Theses on Remembrance
By Niall Twohig
The body is the temporal expression of the soul.
The soul is presence not limited by time or space.
God is the presence of all presences.
Love is the body’s awareness of soul.
Praxis is love in action.
Loving words are gateways to soul and to God.
Communication is the call and response of souls.
Communion is the meeting of bodies as souls.
The mind is a storyteller.
Stories give form to what is formless.
Stories are useful for understanding reality.
Stories are not reality.
Joy is the soul seeing itself as body.
Joy is the body seeing itself as soul.
Suffering is the mind seeing itself as body.
Suffering is the body feeling itself as mind.
Joy is the high path the body takes back to the soul.
Suffering is the low path the body takes back to the soul.
Meditation is the middle path back to the soul.
Wisdom comes from walking all three paths.
Just action is action directed toward bodies as souls.
Justice is the condition of being treated as body and soul.
Eternity is the constant is-ness of all things.
Time is the story we give to our awareness of matter in flux.
Birth is the conception of the soul in time.
Death is the end of time and continuation of eternity.
Memories connect to what is lost in time but not to eternity.
Mourning is the mind caught in time.
Forgetting is the mind dying.
Forgetting is the end of stories.
Forgetting, above all, is the unraveling of time and remembrance of eternity.
The senses expose shards of eternity.
The watcher watching the senses is the soul.
The watcher watching the watcher is God.
Sensual pleasures, when infused with love, touch eternity.
The body sees work as work.
The soul sees work as play.
When the soul plays, all work becomes art.
Art uplifts body to soul; art lets us feel the presence of God.
The conditions at birth set the ground for experience.
Experience gives the body the tools it needs for reconnecting with the soul.
No two experiences are the same.
No two paths to the soul are the same.
Tools are gained from experience.
Tools help us chip away at the walls and illusions that bar us from soul.
Good tools can be adapted for use in changing conditions.
Compasses are gained from experience.
Good compasses orient people to the soul.
Good compasses maintain their orientation even as conditions change.
Heaven is the absence of evil.
Hell is the absence of good.
We are born where heaven and hell meet.
Good: the body that remembers its soul.
Evil: the body that forgets its soul.
Good needs evil to exist.
Evil needs good to exist.
One must forget in order to remember.
Following Blake’s dialectic:
Hate is born from the marriage of good and evil.
Love is born from the marriage of good and evil.
The marriage of good and evil, of heaven and hell, is Sacred.
Sacred shape: three-dimensional yin-yang.
Black and white points form the tip of two serpents’ tails.
Two serpents coiled as one.
Faith is the soul reassuring the body of its path to God.
Hope is soul energy when mind and body are exhausted.
Teachers are mirrors of our souls.
Gurus bring the body and soul to God.
Freedom is the removal of that which separates the body from soul.
Freedom comes in stages; its final stage is death.
Hate is good at revealing how far a body has drifted from soul.
Addiction is the body mistaking things for soul.
Greed is profiteering off the things the body mistakes as soul.
All that is profane can be made sacred.
When profanity is sacred it is infused with love.
Sacred things are not things; they are parts of soul and God.
The soul masters addiction when the body sees things as sacred.
Burn cigarettes and joints as incense.
Sip whiskey as soul nectar.
Bliss is the body’s intoxication with soul.
Beyond bliss: the body’s intoxication with God.
Beyond bliss is the end of death.
Falling down drunk, from another angle, is the soul’s ascent.
Poison, in small doses, may be good for the body and soul.
Poison, in large doses, may be good for the soul but surely bad for the body.
Greed is profiteering off poisons.
See your piss and shit beyond time.
Waste is the other side of food.
Food is the other side of waste.
We only come to know God through the body.
Cling to the body if you need to cling.
The body won’t find soul by renouncing its needs or wants.
Selflessness comes when needs and wants are all spent.
Let one die as one needs to die.
If they cling to the body, let them cling.
If they move toward the soul, let them move.
We will be obstacles that prevent a body from reaching soul.
Sometimes our love will be the obstacle and sometimes our hate.
Count yourself blessed if it’s the former.
Count yourself cursed if it’s the latter.
From another angle, every blessing is a curse and every curse a blessing.
Mourn as you need to mourn: cling or let go (there is no right or wrong).
Let the one next to you mourn as they need mourn.
The golden rule need not be said amongst souls.
For souls, there are no others.
For souls, every body is perfect.
A soulmate recognizes a body’s soul.
A soulmate helps a body remember its soul.
Soulmates are clear channels to God.
The union of soulmates creates life and art that is close to God.
The love of soulmates goes beyond their bodies; it is timeless and spaceless.
The love of soulmates is a blanket that wraps those in their care.
The love of soulmates is God’s love.
Don’t judge a life by its final days.
Each instant of your life is carved in eternity.
Don’t judge a relationship by its final days.
Each instant of a relationship is carved in eternity.
Weep the loss of a loved one’s body.
Let your tears open your senses to their full presence.
When struck, you may strike back.
Strike with hate, you miss the mark.
Strike with love, you hit the heart.
The soul forgives for slapping the body awake.
Better to use salts and spices; more palatable for waking bodies.
Following Tillich and King who say that sin is separation—
Sin is that which separates body from body, body from soul, body from God.
Original sin is the separation of soul from God.
It occurs when a soul is born in body.
The soul is cast from the garden of eternity into time.
Original sin doesn’t mean we are broken.
It means our soul has decided to forget so it can remember.
Nature is a sliver of Eden.
We are born from slivers of Eden.
Sin means to miss the mark.
In the game beyond the game, a missed mark is right on target.
Sin is a condition for salvation.
Separation is a condition for union.
All saints had first to be sinners.
A saint’s rule: look at your sin, not with guilt, but with love.
For the saint, sins are like beads on a rosary or mala.
Sin circles back to sanctity.
In solitude, one travels inward.
In community, one travels outward.
Both bring us past the edge of the body to the continent of the soul.
Society is the intertwining of bodies.
A just society sees the edges of the body as the angles of an oversoul.
As with the body, society forgets the soul so that it can be saved again.
The oversoul is the closest expression of God we come to know on earth.
When It is forgotten in society, find It in nature or good company.
Those who know the palace and those who know the ghetto are great allies in the heart.
The poor and oppressed are no angels.
Nor are they devils.
Shackled in hell, they can give hell.
Shackled in hell, they can unleash heaven.
Diamonds form under pressure.
Intense conditions smooth their edges into angelic angles.
Forged in the dark, they reflect great light.
When sharpened, they cut through anything.
Look for diamonds, not in vaults, but amongst the poor and oppressed.
Greedy people market diamonds.
Markets for diamonds turn profits on eternity.
You, diamond, beware the marketer; he’ll buy and sell you.
The God of the poor has texture formed by time.
The God of the rich is a plastic thing molded to wants.
The difference between a soul song and a pop song.
Beware false idols, yes, but more important:
Beware the idol that tells you to beware idols.
A poor person with soul is quick to share blessings.
They know there’s enough wealth to go around.
The rich can be redeemed by following their lead.
Look for God, not in shrines, but in the motions of the heart.
The movement for freedom is the movement of God.
The heart is limitless.
To feel this: just strip away conditions.
With zero conditions, you love as God loves.
Do not be ashamed of where you come from.
Your history gives you precisely what you need to be free and to free others.
The best way to free others is to be free.
Freedom attracts freedom.
Guilt is a vampire.
Try not to invite it in.
Put the energy it saps into praxis.
Apologies don’t reach those who want your guilt.
Guilt and pride sap the goodness of good deeds.
Guilt and pride can put us on the soul’s path.
Walking the path we leave them behind as old acquaintances.
A perfect forgery is as good as an original.
Always prioritize life over the story of life, unless the story helps you or others live.
Synchronicity is when the mind is attuned to the logic of God.
When you’ve gained experience, share it.
It’s the best teacher, better than the best lesson you’ve planned.
Acknowledge your mistakes rather than covering them up.
The soul comes through the cracks.
The best performance I saw was perfected by a mistake.
Take caution if you have an inkling to write about yourself.
Write of the life that shaped your life.
Write zoëgraphies rather than biographies.
“Progress” is not a smooth line.
Things get better, get worse, get better.
Look at life as a pendulum.
It swings to places that separate the body from the soul.
At a point, the body has enough and pushes back.
The movement back to soul can be called progress.
A movement that has to be made again and again.
To ask for the pendulum to stop swinging is to ask for death.
In stormy waters, the soul is a lifeline for the body.
You can’t stop the storm, but you can extend a lifeline to those drowning.
Old vessels aren’t given up easily even when water-logged.
New vessels aren’t built over night (just build your little part).
A drowning man who denies he’s drowning isn’t ready for a lifeline.
The mind says I must go on.
The body says I can’t go on.
The soul says you’ve arrived.
Curing is different than healing.
Cures are remedies for the body.
Healing is a remedy that brings body back to soul.
Healing begins when the body begins listening to the soul.
Miracles are all around us.
Miracle workers make visible what’s right under our nose.
The great sadness will hit you, a sadness of the worms and flies.
Don’t try to get rid of that; don’t push it aside.
Sit with it as you would a friend.
It tells you how much you loved life, loved people, loved the body.
In great sadness, you will doubt all I wrote you here.
But a part of you will remember these words were spoken from my soul.
Even in disbelief, that part holds these words as truth.
