November 2025 – Jane Tawel

Wishful Thinking

Wishful Thinking

By Jane Tawel

November 28, 2025

Candid contemplations resounding hollowly,

for who can know the parameters of any single thought.

The heart knows, but has no words.

The heart knows, but has no thoughts.

The heart knows, but as it pounds and beats

with that which can only divine love –

with that which is — only Divine Love —

the mind steps in to silence it

with rage, or lust, or fear

that masquerade as intellect,

pretending to protect,

but only punishing the heart.

To ask the heart to take control

is to ask silence to speak,

love to look,

and caring to control all feckless fantasies.

To ask the heart to understand

is to fall back on humanity’s first thought,

that the only idea at all that is a good one,

is that only God is Good.

The mind’s machinations and convoluted fears

are based on the illusions

that the power of merely wishful thinking

can do anything but lead us down

wide, wide, wide brambled paths:

paths that lead from one dream to another.

The heart knows

that only The Narrow Path

leads us Home.

Our minds, that we created

out of forbidden fruit and falling skies,

to work or use or strain or stain —

are simply skipping, broken records of the brain,

or anxious agitations of notyetnotyetnotyet.

We take such pride, we fight so hard,

for what we think we know.

The mind is like a boxer in the ring

always and everywhere trying to prove everything

basing its illusions on its might and solidity,

only to find the terrible, unbeatable opponent

is one’s own supercilious, smugly dissatisfied self.

The heart rests, like a cat in the sun.

The heart is quiet, like the moment before dawn.

The heart is full of beauty, as Spring’s first bloom.

The heart is safe and peaceful, as a baby in the Womb.

As I have this small time,

Now, and only Everlastingly Now,

through Grace alone, gifted to me,

may my vision and my will

be Grace-bound, full of Light and Love, and freed

from my mind’s prideful prison of ego and need,

until I have become whole-ly Heart-led,

and holy in deed.

And if that is wishful thinking of the heart —

so let it Be.

Note: Some of this may come from my working through thoughts after a cool story I heard about some neuroscientists who invented one of those machines that they put on people’s heads to measure their thoughts and brain waves etc. The scientists took this head helmet contraption to a monastery to study the brain waves and thoughts of a group of Buddhist monks, but when the scientists asked the monks to put the machines on their heads, all the monks burst out laughing. When the brain-experts asked why they were laughing the monks told them they had designed the machine incorrectly and that if they wanted to measure people’s thoughts, the machines had to be designed to fit here — and they all pointed at their hearts.

The Apes of AI Know, but I Do Not

by Jane Tawel

The Apes of AI Know, But I Do Not

By Jane Tawel

November 21, 2025

Take a deep breath;

No let me hear it.

Now relax all your muscles

and repeat after me:

“I do not know”.

That felt hard, didn’t it?

Maybe for some of you it felt impossible.

If you choked on one of the words,

Just try again —

Do.

Not.

Know.

Now give yourself a little pat on the back.

You just did something ancient and wise

and almost completely forgotten, abhorred, and denied

in our world today.

We have a problem.

We have long thought we have to know.

We have long thought we DO know.

And because we are, well, who we are,

Human-doings (and no longer human “beings”),

we convince ourselves that with small effort

we (or our kid, or our doctor, or our teacher, or our leaders)

can know everything; should know every thing.

And those who don’t know what I know

are —

Just.

Plain.

Wrong. (“Wrong” is a nice word

for what most of actually think and say about those “others”.)

And now we have some mechanical monkeys,

invented to know

but not to understand;

Invented to keep humans

from being uncertain,

from exploring,

from resting in unknowing and unknowingness,

or from Wonder, or Anticipation, or Trust

or Awe —

from not knowing, even for a moment

(which is often the life-span of what we know —

a moment –then — forgotten.)

We have lots of “stuff”

that we can see or hear or say —

at the tip of our fingertips –

or even better our two thumbs —

just like the monkeys —

even our digits have devolved.

We can find information

but not Wisdom,

on where to buy the best car,

or how to conjugate a verb,

or when to get married,

or who wore what,

or why –

and yet, when it comes to that most important

investigative, meaningful question of all — Why? —

we still feel empty and alone and afraid –

because we no longer ask:

Why am I here? Why Am I?

“Know” and “No” — so much spiritual insight,

so much philosophy,

so much paradoxical Truth,

so much Literary device excellence that

only a Word-Nerd could love –

so much in those two words, contained

in two little homophones. (Look it up.)

So, we keep watching obsessively,

asking stuff (These are synonyms for “stuff”

which I thought of myself without having to look online:

stuffing, filler, padding, wadding).

We keep on and on and on,

not “training up our minds”*,

but treadmilling them;

asking our trained monkeys,

affectionately called by different names,

(Well, actually, they don’t have real names, do they?

Just acronyms, as if somehow an acronym

could lend mystery to their naked-ape emptiness.

You can ask one of the monkeys what I am ALLUDING

to with that “naked ape” line. It will save you having to read books.

You may also, though, need to look up what the literary device,

“Alluding” is. Hang in there.

Just don’t admit you didn’t know and you will be okay.)

AI, is the newest, the biggest, the baddest ape in town.

There is some lazy monkey, beloved of students,

called “ChatGPT”(I refuse to even go near that one;

I am terrified enough for our current generation.)

Grammarly — my favorite nemesis and bugaboo

(Look those words up, people.

Look them up!) —

that little monkey Grammarly

especially cracks-up this old English teacher,

so often inserting in her bananas to create a dangling modifier,

(Example of funny dangling modifier —

although I know you all know —

“Coming out of the grocery, the bananas fell on the sidewalk.”)

or where subjects should be, not objects

(Example of where subject should be

where Grammarly often puts in

a stupid-sounding object — .

“It was I that you found to be a pain in the neck for

giving you an old-fashioned grammar lecture.” I mean,

I know I was mean to say “stupid-sounding”,

but do you really want to regress back to saying:

“Me is a pain in the neck”? Think about it — or don’t.

Oh, and “pain in the neck” is considered an idiom.

Look it up.)

Even Siri, that most willing of helpful little chimps

can “unwittingly” (literally — no wits) can send us

down the wrong path.

Ready for another allusion and paraphrased play on words?

(You can do this! I have faith in your uninformed curiosity!)

“I stood looking

only for the brief moment of attention-span I have left,

at two paths suggested by Siri,

diverging between my laptop and my cell phone;

And I, I took the one that had the most battery life left,

and it hasn’t made a bit of difference in my life,

except for getting me faster to somewhere I didn’t really want to go,

and except for briefly taking my mind off

of having to think about anything meaningful

like poetry.**

Oh, I say I laugh,

I seem to mock,

and yet I see myself

like the old, grey lemming I have become

so often in fear or plain laziness,

rushing to “know”;

(and I just realized I am perhaps teaching

some of you to subconsciously understand

how to use a semi-colon);

creeping with anxious tapping fingers,

and breath-less, untrusting, certainty

at the back of the propelled, plodding pack.

There am I (practice makes perfect

when I comes to grammar lessons, folks),

Searching with the rest of my simian-species,

And blinding myself (literally and figuratively)

with eyes wide-open

blurry with the ever-lit, lambent LEDs

feeling connected to my computerized-community —

(until someone says something I disagree with or that I know is a lie

and then I unfriend those dummies) —

As together,

We veer toward the cliff of knowing so very much –

and Understanding

Nothing.

Take a deep breath.

Stand at the two paths offered you,

and repeat after me:

We do not know.

Maybe we do not need to know.

And most shockingly peace-that-passes-understanding

Amazing of all is that when I do not know,

I experience.

And only experience can truly lead to

Knowing myself,

Knowing The Mystery,

Knowing Wisdom

(Dare I say it? — Knowing God.)

And not knowing how I know what I do not know,

or the knowingness of that which is beyond words,

and yet longs to find words that will for an instant

make a bridge between the subjective and the Absolute

(because none of that is brain-knowledge) —

This searching-reaching-resting-Unknowing-sightless Vision Quest

is a joyful, peaceful, freeing gift.

Because Truth and Understanding

are not, and have never been, head-knowledge

but Heart-Wisdom.

Even after all these centuries,

and all these smart people,

and all these so-called smart machines

it is cosmically comical

what any of us has ever,

does ever,

can ever,

Truly know.

In light of the depths of the Ocean,

in light of the expansiveness of the Heavens,

in light of the marvelous vastness in variety

of animals, and sea creatures,

and plants, and bugs, and minerals,

and yes, the delightful diversity of apes! —

In light of The Universe,

in light of God,

in light of Light! — and,

in light of what we do not know even about ourselves —

Unknowing is not, as the poet said, unbearable;

instead it is weight-bearing.

Not knowing, is the weight-bearing raft

that floats our weary souls

on the Great River of Acceptance, Faith and Hope.

And we paddle our little life-boats, our River-rafts, with the oars of

of curiosity and creativity and contentment with what is,

and all we need to know is that Something — SomeOne

Who lives and breathes and has Being

in all the Life-Streams

that lead to and are the Ocean and the Oneness

— that which Is, which is I AM,

and contains the Truest of Truths,

which we can only faintly glimpse in a glimmer of Glory,

and “holds these truths to be self-evident”,

that Faith, Hope and Love are real and Eternal,

and if we can let go of knowledge,

we can find Heaven on Earth;

we can find Eternity,

which our brains can not know,

but only the Soul can find.

Ignorance can be bliss;

ignorance can be Stillness;

ignorance can be freedom from

the monkey-mind of thinking that we need to know.

Because truthfully,

one thing we do know

is that even those smart apes

can never tell us

the most important thing of all —

What Love is.

How to Love.

Why we Love.

Only the Heart can tell us that.

Only the Heart can know that.

I do not know.

Oh, how wonderful and wonderous-

to know nothing except

how to take the next small step

on the Narrow Path;

how to breathe the next small breath,

in this amazing, mysterious body;

how to look at the next small person,

with humble and kind eyes;

how to touch the very present and only moment,

with hands ungraspingly, un-fisted, unholding,

and a heart as wide-open as the Spaciousness

of Love-Oneness.

(And maybe if we rename “God”

or re-name whomever we make our gods, “Love-Oneness”,

then there will be no more religious or national wars,

because how can you truthfully worship “Love-Oneness”

and do the same old violent, hateful monkey doo-doo

that we humans keep doing in the name of our gods?

And maybe we will finally know something important,

about all that we have never known,

but have used and abused instead.

Just sayin’. But what do I know?)

By knowing nothing,

I may just have a wee, small hope

that I may one day

join the wisest of the Wise Ones***

and walk in Love as the Greatest of The Loving Ones,

and I just might evolve back and forward into being

a human Being.

But I can’t be sure;

because I do not know.

*Romans 12:2

** “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (Look it up.)

***Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.” “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

My Small Lizard-Self

A Mish-Mashed Essay on Meaning

My Small Lizard-Self — A Mish-mashed Essay on Meaning

By Jane Tawel

I am but a small, small person, living in an age of gigantic egos, no matter the reality of who they are, and no matter the justification. And the biggest ego of all — the biggest problem of all — the biggest complaints and worries and angerings of all that make my life miserable and fraught and painful is my own out-of-bounds, out-of-control, out-of-all-proportion Ego. People, who know me, may think they are being kind and truthful when they poo-poo this statement about me. And all the world’s psychologies and philosophies and spiritualities will try to help me or dissuade me from this albatross of my understanding of what the world’s problems are. Oh, I see the world’s problems and wrestle daily with the knowledge that if only every single person — my family members, my friends, the government, the religious leaders, and the silly squirrels and rather stupid lizards and one-minded ants would JUST LISTEN TO ME — well then truth, justice, and correct behavior would be universal if everyone would just listen to this darn smartness I have about how to fix everyone and everything. And you know I am right, because that is exactly what you think about yourself, right? (This is where if this were a text I would put a laughing hysterically emoji. So, I will just say –ha! ha!).

See what I mean, though, about my ego? And after the last years of studying the Greats — those who realized that their ego was a burden to let go of and that only by “laying down their lives” could they truly have Abundant Life and be their True Self — I have imbibed a lot of good hints about Who I Am meant to be and How to get there and What the real purpose of all our lives is and Where I should be using my desire to give and be of good use, and above all Why — Why I should gladly “die to my small self, the ego” and Live to the Spacious Self, the Deep I, the unattached Buddha, and the Love of Enemy Christ. (And yes, those capitalized words are the penultimate, Ultimate and well-documented for effective truth-gathering “Investigative Questions”.) And I love learning all that important stuff about The Soul of myself and The Soul of the World, and God, and my True Nature — and then I go out and just snuggle back down into the bed of my narcissistic, ego-driven, comfy little lumpy small self.

My ego’s biggest fears right now can be reduced perhaps to two: First, I see that we humans are literally intent on destroying the world, people and planet and all; and this makes me fearful and very sad and very angry because humans can be incredible and none of us (don’t lie to yourself) none of knows what really happens to humans when they or all this world are gone forever (Great humans = Mozart, Dickinson, Usain Bolt, Ghandi, Teresa of Avila…). And also the planet is the most beautiful, awesome thing I have personally every experienced (Trees! Aforementioned squirrels, lizards, and ants. The Ocean. Little streams that make their way around rocks and fallen branches. Rain and also, sunlight falling on an open page. My children’s hands and our knees — aren’t knees amazing!? And flowers — I mean, Why God? Why useless, lovely things like flowers? Oh, this glorious world!) And none of us really knows (don’t kid yourself) if there is some other place somewhere that is anything as glorious and delightful and awe-inspiring as this dear, dear place we call Earth with these unique creatures from bees to rhinoceroses to people. I mean Jesus said it — The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t out there, it is here on Earth, among you, within you — earth and humans = Perfect World. But of course, it isn’t. Cuz — well, our egos. We don’t want the perfection that is or at least could be, because then we would all have to give up our egos and just share it all with each other and love each other and be joyful and peaceful and how boring would that be? (See Book of Genesis for allegorical proof of this should you need proof.)

Secondly, my biggest fear can be reduced to one word: Time. Running out of it (from being late to not getting a project finished on time to dying — the ultimate running out of Time). There is also the constant monkey-mind fear of not being present in this moment of time and constantly trying to anticipate or actually anticipating what it might or might not bring me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow as it “creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (Yep. Shakespeare — Another great human to mourn the possible eradication of from the memory of the Universe if we kill the planet and ourselves.) (Does the Universe even have memory? Does it need memory? I don’t know. Stop asking me these hard questions. I’m tired.)

And the ego has long accepted platitudes and mockeries of faith to shore up its sandy shores upon which I have built the house I call my home — my ego, my small self. And it is only in small ways that I have started to piece together a new shelter, a shelter cobbled together from bits and pieces and wrecked ships on past shores of desire and dreams and beliefs, and my soul or True Self has begun to seek that which creates in me a small sanctuary, created from moments of mystery, the calm of curiosity, the unfailing truth of Unknowing, and in lighting the small wick of Love in my small self for all people, all things, and all that is “not me” and perhaps is God. And for a few little seconds at a time I can dwell in the difficult but loving reality I happen to achieve in nano-seconds of letting go, of opening up, and of quieting and lovingly rejecting all that races as a false reality in my ego-driven mind, and I stop momentarily the babble of my brain and with my heart I listen for the Still Small Voice of “peace that passes understanding”.

***

Last week I was in and out of my back door hanging up laundry. My husband and I like to hang up laundry when we can because not using our dryer is pretty easy in California all year long, (it rarely rains, alas) and it is a small thing we can do for the environment. It has also become a rather “Zen” activity for me and gives me a sense of connection to eons of women doing small tasks with our hands in the open-air, praising the sun and breeze as gifts for our good and our pleasure. Our back French doors are a bit wiggledy-woggledy, and if you aren’t focused and careful, there is a slight crack left open when you sort of swing it shut which you have to kinda’ do, to be honest, with a basket full of laundry in your hands. I hung the clothes and came back in to find a small mama-lizard (I know it was a mama by the size — in SoCal you get to know the lizards in your yard — the baby ones are soooooo cute!). Mama-lizard had rapidly, sneakily, foolishly, crawled inside to warm herself on the warm sunny grey kitchen floor. Now, that would be fine, but eventually, the lizard would realize that once inside she didn’t really have escaping capabilities (or brains –I am not being judgmental here, cuz well, lizards, well… evolution, people. Lizards — not meant to be all that high up on the smarts chart.)

I hate for anything to be in danger of harm or especially danger of death. On walks, if I see a silly squirrel start to dash across the street with a nut in his mouth, unconscious of oncoming cars, I call out: “Don’t do that, Silly. Be careful.” I often caution the deer who come down from the foothills to be safe out there and try to head back up as soon as they can. And my dear bees who throng busily around my lavender are such marvels, but they do buzzily worry so when I come in the evening to water the plants. I always let them know to stay up high (“When I go low, you go high!” To paraphrase Michelle Obama, another great human). “I won’t spray you, dear girls. I love you. (Bees busily buzzing in their beautiful business around our plants are girls — I used to call them “guys” but if you think about it, of course those lovely busy honey-giving, plant-pollinating nurturers are Female! I mean, it makes me feel sorry for Queens to think about the queen bees having to stay inside doing nothing but making more baby bees with AI drone bees. Makes me happy to be born one of the female worker bees out here.)

So, the mama-lizard gets into the house, and I realize I have to get her out. If you have ever tried to catch a lizard — well, you will have a clear picture of just how fast I failed. So, if lizards are stupid, what does that make me? I was actually very smart. I quickly got a colander (air holes) and a thick piece of cardboard (sturdy). I cornered the scampering (well, sort of quickly slithering, to be honest) lizard but then — I choked. I knew the lizard could grow a tail again if I accidently bashed the colander down on it but I am really rather mechanically challenged and I feared I would clang the pot down on its head and I didn’t think lizards could regrow their heads, even though they do have very small, barely functioning brains. And when I choked, mama-lizard dashed under the washing machine. End of lizard. End of story.

Except it wasn’t. Because speaking of small-brained dingbats, the next day I left a crack in the French doors and Another Lizard Came In! Wash. Hang clothes. Repeat human stupidity. I came closer this time with the colander/cardboard trick, but this lizard got back behind a cabinet. End of story. End of my saving lives. End of my Mother-Teresa-ing it, and doing great things with love by a small person.

I spent the rest of that lizard-losing-and probably-dying day mourning mama and papa lizard and all lizards and all lives and feeling like a failure and thinking all kinds of Nietzsche-esque thoughts about the meaningless of life and in particular the meaningless of my small self- life. I mean who can’t manage to wield a colander and piece of cardboard to save someone’s life? Ugh! Useless me.

But the next day, a miracle occurred. Because miracles are really just those moments when you have given up your small self and ego enough to just not know anything and so all the walls and doors and boundaries and ideas that close you off to something happening can happen– despite yourself, despite your beliefs, despite your accomplishments and also, well, — just “despite” — and when you give-up, then a small little crack in the unreality you have created about yourself and the world and Nature and God — opens to the Reality and through that little crack, the miracle of one, small act of Grace can sneak in.

Here is proof of miracles. The next morning, one of the lizards came out from hiding and sat patiently waiting for me in the small shaft of sunlight coming through the crack in the door and I said to the lizard, “Please don’t run away. May I just open the door for you?” And my small little nobody of a self, quietly, calmly, without overthinking, opened the door, skooched behind mama-lizard and with one small, old, very-human foot gently guided forward and through the door-crack one small lizard — back into her lovely, lizardy world and home to her waiting, anxious family.

***

I don’t know the meaning — neither the small little meaning of why I was allowed to be born and live this long, wonderful life I have lived, nor the meaning of why I was graced with saving one life of one lizard, or why I was given the gift of my family, and friends, and my particular Space and Time on this planet; and I don’t know what or if I will have any meaning after this body and brain die; and I definitely do not know the Meaning of “It” “All”. And the biggest tragedy of my life is nothing any one has done to me but rather what I have done to myself in thinking I have to know too much of anything at all and not just live as much Love as I can, embracing all the wonder, all the beauty, all the gifts, and all the joy — in just the miracle of being alive, in just this moment.

Maybe the sole reason I have lived was to witness the salvation of one small lizard and to know that in the end, there is nothing I can do but accept the miracle of grace by opening to the small cracks that let in the Sun. In my smallness is the greatness of grace. And therein, I may find the truly miraculous meaning of it all and a stillness and peace with a mind like a small lizard that needs to know very little, except how to open my heart to everyone and everything and with Love, follow the Light.

What Small Part of Oneness Am I?

by Jane Tawel

What Small Part of Oneness Am I?

By Jane Tawel

The ray of light is from the Sun,

it is of the Sun,

but it is not the Sun.

The cloud is in the Sky,

it is of the Sky,

but it is not the Sky.

I am in Space,

I am of the Space,

but I am not Space.

I am in Life’s Ocean,

I am not the Ocean,

but I am a small wave.

I am in God,

I am of God,

but I am not God.

If I accept the wonderous mystery

of being blind to what lies beyond,

I will be the Light.

If I let go of my anxious need

to control the weather of my life,

I will be content with being now —

Floating, not digging in and dissipating.

If I release all my desires

To contain and to enlarge myself,

My Heart will open the cage of my mind

and I will be as One;

Spacious with All.

If I, with thanks, set learning aside,

And experience God

In the Unknowingness and Love

Of the God of All Creation and All

I will no longer play God —

I will be Christ.

“Each day, I am looking at my small self as dead

And yet I AM — more alive than ever.

The anxious, painful, over-thinking self is slowly decaying.

I realize the tiny me is no longer only who I AM.

But instead, Suffering becomes Love and Joy

in the small self that is not myself

But a resurrected Savior of Goodness and Peace”**

Choose the name you wish to be crucified with –

Be it Krishna, Buddha, or as was chosen for me —

The Christ.

Die to all that is in you that does not save.

Die to all that is within you that does not heal.

Die to all that is in you that does not forgive.

Die to all that is in you that is not at peace.

Live to all that is Love.

Live to only that which is Love.

Let the clouds disperse

and release into the vast mystery

of The Sky.

Let the ray of Light dissipate

as it touches the Earth

warming others

and new things will grow.

Let the wave resolve back into the Ocean

and come and go

We know not from where or where to

But always at one with the Ocean,

Alive forever in the One.

Live, and move and have your being

in God.

And be your True Spacious Self

Be the Light of “just as I AM”*

What small part am I

in the ever-moving parts

of this planet’s short life?

In Light of Eternity,

What is Yesterday? Tomorrow? Today?

I am, at heart,

as God — beyond understanding.

But God is even beyond words.

Let me not try to understand

myself or others;

Just as I can never theologize about God.

Let my peace pass my understanding, O God.

You know all my innermost parts.

Create in me a new heart, O God.***

Hold me in the palm of Your Fatherly Hand.

Cradle me in the Womb of Your Motherly Love.

Let me Be no longer a small part,

But Be at One with All Beings;

Be at One with all Beingness;

and Be at One with You.

**My paraphrase of Galatians 2:20

***Psalm 51:10

*”Just As I Am, without One Plea” by Charlotte Elliot

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: