Tuesday, February 5, 2013

vol.3:1 intro


Volume 3 Issue 1 –February 2013
                                                                             by Devan Duke




There’s been a robbery.
You gotta be careful.
Got this kid named Harold
Too ordinary to understand
Reality’s been stolen.
Push button
There he is
With his Gestapo.
His reality
From the moment you woke up,
His in soprano.

To cope with the Eternal’s thought and the transient’s will.
Large and ranging its people over engaging.
If there was any doors open
Bigger than the state
On peace and liberty.
If I go ugly after midnight.
There’s Jim with his hair.
We got his momma too.
I don’t excuse me.
Prior to man it
Matches the efficiency of who I am
With course for change.
Don’t take it personal.
The Chipmunk Press
Will you.
I’ve come all the way back to society.
You won’t find me today
Blocking the 13th amendment.

                                   Donny

vol.3:1 part 1

vol.3:1 part 2

aphorism by David Watson, drawing by Devan Duke

vol.3:1 part 3

                                                                          by Devan Duke
From First From Within
A column dedicated to exploring the role of dreams, voices, and visions in the integral yoga. 

by Douglas M.


I had a dream where I am laying in bed and this being that looked like a Predator from the Predator movies was leaning over me.  He has big thick dreadlock looking things coming from his head.  On one of them I can see the form of a small doll or figure molded into a dreadlock towards the tip.

     Then I woke up with the lower abdominal problems that I have so often in the mornings.  It’s a sort of mixture of cramping and nausea but anxiety is there too and my heart is pounding some.  I’ve had this problem to some extent for about as long as I can remember and I believe it’s largely a response to emerging from sleep as well as the dehydration and hunger that go along with that.  I imagine many people have this problem.  In my case however, it’s been exacerbated (sometimes severely) over the last couple of years because of chronic and disabling pain in multiple parts of my body that I have to deal with on a daily basis.  This brings feelings of anxiety and an understandable aversion to having to slog through another day of it.  I’ve gotten better with time at getting out of this funk, but it always takes some time for it to lift, and sometimes it can linger and color the entire day.  In general too I’ve found that I almost always wake up in this state if I had a hard time with depression and anxiety the day before.
     This creates a vicious cycle, and for most of the last two years I’ve been eating this amplified anxiety for breakfast, but I’ve had more success in dealing with it the last couple of months.  The majority of mornings the abdominal pain is mild and major anxiety isn’t present, just a general anxiousness and inertia but there are still days or spans of days where I have more problems.  I’ve mostly chalked this up to the ups and downs of anyone’s emotional life, but the dream reminded me of something obvious which is the role that hostile vital beings and forces are probably playing in all of this.  In the Predator movies the Predators are cruel and menacing creatures and dreadlocks suggest something (to me at least) of the vital plane and things like voodoo magic.  In addition, the doll-like figure in the dreadlock was similar to a voodoo doll in that it was kind of vague and featureless.  All that along with the fact that this being was leaning over me in bed before I woke up, and I was immediately clobbered with acute form of this bad state leads me to believe a hostile being did something to help bring it on.
     It seemed to me the reason I had this dream was to make me aware of the influence of this hostile being not only to know what was going on, but also so I would ask for protection against it.  So I tried and am still trying an experiment.  The following morning I got up around 5:30am to use the bathroom.  In general if I’m going to have a real problem it doesn’t hit until after the sun comes up, so I was feeling okay at this point.  Before going back to bed I stood in front of my altar for a moment and asked for protection from this hostile being.  Then I went back to sleep and was able to get up a few hours later without any big problems.  The next morning I woke up around the same time but didn’t have to urinate, so I sat up in bed a little bit and looked at my altar again asking for protection.  As with the previous morning, I woke up without any serious problems.  For four days in total I was doing pretty well.1  I had to deal with pain of course but my spirits and energy were up and I was productive.  There was also more conscious faith and trust in the Divine.  Then a couple of yucky feeling mornings came on the heels of dreams full of vital activities such as going to parties and having sex, but they weren’t too bad.  Things were more or less like that for a few more days, and then a bigger lapse came after I had this dream:

I am with Medhananda (a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) and there is a snake there as well.  Medhananda confidently grabs it by the back of the head, handling it.  It seems the snake is trained and harmless.  He allows the snake to gnaw on this woman’s finger, but it doesn’t sink it’s fangs into her.  The snake also gnaws on my finger but without sinking its fangs into me, and at this point (if I remember correctly) Medhananda no longer has a hold on the snake.  Then the snake lunges at my palm, and this time the fangs go into me.  At first I’m not afraid because I believe the snake has had its venom glands removed, but once the snake releases my hand I see a milky white substance coming out of the puncture wounds.  Medhananda grabs my hand and starts sucking and then spits out a mouthful of venom.

     Sri Aurobindo says in Letters on Yoga that “The serpent is a symbol of force, very often a hostile or evil force of the vital plane”2 and I believe that is the case here.  Let me describe what happened afterwards and I think you’ll agree this snake represented an attack designed to bring anxiety and depression and perhaps as well an attempt to make me physical ill.
     I woke up feeling gross and lethargic after this but what really started the downward spiral was when I checked my email and saw my boss wanted to meet with me in half-an-hour.  I rushed to get ready, which brought on a very nervous and agitated state.  Later it occurred to me to ask Medhananda or whatever he represented to suck out the venom, so to speak, as he had in my dream.  Things improved but the agitation stayed with me as background noise for the rest of the day.  The next morning I was more or less okay, but during our staff meeting Nancy (the office manager) was really coughing and hacking, and now I was feeling a cough trying to take root in my chest.  I was really afraid of getting sick because I figured the deflation of vital energy that would cause would really open the door to a nasty depression.  That fear however, ironically but predictably resulted in depression and anxiety getting the upper hand for the rest of the day.  The miracle though is that the chest cold wasn’t able to get in all the way and I actually woke up feeling fine the next morning.  Maybe that was a result of the helping force represented by Medhananda, but whatever the case, I was able to bounce back and have been more or less okay emotionally since.  Throughout all of this I have continued the practice of asking for protection both before going to bed and when I wake up in the early morning.
     So what’s the lesson here?  Well for me it’s the fact that there really seems to be no magic bullet for problems like this, and as long as I’m living with constant physical pain this amplified depression and anxiety is probably going to be knocking at the door.  It’s like walking a tightrope, and whatever balance I find is hard to maintain indefinitely.  Remembering to ask for protection is just another tool to try and stay on top of this problem along with things like exercising, drinking plenty of water, and trying to keep busy.  I guess the goal one wants to achieve is mastery, and I have to admit in clearer moments I can see the possibility of not getting sucked into this depression or any of the other emotional and vital reactions that come up in response to this pain, but at the same time the process seems interminable, the resistance a bottomless pit, and any balance one might achieve would seem to be easily toppled by a worsening of the situation or some new affliction.
     The truth is I have no definite answers.  I hope I do someday, but I don’t right now.  For months now though, when I go to the gym, I’ve been listening to Nolini Kanta Gupta reading the Words of Sri Aurobindo on my iPod.  I’ve noticed that as I listen to them over and over again certain points keep popping out at me.  To end this article I want to share one that has been helpful for me and I hope helpful for the reader as well.

The persistence of your own will to conquer with the Mother’s force supporting it will come to the end of the resistance.4

Notes
1.   There is one thing I want to bring up related to this.  After the Predator dream, as I lay in bed feeling lousy, I was able to put two and two together and my initial response was a feeling of hatred towards this hostile being.  My mind reminded me though that it’s just acting according to its nature and there’s really no sense in hating it.  That enabled me to drop the hatred.  Later on I was exercising and thinking about the dream some more and I recalled the lines from Savitri where the demons weep with joy at the prospect of their defeat 3 and I thought about how it’s just a suffering creature like me.  I thought this was worth mentioning because I think its possible that bit of compassion might have helped to further weaken its hold over me.
2.   Letters on Yoga by Sri Aurobindo pg 975
3.   And as he sang the demons wept with joy
Foreseeing the end of their long dreadful task
And the defeat for which they hoped in vain,
And glad release from their self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom they came.
Savitri by Sri Aurobindo pg 417
4.   Letters on Yoga by Sri Aurobindo pg 1436

vol.3:1 part 4



The remainder of the poem can be heard while you read it below. Use the player.
                                                              by Devan Duke

Have You Seen the World?
by Donny Duke


Sounds quarterly.
If you don’t
What’s the problem?
Seein’s believin’.
As he put paperwork.
Rank of service
Tailoring executive.
Show you somethin’:
Nobody’s perfect
Everywhere else.
Step in the elevator.
What’s this load of either?
Judgmental beating.
Well,
Whatever it is
Same place as brothers
All of us live together.
Cancel it
In every sheet of paper
The world uses for its equipment.
I’ve got another way Moses.
We ram in
New perspective.
Hey cowboy,
Not listening.
Look,
Is it trouble
We’re tryin’ to celebrate,
Or is it
What we’re tryin’ to do here:
(The line was stickin’ to the bottom of the cage.)
World works?
Now,
One idea.
That’s his soldier;
You’ve never read a poem like it.
Chances are
It’s very close to armies.

Why are you doing this?
And by now it’s patriotic.
Be polite.
Be political.
Who can show up?
The idea in the ring.
I was supposed tah
Become the forefront.
That’s not society’s viewpoint.
We’re stuck on national growth.
Take hold of an idea.
Policy land with it.
Get a great divided Earth.
Is it real Time said.
It would factor in Time,
But it’s not the lines that draw Earth.
It indoctrinates well.
Put it next to the I in raising children.
Don’t tread on me.
Raise your hand to the flag.
The world is focused here.
I’m slightly overdone.
Attached to the mailing list
That brings the Earth in view,
This is no vain caper.
A nation can economize the world.
Where does it see it at stake?
What does it hold has larger purpose,
Its life or the globe’s?
I’m a question for tomorrow’s newspaper.
Do we stand on Earth,
Or where a nation draws its lines?
Where would we be?
Come distance sing,
With a forward.
Define poetry.
Put me in regards to
Where on Earth a nation sits.

Definitely.
Can you bring that closer,
The world in view?
Our horizons would be the Earth.
Each and every national perspective submits that
To its building room.
One more question:
What is the loaded gun?
You taught me a little bit,
Nationalism.
That’s not a big deal.
The heart of a nation
(You see diamonds)
Is a sovereignty.
We need this to fix it right,
World sovereignty.
We’ll do a good job
(Listen to this.
He put the curves in there by himself)
Being a world
Expressing national interests.
Who else would do it?
A world government,
I don’t know how it opens
Losing options for more than one player.
An absolute control angle
As we sheriff.
But you’re not along with me to tell the truth.
This is in a bad place.
I know how we are.

The rest details about
Where they go,
The free nations
As a cooperative world.
M.O. please.
Where were you?
In holism I was there.
This is a national perspective.
This is how everybody sees the world.
That’s our identity out there please,
With Earth,
Everybody.
There’s one detail missing,
Everything else.
Bring good care.
Bring it back,
Our horizon hooked to this:
About thirty miles.
What’s happenin’?
This is called FFC,
Open listen.
What’s the national here?
Try to attitude a nation
And get up and start your world.
Can you pressure me I’m hurts?
I been doin’ all this movie.
We can format you wrong
In your movie.
This is not our castle right here,
Forcing you to be that thing we ask.
Something is born
From our empathy with you,
This close to your street walker.
In that field we raise your combination,
Supreme somethin’.
It’s a hope on a tiger?
Guys,
What are you talking about?
Kings told you my eyes.
They found her whole intestines
The storm valve.
Some answered love fixed it.
When we’re bigger more mature
You won’t filter this out lame.
We’re gonna be able to keep man outta here with so many warm clothes.
It’s just pressure on his stomach,
Some love angle.

Poetry searching site,
Lemmie see it.
There where just poetry expression
I’ve been additional comments.
Ask of the students:
Did you know the governor of Roosevelt died?
Need I quote Shakespeare?
Twelve acts of his plays,
All of his sonnets,
Just to chant some nice fillet on life.
Uncle everybody has a problem stating this.
Then it should be said more often.
Since I died,
Weather is an overkill.
It starts and it finishes,
Starts and it finishes.
It doesn’t start and finish enough.
Lemmie point your ice cream.
It’s never in a story.
Be where it’s happenin’,
What that story’s worth.
The dead speak of this often:
What there in life to get.
Have a word with you.
If he focuses his attention
Some questions
Come up.
What in the hell is going on here?
What’s that star about?
Who planned the Earth anyway?
Is there meaning?
He’s gonna throw himself around the room
Until he cuffs himself.
One technique.
The other is just to settle down rose.
Existence is about meaning.
If you plan this research at all
You go in for names,
Coveted schoolbooks.
Religion’s fine wares.
You can’t get past the scroll.
No Buddhist’ll tell you that.
Book trapped.
Reminds me,
Did you try anything different?
I’m asking you to be careful.
I’m asking you to be carefree.
You’d go to more books.
They help as a reference point.
It’s an inner journey
Toward your own goal.

Poetry please.
The wedding gift is on for tomorrow.
In fact stunning.
The deepest part of yourself
Answers the call for home.
There’ve been other things
Landed route along the way,
Distractions in gold cuffs.
A limit to zero was felt,
And you did not null out your infinity.
You carried it home.
Home is higher than house.
It’s the consummation of your experience.
Hey listen,
Home is not a business.
Go quietly within until you find your center.
Become that depth and you are home.
I visited a few times.
That’s why you hear this notebook.
It has to hide.
No journey no goal.
I’ve had other flights.
Home is the launch pad.
We bring life here,
A direction movement.

You were saying about Dharma?
If you’re that sticker.
What field Earth moves?
Make a policy decision:
You’re getting out of here.
The appointed staff
You missed.
Ask you right now,
The feelings,
Too much?
You have to get out of existence?
There’s a big reason book for people,
The big reason.
You kept murdering your wife.
That’s your inner speaker.
What are you crazy?
Hung it there:
The answer to existence is to leave existence.
The operation
He didn’t understand,
And that’s crown of thorns.
He’s in the hi amigo –
Kept Robertson
Abraham Lincoln
Rookie.
You’re a spot on the rest of his clothes.
You give him
The easy way out
And we’ve elected Robertson to the Legislature.
Charlie,
Don’t leave.
You don’t get it.
Got one way out:
Cease to exist.
Yah think?
Turn the television off please,
Turn the television off.
All I know is,
You man it boy.
Existence has larger room than escape.
There’s a golden page,
A master’s worth,
A king’s court.

I apologize.
Don’t worry about it.
Don’t want them rotten tomatoes.
You don’t want a little
That’s incredible?
You see good reason
Not to be judicial about this,
But could you do me the favor
And give this story an umbrella?
I can help.
I let my nose
Just stay out listed
A wrong directory.
Trouble compiled wrong.
What ah
Slow city measure.
I’ve knocked down a few airplanes.
A wire specialist,
Where was he?
I told you that.
Why should I look?
Holism, the thing is,
Has everything
Where you put your love.
For further information,
An event last night
Squared this home to me.
Love,
Feel love, or you don’t.
I read it,
But there was this stick in the program.
I had the hardest time with the wires.
(A poem is made of wire intensives.)
Love is not particular to regard.
How many times have I told you,
No matter what,
Love will outgrow it.
This is the book as it was read to me.
Ever since,
(Is it will or carrier?)
I’ve watched love come home the way I see the world.
A holistic viewpoint.
This is heavy.
It has the weight to stop wrong.
Are you mountain see?
Now let’s argue about wholeness’ window.
I’m just gonna tell yah,
Wholeness’ got a perspective list.
Cigarette?
No thanks I quit.
That’s not my perspective in life,
Give everybody smoke to breathe.
Stop your own horn.
On the outside
Gonna turn it down,
That finger pointing crusade.
It is not holistic vision.
Look for something like that,
As wholeness sees the world,
People in it,
(I’m putting a bill together)
Sit down in here:
The whole Earth.
I’m gonna play around.
Holistic vision
We’d center on you.
Come ‘ere,
Take your medicine.
Now who hurts?

Arrange the Earth your personal responsibility sum.
It’s the smell of roses at your door.
You still want a heart that’s free?
All you have to do is
Crave the beginnings for the very last,
Put everything in terms of
Something larger than life.
Bigger, you mean,
Than any life-sized object.
It’s almost impossible to get that idea across.
It’s just intense this.
You might wanna
Allow a vague definition to seep in.
Cool close the door.
I smell heaters.
You want to get by in your room
No emotional strife.
Confusion.
What kind of information?
The inside first page.
Have to get past its dark interior.
Some long journey for some.
Always voices that deceive,
Visions that gamble.
Always call for more awareness, 
Your whole reality,
Deeper parts of yourself.
Finally arrive at your room
Where the vision takes shape.
Know this for a beginning.
See if he wants to.
I wanna show you something.
There’s his see all rewards.
Is that the bright program,
Getting them in his hand?
Some say yes.
Others would hold off until
It was time for that package to arrive
In the natural movement of things.
Am I making any sense?
I’m a wayfarer’s map.
Read me as you arrive.
Now, come in here.
I’m unorthodox molding.
Wanted to.
Proud your nose.
I’m afraid this makes you level with all people.
Superior,
You don’t look that way.
This is where it gets dangerous.
You can light the world,
And there are people that want it dim.
You think I’m talking conspirators.
I’m sorry to say
The world is that way:
The world will shrink from light.
Like I didn’t know that.
You didn’t Samuel.
Move your cursor forward.
We arrive at your building,
Eight o’clock by the looks of it.
I’ll let the universe finish.
Maybe some room
For the larger than universe wear.
This is our extended see
Where we walk as the lighting of a star.
It’s there waitin’ for yah
Out past all known points.
A single glance here,
And see all this poetry?
That’s my football team,
The cheerleaders and the band.
Daddy this is your seating in the cushion.
I am ready
Open a can of milk buy.
You’re arranged for this.
Can you see the world from here?
It’s in my living room.
No matter what
I gave her evidence.
I gave her the key.
Dude, this is a world.

You are a lark land’s end,
Principle destruction.
We will mountain by.
Where did it come from?
Our reach to survive.
You’re the one before.
Continue.
Boy I agree that things have to move.
We won’t a world a regular outcome.
The
Love…
You buy garnish.
This is on the timeline.
We come higher by.
Where did yah get there her evolutionaries?
I didn’t go after the money formula.
I went for it dawn.
There came from man a higher type.
Did you know about this?
It is just our phase
To be a disaster.

Instructions,
General bill like growling and light.
I have a phone rapture for you.
Can you give me this code?
I’ve explained city ways.
It’s what the dead hear
To get them on up out of their movie.
This is individualized concern.
You don’t normally catch this.
Drunk out of thah
Most humiliating pipe,
I was just there to hear.
Land-based instructions,
Thanks but we don’t need to use.
That’s where you mess up.
You have no burning necessity.
Just because of
That’s what you’re into,
The social norm,
No one demands of you change.
We who are
By nature the undesirables,
Change grants us first,
If we can pull ourselves away from all our disease.
You’re hearin’ my calling card.
It’s a matter of survival.
Can self-righteous find that?
I doubt it would roll over.
It’d be nice
Lift your head up
For a moment out of your movie.
You in for where you’re to arrive?
That depends.
I’ve forgotten
What the moment’s here to get.
Hey look,
That will be a cable
To where that moment needs to take you.
That would be a moment up.
I’m takin’ this call.
Are you comin’?

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For the audio
Creative Commons License
For the text of the poem