Peace & Truth

CHAPTER 1: PETER PAN GOES UNKNOWINGLY IN SEARCH OF THE HOLY GRAIL AND HAPPENS UPON ATLAS!

Golly, gee, this place don’t look so good!” Our hero Peter noticed that the landscape was really parched, birds did not sing and there were only a few flowers, desperately trying to stand up, apparently exhausted by some great drought. At the crossroads there was a sign: “Camelot: Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here!” The Pan paused, as Pans sometimes do, and recollected how he had stumbled into this realm because of the malicious efforts of a wayward, wascawy wabbit, who had caught him, unawares, from behind. Pan recalled a long descent down the proverbial rabbit hole and hitting bottom. “I wonder what it was about that push that rendered me unable to fly?” he thought. “Oh, well, water over the bridge, or under the bridge, or in the well, unless you have a dry well!” It was not a very appetizing place, and Pan was certain, if he ever got out of this nether world, that he would never invite Wendy to experience the place, unless he could spruce it up and give it a fresh coat of paint. For now, though, he had to decide if he was going to proceed, but he figured he had no choice. “I may as well continue and assume this is a journey with heart and that grace or The Blue Fairy or some such kindly muse is assisting me along.“ Down the path he went, to a dilapidated castle, with a moat stinking of crocodile tears. “I can not imagine who lives here,” thought Peter, to which some far-off Chorus, in Shakespearian fashion responded: “It is the dwelling of King Arthur, you boob!” “Oh,” responded Pan; “Perhaps it is the dwelling of King Arthur, the great king of myth: you know, The Round Table and Guinevere and all that sort of stuff.” The drawbridge was, indeed, down, and in walked our hero, all curious, yet frustrated by his inability to fly hither and yon. He thought to himself, of course, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep (although he could not, for the life of him, remember who he had promised what to), and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep,” for no particular reason, except, maybe, he wished he was in a forest setting, as opposed to a castle in the middle of a barren wasteland!

Endless wandering! How so like life: not knowing where you are going or even why you are there. One room opens into another room, endless sometimes, it seems. Until … one day, you wander into a room and find a silent, solitary person, sitting on a throne, with a placard above the throne which reads: “I used to be a king … a real king!” That is where Peter Pan found King Arthur, the greatest king who ever ruled this or any land, looking very down indeed. “Can I get you a cool glass of water there, your highness?” asked Peter. The King shrugged a little, giving the idea that maybe he was agreeable to the idea, so Peter left the room, left the castle and went outside to find a little brook nearby that, although severely parched, still had a trickling flow of water from which a person might draw, if they only had a vessel to fill. Pan noticed a champagne glass, half buried in some nearby sand, carefully pulled it up, knocked off the dirt, cleaned it a bit and managed to fill it up halfway or so.

He took the champagne glass back to the king and noticed, as he drew closer to the room King Arthur was in, that the water began taking on the effervescence of sparkling wine. “How interesting is that,” noted Peter Pan, as he entered the King’s chamber and offered him a drink. The King was not too responsive, so Pan lifted the glass up to the royal lips and noticed a tear fall down his cheek. Peter did not know why, but he felt a little teary eyed at that moment too, as he poured some of the water into the king’s mouth. “Into the mouths of babes I shall pour refreshment; blessed art thou who would offer some cold water to any of these little ones or even to me.”

Well, it was, as you probably already guessed, a miracle! The King revived, rosy cheeks and all. As he seemed to become better and stronger, the land around the castle at first, and then his whole kingdom, began to bloom and glisten and sing and dance, and the townsfolk leaped with joy and all was right again in this world. After which, the King bestowed the Kingressional Medal of Honor upon our hero, and Pen went on his way, having been provided with provisions for a wonderful journey further into the unknown Void we call the Mind, or the Unconscious, sometimes encountering something extreme and, at other times, encountering some sparkling wine.

In the distance was a giant, seemingly deep in thought, but actually just really stressed, and Peter Pan, cavalier fellow that he was, approached with hardly a thought for his personal safety. “What could possibly go wrong?” thought Pan. To which the chorus echoed: “The world can be a fairly dangerous and perilous place, if you don’t watch it; you have got to be smart.” To which Peter replied, with an I.Q. of just a few points and an emotional quotient of next to zilch, “What me worry!” Yes, gentle reader, it was Atlas, the Great, the one who holds the world upon his shoulders. When he shrugs (apologies to Ayn Rand), the world quakes, and, when he weeps, the world suffers deluge. This guy is really “out there,” lemme tell you. Atlas looked at Peter Pan and said, “You look like a strong little fellow; could you hold this for me for just a while, while I stretch?” “Sure,” said Pan, “No problem; take as long as you need.” “I was hoping you’d say that,” replied Atlas, after setting the gosh darn entire world right on Peter’s little pandemic shoulders. “Pretty heavy,” said Peter; “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Atlas, as he left, taking giant strides and quickly disappearing into the sunset. Peter Pan just stood there, doing the best he could, and recalled a similar story, where Hercules had been tricked into holding the world by Atlas too. In that story, eventually Atlas comes back to chide Hercules, who asks Atlas to take the world back just for a moment, so he (Hercules) can also stretch. Atlas stupidly does it, and Hercules leaves him there, remarking: “It’s your job; you are suited to it … ENJOY YOUR WORK (advised by William Holden in The Bridge Over the River Kwai).” Pan could not, for the life of him, figure why he had not remembered that story earlier, before he took the burden of holding the world upon his own shoulders. However, after a fairly short period of time, our clever hero thought, “Hey, what difference does it really make whether I hold this thing up or not?” So he just set it down, just like that (Why didn’t Hercules think of that?) and continued on his way, hoping he would not have to meet Atlas ever again …because, in Pan’s mind, that was not a very nice man. However, after walking for a few minutes, Pan concluded that Atlas had probably done the best he could with the circumstances of his life, and that he probably had some emotional baggage that made him the way he was: something like, “If I love you, I am going to put the world on your shoulders, and, if you love me, you are going to put the world on my shoulders;” you know, stuff like that! So, how can you not forgive a big lunkhead like that anyway! After which, with so much forgiveness in his soul, a song in his heart and a breeze, gently wafting, against the side of his face, Pan felt relieved and very much lighter and, dare I say it, happier!

CHAPTER 2: PETER PAN MAKES FRIENDS WITH A MECHANICAL OWL AND, STILL LACKING IN HIS NORMAL FLYING PROWESSES, IS, NONE-THE-LESS, HAPPY TO ALSO MEET A FLYING HORSE!

“Little things can make a big difference, especially when they are really sincere” was the hexagram of the day, as our hero Monsieur Petros, the Pan, emerged from a glade where he had spent the night in undisturbed Zen meditation, having found just the perfect, most wonderful Bodhi tree you can imagine to sit under. “King Arthur’s inner child at work,” thought Peter; “projecting nicely to make things most pleasant!” “Life is really rockin’ now!” With a light step and that song in his heart we were talking about (Fly Me to the Moon, actually, sung in the style of Frank Sinatra, of course), our hero strode, perilously onward, into some Woods of Uncertainty, and found himself lost and alone again, which is the only way a paramahansa, or supreme wild gander, ever really enjoys proceeding into such woods! Why? Well, it’s His choice, of course; no sense in doing something easy, is there! His heart was gripped with a singular palpitation, but he just dismissed it as, perhaps, something he ate, like a bad piece of pork (see, Ebenezer Scrooge, when considering why Jacob Marley had come to visit). “Maybe red meat is not so good for me,” thought Peter. However, despite an eon of Hindu tradition, he dismissed such a notion as another limiting belief pattern, reasoning, for goodness sake, if you are stuck on a desert island and can get nothing to eat but salt pork and sugar, hadn’t you better be willing or able to eat pork, or else you’re a gonner, and isn’t a live scorpion better than a dead lion? “Oh, who cares what I think anyway,” figured Peter, yet he recalled that the Buddha is said to have given some excellent beef broth to a devotee to help her regain her strength, so consuming animal nourishment can’t be all bad, can it! “One should see God in the adaptation or see God in the changes or some such thing, shouldn’t one!” To which, gobs of imaginary fervent vegetarian/vegans rose on the horizon with concerted sentiment, declaring, “We hate you!”

“If you love me, you hate me,” and then … yes, and then .. . there arose such a clatter, he sprang from his trance state to see what was the matter! Peter, startled, noticed something flapping around the branches of a nearby sycamore tree, and knew in a moment, it must be … the mechanical owl you had to have noticed mentioned in the Chapter 2 description above, right? It was caught in nearby branches (aren’t we all), and Peter helped the little thing down, and it spoke to him telepathically to say that its name was Bubo, and it had no idea how it got here or where it was to go, and Peter immediately recognized that it must be filled with the Holy Spirit because who knows where that stuff goes or where it come from or even if it is stuff or something or someone! However, Peter Pan assured Bubo that everything was fine and was going to be all right, even though Peter had no idea about any validity of that statement, no idea how this gosh darn story was going to turn out, but had, long ago, concluded that no statement is ever absolutely true (or false), so, about the best you can do is to speak with apparent certainty, being as nothing really important can ever be fully expressed, and the best use of language is to try to make “the other” feel moderately comfortable about whatever reality you appear to have stumbled into, since, as everyone knows, it is very, very important to try and feel “comf’able!”

Anyway, the little bird, whose raiment was trembling feathers, as he exposed his soul to the world, was, somehow, single-mindedly bent on a mission: to find a friend, a flying horse named Pegasus, and the severed head of Marie Antoinette, and to go save a beautiful princess from a terrible monster. But Pan agreed only to, perhaps, if its wasn’t too much trouble, find the horse, so he might get some flying lessons and be on his way! “The princess,” Peter assured Bubo, “will be fine.” “She and her Kraken probably deserve each other, and Marie will be no better or worse for having lost her head.” As the Chorus concurred: “Women, like men, are seldom if ever not crazed and, therefore, lose their bloody heads all the time. It seems to be an occupational hazard of those with conscious body/minds to have no more control of their unconsciousnesses than a bee has control over its compulsion to go sip from flower blossoms in the spring time!”

Peter, the Pan, Bubo and Pegasus, for the three quickly came together, uniting upon a common Frodo Bagginsesque journey, had a wonderful evening meal, cooked by an emaciated chap, a macrobiotic chef named Gollum, who cooked up a radical kelp, lettuce and tomato sandwich, with copiously disgusting amounts of Vegenaise. With tummies full, our heroic trio rested by the side of some seemingly sinister road with a road sign “The Road Not Taken,” under which some smartypants had scribbled “A Path of Heart!” Go figure what is in the minds and hearts of people and what they will do for attention, especially moi (which can mean “me,” in French, but, also, in Finnish, and we are not finished yet, I don’t think, means both “hello” and “good-bye,” just like ciao and aloha … don’t think you’re gonna get outta here without being manipulated to learn something. You have to watch what you read; you might get it, or it might get you)!

CHAPTER 3: PILGRIM’S PROGRESS (OH, SURE! HOW CAN YOU EXPECT ANYTHING TO GET “BETTER?” NOTHING GETS BETTER; IT JUST GETS DIFFERENT! MAKE PEACE WITH IT, OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES! AARRRRGGGGG!)

“I love those guys!” Pan thought, pan-ting, because he was slightly out of breath, as he waved good-bye to his new found stalwart friends Bubo and Pegasus. “I really wish them the best and wish I had more friends like them!” Peter had so few real friends, or so he thought. He wasn’t even sure if Wendy was actually a friend, never having quite formulated an actual definition for the word “friend.” He wasn’t sure she might just be a smiling “enemy,” who just used him for her own devious ends! “If you love me, you’ll use me and leave me; if I love you, I’ll use you and leave you!” However, he still loved her so; yes, he loved that girl so. She had enchanted him the day they met and had married and divorced him (you can’t really have one without the other, can you) twice. He had blogged about how to respond to her if she ever threatened to leave him again. His response would be: “Well, OK. Go in the direction of your greatest happiness; if that eventually brings you back to me, you know how to get in touch with me, I hope, and I never wanted to part in the first place and I hope, if you change your mind and come back to me, that I will still be here to receive you – I’ll kill the fatted calf, and all that! Go with God. Live long and prosper. I hope I inspired you to make you a “better,” you, if that’s possible. I’m sorry; please forgive me; I love you; and thank-you. Amen! (Having said all that, I think I may go kill myself now, but, not to worry, because I think I remember your saying that you didn’t really care if I committed suicide or not, so … que sera sera!)” All this our hero had written in his “super secret,” not really, blog. Peter Pan also remembered that Wendy had tried to lie about her age. Of course, these things were fairly irrelevant to Pan, since he knew he was trapped in her sinewy web! Besides, he was at least twice her age, even though she often remarked that she felt so much older than he. Of course, she did not really know how old Pan was; he was older than dirt and twice as crusty!

As our ever incredulous hero Peter Pan approached a fellow traveler along the road, he was overjoyed to realize that it was, why should we be surprised, The Buddha! So, he quickly slayed Him (with The Buddha’s permission and blessing, of course, and, realizing our Story is only a mental construct, know that no actual Buddhas were harmed in any way in the making of this film) and continued on His way, fairly skimming the surface of the ground and making profound leaps skyward, as if He were walking on the moon! As he leaped up, further and further, in an effort to become fully buoyant, Pan uttered the magic phrase that would surely propel him into an out-of-body experience: “Clarity Now; Clarity Now,” which reminded Pan of a wonderful I-Ching site on the Internet, where he got some nifty hexagram information for free, “It’s a wonderful life, when you can go to free I-Ching sites and get accurate virtual coin flip readings with a few clicks of your trusty mouse and even get a print out of your hexagram results!”

The Buddhas’s words, right before The Buddha’s timely death, still rang in our heroes’ ears, “This isn’t It either!” Peter Pan was giving it His best to fully regain his flying prowesses, but He was still having a little trouble “failing to launch” properly, yet He felt profoundly certain that, if He really got lucid in this dream and really flew to the moon, so to speak, that He would be able to catapult His way back to conditional reality and into the arms of Beloved Wendy. Would she take Him back though, after all He had put her through? Would She deny His advances? Avoid His quivering lips? “Unfriend” Him from Facebook? or just plain divorce His sorry Self and send Him on his desperate way? “Only time and space will tell,” He thought. “Only The Shadow knows!” The Shadow Self may know, but will it ever uncover Its rich secrets? “Perhaps with enough therapy, meditation and ‘a little bit of blooming luck,’ “ thought Peter. “I must assume that Grace will help Me, yet, I do not want to tell Wendy about Grace; Wendy was a very jealous little girl.”

When you’re wrapped within a flower and it’s where you want to be, The lips of your condition, whisper, “Mon Cheri.” Yet brush of breath caresses, touching petals still, And inception, very gentle, awakens every will. Yet, what sadness pain will offer? Who can really say? But, our process, born of seeking, it is the sacred way. When suffering meets the lotus, with a joyful song, Then, nothing’s lost and nothing’s gained, and things just get along.

“I’m flying; I’m flying!” proclaimed Peter Pan! “Not too near the sun, Son. You may singe your hair, and Wendy does not like you so much with short hair.” So Peter flied around at moderate elevations, seeking for some way to re-emerge into Duality. Sometimes, the Way of the Heart takes you into the stratosphere, but, remember, just because you are flying around does not mean you have veered off the Path; however, do not imagine that, just because you are flying, that you have attained any great or lasting discernment. Siddhi powers are just that and should not be confused with actual Realization, OK? So fly, little Pan, but do not become too “puffed up” in your accomplishments, for, what goes up, comes down, at least conditionally, and really, Up is Down and Down is Up, even in the Void (or is it)! ‘Cause, remember, “The Void’s not It either!” Only It avoids the pitfalls of the Void, so, until you don’t get there, black is still white and white is black, until they’re not. Avoid being too attached to The Void. Nonduality is just around the corner, Jack! And notice that It did not say, “One-ness is just around the corner, OK?”

Peter Pan awoke from a dream, still stuck in King Arthur’s pleasant realm, which, although it was a nice place to visit, was not particularly a place he really wanted to live. However, he had experienced a nice flying dream, although it was not quite lucid, which saddened him a bit. A Sad Pan is not the most pleasant thing in the world, but, remember, The Dark Night of the Soul is a great refining tool, that must burn away the dross because dross can be gross, and the process of “stripping away” (Hexagram 23) can be both painful and terrifying, unless you can really relax and enjoy the proverbial roller coaster ride! “No one ever believes it’s really gonna be a killer roller coaster ride!” However, some people really apparently love roller coaster rides; of course, some people are masochistic and love burning themselves with cigarettes too. However, our hero is most probably not one of those (although he does choose a lot of suffering, it seems)! So, do not lose heart, Gentle Reader. Keep your Heart, and we shall continue on the Path of Heart with faith and hopeful expectations.

CHAPTER 4: IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME; OR WHERE’S WENDY; OR FLY ME TO THE MOON; OR RELAX AND SMELL THE ROSE(S); OR WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

“Golly, gee, life is a mystery,” thought Peter Pan, as he finished his breakfast of cornbread and coffee. “Maya is certainly a delightful spectacle though.” Yet, as Richard “Rose” said, shortly before passing away “from” Alzheimer’s Disease, “There’s nobody here, is there!” However, suddenly, a woodland creature stirred in the distance anyway.

It was a red deer, a five year old stag, that snorted in the fresh morning air and alerted Pan to the fact that Peter was, indeed, as He always was and always would be, still on the Path of H(e)art.

Peter took His rucksack and continued on, ever on, remembering the words of Gandalf, the Grey, who said, “All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given us!”

Peter Pan approached a village and noticed a sign which said, “Seek Ye the advice of the Oracle: Readings only 3 cents.” Our hero reached into His pocket and withdrew the coins upon which He used to so faithfully cast His I-Ching hexagrams, and decided maybe it was time to trade them in!

He approached an old crone’s tent and, as He cast the coins into the “Donations” basket outside, The Chorus stirred: “Beware, Pan, advice is never entirely accurate; trust your intuition; follow your Heart in the direction of Your greatest Happiness; and, for goodness’ sake, remember that cookies, even on the Internet, can be tricky!”

Peter spied a matronly black woman, with a mischievous smile, who was just “pleased as punch” that He had arrived. She looked up from her baking and said, “You must be The One I was expecting!” “Well, I don’t know about that!” “Well, just be careful … if You are The One, that’s all fine and dandy, but, if You want to be the one, watch it, for you may end up being the many!”

With that cryptic admonition, Pan was struck with the feeling that this crafty old dowager was, indeed, extremely tricky, mixing some apparent truth with some apparent falsehoods. However, none of it was going to ultimately be entirely true, since there is no absolute truth in a conditional setting. So, with that thought placed firmly before his Third Eye, Peter, our reluctant hero, took a seat, respectfully declined the cookie He was then offered by the crone, and asked about His chances of ever returning to or “saving” His beloved Wendy.

“Mmmmm. lemme see,” the dowager said, as she tapped her wooden leg. Yes, Gentle Readers, also a tapper! “I think you should know that you have two choices here: You can either save Wendy or save everybody else; the choices are mutually exclusive!”

Suddenly, our hero was struck with a revelation: “Ouch,” he said, “that hurt.” With the wisdom that comes from someone who has watched “The Matrix” trilogy, like, a zillion times, Peter Pan rose and thought of the old Jewish saying that suggested, if he could just save Wendy, he would save “the world entire.” He thanked the Oracle, left her tent and proceeded in the direction of some apparent means to get Wendy back.

He passed an oriental bazaar, with a rainbow of divine light stretched above it and concluded that he need not focus on making himself better or more “pure” to accomplish his goal. “The more pure I become, correspondingly, the more impure I must also become; thus, it is not about becoming either.”

After a while he also came upon a group that appeared to be focused on trying to be happy by clearing and cleaning their thoughts. A man in the front had a great megaphone and was promising “the moon,” while laughing and joking: “Happiness is yours. Come one; come all. Change yourself, and change the world into a much happier place.”

Now, Peter thought that last sentiment had merit, as he had personally witnessed the transformation of King Arthur’s kingdom via the Holy Grail’s transforming effects on the King’s “inner landscape,” which gave rise to the healing of his outer landscape.

Thing was, it seemed to Peter, if you devote yourself totally to one “healing modality,” to the exclusion of others, that restrictive belief could force you into just doing that one thing “for as long as it takes,” which could be forever, and might not be much fun after a while!”

So, Peter stood a while and realized that these paths were oft taken, but, that following a path of heartfelt, intuitive reckoning, at least, it sounded more fun and was more likely “just as fair, and, had, perhaps, the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear.”

So, Peter was struck with the barker’s insistence that he was “an expert” and only wanted everybody’s happiness and well-being. “In fact,” Pan thought, he may have convinced himself of the truth of his convictions, and, for him, that is his truth. “Everyone, I guess, really needs to choose for themselves though,” he figured.

But there are some really troubling questions here, perhaps, and, with that, the man may lead both himself and his followers into “a pit of limited perception!”

“Of course,” thought Peter Pan; “it is so obvious … it was always there, right in front of me: Do what he suggests, not what he does!” HOWEVER, WHAT MORE CAN ANYONE DO, BUT USE WHAT SEEMS AVAILABLE, BELIEVE WHAT YOU WILL, AND HOLD ON TO WHAT GIVES YOU A LITTLE COMFORT, WHILE YOU ARE WAITING TO WAKE UP?

The man’s name was “Legion,” and he was obviously a high-level matrix agent. Of course, we all take that ‘guise from time to time, and, it was clear that, for what is was worth and whatever it meant, this agent secretly craved and wanted to be “The One.”

As Peter recalled the words of The Oracle, it became clear why a desire to be “the one” might lead “one” to actually become “Mani,” promoting a rigid belief system of the eternal struggle of good and evil!

“Sad, sad,” thought Peter, yet he took some of what he heard there with a grain of salt, by “seeing a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.” Peter proceeded on his way.

As he went, Peter Pan continued with his “walking meditation,” step by step, line upon line. Shortly, he came upon a clearing and spied his friends Bubo and Pegasus. “You have reached us,” they declared in unison. “We are so happy!” “Come fly with us, let’s fly, let’s fly away. If you could use some exotic booze, there’s a bar in far Bombay!”

Thus prompted, Pan leaped on Pegasus’ back and did fly away, with his Bubo, who was actually a divine incarnation of wisdom, and Pegasus, flying towards Heaven and away from Heaven, all at the same time!

Higher and higher they ascended, seemingly transcending thoughts and actions and all sorts of things, until, suddenly, great demons appeared, declaring: “Who goes there?; we are the First and the Last; the Beginning and the End; Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum; and Nobody passes here except they face our massive awesomeness and can subdue us!”

Pan was knocked from his mount and plummeted downward, in an apparent Icarus descent of unparalleled proportions; decidedly and irrevocably doomed for destruction.

Yet, in that moment, a tiny grain of hope or joy or non-judgment became evident, surely,a grain existing beyond time and space and from beyond the moment of the creation of the Universe, having emerged from Pandora’s Box, always and forever and never more. It hit Peter Pan smartly between the eyes. (He needs all the “smarts” he can get, don’t ya know?)

Thus was delivered the revelation: “You are the morning star; you are the Pegasus,with wings of gold; you are all-encompassing wisdom; you are King Arthur and his kingdom; you are everything and nothing; and, very importantly, you placed those guardians at the gates of The Kingdom of Heaven and/or Hell.”

FIND SOME ENJOYMENT IN LIFE, FOR GOODNESS SAKE! WITHOUT THAT, WHAT IS THE VALUE OF THIS EXPERIENCE? LET OTHERS DO AS THEY WISH, IF THEY HAVE FOUND ENJOYMENT IN WHAT THEY DO, AND JUST WISH THEM THE BEST. YOUR JOB IS JUST TO FIND SOME JOY AND DO THE BEST YOU CAN!

Peter Pan regained his equilibrium, his equanimity, which he had never really lost and never really had, or had all along, and stopped his apparently perilous course, seemingly traversing the cosmos with a mighty lion’s roar and the persistence of an awesome albatross, dispensing with false modesty, declaring himself “the Universe,” rather than being its victim, and making friends of the Guardians. He burst into a still, soft realm that smelled of his lady love, the fair Wendy.

“Where is she?” he pondered in his heart. Suddenly, he realized she was in his heart, and, as he “turned inward,” he found himself, of all places, on the Moon!

“Well, this is indeed apropos,” he thought. “where else might I suppose to find Wendy, but on the moon, for I always did think of her as my perfect moon maiden!” And, yes, gentle readers, close by, lay his Beloved.

The beloved maiden Wendy was there, pristine, gently in slumber, transfixed in time and space, and with a wry smile on her face, in the style of Carl Jung, who was described by Alan Watts as having “a mischievous little smile that gave you the idea, here was really a genuine, sincere human being.”

There upon her forehead was written: “Wendy, the Pan, your shadow self, you big dummy!”

Peter, after lovingly, very lovingly acknowledging that she was his very own deceptive little witchy muse, gently kissed her regal lips, and she arose (a rose as beautiful as any, however you might name her).

Boy, oh boy, did she ever smell good! Thus, Peter and Wendy became “as one;” the anima and animus fused; the angels sang; and, cried and died.

Visions emerged upon emerald cities of emerald … and went, and everybody and no one went “to the garden in Spring, where there is wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate blossoms.”

Thus, gentle reader, it is just what it is, and now may you all find peace and joy and equanimity, or whatever you think you’re looking for; or whatever comes your way.

May it be so, as it always has been, always will be, and never was, and, “Just remember,” echoes the Chorus, “this was never meant to make sense in the first place and has been written down by what is obviously a dualistic rapscallion, who just wishes Grace might reach up and knock some sense into him before he passes away.

If, in the next moment, if I just faint, dead away, I hope you will understand and forgive me for a life that certainly appears to have been largely misspent. “You are your own master; be a light unto yourself.” (J. Krishnamurti). It is Finnish-ed, or is It!

P.S.: Two short, seemingly original poems, about non-duality or duality or both

I met her in a flower, before the cup did bloom, So, we were pressed together, inside our little room, The flower smelled like lotus, and she of cherry wine, We knew that, in a moment, upon our love, we’d dine. She whispered that she loved me and nibbled on my ear, When you’re wrapped inside a lotus, there’s nothing that you fear.

When you’re wrapped within a flower and it’s where you want to be, The lips of your condition, whisper, “Mon Cheri.” Yet brush of breath caresses, touching petals still, And inception, very gentle, awakens every will. Yet, what sadness pain will offer? Who can really say? But, our process, born of seeking, it is the sacred way. When suffering meets the lotus, with a joyful song, Then, nothing’s lost and nothing’s gained, and things just get along.