Month: July 2019

A Note to the Person who Said It’s not a Big Deal to be Told to Go Back Where you Came From.

~ Koyote the Blind ~ 3 Comments

People like me are told those hateful words all the time. They are meant to make you feel less, and to get others to bully you. They are meant to make feel out of place, like your contribution doesn’t count, and like you will never be welcome in your own land.

It is a racist move precisely because of that intent. Yes, we all learn to live with it, to ignore it, and to continue being decent human beings.

Nonetheless, it hurts.

It hurts to see it being done to your children and the people you love. It’s easy for you to say “so what? Get over it. It’s not a big deal”

Ah! The callousness of the privileged! How well you mask your racism under a pretense of emotional equanimity! Those of us who have experienced over and over, however, can see the truth behind your pretend wisdom. You are not above the fray. You are the instigator.

Sharing my Inner Space/ 32 years of Art (a book review)

~ Koyote the Blind ~ Leave a comment

I have read Martivón Galindo’s Sharing My Inner Space, and I realize now that with every painting and every poem she has been marking a special space in the journey that so many of us undertook back in the 80’s, when the Salvadoran diaspora uprooted us from the place where we wanted to live, love, die, and create. We left because we had to, away from decades of war and oppression, and everywhere we went we kept looking hard inside the most recondite corners of the heart for that something we brought with us, to make a life and create art, and to find ourselves even in places that forever made us feel strangers.

In this book, Martivón gifts us with a tremendous experience through the use of poetry, print, and painting. It is a powerful storm that penetrates your consciousness under the command of an accomplished artist who has dived into the depths of her soul, and confronting the turbulent history of war, exile, emerges in ultimate triumph a master of her perceptions. She takes us through her encounter with exile, an event that shaped an entire generation of Salvadorans, but she does more than make us look at the world, she takes us with her as the seed of her soul emerges from that encounter triumphant, and continues to create and define her artistic world.

Martivón is not content with showing us her skill and creativity. She shares with us that most intimate process of her genius: the process she has gone through as she discovers her true self. We witness this discovery when she manages to put in word and image the creative powers of a soul that is always seeking justice and always burning bright with the wild fire of truth.

Porque lo invisible es el misterio
encerrado en la lágrima de una estrella
Ayer como hace treinta años
busco lo que no está
para encontrar mi luz
mi propia sombra
en el invisible gran universo de lo posible––Martivon (pg. 160)

Every great artist has an inner process through which her silent, intimate center faces the vast expanse of the unknown, and every one of them produce art that touches in us that most intimate abode. Their art awakens somehow our own truth. Martivón’s art does that for us, of course, but she takes a step further. Sharing My Inner Space is a living document showing that invisible inner process through which her genius emerges.

Witnessing this book is a most enjoyable experience. I promise you, the core of your perception will be touched by it, and you will find yourself on a journey through your own inner space. I recommend this book unreservedly.

Watch Discussion of Chapter One of The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor.

~ Koyote the Blind ~ Leave a comment

This is the first class based on The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor.

We discuss chapter 1: Something Was Changed. We discuss the role of the esoteric school, the temple prostitutes, ancient history, and the formation of the architecture of the mind that is being prepared to receive the transformational effect of the Teachings. Also, the role of sexual alchemy and the inner circle of humanity are covered.

Click on the link below to watch this class. A new chapter will be covered each Thursday at 7:30 p.m. PST (starting on 7/18/2019).

You can attend any class live. There is no charge for the course, but donations are welcome and will be given to Xicoco Shamanic Arts. The proceeds from this class will help Xicoco maintain the Medicine Wheel and keep its operations going.

https://youtu.be/ADQ_jknwxm4

The Stirring of my Beloved

~ Koyote the Blind ~ Leave a comment

The undifferentiated silence becomes distinct by the introduction of sound and movement. Having forgotten infinite lifetimes, this new appearance of appearance, grabs the attention.

I begin to forget the eternal emptiness. I hear the laughter. I feel the love of the mother. I touch with my tiny hands, and the touch is joyous in the extreme. I experience searing pain and suffering, and the suffering is like fire innundating all my senses. I laugh. I hope. I experience. I become.

In the becoming I transform myself. I create many me’s from expectation, arrogance, and hopefulness. I create the illusion of suffering. I create the illusion of the importance of my life. I create even the fiction of a spiritual path––the reading of the books, the listening to the teachers. I create an expectation of liberation. I create the fiction of salvation. I create aspirations. And in the creation of aspirations I immerse myself more and more in the illusion that what happens to me is somehow of any importance whatsoever.

And so on I continue with the chain,
the unending chain of life,
enlightenment,
and nothingness.

Nothing is permanent.
Not even the experience of the empty
voidness of the void.
Life runs out.
Death runs out.
Ignorance runs out when I realize
the eternal truth of the eternal empty void.

And the experience of enlightenment
and the dissolution of illusion
also ends with the forgetting of the illusion.
It ends with the stirring of experience.
Unending chain.
A cosmic breath between creation and dissolution.
The long night of Brahma.
The eternal dance of the empty void and her beloved, her lover,
the stirring of the experience.

The Rage of Fascism is the Whisper of a Dying World.

~ Koyote the Blind ~ 1 Comment

Don’t be afraid of the rise of fascism. Bring stability into your heart. Know the truth for yourself. Look around and see how many people actually are moving away from bigotry and racism. See how many or us are really, really thirsty for justice and equality. 

How many of us truly can see in each others eyes and see something divine? If you are one of us, know we are going to be okay. The way we conceive the world is how we are shaping it. We are dreaming the new world together. 

They have loud voices, and they want you to panic. They are giving a message of fear, so they make it seem like a loud roar, but that’s all there is. Here, in your heart, know that death is all around us and that that is no reason to panic. We still have this life, and in this life we get to create, write, speak, etch, mold and share a moment with one another, and we get to practice the truth that is in the heart, no matter what the patriots and the fanatics and the fearful say. They will not win. 

So, welcome the foreigner into your home. Welcome your brother and sister. Open your heart to all manners of religious expressions, to all manner of sexual identity. Open your heart to humanity. The hatred is waning. 

There is still work to do, but we have to go through this moment. It’s not that the world is getting worse. We are simply getting to the limits of what we can tolerate. We are seeing the forces we won’t tolerate trying to go back to the “glories” of racist policies, to the “great times” of segregation and the Middle Ages. understand that they are freaking out. The world as they thought it was is shaking. Their world feels unstable and they are panicking. This is why they are acting the way they are acting. Their world is dying. 

After all the wars and all the oppression and all the racism, we who have been alive in this continent for the past 500 years, know that we are awakening and we see the new world. We have seen it. Now remain calm––steady. Let them scream and rage. Their rage is the dying whisper of the old world. We are bringing the new. Keep your heart steady and loving. When you see the door, it is with that calm efficiency that we will walk through it.

Do You Want to Attend a Class on The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor?

~ Koyote the Blind ~ 1 Comment

Would you be interested in a class based on The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor?

Beginning this Thursday, July 18th, 2019, I will be conducting a weekly class based on the teachings of this book. We will cover a chapter per week. You will have to read the chapter before class, or listen to it.

You can get the book on Amazon or through my store. It is available on paperback and kindle, and soon it will also be available as an audiobook.

This Thursday, we will talk about Chapter 1: Something Was Changed.

Again, you can attend in person if you live near Moreno Valley, or online. The class will start at 7:30 pm PST each Thursday. We will be broadcasting live in the usual channels:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/koyotetheblind

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/koyotetheblind

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/koyotetheblind

There is no set price for the class, but a donation would be very much appreciated and donated to Xicoco Shamanic Arts. Pay what you feel the class is worth, but do come in even if you cannot give anything. Your presence and attention is all the coin I truly require.

You can purchase the book on Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/koyote

See you then!

 

A View from a Gnostic Scholar… pt 4

~ Koyote the Blind ~ 1 Comment

Part of what makes it a treat for me to read Paul Rovelli’s analysis of The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor is not only the scholarly background he brings to everything he writes, but also that he conveys the journey taken with the book at a very personal level. Paul is not only an author and leader of a gnostic movement, he also is a teacher in the A.’.A.’. and the Western Mystery tradition. It is interesting for me, therefore, to see him uncover nuances of my book the way a connoisseur unveils the nuances of wine or high cuisine.

Here is his latest entry about the book:

“Yesterday, I read the first of the next three chapters in continuance of my review of “The Teachings of a Toltec Survivor.” I’ll get to the second during the Yankee game this afternoon. Koyote, did you know the Three Stooges used perfect Jersey accents in their comedy? I’m born and raised there and loved the title of this chapter: “I’m a Victime of Soicumstance.” Indeed, Englewood, NJ was the original Hollywood and many of the silent screen stars owned properties in Englewood Cliffs all the years I was growing up.

But outside my review, I came across something in yesterday’s reading that I found truly profound and thought-provoking. I have been ruminating over the state of death for many years and especially after watching and facilitating my father’s death in hospice about eight years ago. I saw clearly at that time, my father’s essence move inwards, which highlighted for me the importance of understanding the dream state that we all experience and even that animals experience.

To quote the Koyote in the book: “In the afterlife, when the machine has been disconnected, what you become is the voyager. You go from dream to dream for a while, all residuals of your trip through organic existence, but you no longer have the bufer of the machine to shield you.” This connects the book with Koyote’s “Golden Flower,” where he explains that we are always in the dream. The difference here is the added explanation of the buffer of the body, also called the machine; the brain being a part of the machine.

The bringing of elements of the essence in to replace elements of the personality is as brilliant an explanation as I’ve ever heard of the nature of spiritual work and particularly the work of the Major Adept in the Western Mystery Tradition. It is always sad to watch those that use the evocations of this Grade to pursue their own prurient ends, as they make a great miss. Thanks Koyote for the clarity of mind that you bring to the world and to me personally. I am through this book, in receipt of the Aka Dua!”

You can purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RMK9D4C/

A Whisper of Silence, this Self.

~ Koyote the Blind ~ 1 Comment

I do not have a name for myself. I simply exist without tag or form, moving without comparing any one moment with any other moment.

There is just a presence in the liquid movement all around, the flowing of the fields of light, the forgetting the words and their meanings. There is just the peaceful communion with the reality that extinguishes all illusions.

Abiding in this state I forget that there was such a thing as the world. I forget the mere possibility of existence, of sound, of light, of movement, of time. I forget, living in this eternal space, that there is a word for that space. I forget the opposite of what is. I forget the distinction between self and it.

In that forgetfulness, a slight vibration surprisingly comes. It happened, and it went. I almost missed it, almost feel that it did not happen at all. Maybe it did not happen. Maybe that slight stirring comes only from within to put a tiny mark on the perfection of that infinite silence. Maybe it’s just a habit that I have accumulated over countless dreams of existence––a slight distortion of the darkness.

It comes. It goes. It’s a whisper of silence.

In this Emptiness I Forget

~ Koyote the Blind ~ Leave a comment

I let go, slowly but surely, all ideas of God, of eternal peace, of definitive knowledge. I let go of the idea that this person will love me forever. I let go of my name. I let go of my title. I let go of the ideas that I held on to. The more I see the emptiness––the expansive presence of the ocean covering and holding the light of every star––the bigger this nothingness becomes, and the more I fail to grasp on the stream of self-important thoughts.

Ordinary life, then, becomes the dream that vanishes upon the awakening of the soul. It no longer matters what happens to me in this life, in my previous life, and in all the chains of incarnations. I am no longer concerned with what will happen to me today, tomorrow, next year, after rebirth, after that life, in other incarnations. That stream of movement and happenings, I know it to be nothing but the subtle vibrations of a mind that moves, of a life that stirs, of the fire of existence.

In this emptiness I forget myself. In this emptiness, the entire drama of existence becomes as nothing but the flickering lights, the little shadows that come across the eyes when sleeping. It no longer becomes important, that life. There no longer seems to be a difference between being human or animal, rock, tree. It no longer seems different to be word or breath, to be flower or bee. I can no longer put my finger on the difference between being mountain or poem, between being the fluttering butterfly in the heart of a young girl or being the industrious burrowing of an anthill.

There is no longer an important difference between the radiant light flowing from the heart of the sun and the lightning strike flowing through a path of emptiness, emanating, spreading light and death. There is no longer any difference between any one thing and any other thing.

I abide in this state of not being; at union with the eternal presence; at-one-ment through the floating, deeply refreshing sensation of being a simple center in the womb of the mother; growing in eternal peace and sleep. I revel in this sweet dissolution in the forgetfulness of life and death.

 

 

Raindrops on the Old Rooftop

~ Koyote the Blind ~ Leave a comment

I hear the empty spaces in between the words,
like empty spaces between cars of a moving train,
like the sound of rain that falls
on the rooftop of my grandmother’s house.
It falls.

I hear.
Drops of rain carry no meaning;
a drop no more important than any other drop.

I hear my thoughts.
They come and go.
River of movement, river of life.
I do not grab one to follow.
No importance to it all.

All concerns about this body,
of karmic debt, of life before,
are no more.

They grab nothing.
They move and carry nothing.
They appear and nothing contain.

I live, I go;
and when in between thoughts, I die.
And nothing stays.