Training Camp Begins -- Denver Broncos, Fans, Prepare to Enter Darkness of 2009

The ideas we hold are a form of ignition critical to the survival of the soul.  Our actions are how we bring that light into the world.  As the Broncos prepare to wake and go to work, and as fans hold their breath in anticipation of what is to come, we are reminded how frail is the birth and  breadth of these ideas.  The Unknown can extinguish the light behind the eyes.

Ideas as small as candles can be snuffed out by the subtlest doubt.  Vast arrays of white light can be vanquished by a single question.

And when there are too many questions?  So many questions, that the answers are questions themselves?  How do we carry our light into the world amidst that?  Where is the hope?

No, when the questions are as ubiquitous as they have been in 2009, the mind is shattered beneath the blow, its light diffused like dust, a shower of sparks halted mid-flight, like stars across the night sky.

And we look out into that darkness, that place without light, and we see the impossible.  We see the miracle.

In a place where eyes can see no reflections, we see ourselves.

Understand that night is a quite proper and natural state of reality.  Look out at the stars and know that those shadows are indivisible, a unity composed of mystery, multiplicity and silence.  It is the hearth in which questions are born.  Don't be confused by our proximity to a star;  the Day is brief in duration and space.  It is to night what our achievements are to our doubts.   Amidst any period of turbulent or vast change, we find ourselves looking.  Listening.  Constrained by irreducible darkness, we focus more than ever, beyond where our feet can take us, and past where our eyes can see.  Beyond that, only the mind can go.

And seeing no landmarks, our mind creates them, like the pollen of the Zodiac.  These become our Ideas.  First one shining microscopic point, then another, then another.  Our Ideas find each other, an almost imperceptible presence and unity.  The light we see is a spark;  the spark is a star; the star is a sun.   It is thus we come into the light of day.

But not all minds lie beneath darkness the same way.  The pressure of such questions acts in inverse proportion on different kinds of souls, yet there is no mind, no matter how great nor small, adequate or inadequate, that does not find itself drawn or repelled by the undefinable darkness, and its questions.

Because no matter what, when we face a question, what we see, as I said, is ourselves.  And we are not complete.

Some, when confronted with night, feel the frailty of this incompleteness.  Others feel the curiosity of incompleteness.  Some kneel before incompleteness, others stand face to face with it.  Some seek a hole.  Others seek wings.  Each of these Ideas is one of innumerable points of light, and this just makes the darkness deeper still, highlighting the voids and the abyss.  It can be a fearful challenge just to approach these lights.  What if they are always receding from our grasp?  Some minds are repressed by this thought.  Others are enlarged.  Some see the stars and say, "Look!  I am a soul like you!"  Others see the darkness and say, "Look!  I am an abyss like you!"

Amidst so many questions, so many stars, the vastness is multiplied.  We look out at it, uncertain.

Do we understand it?  No.

Do we feel it?  Yes.

We are unclear about ourselves, but not about our great spirit, and our great, unsubdued heart.