Aboriginal Innocence

This is a series of books (reflections & poems) that represent my efforts to comprehend the language of peace. It’s clear to me that as a child, I didn’t acquire much fluency with peace as a first language. Thus, the first book of the series is entitled, Peace as a Second Language. Peace may never become my primary gestalt, but with enough study and patient practice, I may be able to make out the sound of its to-sense-worth clanking with consistency into the bottom of my cup.

As I understand it, the vocabulary of the language of peace consists of any and every situation where our big willingness to narrow meaning (and become exclusive) is transformed by a little willingness to broaden and deepen meaning (and become inclusive). The syntax of the language of peace is clarified with every and any effort we make to break down the mentalities that turn permeable or semi-permeable borders for exchange, into impermeable boundaries (thus the embargo reference in the subtitles).

We practice speaking the language of peace many moments of the day, through: listening to each other, making gestures of reconciliation, practicing forgiveness, speaking honestly, being mindful of our needs, being mindful of others’ needs, not being wasteful, maintaining our sense of humor, offering a helpful hand, working through our differences, appreciating our differences, sharing our gifts, valuing each others’ gifts. The list goes on.

The problem is that we also practice speaking the languages of complacency and war, by neglecting to practice the language of peace, and by opposing its practice with dishonest and hurtful behavior.

I write these books to help myself focus on peace, to develop an appreciation for the nuances of its language, and to distinguish it from the languages of complacency and war, for their vocabularies are often similar. So much depends upon our intentions and the quality of our extensions.

I publish these books in hopes that they will help others to study peace and to practice peace as well. Who knows? Perhaps one day, our children, or our children’s children, will learn to speak peace fluently as a first language.

In Peace, Richard

So many choices to be made.
It’s difficult to find the balance;
to decide at any given moment to:

honor our agreements or break them
be carefree or responsible
follow the beaten path or blaze a new trail
wait for guidance or take the initiative
care for ourselves or care for others
preserve ourselves or preserve our environment.

Perhaps in the end, it is simpler than it seems.
Perhaps in the end, there is no choice.
Perhaps in the end, there is no conversation,
no dialogue, no consensus to come to.
Perhaps in the end, there is simply our conscience
and the need of the moment.

Of course, it is only in the end that we learn to:

receive when necessary
give when necessary
yield when necessary
lead when necessary
listen when necessary
speak when necessary
be still when necessary
act when necessary.

So many choices to be made. Yet in the end

by taking care of each other,
by taking care of the earth,
by taking care of all creatures great and small,

we’re taking care of ourselves.

The simple awareness of the fullness of the moment
makes the choice/need of the moment
less obscure, and therefore, more obvious.

We don’t need to consider seven generations.
All we need do, is generate enough awareness
to consider this moment, fully.

No need for guilt…
where there’s forgiveness.
No need for forgiveness…
where there’s acceptance.

No need for doubt…
where there’s understanding.
No need for understanding…
where there’s faith*.

No need for hate…
where there’s tolerance.
No need for tolerance…
where there’s love.

No need for guilt…
No need for doubt…
No need for hate…

*And by the way, I’m not referring to blind faith, that deplorable faith which scientists…deplore, naturally. I’m referring to ‘scientific’ faith (call it curiosity, call it hope, call it what you will); it is that open-mindfulness which activates all honest exploration of the unknown.

Excerpts from “Peace As A Seventh Language;
Lifting the Embargo on Humanity”

Attune
I have been reporting from the trenches;
the trenches of the economic wars of this country.
My writing has not been focused on collateral damage,
so much as central damage; damage inflicted upon our good will.

I’m weary; weary of war and reporting.
I’m concerned that I am sawing more than seeing;
addressing the negative more than the positive.
Clearly, there’s not much positive to speak of in war
without defaulting to glorification.
Therefore I focus on the cause of war;
discerning cause from symptoms.

Yet at times, they become entangled…

And so, I pick up my guitar
and sling its strap
across my frozen shoulder.
Not as a means of penance,
but as an act of atonement.

I reach for a tune
to attune my soul to peace;
once again
enabling the transformation
of a wasteland
into wilderness.

Wasteland
We’re all dumping our loads. That’s part of life,
to let go of what isn’t useful.
The problem is, we don’t just let go; we hold on.

Imagine not relieving yourself physically.
It doesn’t work for long.
Nor does it work emotionally or mentally for long;
holding on to grievance to limit joy,
holding on to knowledge to limit power.

Perhaps we feel a kind of power when we’re venting anger.
It can help clear the air, when we truly let go.
However, when we fail to let go,
venting leads only to self negation.

We’re capable of both: being ourselves
(where there is no loss in giving)
and not being ourselves
(where there is no gain in giving).

Perhaps we feel a kind of power when we use (let go of) knowledge
in order to clarify understanding.
However, when we hold knowledge against, in order to take advantage
it is but again the power of self negation.

We’re capable of both:
sharing (where there is gain in giving), and
taking (where there is loss in giving).

Taking/keeping/holding negate giving
for they are in opposition to receiving.
Receiving is the complement of giving
and the sign (we await..?)
of its fulfillment.

Elsewhere
You know those times
you catch yourself
reading words
without comprehension
because your mind’s
drifted elsewhere?

Competition offers
similar distraction
from the soul’s journey.
While competing,
we’re busy, doing something,
we may even do it well;
but we’re not making the
necessary connections.

Caution; Genius at Work
I spent some time today
trying to delete an em-dash from a wordfile
then from a photoshop file.
It took awhile, but while pondering how to
go about deleting it from my desktop
I suddenly realized it was not an em-dash,
nor was it digital in nature.
It was an eyelash,
and one of bio-chemical origin.

Upon realizing my mistake
I quickly brushed it aside
with one deft swish of my finger.
It no longer clutters up the view of
my digital field of choice
where I can add and delete
at the push of a button
(without defaulting to
gross motor skills).
It’s out there, somewhere, not
in cyberspace, but nearby.
It is slowly turning to dust.

In a few years time
(when this computer is good
for landfill only)
it will be resurrected.
It will float through the air
with the greatest of ease
perchance to clutter up my lungs.
Thank goodness for the sneeze reflex.
No editing problem there.

Time & Trouble
Skit’s stir crazy.
He’s got cabin fever again.
I brushed him aside while writing about
brushing the eyelash aside,
and deciding whether or not to bring
nations and policy and genocide into the picture.

He ran into the bedroom
and leapt up to the windowsill
to stalk, or at least talk to the birds.
Later, I picked him up and asked for forgiveness.
He wrestled his way out of my arms
then sashayed off to his litter box
acting as if he didn’t know
what I was talking about.

Animals make it easy.
They get their feelings hurt
but aren’t heavily invested in
long term memory.

I can hear him pawing around now.
Now he’s back on the desk.
Now he’s back on the windowsill
neither talking nor stalking.
Perhaps there is such a thing as
too much witnessing.

Of course, writing is not witnessing.
Writing is action. Ding!
The inner type righter is signaling
it’s the end of the line.

Time to get up.
Time to engage both gross and subtle motor skills.
Time to enter, turn and join.
Time to embrace the wholeness of being.
Time to enable forgiveness again.

It’s not easy to do the right thing
at the opportune moment
in a kind and certain way.
But it sure saves a lot of time
and avoids a lot of trouble.

Why do we stop wrestling and
tangling with issues?
Perhaps because at some point
we realize we rely
on muscle and force
to control our lives.

Relying on muscle, on sinew
is the physical analogue
of relying on false belief.

To wrestle and tangle with issues
we would have to rediscover
some finesse or risk injuring
our illusion of control.

What does finesse mean
in the context of force?

In a word, grace.

Stepping out of
the theater of operations.

Stepping into
the theater of healing.

Letting go of everything
we believe we control
through force.

Letting the body
do what it’s able to do
as a whole.

Letting the mind
do what it’s able to do
as a whole.

Whatever we think we know,
we don’t know.
It’s old news. You know,
‘the never ending story’.

Through the process of memorization
we separate a bit of information
from the whole; cull the
lame and halt from the herd.

But one file, one twig
does not a tree of knowledge make.
Even in the holographic scheme of things,
while looking through the eyes of a twig
we’re left with a fuzzy perception of the tree.

What we forget
in the process of memorization
is that so-called reality is more about
ignorance than awareness; more about
survival than salvation.

When we ignore the forest for the trees
we can do almost anything we want
for we’ve entered the realm of imagination
where anything goes.

Before everything goes,
can we envision a world
that is whole again?

Can we take these broken twigs
and learn to see?

One thing I know;
dwelling on the fuzziness
like fourth down pundits,
might bring a safety,
but it’s not going to help us
touchdown into a new reality.

Yet, if my original thesis is true…

Like all games
the virtue of baseball
is not in learning strategies
for survival, for winning the game,
but in learning how to play the game well.

Take batting, for instance; there’s virtue in
learning to stand up at the plate and
take a few cuts
when there’s heat
when curves are thrown
when everybody seems like a
screwball or knucklehead.

Learning how to see
and when to act
takes courage
in a world inclined
to brush you back
and count you out.

No one is white.
The covers of this book are white.
Bleached paper is white.

People call themselves white mistakenly.
The color of your skin combines
many tones and hues of
pink, yellow, blue, green, brown.
White skin is a rare phenomenon in nature, an anomaly.

What we generally refer to as white
is not the skin of our bodies
but the skin of our minds.

White is a manner of thinking.
If you believe you own
what you cannot own, if you are
unable to settle up with the truth,
you are white, ghostlike in hue
at war with yourself
hovering arrogantly above the earth
unable to settle down into personhood.

White is the mentality of ownership.
White is the mentality of entitlement.

Inwardly, white is a metaphor for purity,
for dwelling in awareness; unrefracted light.
Outwardly, white is a metaphor for defilement,
for dwelling in ignorance; refracted light.

Whenever we think that we are
more deserving than another
we are white, filling our cup
by emptying the canvas of color.

But we cannot fulfill ourselves as human beings
thinking white, thinking ownership
anymore than artists can fulfill themselves
by gessoing canvases and
signing their names at the bottom.

To have confidence is fundamental.
To believe in yourself is necessary.

But we must let go
what can only be kept through force
to be filled with something real to share.

Confidence and self-esteem
are nothing like the fearful
mentality of entitlement
which comes as consequence of
neglecting to empty our cup
and fill our canvas with color.

Oddly enough, like all animals
human children are born
with an understanding of
the language of peace.

They instinctually know how
to play with each other.
They must be taught the language of war.
They must be taught
to kill one another unnecessarily.

In the animal kingdom,
understanding the language of peace
doesn’t prevent the taking of life.

Understanding the language of peace
prevents the taking of life
unnecessarily.

Have you noticed a dementor-like pall
hovering about the worlds of sport, entertainment and academia
as performance has become about money, money
and more money?

It starts in high school; sometimes junior high or earlier.
You can see it foreshadowed as tension
in the temples of certain teachers and
coaches struggling to keep their jobs.

I appreciate people’s talents.
But I also recall the sandlot.
During the days we shined brightly,
talent was a gift to be shared
not an asset to be traded.

Cards were traded.
They were also bent, banged up
and left outside in the rain;
not placed into protective custody
at the moment of purchase.

We played for the love of the game
not to be cheered by fanatics.
We played for the love of the game
not to prove we were fit to survive.

As amateurs, we’d yet to stumble
on the trappings of professionalism.
We had no thoughts of contracts and lawyers.

In the sandlot, we were all rich and famous
for we had friends.
We had no need for agents.
We were protected by our innocence.

Thank goodness for the minors
where love may still have some meaning.
It’s not too late to rip our leg-up out of the trap.
All we have to lose is our concessions.

For some, practicing the art of Aikido
(and the meditative arts in general)
is a way of practicing peace.
For others, it’s a way of learning
to ride the horse with more finesse.

I heard on the news recently
that the armed forces are now
teaching soldiers yoga
to help them become
more efficient killers.

One can only hope that this also means
learning to kill only when necessary.

The road to hell may be paved
with good intentions
but the pavement is only
the surface of the road.

When good intentions are tested
they expose the road bed;
the choice
between good will and ill will.

There’s no way out of hell
without good intentions.
Just follow what’s left of the pavement.
If the road gets rocky
you’ll know to turn yourself around.

While trudging up the hill
I lost sight of my hand:
no boat, no flush
no straight, no set
no pairs, no pair
no ace hi.

I had jack shit.

While coming down I realized:
I had a full house with my daughter
I was flush with friends and family
I was straight with my neighbors
I was set with meaningful work
I had two pair with my health
a pair as a poet
ace high as a wise guy
and jack shit
from time to time
to keep me honest.

I had it all.

Children come into the world
not to follow in our footsteps,
not to plow the fields.

They have a soul purpose.

They come into the world to plant seeds
in our hearts and minds
that we might grow in self awareness.

Children come into this world
for good reason.

If they’ve yet to plow their fields,
adults bring souls into this world
for less than good reason.

There’s a difference between
making babies and raising children.

When adults learn to be parents
they come to understand this distinction.

They also come to understand that raising children
is not different from raising themselves.

Should we kill the messenger
because the messenger is flawed?
What would happen to the flow of information?
Would it matter?
Everything would be propaganda, wouldn’t it?

If we can’t trust that fundamentally
people share reliable information,
there would be
no point in talking
and no point in listening.

At some level, trust evokes reliability
like listening evokes honesty
like a microscope or a telescope evokes clarity;
by searching deeply enough
hidden things are revealed.

If we don’t perceive people as basically honest
then all information is unreliable.

Perhaps from an ultimate perspective
everything is misinformation
because from an ultimate perspective
we are all perceptually challenged.

But let’s not get paranoid.

The babblings of a baby are meaningful
not because of the content
of any particular communication,
but because of our appreciation
for their essential goodness.

We all struggle with the truth.
That’s why we’re here.

If we don’t struggle with the truth
we’re not quite here.
We’re in transit; stuck somewhere between
here and there, trafficking goods.

Moral authority does not come from success
or fame or wealth or status.
We cannot accrue moral authority
like we would interest
on a certificate of deposit.
We cannot acquire moral authority
through force or know-how or influence.

We display moral authority through
the choices we make
and the actions we take
from moment to moment.
Moral authority is not compounded daily or yearly.
It is manifested by living in accord
with universal principles now.

We often confuse moral authority
with charm, charisma, the power of persuasion
or the power of positive thinking.

We often mistake it for experience
a track record, a glowing résumé or a host of other imposters.

The truth is, moral authority often goes
unrecognized and unheeded
for it is not in the habit of stealing attention;
it cannot be bought or sold.

That which can be bought or sold represents
something other than itself.
Moral authority comes from the source
and can represent nothing.

In a sense, moral authority is simply a fact;
the natural consequence of being
true to oneself.

We’ve heard about the squeaky wheeler-dealer
because the media (which for the most part
has squandered its moral authority for a scoop)
has a thing for people who are rusty
at being true to themselves.

Who has moral authority?
Toddlers have moral authority.
That’s why they’re so gifted at
evoking our genuine smile.

We’re not capable of outshining one another.
We each shine in our own unique way.

It’s only when we judge one way
better than another and
designate winners and losers
that the trouble begins.

Suddenly, the vastness and wonder
of the night sky are gone.
Suddenly, many brilliant stars
are reduced to one
lonely, romanticized planet.

Planets don’t shine.
They reflect.
Reflection points to the light.
When we mistake reflection for illumination
we start showing off.

Showing off has more to do
with others’ expectations
than it has to do with
expressing inner light.

It’s true that some are more capable
than others at showing off.
Nevertheless, we’re not capable
of outshining one another.

For the sake of planet earth, reflect on this:
There is no contest
while expressing inner light.