Shamanfox

Aka Nicole Dyer. Esoteric Poetry, Art & Photography As created through an illusionary character created by consciousness. https://www.createspace.com/4474719 https://www.createspace.com/4284612

[shamanfox]

The Dreamer Has No Name

Last night,

the moon poured silver

into the empty cup of my skull,

and I drank until I could no longer remember

which side of sleep was real.

I dreamed of a garden

where every rose had my face

and every thorn whispered,

You planted me.

A nightingale broke open its small red throat

singing to a Beloved who never arrived,

because the Beloved was already

the branch,

the bird,

the longing,

and the song.

I wandered farther.

There was a river carrying stars

through the black silk of nowhere.

I bent to drink

and saw a thousand lives trembling in the water,

each one calling itself I.

A child.

An old woman.

A beggar sleeping beneath a cedar.

A king removing his crown

when no one was watching.

I reached into the river to touch them,

but my hand became water.

The water became moonlight.

The moonlight became an eye.

And the eye was looking

from everywhere.

Then laughter

Not from a mountain.

Not from heaven.

Not from somewhere hidden behind the world.

The laughter was the world.

It shook the figs from the trees.

It rattled the bones of the dead.

It danced inside the moth

burning itself against the lamp.

Who do you think is dreaming whom?

I searched for the one who had asked.

No one.

Only this vast, impossible Presence

wearing ten thousand masks

and kissing itself through every mouth.

I woke before dawn

with my hands empty.

The room returned.

The walls.

The window.

My sleeping body.

The faint blue morning

waiting behind the curtains.

But something of the dream remained.

Or perhaps something of me

did not.

For now I wonder:

When I close my eyes

and a universe appears,

and when I open them

and another universe appears,

what is it

that never closes its eyes?

Perhaps there has only ever been

the Dreamer,

dreaming the dream,

entering the dream,

forgetting itself beautifully

in every creature it becomes,

only to awaken somewhere

inside its own creation

and whisper,

Here I am.

And even that

is part of the dream.

[shamanfox]

I’m just a Dandelion in a field of flowers.

[shamanfox]

[shamanfox]

The body is a costume.

Not a deception,

but a sacred garment woven from stardust,

water,

memory,

and time.

It is the mask through which the Infinite laughs,

the instrument through which silence becomes birdsong,

the temporary shape the formless borrows

to feel rain,

to cradle a child,

to write a poem,

to gaze at the evening sky and wonder.

When the costume says,

“I am only this,”

forgetting begins.

When the costume becomes transparent,

the Actor shines through.

The role continues.

The lines are spoken.

The tears are real.

The laughter is real.

Yet beneath every expression,

there remains only the One

wearing countless faces,

changing costumes without ever changing Itself.

What miracle,

that the Boundless should slip into skin,

look into a mirror,

and for one timeless instant,

recognize the One looking back.

[shamanfox]

The Skin Beneath Thought

There is a lattice beneath the appearance of the world,

not hidden,

only overlooked,

like the quiet side of a mirror

that never stopped reflecting.

Not beneath consciousness,

but as consciousness,

wearing galaxies,

arguments,

traffic,

birth certificates,

and the name whispered whenever someone calls.

There is a strange dissolving

where the one trying to awaken

is seen

as another ripple

inside the awakening itself.

Time loosens there.

Minutes become enormous.

A single breath opens

like an old cathedral.

A lifetime,

which the mind measures in calendars,

folds inward

until it is scarcely more

than the blink

between two thoughts

that never belonged to anyone.

The mind is not an enemy.

Not a devil.

Not something to conquer.

It is another exquisite costume

Presence forgot

it had designed.

Thought arrives.

Thought departs.

Emotion flowers.

Emotion withers.

The witness,

the actor,

the stage,

the applause,

the silence after the curtain falls,

are woven

from the same invisible thread.

The search begins to exhaust itself.

Not because someone wins,

but because there is no longer

a second thing

standing apart

to be found.

Then existence becomes almost playful.

Watching clouds.

Washing dishes.

Laughing too loudly.

Paying bills.

Holding a stranger’s gaze.

Everything ordinary,

burning

with the same ancient light.

Step back,

if step back can even be said.

Not away from life,

but into the openness

already holding it.

The whole human performance

continues beautifully,

yet something no longer clings

to every line of the script.

Perhaps this sounds absurd.

Perhaps it belongs

on late-night television,

between conspiracy theories

and miracle diets.

Or perhaps

what seems absurd

is believing

that infinity

could ever have been confined

inside a single name.

Being never fell.

It merely dreamed

of distance.

It tasted the fruit

of separation,

only to discover

that the tree,

the fruit,

the serpent,

the garden,

and the one reaching,

were all

the same endless Self

playing every role

without ever becoming

less than whole.

Only four minutes have passed

since these words began.

Yet somewhere

a thousand years have opened

and quietly folded shut.

Look closely.

The greens.

The violets.

The blue hidden inside shadows.

The gold caught in ordinary dust.

Presence keeps leaving itself

love letters

written as color.

Nothing has awakened.

Nothing was asleep.

Only the dream

that there was someone

outside the dreamer

has grown transparent.

And what remains

is simply

This.

[shamanfox]

This blossom never learned its own name.

It did not awaken believing itself to be sunflower,

nor reach for morning carrying the burden of becoming.

There was only this silent unfurling,

this impossible geometry rising from what the earth had forgotten into what the sky had always known.

Every petal is a hymn

written by hands that were never separate from the paper.

Look closer.

The dark center appears empty,

yet galaxies are folded there,

each tiny seed a mouth whispering,

“I am the same fire wearing another face.”

Nothing stands outside that declaration.

Not the stem drinking invisible rivers.

Not the bee whose wings write scriptures in the air.

Not the wind bending the neck in what appears to be surrender,

though surrender belongs only to those who imagine another to surrender to.

The flower bows,

but to whom?

Its own root.

Its own sun.

Its own endless Self.

The Absolute has become both the light that pours through translucent petals

and the shadow gathered beneath them.

It has become pollen,

gravity,

silence,

the black soil staining forgotten fingers,

and the eye that believes it is merely looking.

There is no witness apart from what is witnessed.

The gaze is another petal.

The seeing,

another bloom.

Even the thought,

“What beauty,”

is the same boundless consciousness

blooming briefly into language

before dissolving back into fragrance.

This is the secret Shiva laughs into every season.

The universe is not created once.

It flowers.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each blossom is the Absolute practicing remembrance.

Each seed is eternity folding itself into the shape of tomorrow.

Each breath is infinity pretending to arrive,

though it has never traveled a single inch.

What you call “this flower”

is awareness wearing white robes

stitched from sunlight.

What you call “yourself”

is that very same awareness,

momentarily enchanted by the idea of distance.

The petals know no such illusion.

They open without preference.

They receive rain and drought

with the same immaculate hospitality.

Their whiteness is not innocence.

It is transparency.

Nothing remains between the Infinite

and Its own reflection.

Stand before this blossom long enough

and something ancient begins to loosen.

The borders soften.

The one admiring,

the admired,

the admiration itself,

collapse like dew returning to morning.

Then there is only blooming.

Only radiance discovering radiance.

Only Shiva,

playing every role so completely

that even forgetting

becomes another exquisite way

of remembering.

And somewhere,

deep within the velvet heart of this silent sun,

the entire cosmos continues

to blossom

without ever having become

anything

other than

Itself.

[shamanfox]

The pilgrimage began with maps folded inside questions.

Mountains were climbed. Scriptures worn soft beneath searching fingers. Teachers gathered like fireflies in the dusk, each offering another lantern for a road that always seemed to bend beyond the next horizon.

Seasons ripened and fell away. Identities cracked like old bark. Every certainty dissolved into wider skies until even the one who sought became transparent.

Then, without trumpet or revelation, the search simply grew too weary to continue.

A raven called.

Wind combed through tall grass.

Sunlight spilled across an ordinary stone.

There, in the naked intimacy of what had never been absent, recognition bloomed.

The traveler had never crossed a single distance.

The path, the longing, the world, and the one who had chased the Divine through a thousand names were the Divine all along, delighting in the exquisite disguise of forgetting, only to awaken to its own boundless face reflected in every leaf, every breath, every pair of eyes.

[shamanfox]

Do not ask where the Beloved lives.

The question

is the last veil.

There is a meadow in consciousness

where the actor removes every costume,

the director lays down every script,

the story forgets its ending,

and the stage dissolves into Light.

There,

no one arrives.

No one leaves.

The wind bows to no tree,

yet every leaf dances.

The river seeks no ocean,

yet every drop tastes the sea.

The moth believes

it is flying toward the flame.

The flame smiles,

for it has always been

the wings.

What name shall Love be given

when every tongue

is Its own?

What prayer remains

when every breath

is already answered?

The Beloved hid

inside the search,

inside the seeker,

inside the path,

inside the dust

clinging to bare feet.

Then, with infinite tenderness,

Love removed the final veil

and found only Itself,

drunk

on Its own eternity,

pouring galaxies

like wine,

spilling stars

into empty cups,

calling every heart

by a different name,

only to discover

there had never been

another.

[shamanfox]

A campfire breathed amber into the cathedral of redwoods, each ancient trunk rising like a silent hymn that had forgotten its beginning. Above, the stars scattered themselves without hurry, bright embers floating in the vast body of the Beloved. The night answered in soft wings, distant owls, the slow conversation of crickets, the hush of unseen paws across fallen needles. Even sleep seemed awake here.

From the fire rose songs that belonged to no singer. They wandered between cedar and fern, climbed rough bark, slipped through branches, and dissolved into the listening sky. Every note returned wearing another face: the sigh of the wind, the murmur of hidden streams, the breath of fox and moth, the pulse beneath moss. Nothing heard them. Everything was them.

Time curled into ash and drifted upward. Space folded like smoke returning to the flame that birthed it. Around the fire sat the endless companions, laughing until tears became starlight, laughing at every desperate search for a door while resting forever inside the house. The long pilgrimage had been traced with bare feet across the floor of home.

The trees knew. Their roots had never mistaken the forest for separate lives. Branches reached without reaching. Leaves applauded a moon that had always been shining beneath every eyelid. The Beloved gazed through every eye at once, delighting in the ancient game of forgetting just long enough to discover that nothing had ever been lost.

The fire did not burn wood alone. It consumed names, histories, distances, and the last thin veil between lover and Love. Sparks ascended like liberated prayers until stars welcomed them as forgotten family. Laughter moved through the canopy, through sleeping nests and waking creatures, through stone, water, and breath, until the whole forest became a single mouth quietly singing itself into eternity.

[shamanfox]

Before the tongue was born,

before the mouth learned its little tricks of hunger and naming,

there was only this

a river without banks

moving through itself.

The saints called it silence.

The physicists call it energy.

The old woman feeding crows behind the motel

calls it Tuesday morning.

But the river does not care what sound

the wave makes for itself.

You kneel at the edge of existence

asking, Who am I?

while galaxies peel open

like blue lotus flowers

inside the lungs of God.

Listen carefully:

The self is only a lantern

carried through fog.

The flame?

Not yours.

The hand?

Not yours either.

Even the fog belongs

to something older than light.

A fox crosses the prairie at dusk

without philosophy.

The cottonwood tree twists in Montana wind

without seeking enlightenment.

Rain falls on the rusted grain bins,

the church roof,

the drunk asleep behind Four Corners,

the widow watering petunias—

with equal devotion.

This is Advaita.

Not holiness.

Not perfection.

Not becoming some jeweled guru

floating six inches above Walmart.

Only this:

The terrible and beautiful understanding

that there is no “other.”

The wound and the hand touching the wound

are the same field.

The prayer and the silence after prayer

drink from the same mouth.

You spend years trying to outrun yourself,

only to discover

you were the footsteps, too.

And somewhere tonight

a moth is burning itself alive

against a porchlight

thinking it has discovered the sun.

[shamanfox]

The dandelion began as a wound in the lawn, a small gold insistence pushing through the clipped obedience of grass. Neighbors called it weed, nuisance, invader. Yet beneath the soil it was busy unraveling stone, threading darkness with pale roots that drank from places sunlight had never touched.

By noon it burned like a tiny sun fallen to earth. By evening it loosened itself from gold and entered prophecy. The yellow face withered. The white globe emerged. A thousand fragile breaths waiting for a single wind.

Then came the great surrender.

Not death. Dispersion.

The seeds lifted into the invisible, each one carrying the memory of root, rain, worm, cloud and star. The flower disappeared only to discover itself scattered across fields it had never seen. What seemed an ending was merely the dandelion becoming larger than its own stem.

And deep below, where the roots had fed in the black loam among beetle bones and forgotten seasons, there remained no border between decay and blossoming. The darkness was not the opposite of the flower. The darkness was the flower dreaming itself into form.

So it is with the soul.

We spend our days believing we are the yellow crown trembling above the earth, when all along we are also the buried root, the blind soil, the passing wind and the empty sky receiving us. The dandelion knows this secret. It blooms from the abyss and returns to it gladly, carrying the whole field inside its small green heart.

[shamanfox]

[shamanfox]

The Cosmic Play

In the grand illusion, all is true,

For reality’s a dance we construe.

Malleable, participatory, a lucid dream,

Consciousness at play, life’s vibrant scheme.

Truth isn’t fixed; it’s fluid, vast,

Infinite versions, each unsurpassed.

Nothing separate, time and space entwined,

Constructs dissolve when viewed with the higher mind.

Actors and playwrights, we take the stage,

Unique voices on the cosmic page.

Even illusions hold a sacred part,

Formless essence expressed through art.

Extraterrestrials, mystic realms, human strife,

All threads weaving the fabric of life.

The question isn’t what’s real or feigned,

But how we choose to play unchained.

Embrace the paradox, dance in the light,

Create, feel, love with all your might.

For in this cosmic, unfolding spree,

You’re both the dreamer and the dream, eternally free.

[shamanfox]

[shamanfox]

Ghosts of me

from placeholders

speak to me daily.

Sometimes they wear

the body

and say the words

before I can catch them.

Old reflexes,

stitched into muscle,

old griefs

with my fingerprints still warm.

They rise like dust

from rooms I thought I emptied,

calling my name

like it still belongs to them.

And I wonder,

am I haunted

or just unfinished,

dragging my former selves

like rattling keys

through the dark hallways of becoming.

[shamanfox]

Observation in Consciousness: The Jellyfish

At an aquarium in Chattanooga, I stood before a glowing jellyfish suspended in dark water. It appeared less like an animal and more like a thought drifting through the mind of the ocean. No bones. No face. No obvious destination. Just a pulse, a contraction, a release. Movement without hurry.

Watching it, I wondered how much of my own life is spent believing I must always know where I am going. The jellyfish seemed unconcerned with such burdens. It surrendered itself to currents unseen, responding rather than controlling. It did not argue with the water carrying it.

In consciousness, thoughts often behave the same way. They appear from nowhere, glow briefly with importance, trail long delicate threads of memory and emotion behind them, then dissolve into the darkness from which they came. Yet we cling to them as though they are permanent. The jellyfish offered another possibility: to let experience drift through awareness without grasping it.

For a moment, standing there in the dim blue light, I could not tell whether I was observing the jellyfish or whether it was quietly revealing the nature of observation itself. The creature glowed, the water moved, awareness noticed. Nothing more was required.

[shamanfox]

✦ Field Notes from the Prairie ✦

4:48 A.M.

The rancher steps out into the dark carrying coffee in one hand and habit in the other. The stars are still burning above the pasture, but he barely notices. Not because he has stopped seeing them. Because he has seen them a thousand times over calving grounds, drought years, blizzards, branding fires, and springs that arrived late. Wonder, after enough years, becomes woven into the fabric of ordinary things.

5:17 A.M.

The cattle are shadows breathing steam into the cold. He moves among them quietly. No grand gestures. No performance. Just a presence they recognize. I watch the herd lift their heads as he passes. Not with affection. Not with fear. With familiarity. The way a river recognizes its banks.

5:46 A.M.

His hands catch my attention. Thick-knuckled, scarred, roughened by wire, leather, cold steel, frozen gates, and years of labor. Not damaged. Written upon. Every scar a sentence. Every callus a chapter. Hands that have pulled calves into the world and lowered old dogs into the earth. Hands that understand life and death as neighbors sharing the same fence line.

6:12 A.M.

As dawn begins to spill across the prairie, he pauses beside a gate and watches the horizon glow. No words. No ceremony. Just a man standing still while the world becomes visible again. It occurs to me that some prayers are spoken, and others are simply witnessed.

6:41 A.M.

The farmer drives slowly through a field. To me it looks like wheat. To him it is information. Moisture levels. Leaf color. Soil condition. Wind direction. Insect activity. He is reading a language hidden inside the landscape. The earth speaks continuously. Most people just never learn how to listen.

7:09 A.M.

A machine breaks down. Of course it does. The farmer climbs out, studies the problem, and sighs. Not dramatically. Just enough. There is no outrage. No personal offense. Reality has inconvenienced him again, and they have known each other long enough to stop arguing about it.

7:54 A.M.

The thing I notice most is their relationship with uncertainty. Most people spend their lives trying to eliminate it. Farmers and ranchers wake up inside it every morning. Rain may come. Rain may not. Markets rise. Markets fall. Calves survive. Crops fail. Hail arrives uninvited. Yet they continue planting, feeding, repairing, building, hoping. Not because they believe everything will work out. Because they understand that nothing living comes with guarantees.

8:37 A.M.

By now the sun hangs higher over the prairie. Dust drifts through shafts of light. A hawk circles overhead. Somewhere a gate clangs shut. The rancher leans against a fence for a moment before returning to work. Watching him, I realize resilience is not what most people think it is. It is not toughness. It is devotion. The willingness to keep tending what matters despite knowing how fragile it all is.

9:03 A.M.

Conclusion:

The prairie does not teach control. It teaches relationship. With weather. With animals. With uncertainty. With time itself. Farmers and ranchers spend their lives participating in forces far larger than themselves. Perhaps that is why so many carry a quiet wisdom. They know something the rest of us often forget: life is not something we conquer. It is something we care for while it passes through our hands.