The Life of the Mind

This glorious mind
It brings us out into the world
And connects us with the ten thousand things
Full of problems and opportunities
Of complexity and delight
Dramatic arcs, reversals of fortune
Heaven and hell

But we come to realize
That this mind is also our jailer
Because the mind can be conditioned
To believe anything
Most of all, to believe that it is separate
From all of its objects

How do we escape? This is the eternal question.
The eye of the needle, so to speak
We begin by recognizing that there is something beyond mind
Mysterious and beckoning

And by accepting that the mind cannot think its way out of itself
We open ourselves, quietly, to what might lie beyond it

An open field of emergent potential
Unconditioned by time and space
Timelessly present and numinously empty

From here, all things are possible.

Albee Kara – Jan. 6, 2023