The Fly - Laughing Brook - Image of a meadow in sunset
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The Fly

Consciousness is Freedom

We do the things we do because we are where are. Over the course of my life I have learned a lot about seeing myself and life differently. That has lead me into greater personal freedom. The path, though, is long and there is still so much more to learn.

For all the things I know and others don’t (just like I didn’t know, not too long ago), it’s easy to get proud and insolent. Yet there is also a choice to become compassionate; an interesting term that literally means „to suffer with someone“. In doing so, I expand myself into the up and the below. But, ah, why make it so complicated. It’s just a fly!

Chapters:

  • 00:00:00  Intro
  • 00:00:26 The Fly – Solo
  • 00:02:51 Fly into life’s mystery
  • 00:10:50 The Fly (Remix)
  • 00:15:02 Outro

Transcript

The Fly

Oh fly
oh fly
on my window
you don’t get it
never ever
again
and again
oh fly
oh fly
on my window
were never meant to

you pause
and lick your legs
oh fly
oh fly
on my window
creature of summer
eternal summer you are
a life of only summer
unreasonably now
eternal moment

oh fly
oh fly
on my window
I see
I know
I feel
I open
let you
out of my window
oh fly
you fly
you fly
into summer
summer
be my summer
such sweet summer
fly, fly, fly

©️ Laughing Brook/Peter Müller 2025

Fly into life’s mystery

The other day I sat on my tiny balcony on a sunny Sunday morning, reading Ken McLeod’s incredibly rich and rewarding book A Trackless Path. The book is a commentary on a poem by the 8th century Tibetan mystic Jigmé Lingpa. This poem comes from a perspective of someone who traversed a path of meditation in the Tibetan tradition and went it all the way to the end, which is the beginning. Or to express it differently, since he was a mystic, all the way to effortless, aimless, not-wanting and not-grasping being. 

Ken McLeods book is such a gem because he writes his comment from the perspective of someone who has followed a long path of various Buddhist traditions – and with followed I mean walking the walk, not just talking the talk. It is very obvious how the guy knows what he’s talking about, down to the most painful, perplexing and desperate intricacies and with a clear understanding and experience of the vastness of where this trackless path leads to. 

McLeod speaks about how once you’ve managed to master the sometimes wildly difficult disciplines of meditation you reach a point where all those disciplines become pointless, or even an obstacle to reach that which has been dubbed in terms like completion, realization, enlightenment or liberation. This is when you realize how no technique or practice in the world will ever get you there. I mean, when you think of it: What could you possibly do to make you be the life on our marvelous planet except that after all your efforts realizing that you were always and irrevocably part of this life and that it flows in you constantly. And this is true, no matter whether you eat vegan, master philosophy and spirituality, listen to inspiring podcasts, or simply spend your life in front of a screen watching the latest shows and eating fast food dinners. There is a difference, though, in experience and in awareness. And this difference makes all the difference, for everything has consequences.

As I sat there on my balcony, which is tiny, but full of pot plants and a colony of ants which has made their home there, I watched an ant walk up the dry stalk of a lemon verbena which has just so made it through the winter. Obviously, an ant being an ant, it was checking out wether there was something to gather up on that stalk. Me, watching her, I saw immediately how this endeavor would turn out to be a waste of energy, a futile enterprise. 

This was because I had a different perspective. I was seeing the ant, I was seeing the plant, I was seeing the end of the ants journey up that dried stalk, as she motored up to the very end, where I knew she would be turning around and then walking down again. And that’s just what she did a few seconds later. From the ants perspective this was the right and only thing to do – walk up there to see what is to see, as one never knows, and then move on in her search for food. 

The path of expanding your consciousness, your awareness, with all it’s demanding efforts and pitfalls, has an ongoing reward. For eventually you realize how certain things are connected, you become aware of what some things lead to and may choose to not go down that route – whereas without that awareness you cannot help but doing that. As life is enlightened by the light of consciousness, you begin to see and thus are free to make a choice. Then you don’t have to walk up dried stalks like that ant, or bump a thousand times against unmoving glass like a fly. You can take a step back, pause, and do life differently. You can, as Jonathan Richman put it so sweetly in a song, fly into life’s mystery.

Outro:

As you may have noticed, some of this podcast was recorded outdoors. It’s not the proper protocol for creating perfect recordings, but I love being outdoors and in this episode I took the license to take you out there with me. You may not have gotten perfect sound, but you certainly got something else. How did you like that? I’m curious to hear, leave me a comment! 

And so it is time to wrap this one up and fly into live’s adventure. If you liked what you’ve heard, please help spread the word and share with a friend or three. Leave a rating, and I love reading your comments! 

It’s been a while since the last episode, so thank you for waiting patiently for this one. I already have some half-done one’s in the pipeline and hope to get out the next one soon. 

My name is Laughing Brook, I am a poet, dancer, mystic, nature coach and man whisperer. And until that next one, keep on bumping and jumping with the stream of life. 

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