more truly and more strange

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I was in the world in which I walked, and what I saw 

Or heard or felt came not but from myself 

And there I found myself more truly and more strange.


—Wallace Stevens
Tea in the Palaz of Hoon

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We are individualized waves of consciousness on the Infinite Ocean of Spirit; so say the sages. But, although the Ocean has become the wave, and the wave, when it dissolves the illusion of ego-separation and limitation, realizes that it has always been one with the Infinite Ocean, the form-bound wave itself is not the Ocean. 

Nor is the Ocean merely the sum of its waves—the Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.

Everything you can see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and much more, is part of this Ocean. For all matter, energy and consciousness is merely waves of certain rates of vibration on the surface of the Ocean of Consciousness; Spirit has become, and is present in and as, every created thing. That is, consciousness is the “water” of the Infinite Ocean of Spirit, and all phenomena arise as modifications of this one stuff, or ripples on/of this Ocean of cosmic consciousness.


—Geoffrey D. Falk
The Science of the Soul: On Consciousness

and the Structure of Reality

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Get rid of everything.
If you exist, then you are loved
by existence. What do you need?
A spoon, a blanket, a bowl, a book -
maybe the book you give away.

Resist the need to worry, robbing everything
of immediacy and peace.
Resist traveling except where you want to go.
Resist seeing yourself in others or them in you.
Nothing, everything, is personal.


—Louise Erdrich
from Advice to Myself #2: Resistance
whiskeyriver (treasure)

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