The Zoo Fence

A Commentary on The Spiritual Life

The Zoo Fence

Why The Zoo Fence? One night in 1974, in a fishing camp on the windward side of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands, we had a dream about publishing a journal called The Zoo Fence. The name probably originated from the practice of the Honolulu Zoo to allow artists to display their artwork on the zoo fence along Monsarrat Avenue in Waikiki. But beyond that, who knows what the subconscious meant by the phrase! In any case, it made sense in the dream, and when, more than two decades later, The Laughing Cat decided to issue a newsletter, the choice of a name seemed already to have been made.

Switch To Mobile

One day in Eden, Adam sees Eve for the first time.
“I am Adam,” he says to her.
“Yes, I know,” Eve replies, “so am I.”
In The Beginning Chapter 4

The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not whine.©

Hawk

One day, a fellow comes upon another enmeshed
in a life-and-death struggle with God.
“Why in the world,” the first asks,
“would you take on such a formidable opponent?
How can you possibly expect to win?”
“You don’t understand,”
gasps the other, between strangleholds,
“I hope to lose!”

A seeker’s rule of thumb:
If it can fit into your mind, it’s too small.

If God is Infinite
who and where am I?
Who and where are you?

A Commentary on The Spiritual Life

Please consider this:
A production of William Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”. On the stage, a great drama unfolds, shaped by prejudice, youthful beauty, romance, joy, delight, love, fear, anger, despair, faith, death — the stuff of all our lives. But none of it is real. None of the characters is real, none of the emotions is real, none of the action actually occurs. There is no such person as “Romeo”, there is no such person as “Juliet”. They were never born, they never loved, they never died. It is all an illusion. The only reality in that context consists of Shakespeare as author, the actors as players, and ourselves as audience. All of those know the play is an illusion, and that all that is real is themselves. But still, the play is performed again and again, and again and again we laugh and we cry. As if it were real. Likewise, what you and we each call “my life” is thoroughly an illusion. Here, we do not truly know what is Real because each of us has taken on the identity of “me”, the principal character in “my life”. And just as neither “Romeo” nor “Juliet” can know Shakespeare, neither can the separate, separative (“I am me, and you aren't”) self of our lives know our Reality. For that, we must transcend the character, and recognize and resume our True Identity in and as and with (choose a preposition) the Author, the Source, the Supreme, the One (choose a label). That is the spiritual process, transforming our current sense of identity bit by bit until finally it is transcended altogether, and we “Remember I Am”. Then, we Realize we never were the character, that we have never been born and cannot die, and that What Is always was and always will be. In a word, Reality destroys illusion.

DISCLAIMER:
Inevitably and rightly, there is a lot on The Zoo Fence about scriptures considered sacred by various traditions. As you read those comments and observations, please understand that nothing written here is, or is intended to be, an academic consideration. I am not a theologian, biblical scholar, or historian. I am not an expert. In the context of this website, my interest in sacred writings is solely as a spiritual seeker who has undertaken a personal, inner journey for the Truth of who and what and where I am. I know that many of my statements, and perhaps even all of my conclusions, will not reflect, and perhaps may even contradict, current orthodoxy, theology, and history. I mean no disrespect by that, but it does not concern me, for again I am not an academic, and this is not an academic undertaking. For me, the scriptures of the world’s spiritual traditions are a guide and a tool and a vehicle which can facilitate and accelerate my own personal passage along the spiritual path only if I understand their message to me. Therefore, I take it to be my duty, even my sacred responsibility, to discover and understand their meaning to me personally, to decipher what the Universal Teacher intends for me to see in them and to do by them. Here, on The Zoo Fence, I share that with you, and I ask that you read it in that spirit.

The SmPrint
This is an abreviated version of The Zoo Fence.
It was most recently updated on April 17, 2024.
It was installed on July 9, 2020.
The Zoo Fence was first published in hard copy in January 1996.
It has been on the internet since February, 1997,
first at America Online, then from 1/1998 at GeoCities, then from 7/2000 at OLM,
and now from 3/2011 at InMotion.
The original website was larger than this,
but not necessarily better.
The Zoo Fence at birth
The Zoo Fence hard copy
What’s changed over the decades is us —
we have aged, our focus has changed,
and the website reflects that.
We hope you will enjoy, and find useful, what is here now.
Our thanks to Alan Simpson
for the color bar graphic used on this site,
and for his book on Netscape Navigator
providing our first introduction to HTML
umpteen years ago.
Stefan Nadzo aka Francis Sinclaire

About us & Contact

© Copyright and Trademark™ information

To return to this page
from anywhere on this website,
click on The Zoo Fence
at the top of any page.

If you have received SPAM email messages apparently from us,
please click here

Please read our disclaimer.

The Zoo Fence

A Commentary on The Spiritual Life

Go Directly To · THE SIMPLE WAY · · GOD: THE NOUN, THE NAME · · PORTRAIT OF A LANDSCAPE ·

Go Directly To
· THE SIMPLE WAY ·
· GOD: THE NOUN, THE NAME ·
· PORTRAIT OF A LANDSCAPE ·