I write this under a Full Moon. I am told that the actual Full Moon is tomorrow at Noon, but I am a poet not a scientist and I have little use for a Full Moon not shining in the night sky where I can see it. I don't even believe in such things. Scientists can believe in moons that don't shine and the sounds of trees falling in the forest when no one can hear them, but I am a skeptic. I only believe in what I experience. (I believe in what you experience too though I don't know what that is exactly, but I do know if you are reading this you must be experiencing something.)
All over the world the Full Moon has been associated with poetry, sex, love, madness and outbreaks of spirit ranging from the fiercely orgiastic to the chastely contemplative. Traditionally the Awakened One is said to have been born under the Full Moon. And traditionally Werewolves and Vampires emerge under the Full Moon. And traditionally Lovers meet under the Full Moon.
As a skeptical Awakening Werewolf Vampire Lover, that is the Full Moon I believe in.
It was one lunar month ago that I stayed outside all night in San Francisco on the night of the Full Moon during my Prostration Street Retreat. I wasn't out for blood, not that night anyway, I just wanted to penetrate the Secret Female Place and it seemed like the moonlit night might provide the right romantic setting and make it easier.
You can read about my preparations for this date in the preceding posts. (They are all linked in order for convenience to your right.) I was excited by my date and had high hopes, which as I have noted wasn't so good for my prostration retreat. Or maybe it was. There are different ways of looking at desire and the spiritual path.
It is said that whenever you want things other than the way they are, that is the cause of dukkha. I can't argue with that, but Werewolf Vampire Lover spiritual aspirants just have to work with dukkha then, because that's the way it is for us.
As it got dark that Tuesday night I thought about all this and I thought about other things too. One thing I thought about was the, to me, somewhat annoying spiritual cliché, “Don't mistake the pointing finger for the Moon.” This is annoying because, first, I have never been tempted to mistake a little pointing finger for a big bright Full Moon, and, second, because it doesn't mention the mistake I am likely to make, which is to confuse the Full Moon for what it is pointing to—the Full Moon of Mind.
I had lost my cardboard prostration mat so I did prostrations in a playground in Chinatown that had a kind of soft foam asphalt surface that was very gentle on my sore knees. A wild looking schizophrenic type came out of the bushes in the corner of the playground and mimed his request for a cigarette. I mimed back that I did not smoke. He wandered off and returned with a long butt he found somewhere and a newspaper. He lay down on the ground a few feet from where I was doing prostrations and smoked and read. He never said a word to me but I got the impression he was glad for the company.
I kept bowing.
I kept bowing.
After a while, I offered him a piece of the candy I had received from my first protector on the first day of the retreat (another schizophrenic whose only intelligible words were “this will help”). My new friend took it and ate it without comment or reaction, as if a candyman bowing in a playground were an everyday occurrence in his life.
I ate a piece myself and presented three other pieces and the Monday Moon Silver earrings, the ones I had found on the slimy Tenderloin street, to my Love.
I kept bowing and chanting the Tara mantra. I was able to visualize white Tara much more clearly than usual, which I took as a very good sign. I finally sat down and let Tara settle into my heart and disappear. As I came to rest, the Full Moon of Mind revealed itself.
This sounds exciting but it isn't. It is impossible to describe. Experience just kind of glows in the brilliant dark background of non-experience.
This sounds exciting but it isn't. It is impossible to describe. Experience just kind of glows in the brilliant dark background of non-experience.
Nothing much happens in the Full Moon of Mind, but it is romantic somehow nonetheless. I felt the glow and sensed it was time. I asked Tara if she would help me with the Secret Female Place. I received the answer as that deep knowing within, which poets often relate as a voice from without:
“She's all yours, John.”
I was ecstatic. But things always turn out a little differently than we think. I'll explain in my next post.
Love to All,
John O.
