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Voyage to the Beginning
For my first 9D Breathwork workshop in 2025 I had set the intention to discover what my “soul” or inherited “essence” was and I had been very surprised, as described elsewhere, to discover that when I was in the womb I was both male and female and that I only became male after my birth by virtue of my genitalia. I felt that experience had been very important in terms of my soul discovery, or my soul retrieval, or my soul access work; that there was nothing more foundational than for me to understand that I was both male and female.
So when I went back for my second breath session a few months later I had the same intention, which was to learn more about my soul, and, for some reason, when I began deepening, I found myself in the company of my my father’s mother’s mother, my great grandmother, Toby Warshavski, the woman I wrote that little poetry book about how she saved my life when I was four years old. And as I thought about my beloved great grandmother, I remembered that she too had been a little child, and that she had had a father and a mother, although it was the father’s line that I was particularly interested in. And I imagined/visualized her father, probably in the 1830s, and I greeted him and actually opened my arms and hugged him. And then I remembered that he had been a little boy and had had a father and that took me back into the 1780s or the American revolutionary times, and I hugged that man and then that father’s father went back to the 17th and then the 16th century and the 15th century, and as I was following these men and hugging these men from whom I was descended I got back to the time of the butcher Columbus’s voyage to the so-called New World, and the fact that I had had Jewish ancestors in Moorish Spain at that time, and that Jews were on Columbus’s ships, and that my ancestors of that time had learned about the New World, at the same time that they were being expelled from Moorish Spain, and that some of my ancestors were people who had walked to Spain in the middle ages and had then walked away from Spain, often back to the holy land or Northern Africa or eastern European countries. These very people, including some of my ancestors, had been welcome in many Muslim countries, and the image of my ancestors walking to and fro became very powerful for me, and I traveled back beyond the Middle Ages, and continued back to the time of Christ. Only I was now not going generation by generation but jumping back centuries at a time, back to Christ, and then back to Moses, and beyond. And the fact was that I had ancestors who had walked into Egypt and generations later ancestors who walked with Moses from Egypt to the holy land. And there I was, back in the time of King David and young David and Goliath … and my ancestors were there and I hugged them and I was there.
I then went back to the cave people where I’ve often started my autobiography and have often said that I can absolutely and concretely feel that I was descended from people 50,000 years ago making handprints in blood on the walls of the cave. And I went beyond that, back to the earliest stages of humankind, and I felt that I had walked back millions of years, walking, walking, back to the Australopithecines, back to Lucy and her kin, and I knew for certain that one of her contemporaries was my ancestor, both a male and a female ancestor. And I pictured the primates as I continued as my own direct ancestor walking backwards through time. Walking. Walking. And I kept going further and further back… back to when the first animals walked on the land, and then back to being the creatures in the sea who were my ancestors. And then back to the first forms of life on Earth. And then even back to the big bang, to the explosion that had fostered the current iteration of space and time and matter, and I was back at my lifelong obsession with the question of how something could come from nothing … or how it always was – which solved nothing about origins – there being just soooo much mass – and I truly don’t understand. And I know I don’t know. And can’t know. And I can’t stand that I don’t know the answer to how something can come from nothing and that saying it always was and always will be solves nothing. Whereupon I started mumbling “I know that I don’t know,” and “I know that I can’t know.”
And then started my journey of returning to the present, first as atoms, then molecules, then stars and suns, planets, the Earth and the sun, and the elements that became the combination of molecules that produced the first life that led to the creatures of the sea that came out onto the land and that were able to walk into primates and Lucy and I was working my way back, and back, and back. And I came back to my great grandmother, Toby. And I came back to my grandfather on my father’s side, Samuel, a man I knew, and I came back to my father, and I knew with great clarity something about my father’s deep deep tension between the soft soul of the man he was and the demand that as a man he be strong and macho and fearless and how I had directly inherited the part of me that needed to be a man, and to be strong, and to know what being a father was and then to the very point in my life when I realized I no longer needed to be that person, that I had become a spiritual person, that I was on a spiritual journey and even believed in the existence of some sort of higher power which I’ve actually come to “know,” and I felt in that sense that I also knew as much of my “soul” as I would ever be able or capable of knowing, and it was satisfactory, that although I knew I couldn’t “know,” and I would never know how something came from nothing, that I had traced the journey of my soul from its origins into my current body and current consciousness where it lives appreciatively today.
MISCELLANEOUS
I Bow to Time
I bow to time
Quite literally
In the kitchen
Before the clock with the pendulum
I pause to consider my options
And conflicting desires
Wants, needs
To walk in sunshine
To read, to exercise
To correspond, to work
To eat, to dream
To study, to sing
I bow before time
As a Japanese warrior
Bowing in respect before the battle
Bowing in respect after the battle
Win or lose
Honoring the adversary
Who makes your battle possible
Honoring the ally
Who makes your battle possible
Meaningful
Challenging
Joyful
Sad
Inside the bow is gratitude and respect
For what I am given and what I am not
Here
In this nanosecond of cosmic time that is my life
Our life
Awareness
Choices
Gratitude
Love
Swept up in time
One moment it is stormy
The next bright sunshine
If you don’t like the weather
Wait around a few minutes
I bow to the clock
To time
To limits
To reality so called
To my spirit
To my flesh
To the great mind
The bow
Is delicious
© 1980s
Wendell Berry – The Loved Ones
The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.
Poetry
Soul Voyage – 2025
For my first 9D Breathwork workshop in 2025 I had set the intention to discover what my “soul” or inherited “essence” was and I had been very surprised, as described elsewhere, to discover that when I was in the womb I was both male and female and that I only became male after my birth by virtue of my genitalia. I felt that experience had been very important in terms of my soul discovery, or my soul retrieval, or my soul access work; that there was nothing more foundational than for me to understand that I was both male and female.
So when I went back for my second breath session a few months later I had the same intention, which was to learn more about my soul, and, for some reason, when I began deepening, I found myself in the company of my my father’s mother’s mother, my great grandmother, Toby Warshavski, the woman I wrote that little poetry book about how she saved my life when I was four years old. And as I thought about my beloved great grandmother, I remembered that she too had been a little child, and that she had had a father and a mother, although it was the father’s line that I was particularly interested in. And I imagined/visualized her father, probably in the 1830s, and I greeted him and actually opened my arms and hugged him. And then I remembered that he had been a little boy and had had a father and that took me back into the 1780s or the American revolutionary times, and I hugged that man and then that father’s father went back to the 17th and then the 16th century and the 15th century, and as I was following these men and hugging these men I got back to the time of the butcher Columbus’s voyage to the so-called New World, and the fact that I had had Jewish ancestors in Moorish Spain at that time, and that Jews were on Columbus’s ships, and that my ancestors of that time had learned about the New World, and were also expelled from Moorish Spain, and that some of my ancestors were people who had walked to Spain in the middle ages and had then walked away from Spain, often back to the holy land or Northern Africa or eastern European countries. These people, including some of my ancestors had been welcome in many Muslim countries, and the image of my ancestors walking to and fro became very powerful for me, and I went back beyond the Middle Ages, and then I went back to the time of Christ. And I was now not going generation by generation but jumping back centuries at a time, back to Christ, and then back to Moses. And the fact is that I had ancestors who walked with Moses from Egypt to the holy land. And then I was back in the time of King David and young David and Goliath … and my ancestors were there and I hugged them and I was there.
I then went back to the cave people where I’ve often started my autobiography and have often said that I can absolutely and concretely feel that I was descended from people 50,000 years ago making handprints in blood on the walls of the cave. And then I went beyond that, back to the earliest stages of humankind, and I felt that I had walked back millions of years, walking, walking, back to the Australopithecines, to Lucy, and I knew for certain that one of her contemporaries was my ancestor, both a male and a female. And I pictured the primates walking backwards through time. Walking. Walking. And I kept going further and further back… back to when the first animals walked on the land, and then back to being the creatures in the sea who were my ancestors. And then back to the first forms of life on Earth. And then even back to the big bang, to the explosion that had fostered the current iteration of space and time and matter, and I was back at my lifelong obsession with the question of how something could come from nothing … or how it always was – which solved nothing about origins – and there’s just soooo much mass – and I just don’t understand. And I know I don’t know. And can’t know. And I can’t stand that I don’t know the answer to how something can come from nothing and that saying it always was and always will be solves nothing. Whereupon I started mumbling “I know that I don’t know,” and “I know that I can’t know.” And then I started my journey of returning to the present, first as atoms, then molecules, then stars and suns, planets, the Earth and the sun, and the gases that led to the combination of molecules that produced the first life that led to the creatures of the sea that came out onto the land and that were able to walk into primates and Lucy and I was working my way back, and back, and back. And I came back to my great grandmother. I came back to my grandfather on my patriarchal side, a man who I knew, and I came back to my father, and I knew something about my father’s deep deep tension between the soft soul of the man he was and the demand that as a man he be strong and macho and fearless and blah blah blah and how I had directly inherited the part of me that needed to be a man, and needed to be strong, and needed to know what being a father was and then, at this very point in my life, when I realized I no longer needed to be that person, that I had become a spiritual person, that I was on a spiritual journey and even believed in the existence of some sort of higher power which I’ve actually come to “know,” and I felt in that sense that I also knew as much of my “soul” as I would ever be able or capable of knowing, that it was satisfactory, and that although I knew I couldn’t – that I didn’t – “know,” and I would never know how something came from nothing, that I had traced the journey of my soul into my current body and current consciousness where it lives today.
MEMOIRS
Poetry – Pablo Neruda
And it was at that age…
Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
Poetry
Aimless Love – Billy Collins
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door —
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor —
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
Poetry
The Future – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I know I like to keep my secrets close. It’s who I am.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Doesn’t mean
I don’t appreciate it when you plant larkspur
and roses, lavender bushes and apricot trees,
as if you believe in investing in a world years from now.
Of course, I appreciate the way you call your congressmen
to tell them about the world you believe we could live in.
I love every time you put a letter in the mail with a stamp,
every time you learn a new skill or make a ten-year-plan.
How beautiful you are to me when you dream.
It’s lonely here, of course. Everyone always coming toward
but never arriving. I’m not complaining.
Being the future has its perks. Like infinite potential.
Like hope. I know it’s hard sometimes to believe
you will ever get through this. But haven’t you learned by now
that just because you don’t see the way forward
doesn’t mean they way doesn’t exist?
That is the only promise I can make you, sweetheart.
You can’t see the path. But here it is.
Poetry
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front – Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Poetry
Record Player – Adrian Matejka
It’s never our finest hour in America but right now,
most things at the ledges of my life are like the sad
shuffling at the edge of an LP. This one time, I forgot
to pick up the tonearm & heard polyvinyl lamentations
until Thursday when I finally realized the sounds were from
my speakers & not one of my own haunted creation.
I would have laughed, but it was war time yet again:
more air strikes crumbling schools, more drone opportunities
& misplaced homilies. You got to be kidding me.
Polished tanks cresting possibility’s hill for another,
unrequited salvo. All the mystifying UFOs & split
infinities in the record’s imaginary are in the past as it
kept playing its static goodbyes: little hiccupping pleas
until somebody, finally, flipped off the infernal machine.
Poetry
Prayer – Marie Howe
Every day I want to speak with you.
And every day something more important
calls for my attention-
the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage
I need to bring for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing,
the garbage trucks outside already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from this chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
Poetry