Response to a question from a friend: 

  Hmmm, words. ‘Mysticism.’ ‘Spirituality.’ 

  What do we mean when we employ words like these? And if you or I are fairly clear on ‘our’ meaning does someone we might be talking to have the same definition and thus ‘hear’ the same thing? That’s all to wonder if our language is actually serving the purpose we think it does or are we deluding ourselves? 

  In my own little way that’s what I am getting at when I write below ‘Omphalos Cafe’ that ‘Life is ALL there is.’ That is, everything is a manifestation of Life, an expression. And that means EVERYTHING, good, bad or even murderously evil. All an expression of Life, distorted Life perhaps, thwarted, aborted. 

  Whatever… but ALL of it is Life!

  Therefore I refuse to get worked up over words as they often distract us from Life. Humans are strangely vulnerable to this condition. 

  Mysticism? Spirituality? We once long ago—and a few peoples here on planet earth still do—had a direct ceremonial, ritualistic, experiential participation in the Flow of Nature and Life. Odd individuals we could label as ‘shamanistic’ helped with this relationship. Today we live in cities, even when we live in the country, for our minds and our activities are governed and regulated by city rhythms. Thus, the direct experience and participation with Nature and hence Life has been lost. Plus the shaman have been largely eradicated. As a result we are lost and disoriented and seek out compensatory pseudo-connections such as ‘mysticisms’ and ‘spiritualities.’ They employ compelling poetic imagery in an effort to replace what has been lost. However, the reality is that this ‘compelling poetic imagery’ can be employed for other purposes besides compensatory efforts to connect us back to Nature’s Flow. Unfortunately for us, what’s worse is that in our citified ways the more we become disconnected from Nature the more we become vulnerable to misuse and misapplication of ‘compelling poetic imagery.’ 

  Now I don’t mean to sound negative here because I am not. I love Life and in my own tiny way work to promote it.

  But to my thinking the ‘safest route to bringing back love and the order of nature to our chaotic world’ is simplicity and a sort of forgetting of the ‘greater world’ and establishment of that simplicity and love on the smallest, most individual scale. 

  That is, for me, smilingly singing my song here at the Cafe but never ever preaching or attempting to change people in any way. 

  One Aummm at a time, so to speak…

  though I rarely if ever actually intone an Aummm except in writing..