Pray Alone, That You May Love Together

Pray Alone, That You May Love Together
Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Each element of consciousness, each individual soul, knows only that to which it gets exposed by its immediate experiences and that which it is told by the other people around it, exactly analogous to molecules in a fluid flow.

The analogy continues as the molecules and the element of consciousness, a human spirit, get carried along in flows and currents and tides.

Occasionally a wave breaking on rocks or the white water chaos of the rapids will propel an individual element away from the main flow, exposing them in a moment of chaos and confusion and terror to that which is new and alien and incomprehensible. 

The wrenching trauma of such events may displace that drop of consciousness into a completely different

Whispering Hope

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Whispering Hope

How noisy the world is.  If not the rumble of explosives or the crack of guns, it’s the yelling of the TV announcer and the snarling of the rap star.

There is little place left for a soft whisper, for a gentle suggestion, for a lucid thought.

How flimsy seem the remaining tattered threads of Nature.

How futile is the soft light of Wisdom. 

There is no place for the soft and delicate and gentle.  There is no welcome for that which longs to heal and nourish the soul, and anything slow and gradual is doomed to derision, drowned out by laughter. 

There is a terrible noise loosed in the world today, a noisome cabal of shallow connections, a raucous cacophony of demanding and consuming and doing and going, he who speaks loudest winning the debate, she who spends most earning approval, and the clanging rattle of first world bucket-lists obscures the cries of those

Hollow busyness

Hollow Busyness

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

“Hollow busyness”.  That is my new watchword summarizing modern United States society.  From the outside the “hollow busyness” always looks like so much substance. 

It always provides an answer to those inescapable questions “what did you do?”, “what are you doing?”, “what will you do?”, “what do you want to do?”, “what do you plan to do?”  Woe be to those in modern consumer society who confess they did nothing and have no plans for doing something!   

Outsiders cannot see past the perimeter of our lives into the hollowness at the core because of the obscuring surface whirlwind of activity, and we ourselves often as not are blinded by the dust and sand kicked up by our frantic busyness, our watering eyes unable to discern the relative merit and value of our frenetic activities, unaware of the real reasons for our tears.

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Terrifying Passage from the Garden to the Kingdom

Terrifying Passage from the Garden to the Kingdom

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Imagine what existence would be like without fear and pain.

Imagine human behavior in the absence of fear and pain.

I ask this with a broad, broad definition of fear and pain, including hunger, need, insecurity, loneliness, disapproval, survival, aging, dying.

Imagine walking into a life with none of that.  Imagine existence as pure consciousness, sharing life with other elements of consciousness, and entering that life with nothing driving you, only security and safety and embrace and love pulling you.

What would our existence be without something driving us?.....without cold and wind driving architecture, without social strictures and the need for acceptance driving our acceptable behavior, without hunger and war driving technology.

Upon erasure of the manifold motivations derived from fear and pain, we find remaining the distilled essence of humanity.