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Mar 2021 · 1.7k
Addicted
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
What can I say that I've broken the Baha'i Fast so that I won't be overly anxious on a busy day at the restaurant?
Using my arms and back to wash dishes.
Tactile placement of the feet around co-workers.
Remembering every detail needed for deliveries.
Baha'u'llah has exempted heavy labor from the Fast.
I couldn't do my work without constant water and a store of calories.
But what of smoking on work days?
What would God think?
The fact that I'm overly anxious at work without them has made me know how addicted I am.
So anxious as to question whether I should quit work.
"Don't do that to me again," my body tells itself, "last night was too much anxiety to simply be without smokes."
I suppose my soul will go to a tier of the afterlife where people are addicted to cigarettes.
Poor me
Mar 2021 · 187
Thank you
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
The object of meditation is to attain a why-less insightful personality.
Like everything is "its own cause".
Life has become disenchanting by the common awareness of my real familiarity with it.
My thinking of "what is the need of this or that" is truly a mark of low intelligence, or a common sign of age.
Thanks to "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality"
Mar 2021 · 465
Busy work
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
I found how infrequently some points or lines could align with a hyperplane.
It sounds way harder than it was, probably because I used to not know the succession of steps to learn about R^n and the hyperplane.
They are easy to grasp but it used to not be as easy as 1,2,3.
But it really is a simple plane in n-1 dimensions of R^n.
Yet when I first encountered the word some years ago, it was quite mesmerizing.
I think math will always be mesmerizing except if I've encountered it in pedagogy.
With this understanding, I know that all math is stepwise succession within its branch.
But somehow this leaves things undone, probably because I can't cheat true and tried pedagogy.
That's what I really want to do.
Autodidactic
Mar 2021 · 678
Walmart
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
I lay here and stare at the stitching in my new hat made in Bangladesh.
There are few other things I know about this country.
I imagine the sewing machines and brown fingers and faces working to get by.
Some, I imagine, with mopeds.
I imagine the teams of fabric.
The spools of thread.
Sewing on a tag that they may not be able to read.
Amongst the tropic-like weather.
Annual income less than what I make in a month.
That's about what my paper route paid: $600/year.
Reflections
Mar 2021 · 551
One World and fasting
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Not eating, drinking, or smoking for the Will of God.
These mortal morsles seem so significant now - energy to do things.
Dry, sticky mouth.
Slight ache in the belly.
Unfulfilled desire of the lungs.
It seems my reflection is dependent on these and not my soul.
240 million malnurished children.
2% of the world is homeless.
18 million in prisons.
689 million live in extreme poverty.
What can I do, I'm one person?
What can I do, I'm one person?
What can I do, I'm one person?
Give a little more than I spend for me.
Give a little more than I spend for me.
Give a little more than I spend for me.
Mar 2021 · 373
G'night
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
There's not a poem or a song for this yet.
Loving because love is the only way.
As we dance and move around our hearts,
Your face shows me your part.
A show of respect.
A show of affection.
How do I love someone more like a daughter?
I'm glad we could be around each other.
I don't want you to go out of your way for me.
But when you do, I know that the respect and affection are there for you too.
I don't want into your personal life, unless you want to go out of your way to.
Sometimes there's no way to show you.
Sometimes there's no way to show you,
What my smile is about.
It hides years you don't have.
It hides tears you don't have.
It hides smiles you don't have.
I wish somehow my heart could open this treasure box inside.
It can't happen until you start asking questions.
And I can't show it with wisdom save for maybe once or twice a year.
If it doesn't spark your attention,
Then I'll smile and it'll be alright.
Oh honey
Mar 2021 · 900
Tobacco
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
My mind goes for a smoke before my body does.
It becomes a pressure just like holding *** if I don't fulfill the mind's intention.
The heart is silenced and prepared for the intake of nicotine even though I haven't moved from my place.
The social joys, the buzz, and relief of smoking circulate through my mind.
My back tells me it will be comforted by smoking, just like a teenager asking for car keys.
The part of me who doesn't want to smoke is portrayed as an over-worried mother, over protecting this teen.
The male aspect that wants to stop smoking is decided as the empty insurance salesman simply concerned with the money.
In other words he is seen as fake.
Next, the Natives remind me that tobacco is a sacred tradition given by White Buffalo Calf Woman.
"It eases tention," She says.
I think about the people I've influenced to smoke, and how others influenced me too.
I think how much more healthy Chloe looks now that she's quit.
My hip muscles now tell me a smoke will relax them.
I'm reminded of the lack of care of minorities by those who don't smoke.
I'm reminded of smoking comradery.
Of Native society centered on the pipe.

A tattoo of my newfound math problems: R^n.

And with this one distraction, all these thoughts of smoking combine and say: "okay, let's go smoke" as if tugging at my seat.
Yet I tie myself to my seat, I theory anyway.
Smoke or sleep? They try the either or question.
I'm staying up for another 11 minutes.
What will happen?
The friendliness of Nic does it to me again.
Mar 2021 · 175
Hello Poetry
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Post your poem so I can share my thoughts, she says.
That child that gets to share at show and tell in kindergarten.
I get to talk to everyone about me, that little boy says.
All proud of himself.
Is it a hidden world where I am a star?
When will it be the other kids' turn for show and tell?
When I'm interested, he maintains.
This world is about me when I focus on me, and about them when I focus on them.
Is there a place not to share?
Does this mean I listen to others by not sharing?
Well, it certainly sets the ears to others than myself.
Mar 2021 · 467
Just go already
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Holding *** when the muscle requires some effort directs attention to the lower body away from the eyes and the head area which is the normal place of reflection.
It makes me think of releasing it and of the bathroom and toilet to do so, as if I was constructing a plan to carry out.
The other muscles used to concentrate can be relaxed as the new concentration is on the bladder area.
Yet this pulls the attention to the seat if seated, like placing attention on the foundation of the meditation posture.
The focus spreads to the thighs and solar plexus.
Finally to the back of the head, but with pressure that will not allow anything to replace it.
The management mind states next that the task at hand is more pressing than bladder release.
And I remember all the times I've had to hold my *** and the places and situations that precipitated them.
I start to tell myself that I'm suffering needlessly as if I was being bullied by my situation.
Thus the parts of the body actually take the center of the personality over other parts of the body.
The managerial aspect will offer motherly comfort to the childlike personality of holding ***.
I start to go into wishful dream mentality just like holding *** while in the early hours of the morning trying to still sleep.
And the attention is tranquilized back to reflection with the hold tucked away in the background of the mind, reflection aspect now being more parental in nature.
What is transcendence? is sort of a moronic question, and I notice my words start to be more bullyish.
This question is rather asking is there a particle of transcendence?
No, it is a function of frequencies of the body.
Consciousness can be the essential aspect of transcending, but no more than consciousness is the essential of concentration.
Tranquility and insight, just as taught, happens, without attention on tranquility, and without tranquility within attention.
Experiment
Mar 2021 · 269
Sparks
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
So much is dependent on personal initiative.
Truth goes unread because it has to do with someone else's answer and not mine.
What has consensus done to the world but created a unified vision?
Consensus is really only reached through personal knowledge and awareness of the aspects of the vision of the world.
So if I see another reaching for an answer, it might be beneficial if I reached for it too.
Realizing my need to search
Mar 2021 · 740
All nighter
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Reflection is an object just like an atom or a wall.
When this object reflects nothing, there is no object at all.
Nothing is so disgraceful for a writer, except to hearken to its call.
No life is there save by this word, a letter, or a number even.
Only appreciated when the song birds sleep.
During the day I replace it with something, so that I may reflect some object.
For "nothing" is as sleep except for one still awake at 5 AM.
Coked up you could say on dark chocolate, green tea, and nutmeg.
Spaces held together by cigarette puffs.
Waiting for sunrise for another day of the Baha'i Fast to begin.
Hollow is how I feel from concentrating on vipassana alone.
But what is peace if there is no knowledge?
"No knowledge, no peace," there I've said it.
Already missing the winter, though I dreaded it.
Or is it "Know knowledge, know peace," I play with it?
So here I hold the philosopher's stone.
In a month I'll question if I really did.
This thing, a thing it is, though it is a chameleon of sorts.
The trick is to never make small talk with myself.
Though at this a seasoned person would balk.
What is left but a heart beat and a nerve?
A silence that will soon be warmed.
Oh yes, at a new day I must restate what has proved the tests of time: what is consciousness?
I think what they really are asking is what gives humanity our level of abstraction.
Why it's been proven: our large brain compared to our body's size.
Why must consciousness be a surprise?
DNA that formed from the elements: is this a more abstract conclusion?
Or, should it be found in a vaccuum: where no one can socialize, so only one team of scientists can win the prize?
Is it in God, to which I say a Prophet has said we will never ever know.
Within reason, to know God, our DNA would have to further differentiate.
By this, I mean, these mutations is what we are after.
To evolve, could this be consciousness' answer?
Without sleep, no meat (for a year), what other memories could rhyme: deer?
Rabbits and squirrels, mosquitos and trees all sleep, but please: I'm on a numbered clock not a clock of the sun.
Remember when the Braves won?
Remember when the pool was no sport, but fun?
There I go in frivolous pastimes.
Insight, insight, insight, my superego clamps down.
Produce a pearl for Hello Poetry to muse.
Although sometimes these poems I think confuse.
Humanity's joy shut down by a virus.
But an introvert's paradise, what consolation.
To the news half of the ears surmise.
Why is the news about dollar signs?
Capitalism is the Holy Ghost of some.
Give all my money to the Church and Republicans.
Tell us "only Jesus" when only half your gospel you follow.
Tell me Jesus is love when you think hell is beneath.
What grief!
Have you ever heard of the sweet sparrow of Baha?
Calling all peoples leaves of one tree?
Saying every person is equal, no more righteous, nor exalted?
Setting the hearts of the followers of all religions on fire?
They all are One, we say.
You practice yours, I'll practice mine, but never say "hell" to one another, and you'll find:
a better Earth, hearts of heaven too.
A better neighborhood for me and you.
*
But I know some have searched the hearts of Baha, only to find we're "one wayers".
If you cannot find the mercy in us, we're happy for you to join another religion too.
Thanks for inquiring, and if Baha rings so true, but find it's not practiced right, then Baha has said truly no religion is right, no religion is true.
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Buzz of electricity.
Snow refrozen in the night air.
Laundry veins cooing.
Trees standing without wind.
Clear sky calling to other life.
A chair of safety and the silver spoon.
What would life be like as a Native or a Black, an Hispanic or Asian?
How much more alone would I feel?
How much more understanding would I need to be?
How much would history paint me?
Would prisons call out for me?
Would ghettos know my name?
Would people condescend?
Mar 2021 · 516
Desert-ed
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
I always take her to the bottom of the sea, before I realise I've forgotten the greatest commandment.
Love as you wish to be loved.
Mar 2021 · 97
Prayer for Chloe
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
I know a soul who courages on.
I know a soul who smiles when things go wrong.
I know a soul who has eyes that cures bad songs.

She lives in a world that continually changes.

And I want her see, that God's mercy has nothing to do with me.
So angels give her visions that no one else can see.
Angels make her feel truly free.

So she will live in world that's comparatively strange.

So she may walk on this Earth as in heaven.
Like she hasn't changed since age eleven.
So she'll really know what kind of thoughts I'm craving.

I'm not perfect, I cringe.

Whenever the human heart is placed in my hands.
Please, angels help her stand,
Amongst the devotees who always can.

Make her know that in heaven love never begins.

Because the world is always making a fool of me.
But make her soldier on without me.
Give her thoughts heavenly.

That she will know the expanses of knowledge.

Angels make her read,
Angels make her write as she needs.
Angels give her good deeds.

Angels help her contemplate.
Like "Daughters" by John Mayer
Mar 2021 · 202
Good
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
I knew my love could not be true, so I gave you a ring to declare immortal friendship.
I have put away my desire.
Now I am empty.
Mar 2021 · 878
Does Beauty = Love?
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Love has to do with silence sometimes.
It is a feeling that can't be learned.
It must be felt.

Some women are graced with dark brunette hair put in a bun.
Some have bright eyes.
Some have glistening skin.
Some have an hourglass figure.

While one of these might merit attraction to some,
To have all of these is quite a sight to see.

Maybe attraction to beauty isn't love,
But when you are also nice,
When we work together,
It just melts my heart.
Her again and again
Feb 2021 · 141
Life Story
Michael T Chase Feb 2021
How do I put away words when they can spread maturity?
How can I exercise deeds when wisdom doesn't call for them?
How can thoughts ever have effect if they are not cognised into words or deeds?
How can objects of the macro level ever be justified if they are not used at the macro level?
How can minutia ever be justified if they are not employed in technology?
A quantum computer on every phone or in every home by the time I die!
How can prayer ever be worthwhile it doesn't inspire these things?
Who will be an exponent of knowledge in a field of ignorance where each person must criticize another knowledge to build up there's?
The school of life is full of naysayers.
It is also full of special interests who wish to keep me questioning the dignity of dignified politics.

The world needs unity, our President has propounded.
Yet who am I to set forth ideas for laws?
I am a vessel for love, for idealism.
How do I spread idealism, when my deeds say "moderation"?
Smoking cigarettes, non-alcoholic beer, **** art, *******, and God forbid: coffee!
On the other side: vitamins, vegetarianism, exercise, meditation, martial arts, math, and science.
For some reason I have a picture that idealism equals fundamentalism.
When in reality idealism is love and unity.

When spoken of as love for God shared with others, love can be a foreign word.
If God can never, ever be fully seen or known, wouldn't the only love of God be love of humanity?
Also, when knowledge is the main focus of life, love loses meaning and love is love of knowledge, while any other love than this is petty.
There is also love of excellence.

From a child it was the admiration of a kind one, an athlete, a musician, and artist.
It soon turned into a love of companionship, both friendship and romantic.
Yet due to my diverse nature, I found no one to share a moderate life with.
So I turned to companionship centered on alcohol and drugs.
Then I finally realised it was really just love of drugs that kept us together, and that without them I was as nothing to them.
So friendship ext became a sort of intuition.
The institution of religion.
Where even the proximity of a religious person was as dear friendship to me.
And any differences between us were joys of freedom of belief.

Next, without school or work I was as an outcast, because religious friends are interested in my work for humanity or too often an outer institution of knowledge.
With no compass for even writing down my thoughts to give me confidence, I did the only thing I could: I copied an Isaac Asimov introductory physics book word for word.
Physics my senior year created such a love for physics that my only dear expression was in copying that book.

Then, one night I realised I could copy Holy Scripture to strengthen my virtue.
And with one copy of a verse, my world came caving in.
My newfound spiritual power found the only avenue for my ignorance in violence toward my father.
I was hospitalized for mental health at 19.
First I argued with the staff thinking I didn't need medication.
Then I realised that cooperation was the only road out of the hospital.
I became docile and sedate.
My first day out my father recommended that I start his style of meditation.
Previously I had wanted to do my own style of meditation, but when I shared my insights with him, I was met with: "That's not what so and so teaches".

Now I found myself docile enough to begin his meditation.
After three months I felt focused and one-pointed.
After 18 months I had my first enlightenment experience.
Then, after I continued, The meditation started to make my strong and capable virtues waste away.
I was, unknown or rather known to me, a prisoner of my meditation.
My fields of study changed form music to philosophy and religion.
I moved away from home.
I worked unrelated jobs.
Then, due to my interest in spirituality, I entered an unaccredited spiritual school.

They challenged me to practice different techniques of inspiration, meditation, concentration, journaling, and diet.
I felt it was time to change my meditation practice which I by then had fully assimilated form my father.
But now I differentiated form him.
I used my own eyes like they had never been used before.
I finished a higher college degree.
I got married.
Then I was tested harder than I ever had been, and still never was.
I battled for normalcy by going off my medication ending up estranged in jail, only to come out with a wife who filed for divorce.
With her unforgiving and weak heart, never wanting to see a husband go through such tests again, the marriage ended.

I at once felt cut off from the world and became depressed.
Now on two meds I once again managed my life on my own.
I worked while going back to school to study electronics.
Afterwards, my interest in physics grew and grew.
I devoured all I could in my free time away from my job.
Then work was taking me too far away from my studies, so weirdly enough I had a back/hernia problem at work, which caused me to quit.
That same week my roommate, a best friend, had moved out of state, my cat who was catching mice for another fiend wasn't allowed back into my apartment by management, and my grandad had died not too long before.
I was weak, exhausted, felt displaced, and companionless.
I immediately took a 90-mile Uber trip to my dad's.

He let me study without a job for three months until I felt my life wasn't progressing without a job.
Two jobs later I find myself as a dishwasher/deliver/food prep worker at an upscale restaurant.
With blue collar humor mixed with female energy, it is quite exciting on busy nights.

Almost 21 years since I finished my first physics class, with an electronics degree, and over six years of self-study, I have little to show the world of my love for this knowledge of math and physics.
With Grassmannian geometry, momentum event horizons, and galaxies moving in all directions at all accelerations, with the inconceivability of witnessing a graviton, and the cover up of the US government reverse engineering extra-terrestrial technology.
With local laws helping free us from the grid being squashed by state governments, and thousands of secret patents, and inventors killed.
I can hardly make any ethical movement in technology and science without first coming to terms with the Native American, Black, and Hispanic brothers ans sister being systematically devalued, while women don't have equal pay with men.
So my mind wishes to grapple with science while in reality that path can hardly be entertained, or entertained only as an outlet for curiosity.

Meanwhile, seeing with my own spiritual eyes, my meditations have developed into a kind of zen, although I have no formal teaching in it.
Feb 2021 · 1.3k
Vipassana
Michael T Chase Feb 2021
What is it that I'm "in my head"?
The shape of my brain and skull act as a maze through which frequencies are played by the thought constructs which I employ.
It is like every attribute has a string or key which can be played, and every time it is played, it conjures all the processes which that key has encountered before.
Eyes half closed places me in my head, and body sometimes too.
Looking up is paying homage to the sky.
The ability to walk on two legs places humans between earth and heaven, two limbs can reach up, and two limbs touch bottom.
I have no visible tail, only a remnant of one, which makes my movement dependent on just these four limbs.
The head and spine being shared by all vertebrates, means that its sign is more diverse in nature.
Humans have the largest brains compared to the rest of the body.
However, an extra-terrestrial skeleton proved to have a brain/skull even larger than humans.

Consciousness is held much like using all the controls while driving a car: the eyes adjust, pressure in the skull and body is adjusted with muscles, the position of the body, neck, and head is adjusted.
Sounds are drown out or given attention.
The body can be divorced from emotion, virtue, and the universe.
The Self can be divorced from virtue, organization, emotion, and the universe.
Everything in such a state is local.
When things are local, I can only observe the scattering amplitudes.
If the scattering is very low, then the gross or macro-level world is all I see.
But what is different from a chair or sofa and a star or moon?
Both are made from the same universe.
The difference is that one was formed by humans, the other a part of nature.
What makes nature a better object of focus than man-made objects?
The man-made object tends to already have a use while the natural are base elements.
They signify the lowest grade of complexity.
Thus, my body is the lowest grade, the simplest, structure in the local home.
Being simple, it is like a canvas that can be painted, or a quarry from which a rock can be sculpted.

Now I switch to morning mode, which is about waking up and making progress.
But meditation is just as hard waking up as it is staying up sometimes.
I must once again ask the same questions in a new day.
What is consciousness?
Can it really be defined as a particular mechanism?
Wouldn't DNA be the best candidate, and it is made of compounds, which are found with the elements.
Yes, it seems science must switch from a "finding a particle" mode to a global life-form mode.
One which knows that life is a web of different things without any one of which the whole planet would fail.
"Finding a particle" mode has proven to be at the end of its run for finding them, as to find a graviton would prove impossible due to the amount of energy needed that would then create a minature black hole.
It seems like I'm a couch scientist, or a science critic not contributing to the picture.
The "finding a particle" mode is so hard to give up because it has been a part of science for over 100 years, which has shaped what a scientist does, how one thinks too.
However, the "web of life" mode gives a harder picture to deal with: one of thinking about social relationships between and within species and kingdoms.
It means that insight will no longer come from a "gold rush" type mentality of a find, but rather insight gleaned from a cooperative consultative stream of thought.
It takes the center away from the individual and places it on the community and the biosphere.
The biosphere or world civilization perspective takes away a lot of physics needed and instead offers a simpler picture, far simpler.
Now, I ask: how can social groups become more enlightened?
How will personal growth, science, the humanities, and social justice play a role?
How will spirituality, which so often is "other worldly" actually weaken this social structure if it is not focused on the simple practical matters in the "web of life" outlook?
I now see that asking "what is consciousness?", if asked too much, will prove to individualize and hamper people's worldview by placing its concern on minutia.
This "find a particle" view could even be seen as an illness which keeps people from having a more social outlook.
It means giving up the personal glory of the scientist, for the practical glory of the community, of the whole.
Instead, what will cause love to grow and hatred to end?
What will make conversations and interactions become more mature?

Now I turn to the element of virtues, which can be divorced from the human body if its goals are not aligned with them.
Addressing trama and how to cope, or simply depression and anxiety too.
The goal of course being a utopia where all can flourish physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
We must come to some shared understanding of how society best operates, or else we will keep contending with each other for a millennia.
I feel these shifts occur form injustice and the rally for justice in its wake.
It really comes down to the people in power making decisions today.
To how we treat those who share different beliefs, and how we distinguish from mere differences of opinion from a difference between knowledge and ignorance.
I can see both sides of abortion having good points.
I can see good all the way from a flat tax (like religion) to very high taxes on the wealthy.
I can see the difference from helping poeple survive to helping them thrive and knowing the good sides of both issues.
Moreover, I can see why too much nationalism and too much globalism could both be unjust due to the particular opinions of a mother nation, and the need for global unity.
I can see why adherence to one religion will only work if it is based on love and freedom, for love without freedom is not unconditional.
Meanwhile freedom without love leads to destruction.
However, erasing safety and protection from love and freedom would also lead to disaster.

Where is the balance?
That is what the "web of life" mode needs to deliberate.
This is a slow process.
The willingness of one can only affect others through wisdom not fanaticism in any degree.
What is consciousness?
The highest consciousness is deciding public affairs and interacting with others about public affairs.
Therefore, read, write, interact, and work.
Then reflect again and see how far we have come.
4 hours of journaling
Feb 2021 · 800
Elements of consciousness
Michael T Chase Feb 2021
Does measuring the particles ever tell me what consciousness is?
Wouldn't it be the unique combination of elements, for we know that DNA determines the difference between a dog and a human, from a fur tree to a butterfly.
DNA is made of elementary compounds.
Is there any way to express the allness in one thing?
Life, this all, and consciousness, which even plants have, how can it be deciphered into one essence, when it requires a joining for it to happen?
Could it be in this joining that life takes place - the magnetic attraction of love?
Feb 2021 · 348
Empty
Michael T Chase Feb 2021
Business, it takes the love out of everything, but gives so much spirit.

— The End —