I hope I didn’t ramble, but I seem to be creating poetry, connecting dots on the run from my everyday life. Front Porch and the eclipse of the sun. How do we connect that? Night and Day…you are the One. How doe this Cole Porter song connect wth the eclipse. You are the One in this timeless moment when night and day, day and night become One. And in the eye of the Beholder, the Beheld is the One. You are the One when the day stops chasing the night, when the sun stops chasing the moon.

So in my wild flight of metaphors, I eclipse my own seeking and chasing. Connecting dots in my everyday life here and there, I hold the sun and moon together as One. Can I control spontaneity? Can I keep my feet on the ground and not get lost in the ecstasy of my own flight? Can I speak from my heart without losing my mind? Can I eclipse the sun without losing my sight?

The old pond

A frog jumps.

Plop!

The Plop is my talk. I just jump in. Can I control the plop so there is meaning for you? Can I create the invitation for you to jump? I don’t know. Before the talk I feel resistance to jumping. What is that resistance but the fear of losing control. Who am I when I jump in and disappear in the water of the moment. What happens to the old pond, my old self, my controlled self, my aloof withheld self?

Great art is an eclipse of the mind. Remember The Avatar and the Voyage to Pandora? Movies can be great art, our modern great art for everyman. When you go to a great movie, there is a level of meaning for everyone. We each drink according to our ability, according to our emptiness, according to our willingness to surrender to the Art. It was easy to surrender to Avatar because we were dropped into a New World through the eyes of Jake Sully. Through his journey, his mystical journey, his surrender to the Eclipse, we surrendered to the eclipse.

What was the eclipse of Avatar? When the sun of the Sky People became one with the Night of the Navi. The movie ends with the eclipse a Jake Sully becomes both sun and moon and sits up: I see you.

The movie as Art invites us to surrender to the Eclipse through the magic of the move, through the alchemy of the movie. This movie is a dramatic Eucharist, the death and both of a new unified You.

The sun of the Conscious, and the night of the unconscious, become One when you awake.

What does that mean? When the unconscious becomes conscious you are no long held hostage by unconscious behaviors, by ritual compulsion to repeat yourself in endless seeking of the One, the yang chasing the Yin, the endless Ground Hog Day of Samsara and sorrow. The endless yearning for Paradise Lost.

Avatar is a dramatic metaphor, an extended metaphor that invites you to become conscious, that invites the ellipse of the mind where the sun and moon becomes One.

The old pond

A frog jumps in

Plop!

This. Haiku returns to me and new meaning. That is the purpose of a Zen Haiku, one should get high on the ku. Any time when you suddenly just throw of restraint, cast away your karmic chains of habit and fear, the Old Pond, and jump. PLOP! that is the high of the ku.

The Eclipse is the moment you do that. The Eclipse is a metaphor for the moment when the dance of the Conscious Sun and the Unconscious Moon, mind and body, spirit and flesh, is perfectly balanced, and time stops. The leap of the frog into the old pond of karma and time is the ellipse of time, and your moment of timelessness. PLOP! The plop is not in time, not in the old pond, but the plop of Now. Jump in.