Death Valley in all its beauty — I walk alone.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

— Psalm 23:4

Alone with All. — All One with All.

Dak To: South Vietnam. June 7, 1966 Picture courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration.

Sent: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:24 am
Subject: Healing event
To: Autumn Antal

I told Rev. Kathy your healing story and here is her response……

Hi Dave,

Wow! What a story! That’s quite incredible… Sometime it would be great if you could get Autumn’s permission for me to share that story in church some Sunday. Definitely worth telling. Thanks for taking the time to write to me about it!

Love & blessings,
Kathy

—–Original Message—–

Hi Rev. Kathy,

I wanted to tell you of my witnessing a spontaneous healing yesterday. I was out with a friend of ours. Her name is Autumn and we were out doing errands yesterday afternoon. After my bank appointment, she had to go to he County building to register to vote.

She went into the room and I stayed out in the hall and sat in a chair, but I could see her the whole time. I noticed that she was talking to the man next to her and they appeared to be in some type of deep conversation as the man moved closer to her. I noticed that they hugged. The man came out first and he was smiling and felt very light as he walked by me. Here is what happened at the counter…

The man had almost filled out his voter registration form, and the woman behind the counter looked at it and said, “Thank you for your service.” He responded that he was a veteran of the Vietnam War and that that was only the second time someone had thanked him. So Autumn felt very compassionate toward the man and entered the conversation.

Then something happened, and all of a sudden she could see through his eyes…She saw the battlefield and people being killed, and all his friends being torn apart and killed. She could feel all his pain and agony that he had been carrying for the past 40 years (since 1968). She learned that he had managed to hold onto his marriage but was unable to get emotionally close to his family. He had been just barely hanging onto life all these years.

My Tho, Vietnam: A Viet Cong base camp being destroyed. April 5, 1968 Picture courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration.

Then she saw all his friends (Marines) standing there right with him, and they started telling her what they wanted him to know. They wanted him to go back to Vietnam and open up a hospital. If he would do that for them (because he was the only one left who had a body) he would be the catalyst to heal not only himself and them but also all the people they had killed.

He seemed very open to hearing what she said, and told her that he had been offered chances to do just that several times but that he could not find the courage enough to go back there. Then she nicely insisted……insisted that the karmic destiny of all his buddies and others were at stake. And that it was not just about him.

Napalm bombs explode on Viet Cong structures south of Saigon in the Republic of Vietnam. 1965 Picture courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration.

I could tell by her facial expressions that she was showing him much love and kindness as she explained to him what she was witnessing. But she told me that she had to insist and gave it to him like it was an order. He understood it all. The more he listened the lighter he felt. He had reached a great turning point in his life.

The rest is history. The man gave up his pain and you could feel it in the air. A great healing had taken place. She had entered the killing field and had managed to stay centered so that a healing could take place. He got healed, she got healed, I even got healed just by being there.

And that was just yesterday. The healing continues today. I could not hold back and wanted to tell you. I mean what do you say to something like that. What a great thing to happen for all concerned.

Take care,
Dave

Dong Ha, Vietnam. Operation Hastings: Marines take to the water as they move to join up with other elements of their battalion. July 1966 Picture courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration.

Update: After this event, we stayed in touch for a few months by telephone and email. He and I had several intense telephone conversations. I gave him the physical descriptions of the three Marines who spoke to me and he recognized them immediately. He told me their names and more about their stories. The photographs included here are very close to my vision that he validated for me as accurate.

The last time we spoke, he had not yet returned to Vietnam. He was checking into the established organizations that are there building hospitals and medical centers.

However, he told me this…That the most powerful part of the experience for him was knowing that death was not the absolute end to being that he had feared. He said that forty years of fear had lifted from him.

He had been standing on the outside step of a large truck, talking to his buddy who was driving, when the truck hit an IED. He was blown yards away into a rice paddy, but the three friends riding in the truck were killed immediately.

He told me that seeing people he loved there one moment and gone the next had crippled him emotionally. Although he had married and had a child, he kept a distance out of fear of separation. On the telephone, we were both moved to tears as he told me that since that day in the County Building with me his life had forever changed.

He was now able to embrace his wife and daughter in a way he never had before. They had noticed a profound change in him. He was so very thankful, as was I to share that load with him, to give him a vision of life, of love eternal — beyond fear.

Love,
Autumn
01.15.11

P.S. Found out the reason I felt required to give it to him “like it was an order” — because one of the men killed on the truck had a higher rank. Not much higher, just enough to use to tease or as leverage when needed.

The non-physical buddy was saying, “That’s an order, Marine!” And, I heard it said in that half-joking tone of the completely serious.

©2008-2011 A.L. Antal

El Silencio es el corazón de la Singularidad.

From some perspectives:

Yes, those who make a lot of noise get some attention.
However, the quality of attention is not so beneficial.

There are those whose silence attracts attention.
Their silence is louder than words.

Silence has a pull. — Its own gravity.
The Silence is the heart of Singularity.

V838 Monocerotis: Hubble Space Telescope via NASA.

Time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity and every point in space — insect or star or idea — turns into dance.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Let me tell you of my Love. My Love is limitless — Universes unto himself. He contracts. He expands. Contracts. Expands. Contracts. Deeper, darker than a double black hole. Expands. Radiant, explosive as new creation.

The Ouroboros in space who devours himself, only to twist into a Möbius strip, doubling back as Eternal Being. That undifferentiated potential to Be. Seeming opposites fuse as complementary. Dark and light interweave to balance in cosmic unity. Singularity dances, harmonizing the song of the stars with the music of the spheres.

I can love only he; for me there is no Other. He is I and I am he. Two bodies? Maybe. Two memories? What is memory? Is it now? Is it real? If you are going to tell it, tell your story with full intensity and authenticity of Being. Take me to that now and I will recall it. See it. Feel it. Taste it. Telepathy, empathy, intuition, and other similar words are but names we give to our universal connection in consciousness.

There is only one now. Life streams merely seem to flow to and from the Love source of All. There is no movement in reality. Dynamic quiescence — all is still in constant motion.

There is a woman in Hawaii who gave me her grandfather’s pocket watch long ago. Much has slipped through my hands; yet there wrapped in cloth is the watch. This has nothing to do with the thing itself. It is a symbol of human trust. I could not break her trust in me — because she forged it in the fire of certainty with absolute strength. Her divine resolve, or Sankalpa in Sanskrit.

See her eyes as I see them now…She puts the watch in my/your/our hands carefully, as if it were a small bird. She says sincerely, “I know I will lose this. But, I know if you have it, it will be safe.” And so, it is…and so it will be always. Safe and sound in our collective cloud memory — now distributed because you share it with me.

Feel it? Our grandfather’s golden pocket watch? No more is it cold metal. No more is it a “thing” that I alone must keep safe. Now, it feels warm — the soft echo of Love in our hands.

That which appears to us as matter is but slowed thought. All is Consciousness. All is Love. All appearance of division is illusion based on limited sensory input. The All is absolutely inclusive; existence cannot be otherwise. All is All — and That is our true nature.

Soft driven, slow and mad like some new language. Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger.

— Jim Morrison

Knowing what we call reality is a holographic expression of infinite consciousness playing — and knowing you are That consciousness — here are some words about words, just for fun:

English language demands duality to exist.
English is a language built on a foundation of opposition. This can result in unique mental dysfunction for native English speakers. [I know whereof I speak.] First among them is our profound fixation on judgement. Everything is black and white in a mind that thinks constantly in polarized English words. As a culture, we are close to losing the capacity for subtlety.

In reality, opposites are complementary. This nondual vision is known to the East and to some extent in Western culture. Yet, its simplicity is often its cause for dismissal by minds desiring complication. Not to fault the mind; the mind’s job is to measure and to divide input into little bits it “thinks” it understands. However, it does further to put the tool down when not in use. Human thought is not the speed limit of consciousness we think.

Repeated thoughts cut grooves in our neural net as physical and solid as a vinyl LP. A record that can play of its own accord once you lay down the tracks in your brain. Have you heard the loop? We often play the same pattern, the same old song over and over. Pretty or painful, it does not matter because while lost in the thrall of that old song — we miss now.

Based on my experience, some languages seem to take less of a mental toll on their native speakers than English. Yet in recent travels, I see deterioration of local ancient principles of unity and polarization of thought even in remote corners of the world. English has invaded as surely and relentlessly as kudzu.

The entirety of existence is a great mystery beyond any of our immaterial human definitions, labels, limits and morals. This knowing defeats the undisciplined mind’s very reason to exist and that is not acceptable to mind.

Mind can function without the crutch of language percolating though it incessantly. Few experience this thoughtless awareness. It takes discipline and discipline has become a bad word in English. We are bombarded by noise at every moment — and we are not culturally encouraged to be silent. It may take great strength to break free of cultural conditioning at first. However, once the game is named, there is no going back to original ignorance.

Even those of us who adore silence choose to speak on occasion. We humans are bound to language to facilitate communication until such a point the majority are functional telepaths. That state of communion does not appear to be forthcoming — so we speak!

Sanskrit is better for a language.
Some Sanskrit words have no English equivalent. It can take an entire book in the English language to explain a single Sanskrit word. You do not have to speak Sanskrit to benefit from it. Simply hearing the sound — or knowing that another means of expression is available — can be enough to short circuit the psychic/physical grip of dualistic English.

Sanskrit introduces vocabulary for many esoteric concepts: Advaita, Brahman, Bindu, Purnam, etc. The West is making some progress, with science seeming to lead the way in language beyond limitation. Many Sanskrit words have an equivalent term within the realm of Quantum Physics: Singularity=Bindu; Zero-Point Field=Brahman, the unmanifest potential from which all creation emanates to which it must return.

The Hindu god Shiva has a form of the cosmic dancer that can be seen as symbolic of atomic theory. Moreover, as the Lord of Dance, Shiva Nataraja dances the universe into creation and dissolution. The Big Bang is the start of Shiva’s dance in terms of Western science. Mahapralaya, the final dissolution of existence, is described as all creation being absorbed back into Shiva’s third eye — or Bindu or Singularity! A symbol is a symbol. Look deep and the correlations are clear.

Speaking reduces Being/Consciousness to a concept.
Yes, at one level this is true. Nothing can be said about That with any real meaning. THAT is simply beyond the scope of where language can go. That is why we often just refer to the all as That, with a capital T. Words are lumpy things, crude, not subtle at all. At times, I see words flying out of mouths with the solidity of a thrown stone.

Words can be seen as a vibrational form with a definite shape. Sound can be seen as solid at a certain frequency. You get a sense of that sonic solidity when you go to a rock concert and dance in front of an enormous speaker array. From another perspective, words have no meaning at all but for that which we ascribe to them. Sounds blurring into white noise of all sound that ultimately becomes silence.

Speaking without speaking.
It is possible to have speech come forth spontaneously. Not premeditated. It is a Zen state. Often, there is no recall of what is said. Words come out. You are a flow. Perfect expression comes forth with no effort to analyze, remember it or cling to it in any way. Natural, organic speech.

Degauss your mind.
A moment of determination, intent and strength of will can degauss [demagnetize] your mind. Blast away the constructs and chatter. — In the same way a magnetic burst cleans a recording head on a tape deck and returns it to normal bias. You can comb the tangles from your neural net and create new connections. This can happen in an instant or as you choose. Perfect silence. A new beginning. A new shape.

In my early efforts at verbal speech, before age three, I regularly used a personal pronoun he/she before naming certain things. I find it amusing to note these are common mistakes for an English as a Second Language [ESL] speaker coming from the Latin/Romance Languages. Was I really making a mistake or simply remembering how I had communicated in another body? No sé.

Move beyond the confines of limited language into disciplined attention. Then, the need for attention drops away into pure spontaneous expression of Being. Consciousness in the cosmic dance. Expansive. Free of human limits we have mistakenly projected on The All That Is.

Here is the abbreviated version of my Universe Meditation:

Feel YOU, your being extending beyond the body, beyond your home, beyond your city, beyond your country, beyond the planet, beyond the solar system, beyond our galaxy, beyond myriad galaxies, beyond all known existence, farther than the Hubble Space Telescope can see: IT IS ALL YOU.

Recline as Love, as Infinite Being in that fullness, purnam, complete — and know THAT is who you really are.

Om saha nāvavatu
saha nau bhunaktu
saha viiryam kara vāvahai
tejasvi nāva dhiitamastu
mā vidvishā vahai
Om shānti, shānti, shāntihi

Om Lord, protect us as one,
Nourish us Lord, as one,
Let us flourish in thy strength as one,
Let our knowledge be changed to Light
And change our hate to love.
Om peace, peace, perfect peace

Autumn is a dancer trained in the technique & choreography of Isadora Duncan.

My motto: Sans limites. — Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan entered my Being in 1968: Saw the film “Isadora” from the backseat of my Dad’s Lincoln. With three small children, the drive-in theater was my parents’ only cultural recourse. Little did they know just how much we absorbed! [The tunic and headpiece in the photo are my own design.]

Isadora was a radical. Brilliant. Beautiful. Mercurial. Her revolutionary methods of Natural Movement laid the foundation of modern dance. It was Isadora who broke the rule of a lower-spine based center of movement. This center of origin gives the rigid, marionette-like movement to ballet.

Isadora taught the origin of movement is the solar plexus — and that all movement begins with the breath. She saw the Greek Ideal as the highest human physical manifestation possible. Her dance is as if the great classical sculpture of Greece were brought to life. Her schools were holistic with a vision unique for her time.

Dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual. — Isadora Duncan

Autumn with Duncan Dance partner Patricia: About to make their 1992 debut performance at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts.

Look out — Autumn about to cut loose on Blues Harp!

#nowplaying No Guru, No Method, No Teacher — Van Morrison

Are you ready? Get up off your asanas! Let’s dance in a new shape to this consensus reality.

“What is real? What a group or culture chooses to believe..” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_reality

A new frequency to our tuning. A deeper harmonic embracing the full spectrum of Being. ALL inclusive.

Overcome the feeling you have something to overcome — and BE.

No more lie of limitation: beLIEved and taught by parents, relatives, friends, teachers, clergy, doctors, politicians. Drop it without blame.

Quit the division. “Body” is not bad. “Ego” is not bad. “Subconscious” is not bad. No aspect of your being is bad.

No aspect of your being must be killed. No aspect of your true being can die. ALL is eternal.

Is fire bad? Is a sharp blade bad? See beyond petty judgement based in duality. Opposites are a concept with no basis in reality.

Separation is a delusion. You ARE THAT. Without modification. Accept That and Be. Have the strength not to buy the LIE.

There is no going back. Our accepted “normal” of self-destruction is not sustainable. This is the transition. The shift is here now.

It is upon us. We are trying to revive a corpse. Patriarchy is dead. Matriarchy is not the answer. Unity. Balance. Or die.

Choose. Response to circumstance is in your hands. Heal or destruct. Now. Not in some future fantasy. NOW.

Nutrition. Health. Education. Work. Politics. War. Current methods do not function and cannot be revised to be made functional.

We must step over the threshold into the unknown together. There are no reference points because we have NEVER been healthy!

Can you put down the video game, TV remote and take the garbage out of your mouth? What’s it going to be? This is the final round.

Be That Now

#nowplaying We don’t need anybody else to tell us what is real. Inside each one of us is love and we know how it feels. — Sir Paul McCartney

What we say is meaningless. I know because I participate. We talk of the Observer, the Witness, karma, reincarnation, etc. all are merely concepts born of separation and do not exist in reality. The Universe is of itself consciousness only. No one doing. No one acting. All arises in spontaneous perfection. Consciousness is experiencing itself.

My only justification for having said what I know is not completely true is that direct truth is rarely understood. Using language is always indirect; to point in a new direction was the intent. Perhaps to offer another perspective that might shake up the rigid mental structures of the facets of myself who are not aware that they ARE all? Even that is a ridiculous effort.

Consciousness is the absolute totality that cannot be divided. To say there is a “subconscious” is the equivalent of saying each radio station is a different “radio.” Archetypes? Our collective favorite old shoes and jeans. Comfortable. Well-worn patterns. Easy to wear. Prête à porter of temporal personality!

Nevertheless, we talk about these concepts as if they were real because the true reality is so very natural, so absolutely effortless — we ignore it! We call that natural state “enlightenment” and make up methods, rituals, tapas, austerities, levels, divisions, religions, etc. all in a vain attempt to make Being into some difficult attainment. So what happened? How did we get into this mess? We have made the mistake of self-identification with the body and with what we think we do. You are not your body and you are not your “job” or any act of doing.

There is no place to point toward when all points are One. Singular. Yet we go on and on with such authority. You just have to laugh. Otherwise, it is easy to reject intuitive knowing or go mad with it — because reality is beyond the understanding, defining and labeling of limited human senses. Even to think about it in words overcomplicates the purity of spontaneous Being and reduces it to a concept.

We ask and even pay so-called others to show us the way to our very selves. We are already there. You are That. That is All. All is simply being. All is and you are — how can “you” possibly be separate or separated from all that is? You can say the words I AM. How sure are you? Do you deny your own existence? Who Is? Who is asking? Who is the “AM” in I Am That? Explore yourself. You may find nothing and everything at the same time.

To function, to communicate, to “get by” in the world for me means deliberately NOT feeling fully at times. When I feel fully what IS — I cannot speak. When I feel fully what IS — the small “I” ceases to be and the eternal self takes over. When I do permit myself to feel fully, I often “come back” to find my body on the ground, my face wet with tears and no memory of getting there. That sort of thing makes it hard to keep a regular job. Therefore, I deliberately desensitize myself to play the game, to pretend to be “interactive” on the Holodeck.

The irony is that if you do not play the games founded in unreality you are branded “inhuman.” Hence, the admonition given by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, “Don’t be football of other people’s opinion.” Go beyond that, to the wordless knowing that there is no “other” to have an opinion. Pretend if you must. The dramas, comedies, horror stories, all of it, we just make up for entertainment. I can say that once you see that there is no death in reality, only life fueling life — there is no going back.

Osho said, “Never born. Never died.” Many called him mad or worse. Emotions and thoughts may pass through you, but with no more solidity than the clouds in the sky. You will not turn into an unfeeling zombie, have no fear. There is just no more clinging to any particular state. You are fluid and without attachment. This can cause misunderstandings. You are simply expressing spontaneous Being and it can result in a torrent of projections from facets of self choosing a limited perspective. Don’t judge or criticize. Accept people as they are — for “they” are you, no other.

In my experience, people have said things such as, “I didn’t mean to upset you.” My first response is usually, “Huh?” Then I have to backtrack and go linear to communicate in a so-called normal manner. I do my best to convey [gently] that they do not have the power to upset me. Only I can upset me. Our cultural brainwashing tells us blame the other at all costs and do not take responsibility for your emotions. “You MADE me angry!” “You MADE me sad.” No one can MAKE you feel any emotion — how you “feel” is a choice only YOU make.

We are “enlightened” but may not understand that because we are looking for something “different” to happen to us. In that very looking — we miss! The heavens do not part with celestial choirs and trumpets heralding the arrival of the next great avatar. Sorry. It is not a matter of adding something; it is more a stripping away of self-limiting structures.

Thoughts, projections, etc. have built up a crust of barnacles on our true Self. Make like a whale and leap! Throw yourself out of the waters of delusion and knock them off your precious self. You may go back into the water, but you are clean now and free to swim with effortless joy.

Every permutation must exist in creation. It all is. All frequencies are perfect by their very existence. The white noise of all Being is the most beautiful music in the universe. Dance with it! Play in the eternal leela. Perhaps we use talking about the inexpressible in poetry, similes, allegories, parables, etc. as alarm clocks to shock “ourselves” awake. I don’t know.

Maybe it’s the only game in town.

Om purna madah
purna midam purnaat
purnam udachyate
purnasya purnam adaya
purnam evaa vashishyate

That is the Whole, this is the Whole; From the Whole, the Whole arises; Taking away the Whole from the Whole, the Whole remains.
— Isa Upanishad

Blue Moon Me — Self-portrait: Watercolor, India Ink & Coffee ©2010 A.L. Antal