On Self Deception

We humans hold tightly to beliefs,
as if they were vital organs.
Perhaps they are.

We need to feel safe
in an increasingly unsafe world.

Fair enough.

Fundamentalist religions understand this well—
how firm boundaries,
declared holy,
can feel like shelter.

How obedience
can masquerade as peace.

Fair enough.

But something quieter—
and more dangerous—
happens
when free-thinking people
begin to believe
they are immune.

When reason
becomes the chosen refuge.

When intelligence
is tasked with protecting the heart
from what it already knows.

When logic is used
not to illuminate,
but to justify
the narrowing of our lives.

This is not stupidity.
It is often the work
of very capable minds.

We tell ourselves
we are being practical.
Realistic.
Responsible.

We say we are choosing freely,
when what we are really choosing
is familiarity.

We say we are being patient,
when we are actually postponing our place
in the shared reality we already inhabit.

We say this is temporary—
that conditions will improve,
that love will be ushered in
once the scaffolding is complete.

And because the reasons sound sensible—
even kind—
we do not notice
how much we are accommodating
what diminishes us.

Slowly,
almost imperceptibly,
separation becomes a virtue.

Endurance
becomes evidence of character.

Self-erasure—
the quiet shrinking of one’s own truth—
begins to look like maturity.

Withdrawal, mistaken for serenity, passes as peace.

At that point,
self-righteousness
need not announce itself.

It can feel gentle.
Earnest.
Concerned.

But the effect
is the same.

Justifications multiply—
for why another’s freedom
must be curtailed,
why another’s truth
is inconvenient,
why sovereignty is claimed
as a luxury
we cannot yet afford.

Safety, once mutual,
is quietly hoarded.

And we may even feel
virtuous for it.

But there is a cost.

Because when one person
is not free—
not in theory,
but in their body,
in their choices,
in their capacity
to say no—

the rest of us
are not liberated either.

We are only managing our fear
with better language.

The question, then,
is not
Who is right?
or
Who is to blame?

It is simpler.
And harder.

Where have I made a life small
so that it would feel safe?

And what truth
have I learned to live with—
as though I were its recipient,
rather than its source?

Singled out ~ bj 2017

Thresholds

From the cradle to the grave,
life presents itself in thresholds.

They arrive without announcement.
A pause in the air.
A shift in the body.
Something loosening, something tightening.

I have learned to notice how they come—
not as crises, not as summons,
but as moments that ask for orientation.
A quiet recalibration.
Feet finding ground again.

Thresholds do not vanish
when they are ignored.
They wait.

Momentum gathers regardless,
drawn by an inner compass
that cannot be reasoned with.
It moves according to attunement,
according to something beneath language.

I no longer think of this as a spiritual journey.
It feels closer to a soul one.
A life inviting itself forward.

Growth, as I’ve seen it,
rarely arrives through force.
Pressure accumulates only when there is no room left
for listening.

What is resisted does not leave.
It lingers.
It circles.

Over time, the distinction becomes clearer—
between what I believe
and what I know.

Belief lives in structures,
in inherited frameworks,
in explanations that promise certainty.
Knowing lives elsewhere—
in the bones,
in the marrow,
in the body’s unarguable response.

I have noticed how different we are in this.
How wiring, conditioning, and culture
bend us toward certain paths
and away from others.

Still, there is a shared instinct:
to pause when something subtle calls for it.
To wait until a signal makes itself known—
through sensation,
through timing,
through an almost imperceptible easing.

The road forks more often than we admit.
Choice is rarely dramatic.
It usually feels like a small turning.

I have learned that waiting is not absence.
Answers arrive in their own way,
without being forced.

Pushing tends to produce conclusions
before they are ready.
I have done this.
I have borne the cost.

When I release the pressure—
when I stop biting down—
movement resumes on its own.

Like a wave gathering,
finding its shape,
then rising,
and landing—
steady,
without strain—
on a vast, sandy shore.

Halawa Bay, Moloka’i ~ bj 1990

Shimmer

I watched a sunfish die on the dock
after the cats had grabbed it.

The boards were sun-bleached, warm beneath
the curling flesh—
water close enough for it to sense,
but not to reach.

I knew then that life was no longer sustainable.
And yet I was compelled to observe.

For a moment, the body still held the memory
of where it belonged—
winking lights of orange and jade
flashing, each scale refracting,
as if refusing to let its animation go.

It was beautiful in a way that hurt,
not despite what was happening,
but because of it.

The shimmer remained longer than the breath,
as if water were still articulating through the body,
as if light itself were reluctant to leave.

Then something thinned.
Not suddenly.
Just… less.

The brightness softened.
The colors dulled.
The knowing imbued in all of life
withdrew.

That was when I understood:
luminosity is not something living beings own.
It is something that happens
when conditions are right.

A sunfish does not shine everywhere.
It shines in water.

On the dock, even beauty cannot survive
its own displacement.

I have seen this elsewhere.

Trees pulled from the ground
lose their upward intelligence.
Birds held too long
forget their knowledge of flight.

And humans—
when we exist inside shapes that are not our own,
in roles that constrict,
relationships that deny the body,
identities or spiritual frameworks
that silence instinct—
we languish.

Not all at once.

At first, there is still shimmer.
Memory.
Habit-light.

Then less.

Not because the human being is lacking,
but because we are out of our element.

And here is the quiet truth
the dock revealed to me:

every being deserves to live
where it can reveal itself—
and to release its light
where it belongs.

The sunfish lost its shimmer on land.
Humans lose theirs in falsity.

Luminosity is contextual.
And context is everything.

Shimmer on sand ~ bj 2014

The Portal

There is a pinhole of light streaming through a blank canvas,
and as I ponder this portal, more is revealed—
always in time. We are in a conversation
with the unfolding.

There was a time when I would have torn the edges,
clawing my way with eager hands to get through that opening,
any opening offered me, context and content be damned.
But now I peer first, tentatively, at the world beyond—
the colors, the textures, the shape of what is waiting—
and pause before offering myself to it.
A gentle invitation rises, the encouragement that prompts me to enter
again and again.

I look forward to these openings,
even when they do not arrive on days I wish they would.
For I can fashion wanderings of my own imagining;
the path is mine to behold and engage,
a living dialogue with the day itself.
Not the narrow definition handed down by patriarchy,
but the wide-open thighs of a goddess in labor,
giving birth to what wishes to come through.

We need not manufacture an entire day—
why would we?
Instead, we set our feet upon a chosen path
and watch it unfurl before us,
dancing with the luminous threads of an evolving cosmos—
and we, never separate from that which knows
far more than we can fathom,
delight in the surprises and opportunities laid along the way.

Kohala Mountain Rd. ~ bj 2018

Edge of the Infinite

We go down to the ocean’s edge each evening,
and sometimes I am so tired my inner filters slip,
and I can see beneath the waves.
I don’t mean this metaphorically.
I mean I can quite literally see—
the mounding lava rocks, the mountains of structures,
cliffs rising just beneath this roiling,
north-facing sea.

I cannot stay in that visual mode for long.
My nervous system isn’t built for it.
I know this now, though I think
I have always sensed it.
There’s a gentle tug at my navel,
and I snap back into the miracle
of this human form.
Then I wonder why I cannot see more—
and perhaps one day I will.
But not now.

When the Mystery lies this close to the surface,
the mind grapples with its whys, hows,
and wherefores.
Are these the limits of consciousness
for the remainder of my days?
And yet the Mystery keeps offering itself
in pieces small enough to be borne.
I still long to feel more,
live wider—
a natural extension of awareness
once it has tasted
the edge of the infinite.

But for now,
though perhaps not for all time,
this will have to be enough.

north shore magic ~ bj 2025

Instinctual

Daily writing prompt

Do you trust your instincts?

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Instinct is older than language—
a pulse beneath thought,
a knowing shared with every creature
that breathes in rhythm with the Earth.

Yet somehow we,
the ones who call ourselves intelligent,
forget to listen.
We override the whisper
for the noise of ambition,
ownership, control—
ideas the wild world
has never required.

My own instincts speak quietly:
a drop in the gut,
a shimmer of unease,
a soft expansion when something is true.
It isn’t a choice anymore to heed it—
the cost of ignoring it
has carved its lessons into me.

I think when I was young
I had to tune it out.
I lived among people
whose needs overshadowed mine,
and survival meant adapting
to a world less democratic
than it claimed to be.
Even strong instincts
cannot always guarantee safety.

But with time
I’ve returned to the old language—
the one spoken beneath thought.
And when I listen,
life arranges itself
in ways that feel almost choreographed:
paths clearing,
doors opening,
as if the unseen world
were making room.

Instinct, after all,
is not a guess.
It is the body’s way
of remembering the truth
before the mind awakens to it.

Island deer ~ bj 2019

Coming Home

Coming home may be the first truth we recognize
without words—feet sensing receptive ground, comfort
rising from the soil as breath deepens and expands.
We are no different from the dog with its wet muzzle
lifted to the wind, savoring with senses we still possess
but long ago overrode as the noise around us mounted,
the pace quickened, the world held its axis
yet somehow whirled with greater momentum.

We forget the kinship, yet still we sense.
And in that sensing, the invisible chains
begin to loosen, then snap, dropping
with a quiet thud. Shoulders release.
The neck lengthens. Something inside widens—
and we discover we are not so unlike
the downy goose, liberated in her watery realm,
arching and flexing her neck this way and that
before tucking it once more into a ruff of feathers,
broad feet paddling slow circles, attuned
to everything within and everything without—
the unmistakable freedom
of coming Home.

Kohala winter sunset ~ bj 2025

What Am I Sensing That I Cannot Yet Name?

What am I sensing,
that I cannot yet name?

Perhaps this sensing stirs first,
beneath language—
a pulse in the roots
before the rain arrives.

Maybe it’s the hush before recognition,
the body knowing
what the mind is still fumbling toward.

Light gathers behind the eyelids—
a scent, a tremor, the faintest chord—
the Word attempting to breathe through me,
asking only that I listen.

Something wants to be born here:
not an answer, but a presence.
I will wait, hands open,
until the weight of it
discovers its own voice.

And when it comes,
it may not be a word at all—
perhaps warmth rising through my soles,
or the taste of salt
at the dawning edge of day.

Perhaps it will arrive
on the whisper of wings
brushing an unseen threshold,
or threaded through the low hum
of belonging that trembles, ever eager
for expression, in all living things.

I will know it by its stillness,
by the way the air leans close,
by how the heart steadies,
recognizing its rhythmic beat
in the potential now hidden
within the vast expanse
of the unspoken.

Dawning of the Day ~ bj 2025

One Size Fits No One

What heals one body may harm another.
The raw becomes too cold for the weary stomach,
the stillness too rigid for the restless heart.

Even meditation can bruise the spirit
if what we need is to walk, to breathe,
to kneel in the garden’s forgiving dirt.

Food is medicine, but only
when it speaks our own language—
warmth for one, coolness for another,
quiet for some, a stirring wind for others.

One size heals no one.
The medicine is movement, awareness,
listening for the pulse beneath our own.

And when we finally hear it—
a small drum in the dark,
a steady rhythm of enough—
we remember:
healing is not agreement,
but relationship.

food ~ bj 2014

~

Until Dawn

Late tonight my body longs for the balm of sleep,
the oblivion of dreams—yet awareness flares
like a just-struck match; ideas rumble and roll.
I am not beset by worry, but by the bright ache
of knowing how brief it all is—this speck in eternity
we call life, the amazing grace by which we’re
allowed to coexist with fur and flesh and bark
and soil, here on Earth, singular in this universe.

How many among us still do not demonstrate care,
believing this to be some personal joyride—
all that is needed are fast cars and city lights,
enough money to fill a bathtub, to wine and dine
and consume until we burst—not with fullness
but gluttony—overblown with our own importance,
forgetting the thread of interconnectedness
that binds all life, all species, all creeds
within a landscape only a Master could paint.

How astonishing, this Earth-walk; how amazing
this animal body we inhabit for a time—
a perfectly designed system of checks and balances.
If only we possessed the courage to trust, to attend,
to listen and adjust, instead of pushing and forcing
and wishing to be anyone or anything
other than the miracle we are.

If we could attune, our bodies would adjust,
the weight of worlds would drop from weary shoulders,
and our hearts would sync with the pulse of every creature,
every being who ever existed—their stories intermingling
with our own to form an exquisite gossamer tapestry
cloaking the planet with a single beating crystalline
heart of love.

And so I lie awake within the currents of this knowing,
bridging worlds long alive in me—
not frightened, not longing—only awake
in the shimmer of soul-light that keeps me hovering
until dawn, until daybreak draws me gently
across the thin veil
into the tender gravity of form.

Anacortes, WA, 2020 ~ bj