Steve Brooks (Abhaya) – Poetry, Prose & Art

Manifesto of the Real

The only reality, that can be proven to exist, is this moment. I don’t mean the popular moment of anyone’s current activity, but the moment between thoughts, the moment that conscious time surrounds, the moment of existence.

I’m a realist. I mean to speak of what’s real. Since the language I love is the province of the relative realities of past, present and future, this is impossible, but I keep trying. If I can’t describe the indescribable, I can speak of relative reality from the awareness of a non-relative place. As human beings, as thinkers, as poets and philosophers, we’ve spoken of the moment of existence as something spiritual, abstract and philosophical, and we’ve spoken of our transient body/mind as if that construct describes us, as if that is who we are.

It’s true that we’re transient beings, and all our creations are transient, but the essence of our being is not. We’ve identified ourselves with our periphery and not our center. I’ve written from the center, and I’ve written from the periphery. Both are valid perspectives. We are transient beings in a transient universe. And, we’re able to be aware of our intrinsic nature. We are able to recognize ourselves, as energy, that is capable of being self-aware, and, in our transient selves, we recognize the fact of our existence.

We’re able to recognize ourselves from within our intrinsic nature, without recourse to the identity of mind and body. This is the opportunity to speak from the moment, in the moment, about the moment of our own existence. Everything in our history goes against this opportunity. We’re habituated by the neglect of our own reality. I’m a realist, and I have been a romantic. I’ve been inclined to speak from intrinsic existence. Letting the romance of reality fall away reveals the reality that underlies the romantic and all the other postures of the poet.

In my life, I’ve gradually felt more real, and that’s been the reward of my nature. Some of my writing has been an attempt to speak from this awareness, and that writing has been seen by others as spiritual, abstract, and philosophical. From my perspective, it’s none of those. I describe what is and what occurs, in my awareness, using this flawed, beautiful tool of language. I see the difficulty in using transient language to speak from the only reality that’s not transient. Poets have always tried to leap into the center. When poets don’t effectively leap into the center, the description of the intrinsic sounds abstract, with a romantic costume, like religion or spirituality, or it becomes philosophy.

I love this transient world we live in, I love the transient life we’re living, and I speak of transient reality in simple wonder from the awareness of the real. The real is greater than the exquisite transience of its lesser realities. I’m not a physical being living a spiritual life, I am awareness, I am energy, living a physical life. And all my words are only my hands waving in the air.