PERSONAL SYMBOLS IN EVERYDAY LIFE


     Odd, I've noticed that the past week or so, I've seen a lot of deaf
people signing, as I've walked in various public places. I'm talking,
maybe, one a few days ago, then a couple of them signing to one another
yesterday somewhere, and four teenagers signing and laughing amongst
themselves at a study table at the local public library this afternoon.

     It's unusual because I can't recall seeing any people signing in public,
at least for a number of years.

     Like lots of things—nearly everything—I don't know what it "means".
It's all during the week of Baba's Birthday, and perhaps one could say
it's Him, gesturing, saying "I'm right here."

***

     I remember years ago a time when I was drawn to a scurvy old abandoned
cement shack on a beach near Santa Barbara, with God Knew what vibes,
and graffiti all over it. I somehow felt it was like a mansion, and
practically wanted to move in. I suppose that was the state of my soul
in those days. (Hint: it was during my psychedelic period in the late
'60s.) 

     Some time after that, I became aware of construction scaffolds and
re-building, wherever I saw them. Like my eyes were magnetically drawn
to them as a symbol of what my spirit was going through—in fact, like
they were illumined before my eyes. That felt nice, I felt BABA was
strongly at work within—similar refurbishing going on in me.

     And around then I got the first, and quite wonderful, Sufi Choir (this
was the Vilayat Khan group) record—it was around '76—and, among the
other fine songs was one that put to music these lines from W.B. Yeats
that I still remember, and that expressed the archetype of rebuilding
active within me:

"A house that stood
 Since childhood
 Uninhabited, ruined,
 Suddenly lit up from within."*

     The house, of course, being the Soul.

     These symbols are like dream symbols in the "waking" world of Illusion.
I've often wished my life were always so clear that the archetypes of my
current inner state were obvious to me in the outer world.

     They're probably always there, but so often my life, for one reason or
another, for months, even years at a time, has had a muddied quality
where nothing  was obvious except God's felt absence.

     Which, I suppose, created the longing that would eventually bring back
(the feeling of) His Presence. Ah, well, that's the best I've been able
to do, this lifetime.


*******

* Here is the whole poem these lines are from:

CRAZY JANE ON GOD

By William Butler Yeats


That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.

Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.

I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.