Spiritual Operation

for the New Year 2024

Here’s wishing a happy and calm - 2025!

We know what this means in terms of outcomes for the looming chaos of 2024, what can be expected at home in the U.S. during this election year and around a world upended in turmoil.

The chaos is real, the threats are real, grievousness and atrocity demand recognition; yet, with all this, there’s going to be a lot of noise.

Politics is noisy. Lies are clamorous. War, propaganda, and disinformation scream impositions of blame, hatred, doom: visions and images louder than thought.

Nevertheless, there are ways to see through the year ahead to what it is to be hoped will be better, more settled times. More than ever, there’s a need for piercing through the noise, seeing through appearances.

Spiritual Operation

In confrontation with the chaotic year ahead, an operation for peering through, hearing through prevailing intended disruptions of what sustains, what is substantial.

Best to sync with the core quiet. Akin to “peaceful mind” in martial arts (clarity and calm under the torrent of blows), but going deeper than any mere psychological attitude or attainment, this practice is towards accessing the axis of the world as it spins.

Set aside an hour. Confine yourself to a small room. Allow only natural light into the space and, if it’s night, let it be dark. If it’s dusk or dawn, allow the change in light to play into your receptivity. 

This operation can also be done outside, in a secluded grove or empty lot.

Walk the space and feel your feet on floor, pavement, or ground; get a sense of your sole and toes and heels differentiated in the placement of their support. 

All grounding is upon intrinsicality.

Pay attention to your posture without changing it at first, then with awareness make adjustments for upright balance. Stand still in such balance and pay mind to your embodied self. 

All grounding is upon intrinsicality.

Allow the space to be defined around you, first by feel - skin feel and perceptual aura - then by ambient sound, aurality. As to feel, how far do your perceptions reach? As to sound, notice any breaches in the ambience and/or the hum of whatever's humming, even the ringing in your ears. What are the sounds differentiated against?

Lie down, close your eyes. From within your space, situate yourself in time: acknowledge the year past and anticipate the year ahead. Attune to what passes, what abides.  

4×4 Breathing, supine ×4: four seconds inhalation, four seconds hold full (plenum), four seconds exhalation, four seconds hold empty (vacuum)…     repeat four times. 

Rise. Stand alone in time. Amidst the stillness of the moment, you'll feel currents gaining on you; they will grow into a stronger and stronger wind easily capable of displacing you in your spirit, in your stance. 

Pass your palms faced towards your brow from head down through torso allowing the gale force of those energetic currents to strip you of all extraneous attachments - what ties and cords (and chords) cling to you, never mind what you cling to. Repeat such passes evenly as many times as necessary. 

Wherever you're facing, that's what's ahead of you: understand there's nothing beyond the scope of your positing, your position. Turn. Turn again. Course of the world and passage of time happens around you, through you; duration is core. 

4×4 Breathing, standing ×4: four seconds inhalation, four seconds hold full (plenum), four seconds exhalation, four seconds hold empty (vacuum)…     repeat four times. 

Let your arms hang by your sides, palms facing forwards. Tilt your head back and lift your brow to the sky. Ready for the future. Open to what's for you, from you. Maintain this posture for as long as you can stand it. 

Thought

The quiet resounds with its fullness. Everything is always at stake. Replete presence, momentousness; the present passes into loss, and it takes more than what is at hand to win the day. From out of nothing, faith. Mind moves forward relentlessly, eternally, cyclically. Silence incredible for its stirring. Is it the human heart or the human mind which first touches upon such urgency? It is at least incumbent upon us to give it a go again when and where there’s a chance. Gaps, lapses, are openings. The vanishing tricks pain into beauty. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Meaning, we do have it - the beauty, poignantly. Paradise is forever recurrently lost, regained only through pausing for love’s cherished traces.

Poetry

stratagem ruby worn at the center of her brow
precious little to startle feral cat sagacity
empty, full   
empty, full
no more will he smear the cloister

fashioned beast robs the gaze of her swallowing
too much to cast out that harsh shimmer of trust
empty, full
empty, full
no more will he trouble the ark house knock

instead there is ruin
and clench

and pitter-pat of rain
embers, blood of the sun

and gauze

Word Magick

Starcourt

solar plexus rip nostrils dilate and constrict, secret Heka expands and contracts with the breath teardrops for the torn, fibrous tendrils of candor

Autonomy