Shedding the Mind-Skin

With the New Year only three days away
It is time for me to shed 

all past impressions
 

Accrued from 63 years of trying 

to figure out

How to live happily 

in postmodern 

America.

Craig Louis Stehr
29.XII.'12

The growing absurdity of celebrating Jesus Christ's birthday in America's national capital.

Christmas in Washington D.C.

Washington D.C. is experiencing a colossal Depression of spirit, as the fiscal cliff  Looms ever closer, and the politicians refuse to cooperate, their own money's aplenty  (plus Retirement benefits), and with the cold rain...

The district never looked grayer, the sky

Is slate colored and all of those concrete

Hulks of administrative buildings create

Canyons to walk through, the only points of

Light being the anti-nuclear vigil in front

Of the White House, and Veterans for Peace vigiling a block north at the VA building.

And that is it! The rest is hopeless, as

Holiday decorations add a surreal touch

With north pole motifs and candy canes in

Department store windows, blinking strands 

Of colored lights surround grinning reindeer

Pulling Santa's sleigh hauling merry elves

With bulging sacks of electronic toys and

Small fir trees in windows decorated with

Every image pop culture ever conjured up,

But there is no place for peace and justice

Activists because years ago the Metropolitan

Police raided the radical Olive Branch Catholic

 Worker House, forcing the owner to sell, so

Now it's four condominiums, and ya know what?

Somebody needs to quickly alert the Federal

Government that Jesus Christ is still the

Reason for the season, and there is only

Eleven days left before Christmas.

Craig Louis Stehr

14.XII.'12

Not Two

 Not Two
 Ramana Maharshi said that there is
 No such thing as "two selves", in other
 Words "one self that realizes another self"
 And therefore it is absurd for anyone to
 Attempt to become enlightened, because
 You are already the Self.  He advised
 Everyone to abide in the Self always,
 And to do nothing else, this being the
 Primary spiritual practice at his ashram
 In south India, where seekers arrived in
 Droves seeking the Self, only to be told
 That they are the Self, and that there was
 Nothing for them to seek, which left them
 Sitting quietly at the feet of the Master who
 Smiled, nonattached to phenomena and
 Craving nothing at all, which he said was
 Everybody's inherent condition, there being
 Nothing else to realize, know, or understand,
 And thus Ramana Maharshi took walks at the
 Base of Mount Arunachal lecturing visitors
 On the identity of their true nature which they
 Traveled thousands of miles to question him
 About, which he graciously answered for
 Them and on and on this went until he
 Became internationally well known as a
 Spiritual teacher and his sayings were
 Published and his living quarters became a
 Shrine and Mount Arunachal was accepted as
 The Abode of Shiva and his teachings influenced
 Generations of spiritual seekers and today
 Pilgrims from around the world come to his
 Ashram and meditate there and read the
 Books and sing bhajans and hear lectures
 From his devotees and celebrate Shivaratri
 On the mountain and mindfully circumambulate
 On the well worn foot paths and hike up to the
 Peak and light incense and offer flowers and
 Eat prasadam and finger rudraksha seed beads
 And finally realize that they cannot abide in the
 Self, because they are the Self, since there are not
 Two selves, one to abide in the other, because
 Brahman, or the Self, is everything!  OM TAT SAT

 Craig Louis Stehr
 9.XII.'12
 Composed at Saxby's Coffee House
 University Mall (near George Mason University)
 Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Strong Medicine

There's a funny thing about magic
It's kinda tricky because if
The practitioner doesn't get it right
Magic makes a lot of trouble resulting
In madness. Unlimited wisdom and power
Don't share the credit, so please
Watch out if you are the ritualist.

Ghost dancers understand this, and
After the visions they chill out to
Be released from possession and they go
Back to their jobs at the hardware store
Ready to be used again later, not affected
By the power and the magic for having
Put on tribal costumes and singing and dancing
As the incredible happens in ceremonial circles.

The Keystone XL Pipeline-Tar Sands mining
Scheme has invaded Indian country from
Alberta, Canada through the Lakota's land in
The U.S. Dakotas on down through Nebraska
Beyond the vast sonoran desert landscape
All the way to refineries in southern Texas
Where farmers are being coerced off of their
Land and all hell has broken loose between
Government bureaucracies, the mining companies,
and transcontinental construction corporations,
Opposed by Earth First! radical environmentalists and
Rising Tide climate justice activists, while the
Indigenous native councils are in marathon meetings
Trying to reach consensus about money and respecting
Mother Earth, and what does Wakan Tanka expect?

Traditionalists debate the modernists as the ticking
Climate clock reminds that climatologists predict a
Tipping point near the solar eclipse August 21, 2017
And the men braid tobacco and send prayers upward
Carried by the smoke from red clay pipes as the
Women beat drums in a story telling circle
And the medicine man laughs because he knows.

Craig Louis Stehr
8.XII.'12

Kalki Avatar Appearance Link

Here's a link explaining the upcoming appearance of Kalki avatar:
www.yoga-philosophy.com/eng/kalki/kalki.htm


Craig Louis Stehr

Response from Dao Mountain

Clouds steadily moving past here
Fierce shapes, soft and powerful
Merge into one another to create
New shapes wide jawed with teeth
Jagged wings and a spiked tail
The eyes are large and see everywhere

What is it searching for?
Who is riding on its back and
What does she want, with her
Vase of healing water and herbs?
Surveying the earth and smiling
Softly yet powerful, the ideal
Of the mystery which cannot be named

Children bring her gifts of
Giant peaches and the deer
From a magic forest deliver
Purple mushrooms of immortality
Incense is lit in an old wooden temple
Prayers are sent up to her on
Curls of smoke from sandalwood coils

Priests wear robes decorated with
Yi-jing hexagrams and embroidered
Cranes and wear ceremonial hats
Quietly chanting on strands of beads
White pearls with cherry amber spacers

The rivers are flooding and the
Wind is mean and cold; the sky is angry
Calmly the astrologers tend their gardens
Far back in the folds of the mountains

Yarrow stalks are thrown down in an
Urban plaza and examined for esoteric meaning
The sage does nothing yet everything gets done
Harmony is the way, yet disharmony
Is more common, which causes fear

That spreads across the land feeding chaos
Guan Yin doesn't like war, and her
Fire breathing mount reflects the longer term
Cause and effect that results from straying
From the wide path of light which leads
Full circle to the Abode of the Immortals
Farmers cultivate and then take rest
On mountain tops beneath the circling dragon
And its celestial passenger

Wayfarers climb the stone staircase
Leading up from the valley floor

To visit the community that agents from the
Cities could not locate for their rulers
No trace of it was reported to the court
Airplanes were sent out and found nothing
At the temple gate wayfarers are greeted with
Chrysanthemum tea and cotton slippers

A rainbow arches over the inner courtyard
Full of poets and a traditional orchestra
The mountain festival is beginning
Sun and moon yield yin-yang secrets

A reckoning is near and cannot be doubted
For it is written on the backs of all
Tortoises by a grand caligrapher
Who serves no one
Fools laugh at this
But the wise will understand

Craig Louis Stehr
24.XI.'12

Poem for the Earth Warriors

Rejoice in the dark phase of Kali Yuga
Nonattachment both to elusive peace
And discomfort in the face of chaos
Liberates the worrying mind
From earth plane's crazy dramatics
Delusion's nets release the dolphins
Ensnared in the cold grey seas
To roam free and ride the currents
From season to season beneath the stars
Navigating by moonlight to hidden realms
Only to emerge with new messages
Listen to the songs of whales
The electric eel brings a warning
Undersea volcanoes echo the instructions
From the center of the earth which is
The real beating heart at its core
Deep within and silent
Dark and mysterious
Witnessing the movement
Of the universal play
Millions and millions of miles
Of vast space stretch out
One beam of light to infinity
Bends and curves to return
To its origin completing the journey
Everything lives in a circular motion
Always returning like giant waves
That form and crash loudly and go back
Shifting sand beds underneath
And rocking the coral reefs
The great white shark is unmoved
It stays above its shadow relaxed and calm
Knowing what's up and it has known
For a very long time
The reckoning of climate change approaches
Temperatures irregular and sea levels varying
Storms alter fish migrations and the
Undersea plants and deep sea life
All the way down to the ocean floor
In flux in the murkiness with soundings
Rumbling from below bottom dwellers
Emissions escape from fissures and trembling
Are the code of transmissions sent up to the surface
To land dwellers and the myriad species
Trees, plants, mountains, rivers, streams
Frigid air currents and warm clouds
The truth always comes back full circle
We are receiving our instructions all the time

Craig Louis Stehr
23.XI.'12

Shakeout

What's good about the spinning top of postmodernism
Precisely is the growing realization that success
As once defined, is not applicable or even relevant
To billions of global citizens who have given up
Questing to attain lifestyles that are impossible
And may have been an illusion from the beginning

Right this moment, there's a dawning upon the creative
Imagination to abandon quickly the old urgencies and
Free up spirit from attachment to attitudes not ours

Release from cultural sticking points not anchored in
A social context that we recognize, and let us together
Kick out the jams in a mental shakeout that makes
Room for the emerging paradigm, brilliant spiral
Patterns in a changed world that the historians 
Detail but cannot measure; this very precious instant
Contains all chain of events in a civilization
That does not recognize itself, but is studied for clues

It is shakeout time, everybody, to rid ourselves of the
Encrusted barnacles on these earthly ships, now set 
Sails for new voyages to distant places and adventures
Of consciousness, reflecting truth and dreamed of bliss
Shake it out, for the time to make our way has come.

Craig Louis Stehr
30.XI.'12

Kali on K Street

I saw Mother Kali on K Street
Didn't recognize her right away
Because she was really black and
Her hair was disheveled and she was
Pushing a shopping cart past the
Statue at McPherson Square
I asked her if she'd been part of
Occupy DC and she told me that
She tented behind the People's Library
But after the police raid she moved to
Freedom Plaza and washed pots 'n pans
When I was on a break writing my reports
She had a wig on at the Radical Space
Holiday party and critiqued anarchism 
Then showed up for the big protest march
Wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and mic-checked
Outside the News Museum to declare our rights
I inquired if that was her shrill voice on the steps
Of the Supreme Court, threatening to scalp the
Appointed who oppose a woman's right to choose
She smiled pushing her belongings up K Street
Toward Peace House to enjoy a hot mineral bath

Craig Louis Stehr
26.XI.'12

Awaiting Kalki

I dropped by the Krishna temple in Berkeley
Before flying back to Washington D.C. to
Rejoin Occupy DC radical environmentalists

For more intervention in history as the climate
Clock ticks toward the August 21, 2017 solar eclipse
Tipping point of no return and climatologists

Tell me that this is for real no amount of political
Wrangling or carbon trading schemes or swimming in the
River of Denial will hold any importance at all

The pujari attending the altar at Krishna's temple
Informed me that he was patiently awaiting the next
Incarnation of the blue skinned god, who will come

To the earth plane as Kalki, for the end all battle
With demonic forces and this will return the world
To righteousness, just in the nick of time before
Global systemic implosion and ensuing chaos
Make pursuing spiritual goals and following
Dharma almost impossible here, a problem that the
Devic realm must take action to avert immediately

A temple devotee of Radha (Krishna's celestial consort)
Attends temple tulsi plants, and she says that the
Actual time of Kalki's appearance is being debated
By Vedic astrologers, given the gravity of ecological
And social conditions and then a visiting monk from
India looked up from his Sanskrit edition of the
Mahabharata to add that only Krishna knows when his
Next avataric appearance will happen and that his
Vrindavan temple priests recommend preparing now

The pujari returned to lighting sandalwood incense
And offering food to the deity for prasadam at the
Sunday love feast expecting hundreds of bhakti yogis
Who all await Kalki's arrival while they are making
Arrangements to go back to godhead, to Krishna Loka

Chesapeake Earth First! is organizing protest marches
And demonstrations in Washington D.C. right now in
Opposition to the XL Keystone pipeline, a scheme
Fraught with complications and intense conflict
Between tribal groups and mining companies and
Ecologists and construction companies and refineries
And Texas farmers and archconservatives and anarchists

Krishna devotees chant and play mrdanga drums and the
Kirtan teams go out and perform and in India they are
Getting ready to host 70 million Kumbha Mela pilgrims
At the triveni sangam confluence of three rivers at
Allahabad in January engaged in continuous sadhana

For a month, the festival managed by India's army
And even the tantrik mystics wonder what's next

If you were expecting me to give you a comfortable
Answer or some reassuring soothing message, you
Have come to the wrong place, but it's okay, because
We remain friends awaiting divine intervention tonight.

Craig Louis Stehr
29.XI.'12

Wild Virtue

Always at play
Whirling circles of light
The critical edge
Rejoices in victory

Unlimited wisdom and
Energy surges through
The interstices
Of time and space

Junctures in history
Epic stages of control and confusion
Rebellion is the constant
Because power has no friends

Comes a reckoning
That shocks awake
And washes away
The merchants of sweetness and pain

Meteor showers in the sky
You can smell the rain
Laughing, we go back to the places
We have loved, again and again

Craig Louis Stehr
17.XI.'12