Vision Off Temple Mountain Road

by QMS, April 2015/Year 2 of the Pachakuti,

with Natalie and Jen and Kate and Abbey:

We were off the google map,

Just past The Church of What's Happening Now,

And we found a stone which showed in miniature our whole landscape:

The majestic mesas and the soaring spires that enchant the horizon,

All in the microcosm of a rock you could hold in your hand.

It was a map – different completely from a paper map,

And much could be learned by comparing the two:

Flip the rock over and discover another world –

Flip a paper map over and find... nothing.
A paper map can show only itself –  

The rock map has an edge which you can fall off,

And there is death and God and the beyond:

A map which shows the unmapped.

You can hold it in your hand and yet it is an inseparable piece of the world,

A map which leads you always to the source and always to the beyond,

Until you find yourself in the center:

A map to find yourself in the cosmos.

We are become laughter, rejoicers of worlds.

We are amazed to exist, to see, to have minds and hearts,

To witness the extreme importance of cliffs and clouds,

To summit best possible outcomes,

Like kids in a candy store,

Adults amidst creation.

Behold electrons and planets, solar systems and galaxies,

The immense and intimate symmetries – isn't there something we should do about it?

The cosmic serpent leaves snakeskin clouds spanning the sky,

East-West, and then North-South, leading us back and forward further to where we came from:

Above, Below, Within.

The All-Dancing, All-Singing Wonder, Source of the Sacred:

I deliver myself to become its vessel,

Only to find that I already am, we all are, it all is.

(Even God is its vessel!)

And this is what we have in common with God and with a pebble,

With the dancing figures in the cliff-face,

With the exquisite anonymous heroism

Of the small bright flower blossoming through the desert floor:

We are all unique, never-to-be-repeated, pieces of the world,

All sharing the self-expression of the cosmos,

All happening Now!

The universal message and medium is the Nowness,

This too we have in common with gods and stones:

All partaking, fulfilling, unraveling and completing the instant,

The Now which like lightning unites us all.

What question would you ask the all-dancing all-singing wonder?

Perhaps we all are the preparation for the correct question,

Which the cosmic source of the sacred is waiting to be asked.

To find the All-Dancing All-Singing Wonder,

You must earn it.

You must sweat and risk becoming lost.

The intrinsic price at the gate of the stone temple of the sacred is the possibility of no return.

You must face winds and fears to reach the stillness and the glory.

And then you must return.

You can't just sit around looking at God all day!

There is work to be done.

We must try to be as beautiful as the world,
We must strive for a human nature as wondrous as the nature 
Of a cell, a galaxy, a coral reef, an ocean, a cat, a cosmos:
To be worthy of the horizon's embrace!
The struggle for human nature:
This is the mission our generation will fulfil or betray.

Fields of blue and rainbow cliffs,

Soaring towers of orange twisting

Time and matter, churning bright

In the dancing of the light,

What unites the soil and sky:

Universal symmetry.

Into a dust storm

The friends departed,

The pulsing love of life restarted:

We are so sad to say goodbye

But we have shared eternity.

Even Now, Yet Still!

The slickrock is singing

And the moon bell is ringing

And the twilight is drinking the sun,

Four minds are thinking

And eight eyes are blinking

And four hearts are beating for one,

The one that is fleeting

The one that is dreaming

Of us as we dream of the one,

The one that is rippling

With all-dancing meaning

The one that is all and is none,

The one we are meeting

Departing and greeting:

The Now that has just begun!

Constellations are twinkling

And starlight is sprinkling

Hope on illusions undone,

And though we are leaving,

Forever our seeking

For truth shall unite us as one,

As the moonlight unites with 
The mothlight unites with

The firelight unites

With the sun.

("The Rochester Panel" in the San Rafael Swell, Utah, Turtle Island)