merits, is not a wisdom meme. It is a philosophy. The wisdom meme must be a wisdom seed that is so fertile that it blossoms into life-overflowing in all soils — no matter how sandy, rocky, or generally iffy.

The Wisdom Meme

Human conscious space is comprised of feelings and sensations, vague notions, ideas, and the Pure Love that shines through everything — including each human conscious moment.

Is this true?

Well, we can only understand, believe in, or care about our own feelings, thoughts, and actions to the degree we discover that and in what way it is True. [That’s just how we’re wired.] But confusing ideas and feelings about Pure Love for Pure Love Itself is self-defeating (ie: literal dogmatism is self-defeating).

Wisdom is an ongoing self-critiquing/-correcting organization around and poetic interpretation of (not literally defining, rather imperfectly but still meaningfully sketching/pointing-towards) the Love that chooses everyone always; the Love that agrees with and explicates the universal values of aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing and giving feeling/thinking/acting.

As groups and as individuals, we can and should agree to keep first things first:

Let us not sacrifice the universal values or Pure Love for anything. After all, we can only understand, believe in, or care about our own worldviews to the degree that they help us follow the universal values and interpret Pure Love into human feeling/thinking/saying/doing.

That vow doesn’t imply perfection — just consistently, calmly and gently prioritizing the universal values and the Love that makes life meaningful.

Pretending we can do anything perfectly is a good way to bamboozle us into throwing away what we already have.

The better way is to accept that growing in individual and shared wisdom is an ongoing process and that — the point of life being the gentle Love that lives in and through and between each of us — the only way forward is gentle continuous careful improvement in relentless compassion for ourselves and everyone.*

What?
I’m just here at
this
nice peaceful sunshiny
red and white checker linen spread on green bending grasses
so glad I’m not in a war zone or a political prison
picnic
for the free food.
Where’s the olive oil?

…

So there’s a thought.
Maybe you could help us come up with some more wisdom memes?
Maybe that could be a fun shared project?

*You stand tall and you stand strong
You try ruthless compassion
For yourself and for everyone
Yeah it’s hard but it can be done

is from “Til I Whisper you something” by Sinead O’Connor.
I think maybe these few lines are a better wisdom meme than we came up with.
And maybe we won’t find a better one. Sinead’s wisdom meme makes you want to give the path of wisdom a try, and it explains the essential motion of that path succinctly, and it recognizes both that it is difficult (and thus ongoing and self-critiquing and -adjusting) and yet possible.

We changed “ruthless” to “relentless” not because we think “relentless” is more apt, but because, though Sinead clearly means “ruthless against any lapse in compassion”, we worry people may hear “ruthless” and get the wrong idea (and also because relentless underscores the idea of an ongoing process). Still, that’s part of what makes Sinead’s koan so powerful: The “ruthless” catches in one’s mind as being a little out of place when talking of compassion; so then one has to consider the matter a little more deeply. No, we’re not likely to improve upon Sinead’s wisdom koan very much no matter how we try. In fact the little tweak we made almost certainly did more harm than good.

But then surely wisdom memes are useless, for there has been no enlightenment-surge within the Sinead O’Connor fan community (we know because there has been no surge in enlightenment at all); nor does Sinead herself seem to consistently flow off Pure Love with minimal distortions/confusions of the eternal blessedness of kind delight — I mean, not any more than lots of people who just kind of muddle through as we all do.

Hmmmm.

Can someone please help?
Some great spiritual genius?
Or lucky poet?

Authors/Editors: Bartleby Willard & Amble Whistletown

Still kind of long

Our feeling/thinking/acting is only meaningful to us to the degree we gain active insight into the Reality of the Pure Love (an infinitely giving spiritual love that chooses everyone always forever) we sense shining through every conscious moment.

Similarly, our feeling/thinking/acting is only meaningful to us to the degree we feel/think/act in accordance with the universal values: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing and giving.

Wisdom is an ongoing self-critiquing/-correcting organization around and poetic interpretation of (not literally defining, but rather imperfectly but still meaningfully sketching/pointing-towards) the Love that chooses everyone always; the Love that agrees with and explicates the universal values of aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing and giving feeling/thinking/acting.

As groups and as individuals, we can and should agree to keep first things first:

Let us not sacrifice Pure Love or the universal values for anything.

That doesn’t mean we need to be perfect; just that we need to keep gently pushing to prioritize the universal values and the Love that makes life meaningful — in both our individual and shared systems and endeavors.

Pretending we can do anything perfectly is a good way to bamboozle us into throwing away what we already have.

The better way is to accept that growing in individual and shared wisdom is an ongoing process and that — the point of life being the gentle Love that lives in and through and between each of us — the only way forward is gentle continuous careful improvement in relentless compassion for ourselves and everyone.*

What?
I’m just here at
this
nice peaceful sunshiny
red and white checker linen spread on green bending grasses
so glad I’m not in a war zone or a political prison
picnic
for the free food.
Where’s the olive oil?

Copyright: Andy Watson

Still Too Long

Our feeling/thinking/acting is only meaningful to us to the degree we gain active insight into the Reality of the Pure Love (an infinitely giving spiritual love that chooses everyone always forever) we sense shining through every conscious moment. Similarly, our feeling/thinking/acting is only meaningful to us to the degree we follow the universal values of aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing and giving feeling/thinking/acting. [This is just the way we’re wired. To the degree we lack insight into Pure Love or fail to work within the universal values, we cannot understand, believe-in, or care-about our own feelings, thoughts, and actions.]

Pure Love would have to be prior to our ideas and feelings about It (otherwise It could not serve as the firm foundation for feeling/thinking/acting It has to be if we’re to be able to understand, believe-in, or care-about our own feeling/thinking/acting). And confusing ideas and feelings about Pure Love for Pure Love Itself is counterproductive (ie: literal dogmatism is counterproductive). But we are humans and require feelings and ideas to relate to anything.

So our only hope to be meaningful to ourselves is to cultivate meaningful but non-literal insight into spiritual Love: We have to cultivate poetic insight into It. (Our feeling/thinking/acting must point towards Pure Love. Like how a poem about a walk along the beach points meaningfully towards an experience that is ultimately beyond the words of the poem — and even beyond the ideas and feelings that inspired them).

Wisdom is an ongoing self-critiquing/-correcting organization around and poetic interpretation of (not literally defining, but rather imperfectly but still meaningfully sketching/pointing-towards) the Love that chooses everyone always; the Love that agrees with and explicates the universal values of aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing and giving feeling/thinking/acting.

As we grow in wisdom we gain more and more insight into that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together.

As groups and as individuals, we can and should agree to keep first things first:

Let us not sacrifice Pure Love or the universal values for anything.

That doesn’t mean we need to be perfect; just that we need to keep gently pushing to safeguard and realize the universal values and the Love that makes life meaningful in our individual and shared systems and endeavors.

Pretending we can do anything perfectly is a good way to bamboozle us into throwing away what we already have.

The better way is to accept that growing in individual and shared wisdom is an ongoing process and that — the point of life being the gentle Love that lives in and through and between each of us — the only way forward is gentle continuous careful improvement in relentless compassion for ourselves and everyone.*

Too Long Version

We are all in this together.
Not because we say so, but because the Love that alone Knows the Way says so.

We experience this Love more fundamentally than our feelings and ideas about It. So we cannot capture It perfectly in feelings, thoughts, and actions. And it doesn’t make sense to use ideas and feelings to try to prove or disprove the Reality of this Love. But we are humans and require feelings and ideas to relate anything meaningfully to our lives.

So wisdom is a path. It is an ongoing self-critiquing/-correcting organization around and poetic interpretation (not literally defining, but rather imperfectly but still meaningfully sketching/pointing-towards) the Love that chooses everyone always; the Love that agrees with and explicates the universal values of aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing and giving feeling/thinking/acting.

To the degree we fail to meaningfully follow Pure Love and/or feeling/thinking/acting in accordance with the universal values; we are meaningless to ourselves. A human requires active insight into Pure Love and the universal values in order to understand, believe-in or care-about their own feeling/thinking/acting.

As we grow in wisdom we gain more and more insight into that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together.

As groups and as individuals, we can and should agree to keep first things first:

Let us not sacrifice Pure Love or the universal values for anything.

That doesn’t mean we need to be perfect; just that we need to keep gently pushing to safeguard and realize the universal values and the Love that makes life meaningful in our individual and shared systems and endeavors.

Pretending we can do anything perfectly is a good way to bamboozle us into throwing away what we already have.

The better way is to accept that growing in individual and shared wisdom is an ongoing process and that — the point of life being the gentle Love that lives in and through and between each of us — the only way forward is gentle continuous careful improvement in ruthless compassion for ourselves and everyone.*

You stand tall and you stand strong
You try ruthless compassion
For yourself and for everyone
Yeah it’s hard but it can be done

Stand up within yourself (push out from within so that the Light inside explodes out through to the Light outside)
Spiritual growth as an attempt, as an ongoing experiment
Experiment in what?
In the spiritual wager: Love is Real
To win the wager you have to draw the conclusions of the wager while simultaneously seeking for more and more insight into that and in what way the wager is True
Perfect equality within the spirit: placing yourself neither above nor below others
What we all sense about the spiritual wager: it is not an easy way, but it is worth the effort: ongoing, always the chance of error, but always the chance of improvement, and the only way to be yourself is to seek more and more active wisdom / loving kindness

But what about the ruthless compassion?

And above we failed to discuss how knowledge works
We point with ideas and feelings towards experiential senses-of-things.
The only way knowledge can be firm is if there is a knowable/quantifiable and acceptable gap between what we are pointing towards and the ideas and feelings we’re using for the pointing.
But without an Absolute Standard of Truth, we have no idea how close we are getting towards an accurate portrayal of what we think we’re describing (how can ultimately unfounded support beams support anything?).
Hence the need for an Absolute Standard of Truth, and the need to have a meaningful sense of how close our ideas and feelings are getting towards relating to It.
How does that work?
Suppose Reality = Love = Knowledge = Truth. Then there is no gap between Reality and Knowledge and Truth and Love, so Love is an Absolute Standard of Truth; and so we could relate poetically to Reality by better and better organizing ourselves around Love; so we could gain more and more insight into that and in what way it is True to say Love is All.

Ruthless compassion is refusing to compromise about loving yourself and everyone else with spiritual love. It is like Jesus’s answer to what is the most important commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul; and your neighbor as yourself. And active experiential, exploratory, self-correcting dual motion into the Light within and outward into a participation in the reality that this Light shines in everyone else.

But it’s hard to get it right. Too easily what we refuse to compromise on is not loving kindness, but following some other ideas and feelings that have gotten wrapped up with our conception of spiritual growth. Hence violence (physical, emotional, procedural) in the name of Love, and other painful errors.

human ideas and feelings point imperfectly towards experiences — be they conceptual or otherwise

If human thought as a whole includes Love = Truth = Reality = Goodness = the Way, then that Love can guide one’s thought as a whole towards better and better relating ideas and feelings to Itself. Not literal knowledge of Love; but poetic knowledge of Love (poetic knowledge of Knowledge = Love … = the Way). This is our best hope. And it is not an endpoint, but a process, a continuous effort of self-assessment, and -adjusting; a never-ending gentle effort in and for and through the Love that chooses us all always.

An ax to the gut
Hacks on all sides
Into your sex

You carry this crime
Bleeding all over
Everywhere you go

How mean it is
To hurt people
there where they
Cannot protect themselves
Without blocking love

Mean what was done
And now it eats you beats you
What can we do to heal you,
Return you to the sun?

Is a poison
In the heart
Rattling
Us all apart

Looking for some other girl to bother with me
Not what I want to do
Admitting you’ll never talk to me ever ever
Not what I want to do
Pointing out that I don’t know anyway what was possible or preferable or anything since all was just hopes and zaps
Not what I want to do

This problem eddying about my gut
This knife stuck in my belly
and yanked up and around around
This evil choking me from the inside
This sickness bleeding through me like blood in the water
Messing me up, knocking me wrong, kiltering me off
What can I say?
Tired, lonely, disappointed in me
Sorry that I cannot stand up and help
Stand up and find the Beauty that helps
Stand up and find the words that glow
so brightly they hold us all together
in a shared glow within a shared purpose
within the Light that Loves the Light that IS

The wisdom meme
That was the idea
A koan so clear and bright
that none could resist its wisdom
A snapshot of Pure Love so wonderful
no one could escape enlightenment
What would it be?
It would be an irresistible summary of both individual and group Something Deeperism
wrapped around a poem of Pure Love that couldn’t help but turn everyone towards Pure Love and how It flows into consciousness, into feeling, thought, and life
Where is the wisdom meme?
And the cut in me that I don’t stand up to
And what wisdom do I even pursue, let alone find?
But the meme was to help me to; it was a Hail Mary for us all; it was the same old
you see,
the wisdom meme
is the addict’s desperate lunge
When you drink and you need one more
One more will get you there
One more will be the escape that is also victory
One more will be the salvation that is also easy and safe and sound
One more
The wisdom meme is a
One more
that would actually work
Because the wisdom meme saves me and you and us, carrying us to the Way
we’re supposed to be
The wisdom meme written by me is a shared victory,
that final wonderful moment that makes all moments flow together in gorgeous harmony

Oh my god
How much evil
have wannabe wisdom memes wrought?
The violent revolution in the name of this or that perfect system, undeniable duty, clear glory
Leave me, leave me evil intent!
And yet, perhaps
in the safe folds of art
we might yet
seek a newer world

It was fine
This burial mound
where they laid me
down to sleep
for the Lord my
you know
to keep

Golden rings on my strong fingers
A crown of silver upon my noble head
Raiments of flowing color soft and supple as the hundred fingers that loved them into shape
And marble urns on either side full of precious spices and foodstuffs from the many lands that have become One
under my mighty hand my tremendous will my divine leadership

It was fine
To rot here all alone
with the corpses of some wives and virgins I’d not yet had the pleasure of
arranged neatly nearby for to sate my famous needs my amazing interests

These evil days that I pulled my people up out of
Yes, it wasn’t easy
But the getting there
I’d not trade that for all the spiced urns and all the fainting virgins in all the melting worlds

It comes to this
If God but grant me one token
If my soul be forgiven enough for one favor
Let me find it
what I didn’t even seek
while so busy doing and creating your business

I’ll tell you what the real problem is here
It isn’t so much that you won’t talk to me,
but that you shouldn’t
It isn’t so much that you turned away,
but that I made it impossible
for you to turn this way,
towards me towards any kind of maybe us
working it out together

Now I’ll tell you how the wisdom meme goes:

It is long known of old
that there is a way
that unites all Ways

It is long known and oft invoked
that no one’s meaning is meaningful to anyone,
except insofar as the interpretation and living
of that meaning
is aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, and joyfully sharing.
Insofar as we humans do not comply with these basic rules for feeling, thinking, and acting;
we cannot understand, believe in, or care about our own feeling, thinking, and acting:
we cannot travel with our own thoughts to our own conclusions:
we cannot meaningfully inhabit our own conscious spaces.
So we’ve not choice but to agree
both within each human’s conscious space (that writhes and wiggles with many contradictory notions, impulses, ideas)
and between human beings and inside their organizations and systems and rules and regulations and ventures big and small
that we will not sacrifice these universal values
for any reason whatsoever
for to do so
is self-defeating
is sawing off the ladder’s rungs with the ladder’s rungs
is the way towards individual and shared
chaos, madness, corruption:
the meaningless temper-tantrums
that both create and are created by
a failure to
put the universal values before
individual and shared feelings, ideas, impulses, soliloquies and conversations

Some argue for exceptions due to expediency, for emergencies, for immediacies
Or on account of how God or Magic is beyond human conception, human values, and so on

But these arguments misunderstand
the situation

Emergencies arise
Rules must sometimes bend
The core of human meaning is indeed either a Light beyond human feeling, thought, and action;
or nothing that can mean anything to humans:
No one really understands
what that Love is
with which all things are bearable
and without which everything is dried paste in our mouths and throats and filling our eyes and ears like soot falling upon Pompeii back in the day

But sacrificing the universal values
amounts to leaving the tension within which
human meaning
— both inside an individual conscious space and between humans —
takes place.
Sacrifice that tension and you are like a ship dealing with an emergency by throwing out it’s rudder and engines and crew and everything that steers it and that it was built to care about.
Sacrifice the discipline of the universal values and you are a believer following and praising God by making it impossible to hear God, to feel God, to believe in or care about God.
It just doesn’t work
Because of the way we are wired
We need meaning to move with our own feeling, thinking, and acting; and meaning requires adherence to the universal values

What lies beneath?
Why does it matter how we feel, think, or act?
That’s where Pure Love comes in.

There is something within through and beyond
that is
beyond feelings, ideas, words
We know
because
this Love shining through each conscious moment
appears to be
more fundamental
than any of our attempts to describe, prove or disprove, praise or blame It
Either that appearance
is illusion
or we
have not possible way
to mean anything to ourselves or anyone
This is because
our sense that we’re all in this together
and that Love is Real
is our most fundamental universal value
Everything else we require
for meaning
rests upon
that sense
that Love is Real
that life is worth the effort
that Aware Clear Competent Kindness is the Way

So we reach
the conclusion
of our philosophy
and the crossroads
of our individual and shared
feeling/thought/action

To the degree
that one finds
within one’s conscious experience
an ever deepening and widening
way
to know that and in what way
it is True
to say
“We’re all in this together”
and that also explicates
the universal values;
one is at a starting point for internal meaning
(for feeling/thinking/acting in a way that is meaningful to one’s own feeling/thinking/acting).

To the degree
that groups of sentient beings
create an environment
where they can individually pursue wisdom
—
here defined as an active self-critiquing and -improving
organization
of one’s feeling/thinking/acting
around the Pure Love
that must
if we are to have any hope
at internal meaning
truly shine through each conscious moment;
bounded by the universal values
and the concomitant sense of
being all in this life together
and thus
being beholden to one another
and the Light
that binds us
—
and
where we can collectively
safeguard and live by
the universal values
and the
concomitant
sense
that
all sentient beings
belong to each other
and must be
good to each other
gentle with themselves
and others
alive to the joy
of kind delight
and shared exploration, creation, celebration, and service

This is the way forward
I’m sure we can all agree
But how?
How?
How??!??!?

I’ve been so lonely for so long
It wears me through
And the world wobbles
We are the world
USA for Africa
Or
China for Africa
Or
Africa for USA
Or
Africa for China
Or
Everybody for Everybody
before it’s too late for anybody
to smile in the spring sunlight while the tussling breeze flips your collar and kisses your cheek.

It was more than twenty years ago
In Le Havre, killing the English-speaking me
with French and German
wandering in the springtime sun and breeze
swimming at the round-stone beach
and having pizza with egg (I didn’t ask for the egg, it was just there, floating in the middle of the pizza, mostly cooked) on a cement patio outside a yellow wooden hut on the beach with freighters parked all around those sliding steel walls so high overhead.
And the walks in that little town park
Seeing a pretty girl and supposing I might talk to her and meet and marry and stay and be there with her and
walking right past her into some bar
where I drank some cheap wine and gazed ahead in this long white-walled room without windows or anything to meaningful to sink your gaze and its longings into
The green square park ringed with a dark sparse metal fence and with Christmas tree pines planted here and there at the edges and with rougher boughs hanging this way and that
and then a bandstand
round and roofed
with perhaps even a band
It doesn’t matter

I wanted to say
Ah yes
We need a way
to do this
Something Deeperism: There is a Truth and people can relate to It meaningfully, just not in a literal/definitive/exclusive way.
Pure Love: The Truth / Light / the Love that chooses everyone, and that creates, sustains, shines through, and love-lifts us all no matter what always and forever.

Oh!
We didn’t cover the “jut not in a literal/definitive/exclusive way”
That’s because if there is a Truth, it is wider and deeper than human feelings and ideas — which collapse in paradoxes when they try to define or prove or even describe or grasp the Truth; and which anyway know themselves to be limited, finite, prone to error, and generally unfit for capturing things like Knowledge = Truth = Reality –, but we rely on human ideas, feelings, and ideas to think/feel/act and relate; so the only hope is for us to relate our feeling/thinking/acting to Truth in a poetic way. What does that mean? A poem about your walk on the beach captures not just literal images, but an experience and a sense-of-things. A poem points beyond its constituent parts, to an individual vista that we can share because we assume that we are all essentially the same. Poetry and literature do not work without this assumption, but nothing does: we learn how to call and arrange our feelings and ideas through empathy (my father stubs his toe; he clutches it and yells that it hurts, my mind maps his expressions and actions and I feel along with him and thus gain insight into his use of language) — if others are not essentially like we are, our worldviews collapse into unfathomable mush. And so we ask neither too much nor too little of poetry when we bid it guide us towards the Truth. Not like everyone has to be writing poetry to be wise! Although it’s a salutary exercise and all that. But the point is that our feeling and thinking and doing and speaking should all poetically describe the Pure Love that shines though each conscious moment and that — though deeper and wider than human meanings — is the only adequate source for human meaning: since nothing else quite matters if spiritual Love does not shine for Real.

As individuals we organize our feeling/thinking/acting around the Light within. In the regular ways. Prayer, meditation, contemplation, discussion, study, practicing humility and loving kindness, through the discipline of following the universal values in our internal and external interactions. Things like that. Different ways of poetically interacting with the Love that is beyond literal definitions but that is not therefore necessarily beyond our thought as a whole.

Thought-as-a-whole: feelings, vague notions, ideas, sensual experiences, internal and external interactions, all shot through with Pure Love, which is all there really Is, and which is therefore everywhere, in each conscious moment.

This is the spiritual wager: that this Pure Love IS and that our inborn rules of thought (the universal values, the need for Kindness to be Real, the need to understand that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together): This is the wager that a human conscious moment must make and succeed within, if that human conscious moment is to understand, believe in, or care about its own feeling/thinking/acting.

If we confuse our own ideas and feelings for Pure Love, then we clutch dogmas tighter and tighter even as we understand/believe-in/care-about them less and less.

But if we don’t bother to pursue Pure Love, we end up in the same chaos built of feeling and ideas that don’t really mean anything to anyone.

So we stand there in the tension between literal Knowledge and an absolute abdication of any claim to Knowledge. We stand there and work on wisdom: on moving better and better with the Love that chooses everyone and abandons no one, that hurts no one ever.

But for a group?
How can groups agree to agree on what they already agree upon?
Because people seeking power will often give lip service to Truth and Goodness and the universal values and even to Love, the greatest God of all. And people are suckers for power and glory and sex and food and drink and prestige and wealth and being on the winning team and all that eternal nonsense that is part of the animal condition and cannot be pretended away.

The point of representative democracy is so that the people can peacefully serve as a final check on madness and corruption in government.
Madness and corruption are the same in groups as they are in individuals: organizational structures that select for folly and against wisdom: where bad impulses and values more easily gain and keep prestige and/or power than good impulses and values.

Madness and corruption slide into one another and blur together. Sanity and wisdom do the same. Since the root of both sanity and wisdom is meaningful engagement with the Love that loves everyone. And the lack of that engagement is what makes it easier to turn further and further away from Love.

The point of separation of church and state is because combining spiritual prestige with worldly power invites people to lie to themselves and each other about the most sacred things and thus invites corruption.

The point of transparency and openness in government is to encourage good behavior and so that the people can better serve as a final check on madness and corruption in government.

The point of individual rights is to keep the majority from mistreating the individual. It is not so that a minority can indulge in behaviors that harm the majority or that undermine minority rule.

The point of separation of powers is that power corrupts: It naturally wants more and more of itself and this is bad for collective feeling, thinking, and acting.

The point of honesty, clarity, and civility in political debate is so that we as a group can more meaningfully decide and act together.

The point of representative democracy is for everyone to work together to create systems, organizations, structures, and cultures that are better for everyone.

Let us think for one moment
of the last time
we were on a park bench
or in a cafe
or at home
or walking to work or school
or anywhere
relaxing, enjoying a moment of freedom to think and feel and speak our minds and hearts
And be grateful for whatever we have of representative democracy
And to work together to build more of it

Violent revolutions
Wars
Great victories for the Volk
Pouting and shouting along with pundits more interested in ratings than the Truth
All this is fire that burns up and melts and otherwise disappears the gentle process of growing individually and collectively
Don’t let’s throw it all away
on pretend
freedom valor integrity

Let’s think again
Let’s sink down as one
And remember when
Our many lives were young
And reach out together
past the brooding weather
into the heart of it all
where we all start — the Love that calls
and would be heard, known, followed

Why God
Are we here?
In this strange world
where nothing is real
and yet everything touches the Real
where nothing is true
and yet all laces into what’s True?
Strange worlds
odd realms
a delicate tremble
shakes the thin branch and slender leaf loosing a drop of water clear heavy- and round-butted, that must soon but not quite yet sploosh upon yon rock down under yonder

Hmmm

aw well

I am sorry I didn’t say I love you
in a kind way that cuddled you
I am sorry it came out all twisted and broke down
I am sorry I flamed out all silly and choked on
I had a chance to tell you
I wasted that chance
I am sorry
That is all

Authors: B Willard / A Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
The spirit who stands by the broke-backed man
In the Book of Books defend ye,
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your heart unwound
Abroad to beg your bacon,
While I must sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Goodbye can injure nothing.

When your heart so bright would warm mine,
In grave hopes I did dissolve me.
And thus enraged, my dreams I mixed for thine.
If you chance the warden, bid ‘im call me:
I scratched them in the bed head —
‘twixt the buttocks and the siren.
Were not his knots that kept me
but lumpy wishes where I’d lie on.
Now found wrong I sing for food and for feeding,
Feed or drink or clothe one;
Come ghost or bod, be not afeared,
Farewells shall injure no-one.

Delirium’s a hole where some unravel
unaware and innocent of carriage.
But I rolled along the edges for to travel
to you in magical love and marriage.
I thought it well. I deemed it right
to explore what I felt in wanting you.
But quick it caught and held my belly tight
while whispering love — love we knew and would do.
What is the path that finds the deep wide way
beneath what’s clear-day said and done?
I thought faith’d bring me love, not astray.
I’m sorry. For what I sought and won
will never breathe nor ever mend.
Goodbye is all — our only, a broken end.

With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.
Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.

You stupid boring braggart
It was into Goodbye that you slipped the dagger
that slashed friendship apart
you hurt a nice person for no good reason
in the squand’ring you broke your heart
I try you for contempt of love, the highest treason
And punish you to silence
in the cavern where speak the shadows
that comprise both day and night
So get you now and forever hence
Let some wiser other say what’s right

Middle Bedlam verses and a couple slight emendations to the first verse, and of course the final verse:
BW with AW, copyright AMW