webshells.com/nwuco Forum
webshells.com/nwuco Forum
| Author | Rob Brezsny |
| Date | 03/06/04/10:32 |
| Hit Count | 751 |
PAINFUL BLESSINGS by Rob Brezsny This is a perfect moment. It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking thumbsucking dumbclucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction. Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, We are waking up. Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings ooze, We are waking up. Their wars and tortures, their devils and borders, extinctions of species and brand new diseases, their spying and lying in the name of the father, sterilizing seeds and trademarking water, stealing our dreams and changing our names, their brilliant commercials, their endless rehearsals for the end of the world. Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, We are waking up. Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings ooze, We are waking up Their painful blessings are cracking open holes in the sour and puckered mass hallucination mistakenly called reality. News of the soul's true home is pouring in, infiltrating our increasingly lucid waking dreams. Wild ripe juicy eternity is flooding in. Our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in. We're waking up. And as Heaven and Earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, as paradise and the underworld overlap, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge -- you and I are in charge -- of making a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now. As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we can't let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy and resist and prevent their tragic magic; unleash our sacred rage and let them feel it. But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can't afford to be consumed with anger -- can't be obsessed and possessed with complaint. Our sweet animal bodies need to feel rowdy blessings. Our amazing imaginations need to thrive on missions that incite our delight. We need truths in their wild state, insurrectionary beauty that excites our curiosity, outrageous goodness that drives us to perform heroic acts of lusty compassion, ingenious love that endlessly transforms us, tricky freedom that is never permanent but must be reinvented and reclaimed every day, and a totally-serious-yet-always-laughing justice that schemes and dreams about how to diminish the suffering and increase the joy of every sentient being. So I'm radically curious, my fellow creators; I'm seriously delirious: Since we are in charge of making a brand New World, where do we begin? What truths in their wild state are we planning to plant at the heart of our creation? What stories will be our reminders? What questions will be our fuel? Here's one for you: In the New World you will know through and through that life is crazily in love with you -- life is wildly and innocently in love with you. In the New World, you will know beyond a doubt that thousands of secret helpers are angling to turn you into the gorgeous curiosity you were born to be. But then here's the loaded question. The love that life eternally floods you with has not exactly been unrequited, but there's room for you to be more demonstrative. If life is wildly and innocently in love with you, are you prepared to start loving life back the way it loves you? In the New World, you will. In the New World, you will reject paranoia with all of your smart heart. Instead, you will embrace Pronoia, Which is the opposite of paranoia. Pronoia is the sneaking suspicion that the whole living world is conspiring to shower you with rowdy blessings. Pronoia is the dawning perception that life is a conspiracy to liberate you from ignorance, and fill you with love, and make you brilliantly soulful. My fellow creators, I want you to know that I am allergic to dogma. I don't trust any idea that requires me to believe in it absolutely. There are very few things about which I am totally certain. But I am absolutely certain that Pronoia describes the way the world actually is. Pronoia is wetter than water, truer than the facts, and stronger than death. It smells like cedar smoke in spring rain, and if you close your eyes right now, you can feel it shimmering in your soft warm animal body like the aurora borealis. The sweet stuff that quenches all of your longing is not far away in some other time and place. It's right here and right now. Earth is crammed with heaven. |