Dangerous Spirituality 

Thurman’s spirituality was grounded not only in the beauties of the black experience, but grounded as well in the terrors of the black experience, as only someone living in Florida and Georgia could know them in 1915 and 1920 and 1930. At the same time, it was a spirituality that says: “And knowing all that, I also know that all human beings are one.”

This kind of strange combination of spiritual truth with hard political social truth led one young man in the 1930s to say this about Howard Thurman: “I’m disappointed in him. We thought we had found our Moses. And he turns out to be a mystic.” That’s the spirituality that gets people all riled up.

Source: Dangerous Spirituality | On Being

Our current hierarchical view of ourselves and of our consciousness (with “I” at the apex, and “my ideas, my emotions, my experiences, and accumulated skills, etc.”, below) can now be shown to be fundamentally incoherent in a number of ways—the central contention being that in actual fact there isn’t and there can be no centre to our consciousness the same way that there is no centre to a river. Breaking away from the cul-de-sac of the this current/common hierarchical view, this chapter outlines a new model in which conditioned responses of memory—in the form of holarchically ordered, fundamentally interconnected basic assumptions and emotional attitudes—provide a continually shifting structure of consciousness (akin to the changing (infinite, yet finite) structural patterns which may arise in a kaleidoscope)..

Source: In Detail | The Order of Thought

guerrilla zen

feel the need
to plant yo seed

go ahead
do yo deed

do not heed
ya neighbor’s greed

just remember
yo child ta feed

open your mind

let it bleed

don’t be afraid
pursue yo trade

the price been paid
yo back been flayed

the foundation laid

the foundation for a planetary revolution, that is

winged soul
starring role

nobody showed

it grows and grows
with nowhere to go

hot damn
son of sam
on the lam
in yo face
i will cram
(or another place)

no fact to base
just the way i feel
nothings real

spacetime
space and time
matter in motion

such an absurd notion

maybe a magnificent mystery
but would’ve made mo sense
for nothing to be

space and time
spacetime
whats the difference?

what is
the difference
‘tween
beginning and end
righteousness and sin
what separates
enemy and friend
here and there
now and then

spacetime
its a fine line
the razor’s edge
yours and mine
the limit of knowledge
hard knock college

this is it
every bit
the law is writ
a perfect fit
fire lit

city life
walk edge of knife
agony and strife

unholy communion
spreads the poison
of an ill fated union

a selfish division
limits the vision
a self imposed prison
where a teacher functions
as the demon’s minion

to destroy young minds
the devil finds
a foundation built well
for a living hell
no truth to tell
but escape to sell

the great satan knows
how it goes
to lay the blame
call the other’s name
this game we play
every day
is there no
other way?

mired in
the mixed up misery
polluted by
the penny ante
problems
and arguments
of any and every
imaginary
enemy

a fountainhead of frustration
drowning
all higher desire

chained to the station
devoid of elation
no liberation

how pervasive is pain?
well, how many nerve endings you got?

how deep does it go?
through bone to marrow

how much of your brain
fills your soul

how pervasive is pain?
well, how many human beings cover the earth?

how deep does it go?

from the highest and mightiest
to the lowest of the low

how much of your soul
have you come to know?

spacetime
energy and
matter
or does it?
matter, i mean
mystically maybe
but comapared to what?

a cold steel rail
reflecting an arctic
midnight blue
or a hot rock
blister burn
buried in our brain

out on the frontier
the pain of a paradise
just beyond reach

a violent vapor
of dragon’s breath
assaults my nasal cavities
settles there
a memory dark and dirty
constricting my mind
a shadow
an eclipse
growing smaller
the blinding fury behind
purifies
a new world born
on an eagles wing
as the waves break
on the cliffs below

lets go

wicked wet candy
on a wild carpet ride
wrings wrapped red
round muscle blood and bone
our sin the sun sears
through mists of melting matter
a pink and purple puckered rose
rising over the ocean orange
fire frozen forever
midst the velvet midnight
of our mind