Intent, vigilance, love, God, and obstructions on the journey

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Intent will lead us through the forest to the Garden. But we must have intent that is sedulous, uncompromising, and pure. We must have it like an arrow whistling unstoppably towards its mark, for if we falter or step aside for just an instant, we are lost and damned again, and only mercy shall see us through the night, for no one wanders endlessly in the darkness searching for us. If we do not seek with all our might for truth, or love, or God, by whatever name, our lives are but a slow decline to death. To death, as the self falls away from its anchor, and the spirit flies from its ground, so shall we wither without ability to grow, to dream, or to fly.

We are like baby birds which must break out of the shell not once, but always, for the conveyor-belt of humanity runs in the wrong direction, against the stream of life, and we lose ground by just standing still, or looking away for the briefest of moments. A single thoughtless moment of distraction and we wake up years later, a long, long way back, and there are no shortcuts by which to return, no backdoors, no jet airplanes. We have to walk the same trail again, past the same markers, through the same barriers, carrying the same burdens, in order to return simply to where we already have been. Only vigilance will keep us from backsliding. Only uncompromising intent.

And so the only thing to do is to go, and and go, and go, and keep going, and never to think of arrival. And the only way I have found to do that is to accept all the agony, to feel all the sorrow, the separation and loneliness, the loss and confusion, and …to not let it take me down. And by that I mean to stand in the midst of agony, and learn to see joy, and to say yes, yes, of course, yes, I accept, I want more, more life, more love, more dreams, more ecstasy, and all the fabulous madness …regardless of the cost.

But if we do not have that wish within us, nor the wherewithal to fulfill its demands, it will never happen. The flowers and birds will not come marching to our doors and ask us to come out and play. We must ourselves break open internally, and walk out .We, ourselves, must go to the flowers. It is up to us.

            Vigilance. No word is more pertinent to the struggle against the gravity of the mind.

            The universe would continue to provide all sorts of reasons and obstructions to test me, to slow me down and make my goal seem unattainable. That is, until I decided to put my head down, and to go for it, and not to look up until I was through.

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These fragments are taken from unpublished writings by Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.