painful blessings by rob brezsny

[ken becker]

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.

[]

rob brezsny is a poet, writer, musician and astrologer,
not in that order, and can be found at
www.freewillastrology.com