"The New Blue" ©SusanneStill2010/BlueJaguarPress

Essays, Stories, Poems

S E L E C T    P O E M

FROM

THE ERA OF SOLAR PASSAGE

 W I N T E R 

S O L S T I C E

 And therein do I abide

 The winds will blow

  the snow will fall

 and suns will turn to eyes

Yet I will rise in the house of the morning

 For therein do I abide.

 ---Andrew Quilliam Brewer

Death Poems to My Father

-I-

Go radiantly into God
When you are done with days
That is what true men do

Go radiantly into joy
 that overflows
the vessel of your soul
and leave behind no trace of sorrow

Go radiantly into the arms
 of the Holy Mother you so love,
Her peace is strong,
Her prayer is clear;
You are her shining son.

My Father,
When he looked at God,
would tell me this:
"Remember to forgive,
and let no anger blind you."

When he raised the sword of Christ,
His eyes would glisten
and he would say:
"Seek the truth,
Lead where it will,
Come what may."

These words have shaped my soul
and revealed my way.

I have heard your song,
I have felt your light,
May you rise now like David
And transcend this Holy Night.

-II-

As You Smiled Goodbye

As you lay dying,
I was here in spring snow
Falling everywhere.
A rare light emerged, 
Rarer still from its own radiance,
And washed the crystal pitched pines around us,
Ringing with Amen.
And you were shining,
With a lifetime of loving trees,
And for that,
 The forests sang to you
"Halleluiah and Amen."

As you lay dying
I was wishing you could see the day I walked in,
And so you came.
We stood, together, bathed in blossoms
Of apple and apricot and wild peach,
And you smiled to see me standing here beside you
In the House of Light,
Knowing tomorrow
You would walk into the other world.


And I was remembering already,
As a child remembers,
But you were watching the birds--
Hundreds of them--
 That suddenly    appeared
Like a wave of winged gratitude.

They broke upon the ground before us in a wash of joy.
They came to say goodbye to you,
The man who loved them all his life,
A hundred hearts as one
They came to you,
Like the sparrows of St Francis,
 Singing everywhere,

And together, we listened.

As you rose on wings you never lost,
Though Death knelt down before you
You saw only Joy around you;

You opened your eyes
And you smiled goodbye.


 

I am back on the links again with Gerald,  four thousand feet high on the side of Mt. Haleakala,  walking proud in the fields of Poli Poli on the Island of Maui. 

Disc golf is our game and we are playing doubles.  Doubles is a joy because it allows you the best shot of the two players.  This removes the burden from the single player.  It allows you to take more chances and to live fully and play freely.   Because of this, miracles can happen. 

 Now Gerald was a Scotsman by blood, and I, a Welsh, Irish, English mix.  When we joined together there was a decidedly Celtic influence.  For me, this meant more fun, more humor and a bit of the leprechaun.

 Today we were up against Frank.  Frank was a Texas bombshell who could easily out throw and out putt all the rest of us.  He was playing as his own partner, which put us all in double jeopardy.  The game was not going well.  Frank was on, and he was out gunning us at every turn.  The only hope was a bit of Irish cunning. 

 We were almost half way into the game and Frank was way out in front of the pack.
     
 As we were walking up the hill, he stumbled on a rock and had a small outburst of temper.   Now, at this moment my Irish spirit began to listen.   I was filled with an inspiration.  Frank had picked up the rock he stumbled on and gave it a heave with a curse.   His temper was always his undoing, but today, he was doing his best to keep it in check. 

 I gave the look to Gerald and proceded to tell Frank about messing with the stone people and how good relations with them could determine the outcome of a game. 
 I slipped into my best Irish brogue and began extolling the stone people to forgive Frank.   I reminded them that he was, after all, only a small-minded Texas bumble who knew nothing of the finer qualities of the little people and especially the stone people.

  Gerald began to chime in and we proceeded to paint a picture of a world filled with spirit, and the stone people became more real by the minute.   All the while we were chatting away, Frank was huffing and puffing and calling us new age ninnies, and what ever other Texas insults he could think of.  

We were approaching the next hole, which had as its goal a ring of stones about two feet in diameter.   The difficulty was that you had to stay within the ring, which was very easy to bounce out of.   I reminded Frank that he was about to see what cursing and abusing the stone people would get him.   In a typical Texas outburst, he began to curse and kick all the more. 

 Now, Gerald and I were away as we had landed the furthest out from the ring.   We were looking at a very difficult shot.  The further away you were from the ring, the harder it was to get your disc to stay in and not bounce out.  We were probably at least thirty-five feet away.  Gerald went first, and landed in the ring, but bounced out.  Frank was smirking as he was only about ten feet away and had an easy putt.

 I stepped up and began praying loudly to the stone people.  I reminded them of my Celtic blood and how I had defended them from the harsh words of the Texas booby.   I gave it my best story line and fell to my knees extolling their virtues.    Now even though I was playing a theatre to bend Frank's Texas brain, I did in fact actually believe everything I was saying.  In my heart, I did love the stone people and they were in fact very real to me, and also I knew that they loved a good joke just as much as I did. 

 So, it was finally time to putt up or shut up.  I walked to my lay and let fly my disc with an Irish cackle.  The disc hit about five feet from the ring and jumped up on its side and rolled.   It was turned at the last minute by a small stone, and moved directly into the ring where it began to roll out, but was bounced back by one of the larger stones.   So there I was, lying in the center of the ring and all because of the stone people.

  Gerald and I were jubilant and began to sing in our best Celtic brogue.  It was now Frank’s turn, and I told him in a very serious tone, that now the worm had turned, and he was about to receive a lesson from the very stone people he had so scorned just a moment ago.
 Frank was still scoffing and muttering as he stepped up to his very easy putt.   He had a broad Texas grin on his face, as he knew he could not miss.  He let go and sure enough the disc sailed true and landed square in the very middle of the ring.    It began to lie down from a slow wobble, but suddenly it jumped up on its side and rolled to the edge of the ring.   It began to lay down one more time, but was suddenly propelled as if by magic off the side of a tiny pebble and was flung out of the ring.  Now, as if that was not bad enough, it continued to roll, almost defying gravity, up the slope and then down the other side,   stopping at last about twenty feet from the ring.  Frank was now almost twice as far away as his original lay.  

There was an eerie silence as we all surveyed the situation.   Gerald and I were amazed and broke into a fit of laughter.  Frank was absolutely horrified and sank to his knees.  He called cheat and black magic and called for the commissioner to rule against the obvious witch craft that had just taken place.
 
 I gently reminded Frank that he had brought it all on himself, by his bad relations and bad attitude towards the stone people.  I reminded him of how we tried to warn him, but he had mocked us instead.  

We were all quite taken aback by the outcome, but there it was.   The magic of disc golf just got more magical.
 
It was a sorry Frank, a forlorn Frank, and a much humbler Frank that now stepped up to the disc.  He was suddenly looking at a very hard putt indeed.   He tried to rally, but his confidence was gone.  He sailed in a good try, but the stones, once again, bounced it out.   He was almost shaking as he finally dropped in his last attempt from a few feet away.  Even that one almost bounced out, but at the last minute, as if the stone people had decided that Frank had learned his lesson, it lay down within the ring.

  Franks game went to hell after that.    We began to play all the impossible shots we could, and we made them all.  It was as if the little people of the land roused up to teach a lesson to the straight world of golf.  .  I was beside myself with the outrageous fun of it.  These were the moments I lived for, the impossible moments that defied all logic and all predictable outcomes.

 Our game became more magical and Frank’s game became more fearful.  It was as if he knew we were actually right, but he dared not believe.   In the end, Gerald and I emerged victorious and danced a victory dance, and poor Frank slunk away like a wet Texas rat, after an Irish lightening storm. 

All my life, I have lived for the impossible moment that would astound.

When it happened, my spirit would soar and all around me would become lighter.   The lightness of being is truly contagious.  It is infectious and it annihilates the logical mind.  It pulls out the rug of tradition, and all mayhem breaks loose.

 It is here, when the concrete fabric of reality is shattered, that the Zen moment can happen.  It is here, between the cracks, that wonder grows. 
 It is the wonder and the awe of the Great Mystery that feeds the soul and is the fertile ground for inspiration.   Small minds run in fear of the unknown.   But the spirit of a true man rejoices. 

  Let us give thanks to the Impossible and all the invisibles that give it breath. 

 Let us give thanks to the Stone People of the world that give to us, amidst this sea of immensity, the illusion of a solid ground. 

 They are the Rock, upon which I have built my life.  They are the ground  I have respectfully stood upon. 

   Sorry Frank, but Texas is no match for the humor of the ancient Celts. 

©AndrewQuilliamBrewer2011/BlueJaguarPress

The greatest power that we as a race possess is the power of laughter.   All rage, enmity, greed and delusion evaporate in the face of it.  The devil himself has no power over it.  This is why the ancient Celts were so formidable.   They knew the power of the laugh in the face of the despicable.  Tyrants crumble in the wake of it.
 
The Snake boys are not known for their humor, and this is our great power over them.  It is a power that we rarely use or even barely comprehend.  Tyrants are cunning and paranoid and they expect the same from us.

 Laughter in the face of tyranny gives the spirit room to rise and to flourish and to abolish evil.  It is the antidote to the devil's cunning.

 

My first real exposure to the power of the Celts came in the form of a four-foot tall, ninety-year-old Druid master.  He was my teacher’s teacher.

 My teacher at the time was a man named John Donaldson.   He was a true poet and revolutionary genius.  I had found him a few weeks after my arrival in England.   I had come down to breakfast one day in my dreary Yugoslavian bed sit on Glouster Road, to find the whole place in hysterics.  In the middle of the fray was a red haired, wild-eyed Gourde in his fifties who was loudly engaged in a practice, which he later described to me as “removing the sting.”
 
This practice was a very profound method of healing.  He would focus on the young and the old and isolate the wound he saw within them.   Then he would begin to tell jokes and bring humor down upon them with a mighty force.  At the same time he would listen carefully to them and cast his gaze always upon the healed man, rather than the broken man.   It was a wonderful practice, which he eventually imparted to me after a lot of struggle on my part.

 When he saw me that morning he immediately engaged me in a search for his writing, his lost manuscripts.   He said that the police had taken them and he could use my help in recovering them.   As he began to recite his poetry and his plays, I immediately recognized how brilliant they were.      

So I, of course, agreed.
  
This began a series of adventures with this mad genius and enlightened man who taught me so much.  But this story is a long one and the point I am coming to now is the meeting I had with his own teacher.
 
 One day, out of nowhere, he announced that we were going to find "The Man".   He began to drag me through the forgotten and forbidden back ways of London, until we came to a very narrow mews.    At the end of the lane there stood a very small man.  His back was turned to me, but he was dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit.

He was considered to be one of the best judges of horse flesh in the world.  He could just look at a colt and tell you immediately whether or not this horse would be a champion or a great jumper, or whatever its destiny might be.   His two sons both had been killed in the steeplechase and they were both champions before they died.
 
 All this John told me as we approached this very small and strange little man.   When he finally turned to us as we approached, he simply said “Oh hello John, it’s been a while”.  And then he turned his gaze upon me and I was suddenly looking straight into the eyes of a real Leprechaun.

  His ears were long and pointed at the ends, very much like a Vulcan.  His eyes were huge and filled with laughter and light.  As he gazed into me, he smiled and asked me what I was doing with a man like John.  And then he said, “I fear he is a most unfortunate man.”   He waited for my answer.
 
  My mind went completely blank.    I opened my mouth finally and heard these words come out, to my horror and chagrin.   I quoted Zorba the Greek:  “A man is someone who pulls down his pants and looks for trouble, so I guess I am looking for trouble.”   The old man's eyes just exploded with laughter, but he kept his gaze upon me.  “Well", he says, “I never met a man who was looking for trouble, that didn’t find it!”
 
With that, he threw his head back and laughed with a power that completely devastated my ego structure.  I was propelled into another reality where I found myself outside my own mind, (which had fled for its very life,) and I was watching myself watching the old man who was seeing my whole life laid out before him, and he was just laughing and laughing with a most compassionate and sweet laugh that scared me to death.

Suddenly I saw what he saw, and the fear melted away.   I was standing in the middle of my entire life, and at the same time I was Home.   I was free.   There was no reason to worry or to despair about my past or my future.

 In fact there was no reason to do anything but to just be myself, and myself was totally complete.
 
 All judgment and hope and desire melted away from me.   I was my naked self, just shining in the sun.

 And it was enough.

 It seemed like days before I returned to my body and the present moment.   John took my arm and led me away.  I was shaking and confused, but deeply relieved and uplifted.   I was full of a new joy.    The old man had just melted me down on the spot and I had a moment of awakening.  I had an Enlightenment event in the face of the sheer force of his laughter.
 
This was my very first encounter with the power of the Druid teaching.  It is a way mostly lost in this very serious world.   It is a way that I pray will return to us. 

"The Only Truth"

All is God

There is nothing that is not.

There is no place that is not.

There is no one that is not.

The sense of being seperate from God

Is the fire in which we burn

Until we awaken.

Of all the forces of this world,  it is the wind that moves the water….. it is the wind that moves the light.

My life has been shaped by wind. 

When I was just a small boy ,  it was the wind that took me home when I was lost in the pine forests of North Carolina.  It felt simple and natural to me and there was no one else that actually responded to my cry of distress.   The occasional bird would come by and offer some advice, but it seemed entirely arbitrary and somewhat unreliable, even to my young spirit.  I would be standing there, deep in the midst of pine and leafy wood, and even my dog seemed unsure of where to go.   Probably he just didn’t care as he was in for the adventure and the day was long, but I knew I was in trouble and there were bears and large beasts and even DEADLY snakes.   So I would look about for a sign from the heavens and sure enough, the wind would come and give me a direction and I always found my way home.

 There was never any doubt in my mind that I could rely on the wind.   I felt the affinity and the affection and always a personal concern for my well being.   It was this that gave me the confidence to roam in the wide world.  So fundamental! From my childhood, I learned to  seek out the wind to help me find my way and to give me confidence and joy in the wide and scary world. 

When I was a teenager in orange county, (while there still were oranges), I would climb into the tall eucalyptus trees and ride the crazy, hot, Santa Anna winds that would blow in 60 or 70 mile an hour gusts for hours.   I would go down to the marina and get out my canoe and paddle across the bay with my back to the wind and be blown like a wind surfer on a wave of wild hot air.  It was the wind that thrilled my soul...

With Patrick it was the wind and the sea and the giant waves that thrilled me.  The storms would call me out, like a lover, and I would always go and be glad I did.
I was a storm lover and a lightning seeker!  The more powerful the lightening, the happier I would be.  Perhaps my experience in Guam with the Hurricane was the beginning of my love affair with the wind.   Watching the world you know be blown away makes an impression on a small boy.

 The strange thing is that I never feared the wind, with one exception.    The one exception was perhaps my most shamanic and most definitive moment with "The Wind". 
It was a blustery day on Maui.  After fifteen years of contact with a particular thunder spirit that lived in the crater who had become my friend, I knew something was up.  The radio said a large thunderstorm with ninety mile an hour winds was blowing into the crater and the rangers were on the road trying to get out any one left in the parking lots or on the trails.
 
 I had just pulled into my driveway when I got the call.  I was very distinctly told to get to my cave that was located in the bottom of the crater.   I was mortified.   I knew very well that I could just ignore the whole thing and be safe, but I also knew that I had never been contacted like this before and probably never would again.   I was more frightened than I thought I would be and I also knew that I had very little time to get my ass up there before they closed the road.  I grabbed my pack and a few items and jumped into my truck and drove as fast as I possibly could up the crater road.    All the cars were coming down and I feared that I would be blocked from entry.  I also knew that I had a few minutes to change my mind.  I kept going as fast as I could, despite my fears, and when I arrived at the gate, all the rangers were out chasing down hikers and lost cars.  I breezed through, to my great surprise, and headed for the parking lot at the 8,000 foot level.   This was the back way into the crater and the closest trail to my cave.   The rangers were so busy chasing everyone out that they completely overlooked me.

 In a true shamanic moment you can always expect the impossible to happen at precisely the right moment.   And so it did for me.  I parked my car and ran down the three-mile trail to my very hidden cave.   I made it down in record time and when I arrived at my cave I saw the thunderstorm moving in.  A bank of cumulus clouds, probably over a thousand feet high, was slowly moving into the crater floor.

 I was awestruck and also terrified.  Exactly at that moment, a gust of wind going at least 60 miles an hour, hit me in the chest.  The cold penetrated through my coat and inner lining and dropped me to my knees.   I felt chilled to my core and I retreated into the small cave for shelter.   I began to make myself a bed in the far corner to hide in, and then I realized that 90 mile an hour winds would penetrate, no matter what I did.   So I pulled myself together as best I could and went out to face the day.

The storm was moving in and so I walked out onto the lava and began to sing.   (Perhaps chant would be a better word.)   In my chant, I was asking for a teaching and I was revealing myself as best I could to the immensity.    The sun was beginning to go down and in the golden light a huge shape appeared.  It was the shape of a dragon.  The dragon seemed to peer down upon me and I continued my song.  I felt the extreme presence of the golden one go through my heart and I felt very relieved.
 
The Golden one sank down suddenly and a red/gold dragon appeared in its place.  I continued to sing and I felt the effect of the red gold go through my whole body and soul.   I felt more the power of courage and a distinct sense of inner relating to the huge being above me.

 After about ten minutes or so, the dragon sank down and a black gold dragon rose in his place.    There was more of a sense of power and fear in this being, and I continued to reach out as best I could.  I sensed a fundamental shift happening within me but I could only continue to chant for fear I would be annihilated.    At this point the sun had almost set and I felt a huge sense of relief that I had somehow successfully had a real contact with the Great Storm being.

The huge bank of clouds had stopped moving in and the wind had died down during this process.   As the last dragon dropped away, I waited for a moment to have a final song, and then, out of nowhere, a huge and completely terrifying black dragon rose up almost twice as high as the ones before.
 
 I knew that now I was in the presence of the spirit of the hurricane itself.  As it rose above me, I felt completely small and insignificant.  The larger it became, the smaller I felt.  Finally, as I peered above me, I made contact with this huge immensity.  There was no compassion in those eyes.  There was only a brief window of willingness to receive whatever it was I had to say.
 
 I reached to the bottom of my soul and drew it out and I prayed for the power to inspire and to heal.  I have never chanted so fervently and so hard in my life, before or since.  The immensity peered down and received my song, but without any feeling of friendliness or compassion.   I knew without any doubt that I was very close to my death.  I felt the lightening poised above my head, like a spear waiting to fall.

Suddenly it grew darker and my time was up.  I was hit with a cold blast of wind and I was given exactly 45 minutes to get the hell out of the path of the storm.  I don’t know how it was I knew this, but I did.  I grabbed my few things and ran for my life.  I have never moved so quickly and somehow I made it from my cave across the floor of the crater and up the three miles to the parking lot in 45 minutes.  How I did this, I cannot tell you, but I did.  As I jumped into my truck, the wind hit like the hammer of Thor and I barely made it down to my house at the four thousand foot level.
 
 Fortunately the winds were concentrated within the crater and as I got lower down, the storm diminished.    I went to my room and collapsed in a heap upon my bed.  I was in shock and I was still shaking from the fright of staring into the eyes of that huge and black thunder being.
 
 After that experience, something within me was changed and my relationship to the Wind was much more real and intimate.  I felt as if I had gone through a door, which even to this day I cannot find the words to describe.  It was as if I had actually touched the Great Mystery in the form of the Immensity, and this unimaginable power was revealed to be at the center of myself.  I peered upon the cyclone within and it called my name.


  We are the Galaxy and we are the black hole at the center, and we are the one who awakens when the cyclone finally takes us home.
 
This is what the Wind revealed to me and I fall to my knees in gratitude.

  I bow to you, great thunder being, mighty herald from the house of Lono,

who took mercy on a small elf dancing on the lava floor.

  I am, every day of my life, in wonder of the Wind.


©Andrew Quilliam Brewer 2011/BlueJaguarPress

 

Essay
 

"WE LIVE IN THE SEA OF GOD"

Ultimately, despite our great cleverness, we need a context.  The Mystery that surrounds us is unfathomable.    There is no doubt about that.     This does not mean that we cannot ponder and create worlds within our pondering.   There is much knowledge to be gathered and there is also no end to it.     You can gather forever and you can achieve great power and many have taken this road.  

What I am suggesting is another road.  The road of the poets and the saints.   The road of the heroic and the truly inspired.    This road is also open to all of us.    If you are oriented towards reality, then your knowledge will eventually turn to wisdom.  With wisdom comes liberation.  

Wisdom is Freedom.       Power is not freedom as so many believe.  Power is karma and karma  will find you and take you to where you do not want to go.  

This is the great good news about reality.    It actually is         EVAM      “Thus have I heard “        The absolute is in fact the absolute.     But the absolute only exists within the relative.  

It is the nature of existence to exist within the relative.    Space, time, mass and energy all define the relative.   They give it a context and in fact they are the context.  These qualities define the dreamtime, but they do not define the absolute and so they do not define us.   

We do not exist….We are the Absolute…

But words will fail us if we have not already had our heart broken by the breath of God.   

This has always been the problem.   It is so clear  and so muddled to the rest of us.  So a better context, a better dream, (and by better I mean   more useful) is what is needed. 


When I first moved to Hawaii I went immediately to the sea.  The very first day I arrived I grabbed my mask and snorkel and fins and spear and I walked down the road to Charley Young beach.     This is in fact a terrible beach for swimming.   It is a small cove with no sand and only rocks and thorns and some small trees.    The surfers like it for its steady breaks.   
When I arrived at this spot, which was the closest water to my house, I just dove in.   I put on my mask and fins and moved out into the sea.

  When I looked down I saw I was only a few inches from a bed of coral that extended out as far as I could see.  But I was not to be deterred.   I kept moving out, thinking that the water was bound to get deeper.    After 50 yards or so of hard swimming, I noticed that it was getting deeper and also rougher and the coral was getting bigger as well.   So now I was in the surf and I was just managing to keep above the coral beds.

  I then remembered that it was a very bad idea to get cut by coral.  The wounds fester and grow and sometimes never heal.    So now I am getting tired and the surf is getting bigger.   I have to constantly dive under the waves and somehow keep from hitting the coral.      My glorious impulse to swim out and explore the sea in my new tropical paradise was now in severe contrast to the suddenly life threatening situation of the moment.
     
I was a good swimmer but I was not used to the sea and the surf and especially the coral.   I decided that I had picked the wrong beach and to swim any further was to go where I was not ready to go.
 
So wisely, I turned around and began to make my way back.    The tide was coming in and the water was deeper but so was the surf.   

Miraculously I somehow managed to avoid being impaled by coral and as I was nearing the shore, I plunged down under and saw a unicorn fish hiding in the reef.    I brought down my spear and actually managed to catch the fish and so arrived victorious upon the beach as I walked out of the water holding my prize.  

 I was the ancient hunter wearing a very white skin too tight for comfort, and a very long spear.    

  I walked home feeling alive under the new hot and shameless Sun of Maui…I was thrilled and deep and good.     My visions of myself were all golden and seamless and in near perfect form. 

And this is why men do blood sacrifice….  Because  for a brief moment, it feels like freedom  and I was thrilling in my own  zone of reality.    And that is how it should be.  

But I did not consider the cost.   I saw no cost.   

I can see him now very clearly.    He was a young but fully-grown unicorn fish.   They are beautiful on trim, with a bright colored stripe, and black on the rest with a long unicorn horn that protrudes from their forehead.    I had surprised him on his way back to his small cave in the coral.   No one ever swam on this reef with weapons.    Even the sharks did not come in so close to the coral.  He felt completely at ease in his home of turbulent water and foam. 

  And then from out of the sky above a giant fell with a lance and his short and very innocent life was over.    He wiggled awhile on my spear as I proudly walked, but the sun was upon my head and I was glorious in my self  and looking good.  

Now 30 years later I see his eyes.     They peer out upon me with such innocence.    I remember now that I knew better, even then.    I had already had a long and very strange relationship with a carp in England on the Isle of Sheppe.    That encounter had taken me outside the fringe of my reality and shown me another,  a reality where love endures and finally conquers the tyranny of the dark,  a reality where hunting and skill fall away and friendship and sacrifice emerge.    

  I knew the minute I saw the fish, I knew.    But I was so eager to try the new sport that I plunged ahead anyway, thinking I had no chance.   But my hand moved deftly and moved into the fish as it just looked at me in disbelief.
   
I am sorry little Unicorn.    I should have recognized your significance.  

  In my moment of birth in the new sea, I chose a blood sacrifice.  

 But Lord Yama is not to be understood and so I surrender to my deed and still I regret   my putting sport before life….I gave the Unicorn no respect for his place in my life at that moment.   I gave him no value in the unfolding of reality.   

 There was a message and a meaning and holiness in that moment that I chose to overlook.  

 I was deep in the passion of the myth of myself.  In my myth, I was a spearman living from the sea.   It seemed a natural and more real way to live.   And so many native people did it and so it must be a good thing to do.  I was full of all the reasons and they are all good reasons.   In this world, we all devour each other in so many strange ways.   So what is the problem?      The problem is reverence.  

 Reverence for life is the fundamental state of being from which gratitude and joy emerge.  It opens the channel to Reality in a simple and perfect way.

 Without this channel, nothing real can happen.   

What Reality was showing me in as simple a way as possible was that my life was inspired and full of passion with no wisdom.   I did not perceive what was there to be understood, which is the path of wisdom. 

 I was swimming in my life only inches above the coral, in seas that were getting rougher as I went deeper.   Only by the most careful swimming was I able to avoid the cuts and gashes of the coral.    And as I went to leave the sea a unicorn appeared to show me that the sea was with me and not against me.  It showed me the door to a deeper understanding of Uma…. Goddess of the earth and sea.   

The day that I spent swimming in the ocean was like a reading of my life. 

  All the questions that I held were answered in that moment of my encounter with the Goddess of the sea.   The unicorn was the ambassador of the sea's goodness and bounty.    It gave me all it could give.  

So now I must at least look deeper for the truth that was in that moment.    In that way the sacrifice that was made for me goes for something.   I give back my gratitude, at least to that small fish who died to help me to understand.

  We are very intimate with what we kill and with what we eat.    It is best if that relationship is balanced and in harmony, because if it is not, we pay the karma of that ignorance…and we pay it with a sorrow unforeseen.  

And who was that small Unicorn beyond his mystical self?   There was a distinct personality there that I recognized but chose to ignore. 

 We value our own personalities immensely, so why would I not at least acknowledge who was there to be seen?         I did not pause to wonder.    Instead I chose the spear.  

We all move about in many forms.   We are rarely so lucky as to stay in a human form for too long.   The greatest saints have all agreed, once you have attained the human form, which is the highest form, there is no guarantee that you will have it in the next existence.

  If you live to only serve yourself, most of the time, then it is not at all unusual to find yourself as a dog or a cat or a fish, for instance…and this is not a bad thing, it is just the way of things….  Great Mystery will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes….   This is the great promise….you will return to your home.    How will you roam is up to you,---how long and how sorrowfully or how bright. 

And maybe you were the king’s concubine and the toast of all China.    And you sent Li Po and his companions of the wine into ecstasies of verse and vision.  

And you ruled the king and court by a purse of your lips and a flirt of your eyes.

  And your thighs rustled like roses and sent the taste of blossom into men’s minds like peyote rum.    

And now you are a fish and I have just run you through with a very long spear.     And we are both very surprised… 


There is a Nasrudin story about this…The Mulla was walking down a lane in the country next to a tall wall that surrounded a graveyard.    Up ahead he saw a regiment of soldiers riding in his direction.   He recognized the Captain and decided to avoid any conversation, so he jumped over the high stone fence and hid behind a gravestone. 

 Now the Captain had recognized the Mulla from afar and when he saw him jumping over the fence, he was worried.      He stopped the small troop and climbed over the wall to check on the Mulla.     He found him hiding behind a large stone and said…  “Mulla, I have come to help you, why are you here? “     The Mulla only laughed and said, “ Well I, I am here because of you.    And You, You are here because of me.” 

  And to understand this gives another whole level to our relations with each other.   We come to understand that it is not so much the form we have taken, as the actual relationship we have allowed between us. 


So now, out of respect for my unicorn, I must go back and see the day with clear eyes.  

The Great Mystery of life is absolute and profound.   Its scope and depth is beyond our imagination.      Along with reverence for life, comes a certain humility.   It is the humility of true wisdom.   It is from this place that we can peer out with a clear vision.    In Buddhism as well as the Sufi world (from which the Mulla Nasrudin stories come) there is a quality of the soul known as the Diamond Heart. 

  This diamond quality allows a clear perception of Truth, outside the veils of the mind.     The door to this room is opened by a key.     The key is that resonance that arises in the soul when there is a fervent love of Truth, for its own sake, a love that is unconditional.  

As I peer now upon my fish, I see a frightened fish.   I see that I struck out in order to assuage my own fear of the rough sea I was in.    I wanted to feel that I could hunt like a warrior and navigate in this very unpredictable world.   The fish was afraid and I was afraid, and together we experienced death.    Death is often linked up to fear.    This is what drives us mostly.  

I will probably never understand the historical relationship I had with that Unicorn fish. It is the rare human that can recall the past.   It is enough for me to know that I had one.  And whatever it was, it was significant to me at the time.   It was important enough that we both returned and were united again at the moment of death.    That is the most likely scenario.  Our last meeting was also about death and maybe it was my death at the time.  

To assume that a creature is less than we, because they happen to be in a different form from us, is a huge and terrible mistake.

That assumption is the primary cause of the death of the Western world. 

The indigenous cultures, if they are at all authentic, all have a reverence and a respect for all life’s diversity.    They have an understanding of the medicine wheel teaching that is in each moment.   

It is this form of teaching that we must become acutely aware of if we are to transform our knowledge into wisdom. 

The medicine wheel reading for me on that day  is now much more obvious to me.    And as obvious as it is now, is as obscure as it was to me then.    Then I was struggling    to find and hold on to an identity that would allow me to survive.    Now I am more concerned with healing my relations with that Unicorn fish.   I wish to have peace between us.    

To understand more deeply is to honor that moment.   

I was given a day…a day very different from my routine.   A day in the Sea of God.  

My first lesson of that day was that the beach matters.    The beach around the sea was telling me that the sea floor was rocky and full of reef.    The tide was out, so the water was shallow over the reef.   But the wind was picking up and the tide was coming in, so there would be much larger surf very shortly.  

  I was living in a fantasy world…based on the acquisition of new fins and a professional mask and snorkel and a new and very powerful sling spear. 
 I was seeing deep, warm and comforting sand…I was dreaming of many colorful fish all waiting to be speared by such an experienced swimmer as I.      How hard could it be, after all?     I was replaying my virtual model of my earlier expectation of the moment and it was completely the opposite from the actual event.  

 So my second lesson of the day was to wake up and smell the reef.     Wake up and take in the smell  of reality.   The smell would have told me everything--the rotting seaweed, the dead fish, the uninviting and thorny beach.  All of this was painting for me a picture.  Instead of using discrimination and clarity, I chose virtual reality and wishful fantasy.   


As a result of this lunacy, I soon found myself upon the reef in very shallow water.    

The situation was showing me that I was living without noticing very much around me.   And I was living in a way that was dangerous to my body’s health and well-being. 

 I was assuming I knew about the Sea and could handle the simplicity of a short swim.    In the same way, I was assuming that I knew about my life and my new direction was guided by some intelligence.

  In actual fact, it was completely the opposite!    I knew nothing about the sea or my new situation in life and there was little or no intelligence guiding any aspect of my life.   

My third lesson was about surf.      The surf you don’t see is the potential that is always there in each moment.   The potential was building, even as I swam out into the calm.   I saw no potential,I felt no wind.  I smelled no change in the air around me.   I felt no momentum building. For the most part I was almost totally unaware, completely taken in by the visuals and the distractions of the moment.   

This was how I was approaching my life as well; living in fantasy,  with my pleasure zone turned way up, and my discrimination zone turned way down.  

My last lesson was that if I didn’t wake up soon, there would be severe consequences.   

  Finally I was able to bring my full attention to bear upon the moment and save myself from being badly cut up.    But in my desperation to not be helpless, I took a life.  

My fear and helplessness were driving me more than anything else, and so there was neither thoughtful consideration nor prayerful discrimination.   I was not really very present.   I was filled with strong desires and wishful fantasies.    I was buzzing along inside my head and I was not stopping to notice that I was in the Sea of God.  

There is a lot more to see and to understand from the medicine wheel pattern of that event.  Had I noticed at the time, I would have saved myself a world of hurt.    Unfortunately I had to learn from my suffering rather than from simply observing the day.    For years I cooked in the fires of my ignorance.    For years I suffered.   Eventually I got smarter and  finally  I got wiser.       

What I am really describing is  the nature of divine patterning.

In Sanskrit this is known as Ritam.    In the Native American tradition, it is known as the Medicine Wheel.   In the Taoist tradition, it is known as the square inch house. 

 And all of this is  way of seeing that within each fragment  is the pattern of the whole.     The task is to observe this pattern with a clear eye and a humble heart.   

My instinct at that time in my life was to go to sea.    That was the one thing that I knew was real for me.     By doing it almost every day I began to pay a lot more attention to the moment.  

When you enter the Sea of God, the first thing you began to notice is how huge and vast is the expanse around you.   Whales, great white sharks, and   creatures that you cannot imagine live in this water.     The more you understand this, the more you pay attention to the moment.
 
More and more I recognized that I really did not know about the sea and the creatures of the sea.  I did not understand the subtlety of wind and wave and the many levels of current and drag and wash and foam.   


 Finally one fine day when I had managed to just get over myself for the most part, I decided to watch the fish.    I left my spear behind and held onto the rocks at the bottom and did not move.   

The world immediately changed.   All the fish came out from their small perches in the coral.   And after awhile the larger fish came out.    Without my spear, I was just a curiousity.    

I noticed how they moved.   They glided effortlessly by a flick of their tail to catch the slightest movement of the current.    They used the invisible streams around them to surf and cut and slide and sail.      There was no efforting, unless it was to avoid being eaten by another.    And even then, it was total focus and efficiency of form.  
 By their example I learned the art of motion.   I learned to move only when the spirit of the water was with me.    I learned to listen.      The sea is always whispering to you and all is revealed about the potential of the immediate moment around you, if you will only listen.  


Everything that you need to know about yourself and your myth of reality is revealed to you because now you are on full alert.  For an instant, you are awake and actually present!

 Once you have seen the larger creatures of the sea, you are highly motivated to pay attention.   

 Especially if you swim alone in places where there are not a lot of people.   

Where I swam, there was no one else around me.     It was mostly a deserted beach and I was out almost a mile in order to get to the big reef.    I would use a small  board and a rope to tie off at the bottom in order to make my life a little easier.
I would often go out in the storms when the wind was strong.   I was always surprised to notice how calm and serene it was just beneath the surface.   
One day, carried away by the contrast of blasting wind and surf above, and calm below, I sailed along with my snorkel poking up only every minute or so trying to take in the incredible Zen of the moment.    After 20 minutes I finally surfaced only to find myself in a completely new and unrecognizable location.   

I used the shoreline to orient myself and I immediately saw that I had drifted far from where I had been.    When I put my full attention on the matter I noticed how fast I was drifting in relation to the shore.   But without looking for relative motion, I felt no drift.   

Now the wind was really picking up and the waves were getting larger and more ominous, and I was finally getting tired.    To get back to where I had been required a long swim against the current, and without my  board to help me.   In fact I could not see my board anywhere. The waves were too high, so I went very quickly from Zen amazement to fear of drowning in rough seas and being eaten by sharks.  

 There was nothing else to do but swim as hard and fast as I could manage, for I was being rapidly pushed into a stronger and stronger current base and moving into waters deep and fearsome. 

  The Sea of God is just that way.   You can go from one extreme to another in a twinkling and all because you did not notice the current you were in.  

Fortunately for me, Lord Yama was in a playful mood and after 20 or so minutes of hard swimming along the bottom where a different current was flowing, I managed to make my way back to my comfort zone.     Had I tried to swim along the surface, I would have been in serious trouble.    So at least I had learned that if you need to get someplace in rough seas, deeper is better.  

  I was also noticing that my journeys in the sea had pushed me up against my fear of death.
When in the presence of death, whether real or imagined, you become more contemplative.  

So it was that I discovered the Medicine Way.    I learned to look upon my adventure as a reading for my life.    I began to notice Ritam, divine patterning.   From these patterns I began to understand my life and my self in relation to it all.  

 My daily journey into the Sea of God gave me a real education in understanding the medicine wheel.    

The dilemma of the modern world is that it is becoming increasingly more virtual for most of us.   We live in our small comfort box of electronics and predictability.   We have our routine.    

The actual truth is that every day is a medicine day.   You cannot get away from it, even inside the depths of your computer.     But routine and complacency  put us quickly to sleep, and
 in the words of the three witches in Macbeth become  “mortal's chiefest enemy.” 

“To sleep, perhaps to dream… and in that sleep what dreams we have, must give us pause….”

When you sleep too long in the Sea of God,  you will come to ruin upon the reef of your own delusion.     

The art is to move always towards awakening within the freshness of each moment.  Perceiving the Divine in each moment requires eyes that see and ears that hear.     

The Sea of God taught me to wake up and notice the day;  to appreciate the fact that I was still alive, despite my self.

 It taught me to understand my inner and mostly invisible world by observing the patterning of my outer moment.    It taught me that often the most insignificant details are, in fact, the most important to  understand. 

It taught me the importance of cultivating and maintaining a certain reverence for life and a willingness to receive the teaching from the most unlikely places. 

It taught me the price of living in my virtual model, my fantasy world, rather than using and cultivating clarity and humility and discrimination.  

It taught me that each moment is fresh and unique and will not come again. 

And so I am suggesting using a new context for reality in order to stay awake and to appreciate more the significance of each moment. 

It is important to actually grasp the fact that understanding and theory are all very good and can be had in the comfort of you own living room.    But so can death…death can find you anywhere you are.

  Our day in the court of Lord Yama comes closer by the minute.  It is a day we can depend upon.   Every day we spend in the world of virtual reality, is a day half lived.   

Wisdom comes when we can finally accept the fact that  in the present moment of our own and very personal life
  the truth we need most  is revealed to us  in a way best suited to us.    

 If only we will open our eyes to see the sea.   

If only we will wake up and smell the reef. 
 
 If only we will stop to notice the beach we have chosen to play upon.     


This is the square inch house of the Taoist approach.   Understanding this puts us back into the equation and we need to be there.

 We need to be standing in the middle of our own house, if there is any chance of ever understanding  the Who and the Why and the Where, and most especially  The Way. 

So what I am suggesting is that we approach our routine life in another way; 

that we begin by actually noticing that we are already in the Sea of God.  

Where we live, big fish swim. 

 As a rule we do not see them, but they strike all around us, every day.   

There are currents and eddies and whirl pools and cavernous deeps that surround us on every side, invisible to our routine eyes. 

There are jagged spikes of coral and tiny shells with lethal sting.  

Each moment we deny this, is a moment lost that could have lived instead. 


While the presence of Death will always be helpful to jog us out of dreamland, ultimately we need more than fear to drive us forward. 

Ultimately there must be a movement within our heart of hearts,  to sing the song that only we can sing.   

Inspiration will lead us . Our spirit already knows its Way.


  We must find our courage and our faith however we can manage, in order to swim unflinchingly  in the Sea of God.    We must be willing to surrender to the Truth of Reality.

The Way is already the Way.   We cannot change it, no matter how powerful we may become.   

 King Solomon himself, who was the wealthiest of all men in his time, who built the greatest kingdom and who was the most powerful sorcerer and shaman of his age, in the end was alone and had lost all worth. He wandered the world as a man half mad and without respect.  

  In the end, all power comes to ruin and to madness because it is not real, just as all suffering is not real.    Yet we feel the pain;  we burn. Eventually, we turn our footsteps towards home. 

To cultivate the temple of ourselves  is the task at hand.   


Following the Way is  the highest and greatest of all art. 

 
 It is lucky for us that each moment is born anew!

Our birthright  is to awaken…”to the great day that dawns, and the Sun that illuminates the world. “

OM AH RA PA CHA NA DHIH           OM SAI    SHRI SAI     JAYA  JAYA   SAI 

©BlueJaguarPress 2010  All Rights Reserved  

Andrew Quilliam Brewer  is an independent healer, writer, and shamanic cosmologist.  He brings to the table an integrated and well-humored array of east-west psycho-spiritual methods, as well as relevant experience to inspire, empower and orient those in the process of personal transformation.  To contact Andrew, please go to the Guest Book/Contact page of this site.

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