Drala drala wind y'all

The changing winds in my native Bay Area have caused me to take notice of the moment lately. A gust of cold or warm air curves it's way to my chest, and I look up to the sky. The buzzing of endless tasks and changing places cease and their memories fold into little cartoon episodes of newsprint in my pocket. I feel within and talk not TO someone, not even to myself, I just speak.

"I'm alive." ... "There is so much out there." ...

The moment is happening...and it continues to happen...how long I can stick with it...it gets more interesting...and more...more so...my hands, the ground, the cracks in the cement stone planter benches...and I am thinking...using words...they have meaning...they are sounds but not even yet, only in my head...I have a head...a life...and here I am...not talking directly with my words...as no one is talking with words directly to me...but I'm listening...and I feel...click in to the moment again...and it is rising...so much bigger than me...and it is talking to me...with things so much bigger than words...with the very fabric...with the.........what is this?.... but I don't bother with that...only respect...and lean my awareness forward...

I used to have moments sort of like this quite often in my early 20s. I called them "fringe moments," moments when I felt as if I was sitting on the edge of awareness, existence, all the things that made up perception, and that I could see that there was a unfathomably huge thing just right there. Death, I guess it was, or what we call death in our quotidian minds, the everything else, and I knew so much that I wasn't dead. I felt appreciative that I was alive, that I was privy to this viewpoint, that I was even a part of all the grand, laborious design that made up everything that I was and was around me. Even in the small details of my immediate field of vision, it was all a reference to the endless complexity, vastness and magical dynamism that is always present, ever-present, even more than the present could ever be.

But it is all the present. "The ever-expanding present" as I recall reading in channelled books of different sources. Pleidian information I suppose, but the idea that I even considered words printed on a paper page to be vital living lightning streaks of a cosmic source speaks to the frame of mind that I was in those days. I'm still there in many ways, though my appearance and behavior has changed. That's why it was so notable to have a fringe experience again, recalled to my attention by changing gusts of chilly winds.

I identified the feeling of that moment with a term I remember from another personally sacred text from my budding adulthood. The word is Drala and it was introduced to me by Chogyam Trungpa in the book Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior. It is a curiosity at the freshness of experience, the idea that anything dirty can be made clean again, it is the elemental force, as it moves through everything with an active character. Trungpa was a Tibetan Buddhist, and his descriptions, for me, blew away any idea of a stale and boring "Zen" concept of stillness and stable perfection. It, along with his elaboration on "the path of the warrior," bridged the gap between my concepts of Zen and Jedi warriors using "the force" on tv screens and in my childhood playgrounds.

Here is a quote on the Drala principle by Bill Scheffel from The Western Mountain Project (http://westernmountain.org/dralaprinciple.html)

"In the drala teachings, each of the senses is considered an “unlimited field of perception” in which there are sights, sounds and feelings “we have never experienced before” – no one has ever experienced! Each sense moment, if we are present for it, is a gate into the elemental wisdom of the world, even a cold sip of coffee could ignite the experience of Yeats: “While on the shop and street I gazed / My body of a sudden blazed.” Every perception is a pure perception; from the feel of a meager pebble stuck in our shoe to the meow of a house cat. Through this kind of perception we discover that we live in a vast, singular and unexplored world."

I like that this randomly-searched-for quote used a W.B. Yeats poem to illustrate the author's point:) A small synchronicity if you check my second-to-last blogpost. Another quick synchronicity from the drala quote is something I did not include, which is an illustration of the author's friend walking out among the snow, hills and trees. She had a "fringe experience" out among the natural wonder, and she realized there was something she felt inclined and even responsible for observing and following. She felt drala all around. The synchronistic aspect of this is that when I first penned the word "crystacular," I was writing in my journal about a pristine vista I had seen in a dream, a view down upon a snow-covered village from the side of a surrounding hill, complete with snow-touched pine trees and sparkling white snow crystals from all around. In a word, I called it crystacular, crystal-clear and spectacular, a natural hologram of dralic magic and aesthetic beauty hinting at eternity.

I share all this with you for the small personal reasons most people wax philosophical and autobiographical on blogs all over the net, but for not small reasons only. I am, post by post, expanding on an aesthetic theory that I have reached over the years which I call Crystacular. It is aesthetic, but I seek to take aesthetics out the cloistered walls of the lab, to include all the natural and time-less phenomena in which we live. There are so many things to consider in this world, but, as I was reminded by the wind, and as I have found articulated by Bill Scheffel...

"We have failed to see our first responsibility to the world is an aesthetic one."

Emotional Balance

To be a balanced person seems to me to be the pinnacle of compliments. Or at least on the other hand, to be perceived as imbalanced is one of the most dismissive remarks that can be made about a person.

"Oh don't listen to him, he's imbalanced."

"Really? Oh..maybe he's off his meds."

I don't take meds, nor do I hear feedback that I'm imbalanced very often, but it is a creeping feeling that if I am not perfectly "balanced," I could soon be called what almost equates to being called insane and not of this world.

So I suppose we must aspire to be balanced, but what is that? Even-keeled, serene, never raising your voice? Maybe possesing a schedule that has just the right amount of work and play, physical and mental activity, spiritual and carnal concerns?

And of course there is the balanced diet, immortalized by the food pyramid which shows us all what the perfectly balanced, read "normal," human being eats.

It all seems unrealistic, if you want to hear my imperfect opinion, and even boring, if you want to hear me raise my voice. But as in the last post, I want direct my interpretative focus away from a human paradigm, run by opinions and brainy guidelines, and move towards a view that incorporates the Earth itself.

At one end of the scales of balance, we have one extreme, and the other side another. Happy and sad for instance. It would seem that "the balanced person" would not aspire to either of these. It is a Buddha-like notion, admirable for those who pursue, but admittedly not for everyone.

By this idea, a person who is happy more often than they are sad is imbalanced, and open to the sitgma associated with that. To me that sounds crazy.

But my thoughts are on this subject today beacuse I and my fellow Americans are near the holidays. Thanksgiving is in two days, and the anticipation of a happy, warm-hearted day enjoying friends and family is creating a strange effect by my observation.

It's making people more miserable!

I thought it was just me, but as I went out for my extended lunch break, and even within my place of work, I saw it in all others too. It would seem that to balance out the hoped-for happiness of a future date, a little bit of hell needs to be experienced beforehand.

This effect is created by humans to a certain extent, but I would argue that more likely it is co-created with natural, read "normal", forces. Holidays were holy days, holy days arose around holy events, and holy events were perceived in nature, as in the stars, the seasons and the cycles.

Therefore the high of one extreme is accompanied by the low of another, as it has always been.

This I believe is balance, and has not everything to do with our conscious choices, and desires to appear normal and under control. The serenity of a Buddha is linked to the abandon of a Dionysius. This also means for us, that to be emotional or even wild, is linked in balance to others acting reserved or calculating.

We as humans can choose and participate, but ultimately it is within a field that imposes its own choices and movements, moving us by its music and dance.

I could go into how these thoughts were influenced by my own childhood survival tactics, but whether you are perceived as "imbalanced" aka a little crazy, or "balanced" aka perfectly wise, harmonious and all that, I say that you are part of a balance that can't be imbalanced, it will always right itself.

And as with the holidays, the crazy ride can be worth it.

Underground Organs

Mr. William Butler Yeats once described the world's cultures as stops and knobs on a giant pipe organ. Each culture, he argued, contributes a unique effect that helps shape the overall "sound" of the planet.

Yeats used this metaphor to "WoW" his audiences while speaking on tour in America at the turn of the 20th century. It often brought the house down, as he used it to round out his increasingly powerful oration.

He was trying to profess the virtues of his little island home, Ireland, while also illustrating his own cosmopolitan and proto-new age values. It is a lovely idea, as it validates the value in small communities as they combine to the larger whole.

I wonder how the metaphor of a giant pipe organ playing the world's song translates to 21st century life. Organs were and are amazing, but current-day synthesizers evoke a different, almost cosmic, picture with their sprawling, seemingly infinite sounds.

In either case, the vision I hold as "crystacular" found resonance with this thought as I read it from a Yeats biography last week. The world's a stage, and we all must play our part, to paraphrase Shakespeare and Andre 3000 paraphrasing Shakespeare. This is a human-centered viewpoint, differing from the concept of the literal Earth as a massive instrument.

An "Earth organ" changes the focus from one of humans, playing out our personal dramas, to one of the Earth, playing out its song. We are no doubt part of this, as our personal stories and collective cultures affect the Earth. But it suggests that we are just a part of it, not the stars of the show trodding on an unresponsive but supportive stage.

Furthermore, the force behind an organ is wind, an elemental and natural force. This idea connects to spirituality with roots in mysticism. W.B.Y would certainly endorse this interpretation, I believe, as he was steeped in magical study and hoped to find ancient truth through it.

Where does wind come from? Where does it go? It is unknowable, but it affects us all.

But if the model were to be followed, it would seem logical to say that the wind was emanating out from the center of the Earth, passing through the multitude of cultures on the surface, and flowing outward to join the music of the spheres.

If wind is analog, then electricity would be digital, bringing us to an effective metaphor that incorporates our modern-day organ, the synthesizer.

I will close this musing window for now, not wanting to turn a blog post into a manifesto. I only want to note that Mr. Yeats' utterance, which I believe was most likely a stumbled-upon afterthought used to win over his wild-west audience, contains a seed of the crystacular vision.

Whether the seed of that vision exists solely in my imagination, or is simply the world's electric wind playing through my mind, I know not yet. But until I find the audience to draw out the full implications of it, I will rest in knowing that some part of the vision is coming through me thanks to Mr Yeats and the winds of which he spoke.