Practice

The Writing of the Articles is Practice of a Principle

In my tribe, we talk often about practicing certain principles in all our a \ffairs. What are these principles? The first is that we recognize that everything we are, everything we do, is contingent on one thing that we do not do. That thing is drinking alcohol.

When I sat down and wrote “practice,” this is not what I was thinking about. However, it is what spilled out from my finger tips as they dance across the computer keyboard here in “The Bunker” as I call my DC condominium which I share with my dear wife, Lynn.

Truth be told, my thougts in writing the title of this article were with a person who recently joined the ranks of the octogenarians, ROBERT FRIPP. I am much taken with his guitar craft and the way in which he conducts himself. He is, as his passport apparently attests, a composer.

Composing ourselves through our practice of certain principles is an important part of being in the world but not of it. Breathing in, I consider this present moment. Breathing out, I relax and think about what words wish to be written. I don’t know.

Yesterday, the words that spilled out spoke of anguish and I thought a lot about that. I am currently in some pain but it is bearable. It is a pleasure, in fact, to know that I am alive and my nervous system is working. I must admit to a slight annoyance that I have so many bodily sensations. I was thinking of how I might diminish them somewhat. Tylenol is about as far as I have taken it.

Having said all of this, what of it? As I asked yesterday:

Why Am I Writing?

I’m writing to tell mySelf what I am thinking right now. I am and so I am leaving a mark. It’s all layered within yesterday’s post:

Today, I am practicing self-expression similar to what I did yesterday.

I worked yesterday evening between 6 and 10 PM at Daily Provisions. I had some very nice interactions with the folks who came in to get a little something on a rainy Thursday evening. I was filling in for another member of the Front of the House staff who had somewhere to be. Due to an eye doctor’s appointment to prepare for cateract surgery that my wife will undergo in the near future, I couldn’t take her whole shift, but filling in for the last four hours including the heavy labor of closing up was doable. I’m grateful to serve. It makes my day.

At this point in life, at the age of 63, it is something that I can do. It is a pleasure. I think back to my own father’s life. He was about the same age or maybe a few years further on when he took a job at the Barnes and Noble down in Newport News, Virginia for a time. I don’t know how long he did that but I think it helped fill his days.

For me, I’m just grateful that I’m in good enough health to make it through my shifts. I find it physically taxing but I expect that it is also good for me to keep on moving. While I’m doing it, it doesn’t tax me much and that is probably because the beacon of my consciousness is projected out toward making sure our guests are having an optimal experience of being with us. It is a real pleasure. When my awareness turns back to myself and I begin the inventory process, I start to realize the toll the work has taken. No matter. It’s all in the mind, after all. The machinery that carries this consciousness around may wear out but isn’t that what it’s for, after all.

Rising and Falling and Rising Again

It’s an agricultural motif. As I wrote this, I was listening to the “Weather Report Suite” as performed by the Grateful Dead at Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa, Florida on December 18, 1973. It’s flowed out into “Dark Star” now. After the “Drums” part, the band will get into “Eyes of the World.” I was coming up on 11 years old when this was recorded. The main idea is that we, as conscious tools of the universe, come out of this world like leaves come out of a tree.

Yesterday’s writing touched upon the work of Alan Watts, and perhaps it is good to make another of his books a centerpiece for this post as well:

I hope you will give it a listen. The practice in which we are engaged here in life may just be traveling the road to knowing who we are. I don’t know. I just know how it seems to me. I may be wrong.

Being embodied for this brief time - being so many and so much within one’s own head; it is difficult to imagine. Imagination, however, is the thing that we have which allows us to be the time-binding creatures that we are. We are stacking experiences upon experiences of those who have come before and we’ve been at it for thousands of years. Listening now, to The Book, and thinking about the meaning of our lives. Alan Watts is now citing G.K. Chesterton about the oddity of existence. I feel that.

I put The Book into the hands of my late father before he passed. Many were the books that we shared. He seemed to get a great deal from Thou Art That by Joseph Campbell. As I preserve my memories of him, I’m reminded that last night I dreamed that we were getting dinner together. I sent him one the weekend before he died and he took my mother and I out to Second Street on March 16, 2024:

Harod Bledsoe Gill, Jr. on March 16, 2024 about to drive his car to Second Street Bistro from his driveway at 100 Underwood Road.

We couldn’t know then what we know now. However, his spirit remains undiminished.

I’m practicing preserving these memories of our lives as the sole surviving Harold Bledsoe Gill; the third iteration of the pattern. It is a practice that consumes much of my time as I move from dawn to dusk and back again. Eventually, I too will make my final exit, but not before I have done all I can to leave a legacy worthy of the two previous Harold B Gills of the past 117 years. We rise and fall.

Staying Present

At the moment, I am attending the Spiritual Awakening Group’s Zoom Meeting which meets at 7:30 AM on weekdays and 8:30 AM on weekends. There are 55 in attendance on the Zoom meeting and I expect there are nearly as many attending the version in the Dupont Circle Club a block and a half away from “The Bunker” where I am now sitting. We who attend the meetings there are treating a condition that is progressive and fatal. It is arrested through the practice of principles in all our affairs to the best of ability if we are willing to practice them. One thing I have learned is that I have to be ready to step over the bodies.

Yesterday afternoon up in Baltimore, there was a memorial service for one of us:

The Women the System Couldn’t Hold

Here’s one of her last notes from January:

I don’t know what happened to take this person from our midst and I had to take Lynn to an appointment as mentioned earlier when the event celebrating her life was happening up in Baltimore. What I do know is that this will not be the first, nor the last, loss that I experience as I continue my own trajectory toward the same destination. Staying present with the group as we read about seeking through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God is not the simplest matter really. My own conscious contact is closer than my next breath.

I am a Gnostic Theist. I am a lifetime member of the Theosophical Society. I’m a Baba lover. By the first statement, I mean that I know that gods and goddesses exist as concepts in human minds. I am unconvinced that they exist elsewhere, but, as a Theosophist, I explore what my fellow humans have divined along the way from what we were to what we have become. As a Baba lover, I am open to what Meher Baba transmitted during his time in the body.

I am not sure that prayer isn’t just talking to mySelf, but I could probably use a good talking to as many will attest! One thing is certain, when I am engaged in prayer and meditation, I am keeping my fingers out of the machinery of the universe. I am not trying to manipulate things or people. It does no harm aside from possibly enabling sins of omission.

Breathing is the essence of maintaining homeostasis; another day in the bonus round of the game of “Beat The Reaper” as I say. I just wrapped up my participation in the meeting by sharing, without attribution, the title of one of Pete Townshend’s songs:

I remember being richer than a king
The minutes of the day were golden
I recall that when the joint passed round
My body felt a little colder
But now I’m like a sewer channel - running lime and scag
Let me get at the master panel - let me at my stack

The sea refuses no river
And right now this river’s banks are blown
The sea refuses no river
Whether stinking and rank
Or red from the tank
Whether pure as a spring
There’s no damned thing stops the poem
The sea refuses no river
And this river is homeward flowing

I have seen a trace of strain
In other’s eyes not spoken
I must admit that I enjoyed their pain
But this time it’s me that’s broken
I demand for you and His
This must be the time
When we decide what freedom is
Turn water into wine

For the sea refuses no river
We’re polluted now but in our hearts still clean
The sea refuses no river
We tried not to age
But time had it’s rage
We’re washed over stones
From babes into clones of the mean
The sea won’t refuse this muddy river
Nor deny the sulfurous stream

There was a fool in a dressing robe
Riding out the twilight hour
Lonely and cold in an empty home
Trying to assess his power
But now he’s like a stream in flood
Swollen by the storm
He doesn’t care if he sheds his blood
Let him be reborn

For the sea refuses no river
Remember that when the beggar buys a round
The sea refuses no river
And rain fills the gutters
No time for stutters
This is our chance
To sing and to dance and to clown
The sea refuses no river
And rivers were sprung to drown

The sea refuses no river
No pecking code respected for the damned
The sea refuses no river
Whether starving or ill
Or strung on some pill
Just ‘’cause you own the land
There’s no unique hand plugs the dam
The sea refuses no river
And the river is where I am

The river is where I am

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend

The Sea Refuses No River lyrics © Spirit Music Group

This seems to be a good place to wrap things up - with this creative output from another Baba lover. :-)

Onward!

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