ON AWARENESS.

Awareness is the first and greatest gift of God.

Look, traveller:

In an age that worships intellectual knowing

be mindful of the primal gift of awareness,

constantly observing the empirical evidence

in the first place.

What is the I that thinks and feels?

You can thank Rene Descartes,

for the idea’s first expression.

Or think of Yahweh’s words to Moshe,

or recall Jesus’ allusion to that same theophany—

all are naming existence

before any other discernible fact.

Awareness is the means you have for observing.

No experiment is possible

without the observing eye;

no observation of tree line or big sky comes

without center of self

and mystic intuition under the mind.

All this is theoretical and heady,

but think of the implications

when you actually try the spaghetti:

Who says you are old or young?

Who says you’ve been here only this long?

Who says when you leave you are really ever gone?

Who says where awareness

goes when the body expires?

Who says you have this short time—

so make the best of it?

Who says there is no such thing as a silver thread?

God says the answers to all these questions,

but is not interested to spoil the surprise.

Instead, God provides

and sustains your awareness

so you can marvel, wonder, and take in the dawn.

If you are an enlightened one,

you have realized the absurdity

of assumed finality.

You wonder how

you came to the House of the World,

and how many times,

and where you might go next.

And when you read,

“in the beginning”

you ask with the rabbis,

“which beginning?” and laugh.

Your cosmology and individuality

dances with the idea,

that awareness is the first heavenly light:

A star factory divided

into a billion souls across the ages.