I am IT! You are IT!

“God disguised as myriad things

and playing a game of tag

has kissed you and said

‘You’re it..I mean, 

you’re REALLY IT’

Now it does not matter

what you believe or feel

for something wonderful, 

Major-league Wonderful

is someday going to

happen.” 

Hafiz

When we fall in love, each says the other is IT, but there is only one IT seeing itself as that one IT. This creates a virtuous vortex of ever-expanding I AM IT. 

The Art of Zen is to fall in love with the IT that is all ITs.

The Subjective is I AM IT! But if that is the only view, inflation occurs. The Subjective must be balanced with the Objective (there are infinite ITS) The balance is ambiguous for they are both of equal value and stand-alone, but opposite. This gestalt image makes the point. 

The OW and the YW stand alone but they are ONE, separate but cannot be separated. Satori or Eureka is the realization that I am THAT or IT. That and IT are One but separate.

We are exploring in this Zen Fit how we impose our grammar upon reality and then believe reality fits our grammar of the three persons: First, Second and Third Person. First Person is I, Second person is You, and Third Person is IT or person, place of thing, but IT covers all as Object. First Person is the invisible person. 

Our materialistic worldview believes that reality is made of ITS, even you. So in this space/time grid, everything is a particle. The First Person is not on the map. The action or waver cannot be caught as an IT. 

So to understand how our grammar frames our world is to see the problem with language, which is out thinking. Thinking is language, and thinking first the laws of our grammar with a believed in subject and object as being two separate entities. This separate is the cause of our suffering, our dissatisfaction with what we write in our book of life.

I used to be an English teacher for three years in the 60s. I failed. I found that the kind of teaching that wanted to come out of me didn’t fit the institution of the textbooks. So at that bipolar stage in my life, it was either my way or the highway. I spent the 70s trying to fit into some institutional system, but I just couldn’t fit the laws of grammar. The poet would not be chopped up by the butcher. 

In the late 80s, I got a job writing for the Courier-Record and I learned to fit my poet in the prose of the Newspaper. Poetry is First Person, Prose is Third Person. There are different laws for each person. 

This is what the Buddha discovered. When you believed in the laws of thought, which is Third Person, you activate the laws of old age, sickness, and death. This is the wheel of Samsara or sorrow of the world, In Christianity, this is the Cross of crucifixion. How can we get off this cross and its Law, it’s grammar? 

How can you be both the Poet and the Prose, the Sacred and the Profane? That is the Hamlet question. This is the question I work with.

When you let your Word flow, there is no error, no red lines, but when you submit it to the English teacher and the Law, you are full of errors. 

When you release the Poet, your first concern cannot be with the Law and fitting into its logical compartments. But at the same time, unless there is the Law of writing, you are just creating gibberish. 

There is creative spontaneity and there is control through the Law. Obey the rules. How can I be free and spontaneous and still be within the Law. Even Jesus worked with this question. 

Our politics is about this question. Don’t shove your law down my throat! 

We are not digging deep enough into this question to find an answer.

Grammar makes us stutter. Grammar makes us fear being wrong, getting red-lined: What will the teacher think? What will others think? Our language is the way we express our Word. Our word is laced with fear, we stutter. There is hesitation. Thought keeps asking if I am doing OK. English as our language, when taught as the Law, is not unlike religion where the primary concern is obeying the Law of God. 

We notice that we guard our speech when we discover we are in the presence of an English teacher or minister. I’m not saying we don’t need English teachers and ministers, but that we have been conditioned to guard ourselves when in their presence. This is fear of judgment. 

What is judgment but being fixed by the eye of the Other as an IT. We fear our First Person being fixed as an IT, an object defined and frozen, pinned on the wall like a dead butterfly. When we are First Person free from being judged, we fly.

When we soar as First Person a law unto ourselves, we are a Trump. So First Person needs the Third Person checks, All ITS, all Third Person IT must conform to the law of IT or things. No thing can escape the law of cause and effect. But if you believe you are First Person with no laws of grammar, then there is going to be an inflation of the Person and a tremendous tension will build between the maverick First Person and the laws of the Third Person. 

The Third Person will pull the First Person back into the grammar by force of gravity. No person is above the law, not even the First Person.

The artist, the writer who discovers a metaphorical unity of First and Third Person will sell books and then movies. The create a character, either in their art or as their act that is like the gestalt picture posted. The metaphor, the art is both old woman and young woman, both First Person and Third Person. Through the Art, the viewer perceives art as IT but feels his/her own First Person I. The art awakens our sleeping First Person I AM.

The question is how can I be both First Person I am as the center of the world, and Third Person IT, one of many objects in the world. The IT world must conform to laws of nature and man, but the First Person as center of the world is free because where can the First Person go that he/she is not at the center, or at home. The GPS navigator is a metaphor for the First Person. On the GPS the IT world boots around you. Whenever you move on the IT map, you are still at the center. But without the IT map, there is no movement. The GPS just sits there.

As First Person, we feel constrained by the IT world. Why is that? We feel constrained because of our Grammar or culturing conditioning separate First and Third Person. The Truth is that the WORD is both first and third person, both I and IT, subject and object. When one rises, the other rises. They rise together, neither causing the other. But we believe in our grammar that they are separate, that subjects are going stuff to objects like billiard balls on a grid. 

If I’m an IT and a Subject, then I believe that as a Subject and can change my IT self. But let’s go back to our gestalt image. Can the Young Woman (First Person) change the Old Woman (Third Person)?

While our grammar says Subjects act on Objects when it comes to answering the question who am I? Our grammar doesn’t work. The subject and the object rise together, the One that is two, so the subject cannot change the object without changing itself at the same time. When I think I have fixe a problem of me as IT, the problem just comes up in a new way, because the Subject believes it is outside of the object, an observer of the object me as IT. But the subject and object are the same mind, in grammar the same sentence, the same Word. A subject by itself or object by itself doesn’t say anything. Like the GPS, it just sits there. And something that just sits there and doesn’t move cannot be measured, and what cannot be measured is not in time. We cannot even perceive it.

The only thing I remember and hold about Helen Keller is her description of the moment she realized the IDEA of the word. Alone in this unfathomable darkness without the primary senses of sight and hearing, her teacher put her hand under running water and wrote the symbol for water in her other hand. Keller describes the awakening her soul with the bursting light of the Idea that the felt sensation was WATER…suddenly, there was a mediator between Knowing and the Known…it was the Word.

But her genius is that as she began to build the Idea of the world out there, even though she could not see or hear it, she kept her seat in the Knower that Knows before the world (our parents) is born or created.

This brings new meaning for me of my favorite Catholic prayer or affirmation as I see it: “Speak but the Word and my Soul will be healed.” The question is who speaks it? Do I wait for God to speak the Word? Or Jesus? Or do I speak it, and who is it that speak this Word, and what is the Word? Oh, the darkness of the unknown surrounds us when we begin to ask questions. Who do we think is going to answer us? 

Who is the Knower that Helen Keller was before, her face before her parents (the world) was born? We are all this Knower when we are born before the world is formed by language and defined names and forms. “What that, Momma,” the child asks as he builds a world in which he will live, a world of Words. But what is the original Word? 

For Helen Keller the symbol of water in her hand was connected to the felt sensation of this fund—you see I have no word for water that is not a symbol for water. What is the original water before it was named? Only Hellen Keller knew. Who was she before the name? Who are you before the name? 

This is our forgotten face, our buried face, our Beloved face. And we spend our whole life digging up landfills of accumulated names and forms looking for her. 

In today’s Zen Fit I’m exploring what a Zen Fit is. We all have them but we have no name for it. We are like Helen Keller when it comes to awakening because our western tongue has no words or names for it, and even when there is a name, like “awakening” we think the name is the thing, so we are never satisfied because the believed in the name is dust in our mind. We. remain thirsty. 

Who are we before our names are born. This is why Helen Keller gave me a Zen Fit this morning. When the Idea that the sensation of water in one hand and the symbol of water in the other was One yet two, that was Zen. That was Satori. That was Eureka of Archimedes when he had the Idea of water displacement that solved his problem of measuring the gold in the king’s crown without destroying the crown. 

This Idea that bursts upon us creates a new whole, a new world. For Helen Keller, it was the Word that creates a world in which she could live and connect with others, a known world. But for her, fortunately for us as well, she stayed in her original Word, the Knower before the known was born as the words. She was the Word and the Word was her. Before the Word Helen Keller did not exist as a center of the world. But when we believe in the words as real, then we lose our center. Do you see?

The IDEA that bust upon the dark mind of Helen Keller was that the symbol of water and the feel of this moving cool substance was One. The Idea connected the unknown with the known (the symbol) and made communication and relationship possible. Helen Keller was born with that Idea. A world was born. In the Bible, we go right to that moment when the Word is God and God is the Word. 

The Word God is like the symbol Water in Helen Keller’s mind. There is this unknown nameless Being that I am, before there is distinction, and the Name of God, the Word burst upon my mind, and I realize that the name, a symbol, and this unknown being that I am in the darkness before the name is One, a metaphor that holds the known and the unknown. The Word that creates both me and god. 

But then in the accumulation of words, language, knowledge, culture, religion, we stake out territories with our words and believe that our words are God and yours aren’t. We have lost our original Word.

The IDEA that bust upon the dark mind of Helen Keller was that the symbol of water and the feel of this moving cool substance was One. The Idea connected the unknown with the known (the symbol) and made communication and relationship possible. Helen Keller was born with that Idea. A world was born. In the Bible, we go right to that moment when the Word is God and God is the Word. 

The Word God is like the symbol Water in Helen Keller’s mind. There is this unknown nameless Being that I am, before there is distinction, and the Name of God, the Word burst upon my mind, and I realize that the name, a symbol, and this unknown being that I am in the darkness before the name is One, a metaphor that holds the known and the unknown. The Word that creates both me and god. 

But then in the accumulation of words, language, knowledge, culture, religion, we stake out territories with our words and believe that our words are God and yours aren’t. We have lost our original Word.

In this Bible quote I notice that In the beginning, I was the Word. In the beginning, was the word, but I read it, in the beginning, I was the Word. This is a shift from the Word being IT to the word being I AM. Both views are true but incompatible. So we need an IDEA that can hold both at the same time.

I believe we are in a Zen moment in American history, A satori moment, a wake-up moment: this is a spiritual crisis (is not everything) for the GOP mind is asleep, trapped in a mythos, delusional, and actually collective insanity. The center that holds this big tent up is the Office of the Presidency, and they cannot separate the man Trump from the Office. The history of Movement Conservatism since the 50s has been to create the GOP as the Party of America and God and true value. This has violated the Constitution by merging church and state. But the marriage has been secret from the “father Constitution” because it was not in formal religious institutions. The theocracy of a true marriage was held out as promises to the religious right, like “putting God back in schools.” 

The promised land was a manipulation of the religious aspirations of the fundamentalists. And so we have reached the breaking point where insanity is juxtaposed to sanity and the American people, who are basically sane as all humans are, can see through the Fallacy of the GOP. 

Like all religious tents, the more you attack it with reason, the stronger its faith in the tent gets. “I believe because it’s absurd.” 

So this impeachment is an impeachment of the Conservative American View that has been cultured as a reaction to the chaos of the liberal rebellion in the 60s. The Conservative Movement militarized by Gingrich under Clinton absorbed the Evangelical movement to give the movement passion and moral legitimacy. A mix of wealth and religious zeal, the army marched like Red Coats muring to the drum beat of talking points. 

It’s primary virtue and strength was the regimentation of thought under a World Idea that was a tent with two contradictory poles. If one comes down the whole world comes down. 

The two poles of the Conservative Tent are God and Nation, both under one rule, but the rule is contradictory. You cannot have a democracy and a state religion at the same time, for that is a theocracy. So how does it hold together.? 

The MC (Movement Conservatism) got is clue from Evangelicals. The Kingdom is Promised. You cannot live in the kIngdom as you right now, there is more work to be done before you are ready. So the kingdom of bringing God back into society, into the modern secular world from which God has been exiled, was a promise to be fulfilled only if the faithful were elected. 

And then came Trump. The Moral Principle that held up the big tent, that unified the contradictory powers of state and religion was given to a man with no principles, no morality. As long as the IDEA of a promised Kingdom of God on earth through political action was a promise, the Conservative Movement had standing. Politics was a battle of Good versus Evil. 

Trump, however, diverted this Power of Principle into his own coffers. Now the GOP are caught in a dilemma: their power depends upon faith and loyalty, but their leader of obviously corrupt. We witness day by day the destruction of their space ship, the USS Conservative. Piece by piece, day by day, we watch in glee and horror as the great space ship cracks, groans, and fragments.

We don’t know what America will be like when it’s gone because we have lived under its shadow (or light) for the last 50 years since Nixon. Once it’s gone, anything is possible. A brave new world. Our tomorrows will not be shaped by our yesterdays. 

What is real? What is unreal? What is Truth? That is what we are witnessing in a national Morality Play we call Impeachment. Two views of reality are juxtaposed on the split-screen. The play appeals to our basic sanity. Can we see Truth, can we see the real when both are juxtaposed to each other. There can be only One Truth, only One Real. That is the truth. If there were two real, two truths we would be schizophrenic. The impeachment of Trump is our opportunity to transcend our polarization that has grown to full-blown schizophrenia.

What we are trying to do, what the Democrats are trying to do is find a common ground of basic facts that the nation can agree upon, and then have different opinions about what to do, but there must be a basic agreement on basic facts of reality. Without that ground, there is no rational discourse, and no rational path forward.

The question before America is not whether Trump is a crook or not; the question is what’s real and what’s not real. And this confusion between the real and unreal has been building for the last 50 years, and it has created a gridlock of Truth. When we are stuck in the polarity of Truth, we oscillate back and forth cannot evolve to greater wholes or bigger truths that include the polarity. We stop being creative.

 

Our modern gridlock of Red/Blue has been foster by media’s principle of equal time, so it will split the news screen with two contradictory views of reality as if there were equal. For instance, putting evolution next to Creative Design as if both views are on the same objective empirical playing field. This is like putting fiction and non-fiction next to each other and saying they are equal. But forms have a truth, but they create schizophrenia when presented as have the same empirical reference. 

So today, like the famous monkey trials, two views of reality are on trial. Basically, the question is whether history is created by the Heroic Individual or by conditions? The President on the Right creates history, so he cannot be limited. On the Left, the president is limited by history, the law, and the constitution.

 

What is OM and what is an OM Doctor? Let’s look. An OM Doctor is someone who speaks his Word, and his Word is OM. OM is the source of human sound. All vocal sounds are included in OM, so Om is potential. All words come out of OM. OM is the source of the Word and you are the Word and the Word is you. Doesn’t this sound like the Bible? 

The ancient Hebrews saw the world and their history as the WORD. God was speaking them. God is speaking us. We are both speaking God’s Word and hearing it at the same time. But we are lost, we have lost OM when we lose our Word and we stutter with thoughts, thinking thoughts are our Word. Thinking your word is not Speaking your Word. 

Your word is original. Your Word is fearless, and your Word speaks you. You don’t know what you are going to say next when you speak your Word. Art is your Word. Love is. your Word. When you speak your Word your Word is speaking you. 

So the OM Doctor is someone who speaks his OM, his Word, and that Word is like a tuning fork. OM is a tuning fork sound that aligns you with your Word, the Word you have forgotten. The Word that you spoke when you were a child but lost when we learning to speak the word of the world. The word of the world has a stutter in it, a fear in it, a fear of what people will think about my Word. 

Posted is a picture of the OM Doctors who came to hear my word last night. I watch British TV and I love their expression: May I have a Word?

I suppose I’m coming out here. You got to witness it. I’m the OM Doctor. If you use my OM tongue depressor, your depression will cease. I really think we are all depressed to some degree in this world, this vague feeling that something is missing, something that would heal my soul. “Speak but the Word and my Soul will be healed.” I love this prayer, but we think God must speak my word.. No only you can speak your Word. Only you can heal your soul. That is the Buddha’s teaching, which is the Buddhadharma. 

There is no Word but yours. You are OM. You are potentially all words because you are at the center of the world, which is OM. But we live in a fragmented world that is like cicadas chirping in the summer. 

So I suddenly realized this morning that I am most alive, most at home, most real, most myself when I’m speaking my Word from my center, which I do here with you, either in my writing or in my Zen talks. 

Why am I at home here? I discover myself when I speak my Word. When I’m not speaking my Word, I’m speaking the word of my historical personality that is all mapped out, that performs its script, that is caught and swept along in the karma of the world, not as the center but as flotsam being carried along by the tsunami of time. 

But when you speak your Word, you are not being carried along in time, you ARE time. But you can use time to measure how long you speak your word.

 It’s time for the Om Doctors to visit, the medical students from MCV who come as part of their geriatrics class to study a geriatric. I give them tongue depressors with OM on it, and we have a great time. Succinctly put, an Om Doctor is a doctor who is both outside of the patient and is the patient at the same time. An Om Doctor is in empathy with the patient as him/herself and outside of the patient. 

Connecting this to geriatrics, how can you as you grow old and suffer sickness, old age and loss keep your mind fresh. How can you age and stay young at the same time? How can you see your old world as a new world while still living in the old world?

Or to flip to religious language, how can you have the Old Testament and the New Testament as the same book? We cannot stop getting old but we can stop getting old. If we identify with the objective view of the world as me being outside of the world, operating on the world as a doctor on the patient, then I suffer sickness, old age, and death. 

But if at the same time, I discover, I realize through and through that I am the world and the world is me, the You are the Center of the world while at the same time being outside of the world operating on it to make it better. When you are outside of the world we must try to make it better because something needs fixing. 

But when you are the world and the world is you, there is nothing to fix because you and the world are One, and there is nothing to fix. You and the world as OK because you are One. 

So there you have it. The Om Doctor is a doctor (you) who is both outside of the body (world) and is the body (world) at the same time. But the primary viewpoint is that of OM, of unity, and from that unity, the idea of how to fix the world (which is you) rises. 

Today’s Zen Fit asks the question: Can doctors fix sickness, old age, and death (loss)? Is there the cessation of OSD? Buddha said there is. But we know from experience that there is no cure for life. OSD is a fact and relief is always temporary. Yet, the Buddha says there is the end of it. What does that mean? We should be curious, don’t you think?

Whether we suffering from OSD depends upon our viewpoint, our way of being in the world. And it is also what we mean by suffering. Buddha called it Dukkha, or psychological pain of separation from the world, our own experience and a divided self, a wound that cannot heal.

Well, as an old person of 83 I do have a dog in this show. How do I stay fresh? How do I keep doing these Zen Fits every morning where I speak from the heart, from the spontaneous mind and share insights that I don’t even know what I’m going to say. What you see in these Zen Fits is real-time spontaneous talk. In Buddhism, these are called Dharma talks. In Christianity, if I were a Christin, it would be speaking in the Spirit.

I have discovered through years of seeking and practice that there are two viewpoints of reality, but only one is on our cultural map, so we are locked into a viewpoint of being outside of the world, myself, and life. We get a few breaks, miracles we call them, but they cannot be sustained. So life becomes just more trips to the doctor’s office, or therapist, or yoga class, to get fixed. We need an OM Doctor. We cannot get off the cross of OSD (old age, sickness, and loss) .