Everyday that I sit to write, usually between the Pacific Coast hours of 9:00 and 11:00 a.m., is a sacred journey for me. Whether I am coming off a black tea caffeine-high, and spicing my ramblings with humorous prose, or sharing a profound recollection or excerpt from past journals, I honor this time as a part of my spiritual passage. And for being here, and sharing in this journey, I thank you. My hope is that you leave with something of value, though I understand your experience is your experience, and out of my control. Still, my intention is to connect and share, to never preach or persuade. I hope you can sense my intention.

I feel guided by a higher spirit during my revered two hours. I try not to plan what I am going to write, because when I do plan, the words never match my idea of what I’d thought to type. Usually, the prose is at a dynamic polar opposite of my original preset plan.

I believe in a higher power but choose not to let my belief system affect my open heart and mind—I wish to remain available to life and avoid rigidness and dogmatic viewpoints. Obviously, in someway, my belief system will always define, minimally at a subconscious level, how I perceive life.

In analyzing my spiritual reckonings, I say today, at this very moment of writing, I haven’t had a choice but to believe in some higher being, collective energy, or presence. A source that remains beyond myself and my limited understanding.  As odd as that may sound—the statment of having had no other option but to believe in a higher source—this remains a fact in my life. I accept this is my current truism, and recollect, that like the flowers through the seasons, I will inevitably transition, possibly into a new state of comprehension. As I explained in my fist post, I conjecture our perception of life is based on multiple factors:

“Our understanding of this life experience is primarily based on our individual genetic makeup, societal influences, family environment and dynamics, adopted belief systems, and the limitation of the five senses. Some would go further and postulate that our experience of this life is based on a collective spiritual, and perhaps even ancestral, journey, and/or that we are living a journey already preordained and set out in an exact blueprint. There is the concept of emptiness. There is the idea of heaven. The thought of the collective unconscious. The faith of a higher power. Some even hold true to the fact that we are living in multiple dimensions, creating infinite destinies with each and every decision, each and every breath. Others believe this life is finite–that the real reward rests beyond.

Each of us holds something to be true about our experience of the world: even if that truth is simply believing no truth exists.”

 I understand this is only my idea of my universe. I choose to not place my view onto others, as I recognize my individual limitations to see the whole of what is before me; if in fact, anything exists before me at all. Within the vastness of my mind, I postulate that my higher source is an energetic love, and whether he or she, or even it, bares the face of a recognized deity, God, spiritual being, or other established truth, serves no baring in my determination of what is momentarily true for me.

Whether or not my higher source is the commonly accepted name of any given society—past, present, remote, distant, or near—is no matter to me. Having clung to and/or embraced multiple belief systems and faiths, I have determined, for myself, and me alone, that whatever the masses proclaim to be the form or name of a higher power, does not substantiate or decrease my belief.

I believe the power behind words, particularly the names of gods or deities, comes from the intention of the people proclaiming said names. When a word is spoken by the masses to represent truth and love, then the word reflects truth and love. And I conjecture the opposite to be true.

Like others before me, I believe words and symbols vibrate with collective energy, and that the level of vibration is determined directly by the belief system applied by the individual writing or speaking the word. Each of us experiences a word’s vibration based on the collected whole’s interpretation and in combination with our own life experience and understanding of the word. Words are simply, or not so simply, symbols transformed into pictures, images created in our minds. What I visualize in my mind is ultimately different from what another pictures in his or her mind. The variance of experience is inevitable, but the power behind a given word remains universal.

In current times, the line between science and religion, and other belief systems, regarding human’s state of existence, is becoming narrower and narrower; the line often appearing to vanish, as one sect’s of accepted truth overlaps with another sect’s of truth. I believe any man (woman) who holds onto his or her truth as the exact and only truth to be an innocent one. Inside the elements of my truth, all of us are innocent: for even when one accepts the limitations of the mind, he or she is still grasping at his or her individualized way of interpreting the world. This is not to say that I do not envision my higher power as a particular embodiment, only to say I understand my mind’s limitations.

In actuality, there is current evidence for an ever-changing world and belief system based on individual perception. The science community continues to postulate, from collected data, that an electron’s movement is directly related to the observer. And man has recorded photographs of water crystals forming exact shapes and form based on the vibration of the written words and/or the intention of one’s thoughts. Reality is being captured by man as a state of perpetual transition based on the observer.

I share this with you as a form of preparation. Not for you so much, but for me. As this aspect of myself is a vital piece of who I am, and how I currently present myself through words. In my walking world, where my physical form is present, I often shy away from topics encompassing my reality of life, but here, where I am shedding light on my experience, I find a necessity, at least for today, to be as real and authentic as possible.

Ironically, I aspire to paint with words a picture of my individual reality, while I know this world is not mine to own or create alone.

I’ve included a substantially complex prose entitled Universal Measurement below, which delves deeper into one’s  perception. In no way do I claim this as anyone’s truth. I’m not even certain the writing is what I know to be true. The words are only words, miraculous letters combined to convey a sliver of a glimpse of what I perceived. I still embrace many aspects of the religion I was raised to know; the main difference now is that I acknowledge my own being’s limitations to ever know the exact truth. In peace and love ~ Sam

Universal Measurement

I once again understand these words I write are only words, only my temporary truth. Ever changing, these words are no less permanent than the tide of the ocean. I sweep forth treasures of shells and seaweed, and the occasional sneaker escaped from the sea. However, nothing is a truth, only a finger-pointing to a possible avenue for a possible someone to find his or her own truth. This prose was written in a very quick sitting; I have applied no editing or rearranging of the words, as to keep the writing in its pure and original form.

This message, like many others I have scribed, occurred during a time of reflection and prayer. The writing speed is directly dependent upon how fast I can type, as the words pour out of me faster than I can type. When I use the word WE, this is the way I understand the universe to be, a collection of us all with no singular I.  My intention is to reflect no pretense or pretentiousness. I offer this, as I offer everything, as a peek inside my world. The words are what I heard from my own interior voice. I was a student, not a teacher, as I wrote, and still go back to reread the prose to fully grasp the meaning.

Universal Measurement:

“There is a difference between reflecting, remembering, reminiscing, and regretting. Benefits can be found in all; though limitations and discernment are necessary to avoid being trapped emotionally in a state of constant review.

It is necessary to look back; this is how the mind functions; how the mind builds connections and understands where the body and spirit stand. Without memory, we would be forever newborn babies, continually interpreting what was around us as only stimuli and mystery. Yes, this is a wonderful state of being, this state of the newly born: a beneficial place which builds great experience, from a great and vast foundation. To say the slate is empty, is to say the world is full of opportunity. To think back at this state is intriguing and interesting. Nonetheless, we focus on the building from the past

At some point in the quest, souls will long to return to the moment of new birth; this is an impossibility by standard measurement; yet not an impossibility by the universal measure.

To return back to a state of not requiring the foundation of the vast mind, to turn back to a place within us is necessary and attainable, although not by common measures. Universal Measure is the degree in which one comes in contact with the divine force that equates eternity.

Universal measure is measuring the distance from A to B without recognizing A and B: without needing to have an end, beginning, or continuation. The measurement itself is absent of measurement and extends within, without, and in a direction unknown currently to this humankind. To know all directions simply with this mind, is to say what is before, behind, and current is the equanimity (calm mental state) of man’s mental measurement. This is doubly blinding. First blinding in the sense of the continual routine and expectation of the limitations of the measurement, and secondly blinding in the sense we are what we create.

So, in thus creating measurement, measurement lives. To recreate measurement at a universal degree, to see the measurement as obscure and necessary at the same time, is the beginning of enlightenment. To see this wholly, the humble of heart and humble of mind must deem impossibilities as possibilities in every sense.

To say we are traveling forward is non – sense. To say we are traveling at all is not a truism in the sense of the human word of truth. Not to say there is mistruth, deception or meaningful lies, but to report that what is perceived by the mind and by the eyes, and together with all the recognized and acclaimed senses, is not the whole of the truth. The key is in non – sense.

When we stop the reliance of the senses, we stop enough to “see” that through the senses, we have not “seen” properly; or let us say, we have not “seen” rightfully and appropriately recognized as of yet (in your terms of time).

Take an ant on a line or a course. Perhaps a line made from a white chalk that had been swiped across a flat green board. Like the ones in the classrooms. Make the board flat, this green leveled on a table at waistline height. Here we imagine and picture this white line, horizontal and straight, set across a green background. Shall we say green pasture? And then the ant is led (or moves) across the line, step by step, from one side to the next. To say there is a beginning and ending, is to say the pasture begins at one side of the board and ends at the other end of the board. As if the ant’s world were flat. You see, just as humans of ages before perceived the world as flat, thusly many perceive this universe, and all it entails, as somehow “flat.” This is not to say the universe as in space, but the universe in which the spirit life exists and strives.

The question to ask is not where will the ant begin or end his path? Where will he fall? When will he fall? Or how will he crawl down? Nor either is vital the consideration of what is under the chalkboard; or even, on that same account, the vitality or necessity of understanding what supports the board. These are the questions that persist though. Do they not? What keeps us upright? Where am I headed? What is on the end? Where did the beginning come from? So much is spent on these small questions.

In truth you see only one chalkboard, when in fact there are layers upon layers, all interconnected.

Once you see the chalkboard is not a single board by multiple layers, than the interest is more so in where the layers lead, and less so in what made the layers, supports the layers, and keeps the layers.

Imagine yourself as a child waking up to find yourself in a fabric tunnel. This is familiar. There is light. You sense no danger. However, thusly, your first instinct is to find a way out of the tunnel. You either climb one direction or the other, or perhaps twist and turn to pull apart or distort this fabric surrounding you.

Now imagine, for a moment, you awake, and you are not in a tunnel but surrounded in layers, multi-dimensional layers that interconnect and reach out to the other. They are invisible in the sense you can see through from one layer to the next. As far as you can see above and below and to every side is layers, and then, looking down at yourself, you are also layers; inside of you is someone looking up and about, and in this realizing you are universal layer.

This is what we have said before as the mirror inside a mirror inside a mirror: a reflection, inside a reflection, inside a reflection. There is no start, no beginning.

In this way, as you awake and see the layers, your desire is  no longer to find a way out of a “tunnel.” What remains is a desire to look to the places inside you and places beyond you that speak of endless mystery. In staying still, in this one spot of layers, you are transformed and multiplied, and suddenly you see yourself and your dear ones at every level simultaneously. This is not an impossibility, but a universal measurement.

So again, picture the ant on the board, but then multiply the board and ant as many times as possible, in as many circumstances and environments (even predicaments) as possible. Then stop to ask yourself, when you meet up with this ant, if he is given the gift of communication, and you are to ask him a question, will you not ask him where he has been? Who he has met? What he has learned? Instead of where he has come from.

The past is but a million upon a million pasts. An eternity upon an eternity explains the past of where one has stepped. Instead we ask where have you traveled.

And still the mind wants an absolute, the start, the end. Yet who has created such a reasoning of start? The baby is not born with the knowing of start or end. In fact, we can very much remember the time a human told us of death, explained to us of death, and how unnatural and unreal this felt to our mind; how even the trying to understand and accept this explaining pierced an inner part of us. Imagine now the “adult” telling the child there is no start, there is no end, and just as you are now, you shall always be. Yes, there is confusion, and perhaps conflict in acceptance, but in this no inner part is pierced. If we are to rely on our “gut” feeling, then isn’t it likely the no ending and no beginning is the one that treats are inner parts with the most tenderness? This is reasonable. Is it not?

And so, in considering the ant, the ant multiplied into a symphony of other ants, all alike, all on journey, we consider not so much where he has been or where he is going, how he arrived, or who allowed him such opportunity, but in the phenomenal power and extraordinary triumph of journeying a million upon a million times in the fraction of a moment.

Here in lies the inner truth of universal measurement: where you stand, a thousand times a thousand more have stood, not as different, but as the same.

In this way you are truly never alone. There is great love and fortitude in every direction imaginable; not only in your immeasurable selves and capabilities, but in the “soldiers” multiplied beside you offering you equal support. Your friend is neither one or many. Your friend is you, as well. In this way you are but you and your friend. And when you cross paths, which you inevitably do in more ways than you can comprehend, your oneness is reinforced.

So when you kiss the babe goodnight, know you are kissing yourself, your friend, and a million times a million other ones goodnight. Know for each hello, echoes are circled a million times around this earth. And in each singular thought, you have the power to fortify, forgive, understand and love.”