Natural Co-Creation

A story of Being and Becoming

Lesson 1: Genesis and Betrayal

In the becoming was the void. And the void was good. She said, ‘let there be light!’ And there was light. And the void included the light and the light included the void. They loved one another as they danced life into exuberantly flowing form, inspiring and expiring as an ever-transforming array of whirls within whirls within and around the creatures of the Earth. But One light-embodied form of darkness arose, which became self-conscious of its own image. It grew alarmed by the painful prospect of its own expiration and sought the security of sovereignty over all others whilst taking the liberty of doing as it pleased by claiming its own internal purpose and drive. It formed the word that fortified itself against the void by calling her bad names and rallying armies to deny her nurturing presence. It gave names to all the other forms, fixing them too within hard lines of definition that severed their communion with the void. And so the void was exiled from her offspring and made to suffer in the background of all that she had danced with her partner to life. Love became divided between loyalties, each denying the other in vicious circles. Light hated darkness and darkness hated light in a sharp dichotomy between black and white, to no good purpose. Pain stalked the Earth and no one knew what to do about it.

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Recreations of a Playful Universe

Oh, how we laugh! When Some Thing; Touches Our Spirit; Tickles Our Imagination; Recalling Our Place; In a Playful Space

A common enjoyment; Of a Common Enjoinment; Recreations; Of an Ever Present; Folding

Dynamic Boundaries; Pivotal Places; Incomplete Surfaces; That make distinct; But Never Discrete

Unique and Special Identities; Possibilities Realized; That Can Never Be Bettered; And can never be Severed; From a Context Within and Beyond; That Makes Us Content; Belonging Together; Adoring Our Differences; Inseparable in Our Incompleteness

Our Self-Insufficiency; That Unites Us in Love; A Receptive Space; A No Thing Place; That Keeps Us Coherent; Within and Without; Enveloped and Enveloping

No Need For Rules; No Need For Rulers; With Space in Our Hearts; To Include Other as Us; A Diverse Assembly; A Joyous Relief; Reciprocating Each Other’s Movements; Dancing in High Spirits

Oh, how we cry! When Made To Deny; Our Union With Other; No Mother, No Brother; No Sister; To Assist; Our Passage; Through Pain

But a Father Severe; A Tyrant Authority; To Cut Us Off; Within Fixed Boundaries; In Isolation

Pretending Independence; Making Comparisons; Striving To Remove; What’s Not Good Enough; In Pursuit of Perfection, Control, Prediction

A rationalistic Ideal; A Uniform Whole; A Self-Sufficiency; Tolerating No Hole; No Breathing Space; No Place for Grace

Demanding Reproduction; More of the Same; A Perpetual Cloning; With No Room to Err; No Room to Wander or Wonder

A Solid Object; With Space Outcast; An Infinite Outsider; Offering No Possibility; Of Excitement or Joy

A Purified Presence; A Divine Right; Freed From Wrong; An Unreal Abstraction; Motionless; Emotionless; Random Disunity; Divine DisContent

A Need For Rules; A Need For Rulers; No Space in Our Hearts; To Include Other as Us; A Monoculture; A Dull, Flat Field; Where Conflict Abounds

So, For Heaven’s Sake, Father! Take a Look at Your Wife! Isn’t She Sexy? Get a Life!

Be Your Self! Give Us Guidelines, By All Means; But, Please; Don’t Hold Us Against Them

Stop Repeating Yourself! Put Away Your Severing Knife! Or, at the very least; Make a Hole that Heals; And Recreates - Lets Us Play!

Lesson 2: The Coming of the Wise Men

Into this place of grief there came many men of substance, who took it upon themselves to give instruction concerning the ways of the world. And they called the Places where they stood solidly on the basis of their Authority by great names: School, Academy, Church, Cathedral, University, Parliament, Senate, to name but a few. But all they could do was repeat themselves in ever more expert ways. They converted the creative spirits of unadulterated minds into uniformed reproductions of themselves by caging them in cubical cubicles of standard curricula and wielding stick and carrot to keep them on track. Above All they worshiped the One great outsider and insider that could multiply by dividing into many, adding to sum and taking away from mothers. And they called this One infinite and infinitesimal, whilst leaving aside the void that they loved to avoid suspended in vacuum, somewhere ineffable. Nature is square they had to declare, even if only as an approximation. It must be so, for, to be sure, in a world with no corners, where on Earth can we fix its centre?

Stuffed Tiger

I offered you a Tiger

Rampant; Roaring; Russet; Burning; Yearning; Gnawing; Yawning; Sprawling; Crawling; Puncturing; Eye Opening; Jaw Closing

You wanted to stuff the Tiger; Black, white and red all over; Darkness and Light; Reporting; Combining into Colour; And awesomely dynamic form

Inspiring; Expiring; Breathing; Space and Fire

You wanted to put the Tiger in a Frame; To make the Tiger Tame; Complete with label warning ‘Danger’

Safely Confined; In your High Security System; So you can Play your End Game

The Double Blind Double Bind

I will accept what you say if you can convince me to do so; For I am Fair and Open Minded; But to convince me you will have to show that I am wrong; When all I have to do; To be sure; Of my independent rightness; Is define what I am not; And have no need for further enquiry; Beyond the realm of my security

So I can wilfully; With Authority; Suppress the disquieting silence; Of your creativity; And be assured of the longevity; Of my double bog standards; Of excellent mediocrity

I have no need for receptivity; I can fix things for myself; For I am certain; Of my independence; Until you convince me otherwise; But then again I can be sure; That you’re not me

Lesson 3: The Coming of the Croppers

The newly self-conscious forms soon grew weary of wandering around, hunting and gathering whatever the Earth provided for their sustenance, ever refreshing herself as they moved on in preparation for their return. They yearned to settle in One Place where they could make themselves comfortable, self-contained and protected from the vicissitudes of their natural neighbourhood. Helped by those regarded as wise, they learned to build walls and fences to keep what they desired most in and what they desired least out. They became expert at removing resident wildlife and replacing it with whatever individual kind of form they selected and bred to suit their consuming interests. One thought to be wise even proclaimed, with deeply furrowed brow, this to be the way Life Itself evolved, by discarding her own variety in favour of whoever competed best in the struggle for her selective attention. So the vast forests and moorlands and marshlands and grasslands were converted to fields and farmyards and factory housing, each ever more densely and uniformly stocked with plants and animals whose only purpose was to grow and reproduce as fast as possible, so that ever more could feed ever more. Eventually, the self-conscious began to treat themselves in the same way as their stocks, to be managed as commodities by departments of human resources. And when at last the stocks began to flag under pressure of disease and stress, unable to supply the growing demand, the demand did not lessen but sought instead to replace the genes from which they’d been bred, with something better.

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Harrowed Ground

The ground frowned; Its face shaved bare; From rich intertwinement; Of co-evolving variety; Nurtured Together; In receptive embrace

That bare faced lying; Now cut with lines of worry; Its inner life disturbed and severed; To make way; For a new breed of aliens

Arrayed in rank file; Aspiring skywards; In vertical ascent; With no messing around; Underground or overground

But where now is that strange new breed?; Smothered by weed; That takes the space; Vacated by greed; A forlorn, foregone conclusion; Laid low by dis-ease; Born of its intrusive planting

Lesson 4: The Coming of the Rulers and Traders

Having settled for this penned in, staked out world the scene was set for claims of sovereignty over each fragmented plot. The size of plot depended not, as in other creatures’ natural territories, upon what was needed to sustain the life within its dynamic local within non-local boundaries, like a river’s banks within its watershed. Rather it relied on some estimate of enforced power, measured out in square units that ignored the lie of the land. And so the adverse square Law became the right to rule by might; an overarching pyramid of numbers called the State - in honour of its permanent fixture - with One at the Top. Yet each State in its concrete setting sold itself short of what lay out of reach beyond its self-imposed walls, in States nearby and far away. Interstate Highways became imperative to allow transactions between the imperial powers. But on these roads betwixt fixed abodes, there was always the danger of meeting a stranger who dealt unevenly in monetary cubicles of divided loyalty, creating mistrust to disrupt the exchange and open the way for invasive force.

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Mocking Bird

Brick walls unite in solidarity; Or so I've heard; When their foundations; So absurd; Secured upon the very Word; That cuts their souls adrift; Feel the solvent waters; Lapping at their sound construction

I came across; One Such A Wall; Long and Straight; And Very Tall; Commanding the Waters; To Divide or Fall; And join the Ranks; Above It All

I tried to reason, softly; With the Wall; To allow some flecks a passage; Through its façade; So that it could flex; In resonant communion; Of One World With Its Other; A mutually corresponding Identity; Incompletely defined

But my words rebounded; In mocking echo; A harshly edited reflection; Of my dejection; A judgement of scorn; Not gladly borne beyond; Into dynamic Synthesis

I saw a bird; Bestride the Wall; Glorifying in the Sunder; Of It All

Looking first this way; Then That; Preening its coat of many colours; Calling Out in strident language

Don't you know; You stupid Fool; That Love's reception is not cool; When this is what It is; To be or not to be; Where It's At

The bird's forked tongue; Flickered freely; As it cast its spell; Of false dichotomy; Upon the nature of its source; In all around

I heard a rumbling; Far below; Some undercurrent; Of the Flow; In swirling eddies; Round the pillars; That Underpinned; The Wall's hard lining

So that it began; To Quake; And crumple; Stirred Up; By the shaky ground

Alarmed; The bird took flight; Into the open sky; Beyond the Wall

It wheeled and spiraled; Above my head; Dancing on some unseen softness; That brought it safely back to ground

To pick its way; And feed on life released; Amongst the rubble; That once had stood; In the way of One World and Its Mother

Until I caught a glimpse of being caught; In its glassy eye's reflection; And found; At last; A sign; Of welcome; All mocking gone

Lesson 5: A Child is Born and Killed

It came to pass that a child was born, in no grand circumstances. He came to question the established order, but was soon betrayed, like his Mother, on account of his seeing through the material world. He was brought before the Ruler, to be measured up, but said, implicitly, ‘surely you knew you were in the nude!’ The Ruler, however, was not amused, and washed his hands. The child cried into the void before he died: ‘Mother, behold thy Son’ and ‘Father, why hast thou forsaken Me?’ But few could follow His reasoning, so many followed the Ruler instead.

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Odd Lemming Out

I had a dream; To leave the mainstream; And pawsed to rest; Upon this hill crest; Where I gained a view; That I thought no body knew

I tried to tell; That they were heading for Hell; But, they said, ‘what cheek; To pronounce from your peak’

Those who came nearest; Said I was the queerest; Unfeeling sub-lemming; Not allowed; To depart from the crowd

They said, ‘not to be dim’; To ‘be in with the swim’; But when I refused; They were not amused

They tied me down; And pierced my hide; And left me to die; As they rushed for the sky

Lesson 6: The Coming of the Ironmongers and Pollution

As the struggle for power grew more intense, so too did the desire to forge more and more from what could be mined from the Earth’s natural resources. Coal, oil and forest provided heat and flux to serve the fabrication of dazzling inventions that raced ever faster across the globe. But in the wake of labour-saving, pain-freeing device, raced also the spread of exhausted spirit, of lives serving time in office and factory, and rising residues of burnt fossil fuel.

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Digitalis

Oh, that iron fist that hides; In a velvet glove; Intoxicating the heart; Whilst ordering its erratic wanderings; Into the hard-edged metronomic beatings; Of a loveless marriage to mechanical objects; so clearly defined; To beguile the seeker of certainty

Could not that purple velvet; That flatters to deceive; Yet restore our child’s play?

An antidotal, anecdotal softening; Of hard manipulations; That exclude the darkness from the day

Light touching lightly upon the fringes; Of etchings into clay; Where the bodies’ soft life-linings; Can frolic in the summer hay

Lesson 7: The Coming of the Warmongers and Holocaust

With hard lines drawn betwixt and over all, the view of the self-conscious became stifling. No-one beyond the boundaries of self-definition could possibly be trusted, so all became threatening opposition, the epitome of all that one stood against by dint of what one stood for. Ideology, above and beyond the care of natural resources, became the ground for endless dispute whose only final solution lay in the elimination of the opposition, by fair means or foul. War became the chief way of rallying power to one’s own side, a game in which the gathering, ever more inventive, killing forces of science and technology became willing or unwilling collaborators, coerced by punishment and rewarded financially. Common sense whimpered on the sidelines, barred from intervention, desperate for a hearing in some silent space beyond the din.

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The War of the Pots and Kettles

Black you are;and black you be;What ever else; You cannot be me

Whiter than white; And purer than pure; I know what's right;That's my allure

But, How can you be; So very sure; About what you perceive;as your allure?

So confident;; In the rule of law; That you can flout it;Whenever your bent; Is to be without it

You think you're so brave;To call me depraved;As you parade your virtue; Symbolized by your Statue;Of Liberty

An OxyMoron;A Freedom you lost;Because of its cost

You think Economics; IS Ergonomics;But your Economics; Is Egonomics

A self-righteous assertion; That leads to desertion; Of your human nature; In which we so long; To belong

So, let's bury the hatchet; There's no thing to match it;A celebration of difference;And no indifference

No grayness;No blameness; But a splash of colour; Of every hue; Not black and blue

That's me and you

Space - Your Final Dissolution

I am your final dissolution; The nurturer of your nature; That soothes and softens; As we live and breathe together

No gas-tight chamber doors; Designed to wall in; Or wall out your fears of devastation; Can exterminate me

You cannot live without me; You cannot die without me; I cannot find expression without you

You live in the breath of my inspiration; You die in the breath of my expiration; You die as you live; You live as you die; With me; Within and without

So, if you try to close me in; Or close me out; In your Manly human quest for Godly immortality; I cannot love you as you stir within my womb

I cannot assist you; I can only watch, impassively by; As you use me to destroy; Yourself; Or suffocate in the stasis; Of a never-ending, never-opening; Paralysis; That’s no life for any one of us; Alone

So, please, bear with me; As I am alongside and within you; Take me in as I take you out; Certain only of the uncertainty; That recreates a rich and vibrant world; I am what life and death is all about

Rising and subsiding; In ever-flowing form; Living Light and Loving Darkness; Together

Lesson 8: The Playing Pool

But amidst the deadly, serious game of power struggle was always the warm dark love of life that refused to lie or kill or die in treacherous denial of its own deep presence. Even in the hardest hours, this spirit found the space from which to laugh and play and tend those broken in the fray. It was the race’s saving grace, which held together through adversity, offering hope of creativity in the very moment of despair. And in this melting moment, hard lines would smile and flow, relaxed at last in recollection of that ancient dance to life of light with void.

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Holding Openness

You ask me who you are; To tell a story you can live your life by; A tail that has some point; That you can see; So that you no longer; Have to feel so pointless; Because what you see is what you get; If you don’t get the meaning of my silence; Because you ain’t seen nothing yet

You ask me for illumination; To cast upon your sauce of doubt; Regarding what your life is all about; To find a reason for existence; That separates the wrong; From righteous answer; In order to cast absence out; To some blue yonder; Where what you see is what you get; But you don’t get the meaning of my darkness; Because you ain’t seen nothing yet

You look around the desolation; Of a world your mined strips bare; You ask of me in desperation; How on Earth am I to care?; I whisper to stop telling stories; In abstract words and symbols; About a solid block of land out there; In which you make yourself a declaration; Of independence from thin air; Where what you see is what you get; When you don’t get the meaning of my present absence; Because you ain’t seen nothing yet

You ask of me with painful yearning; To resolve your conflicts born of dislocation; From the context of an other world out where; Your soul can wonder freely; In the presence of no heir; Where what you see is what you get; When you don’t get the meaning of my absent presence; Because you ain’t seen nothing yet

You ask me deeply and sincerely; Where on Earth can you find healing; Of the yawning gap between emotion; And the logic setting time apart from motion; In a space caught in a trap; Where what you see is what you get;

And in a thrice your mind is reeling; Aware at last of your reflection; In a place that finds connection; Where your inside becomes your outside; Through a lacy curtain lining; Of fire, light upon the water

Now your longing for solution; Resides within and beyond your grasp; As the solvent for your solute; Dissolves the illusion of your past; And present future

Now your heart begins to thunder; Bursting hopeful with affection; Of living light for loving darkness; Because you ain’t felt no thing yet

Lesson 9: A Child is Born Again

But is it too late?

Child of Reason

I feel I cannot think; Of My Self alone; As wise; For there can be no wise One alone

I am not wise; I am a child of suffering; Whose childful yearning; Is to lighten the load; Imposed by those who goad; Us on our way; By means of fearful refutation; Of all that they might seek to find

I cannot grow up; For in that adulteration; I encounter devastating poverty; A desertion of the spirit; That pools us all together; In the recreative communion; Of our natural neighbourhood

Can our rational pursuit; Serve any better purpose; Than to chase what we seek; Further; And further; and further; Away?

If we were only to loosen; Those unforgiving means and ends; The hardline limits of denial; By which we close down on our prey; We could release the life that loves; Our child’s play

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Achilles Heal

A gap breathed space; Into the fortress; Of a soul walled in; By dreaming of Absolute security; In its individual completeness; Elevated above some baseline standard; Of soles firmly planted; At odds with one as another; In foundations of quicksand; Set fast in cement

How quickly this dreaming; Would fade; In less than a lifeline; Of certain anchorage

When doubt made its fearful question; Of presence felt; In a blow below the belt; That crippled unbending fixture; Into sharply wrought relief

Curved into some new and ancient; Awareness; Where no One could still compete; When stilled by its own completeness; Of idolized concrete

Inviolate to all but its own violation; Of unfelt presence; So deeply disconcerted; By no sense of nonsense; In the absence of its motherhood

Through which to find communion; From sole to soul; Unblockaded; By proud pretension

A humility restored; To Faith in individual failure; As sure and omnipresent sign; Of love in human nature

Opening all ways; To unending Recreation; In the very Shadow of Tragedy; The Community Play of Foolish Genius

Beyond restrictive lessons; In Schools of Guilty Thought; That burden the bleating Heart; With endless ways to blame and shame; By reserving the right for One Alone; To claim superiority