Sunday, December 25, 2005

A Virtual Cathedral.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Now Comes the Sunlight of our Disinfect

We’re told results are what matters and it is often true that good results will ameliorate the impact of a lot of questionable behavior. It is also true that history is written by the victors. They say size matters too. They say that every dog must have its day. At the same time the size of the dog in the fight and the size of the fight in the dog are often strongly influenced by a home court advantage; just as it is on the playing fields of Choate if the sport happens to be Nepotism or Whist. Aphorisms, like so many things, have corresponding poles. And just as it is the case in metaphysics it often proves to be in real life; in math and in art, that two poles create a third, which postulates another opposition to that new pole whose fruit is yet another pole and so on and so on. Which is how you can get deeper into things; how you can understand what someone means behind the appearance of their words, how you can understand math and art and sometimes penetrate into the secrets of the human heart; possibly all the way to the gates of the divine.

We often stop far short of what we could have learned about anything. We very often miss the connections between what we are studying and everything else in the world and in ourselves.

This brings me to the tangled web so many weave. It brings me to results unforeseen and unintended on the parts of those who had all the reference points and advisors in the world to point out to them the things that I and some others knew from the very beginning; without the need for those advisors. Good advice is only good advice if the motivation pushing it has correctly predicted the best results for justifying the bad behavior employed to the argued result. Good advice is only as good as the results. Good advice is a very subjective thing. Most of the time the best advice is to do nothing; to think and reflect, to study yourself first and what you are contemplating after... even though we have heard, “those who hesitate are lost.”

In the case of the case I am addressing; going to be addressing, hesitation would have lost nothing. But of course in this case, self-inquiry was not a consideration. It was more a graphic example of the male goat seeking sexual congress. It’s an observable truth that male goats piss all over themselves in the process getting to it. I find the mythic implications ironic here; goats... horns... pissing... sex... results.

Long ago (just before the Iraq invasion) in a small forum far away, I pointed out a few things about the case I’m addressing. I pointed them out over and over and over again. I even had people I had never heard of before telling me that they had pointed it out before me, which I found as amusing as it was irrelevant. Some of the things I pointed out and was a great pains to point out over and over and over again were; there were no weapons of mass destruction, that the Muslim fundamentalists- being the most organized and pervasive influence about- would become the power and that Iraq would naturally split into three demographics which would effectively create what would amount to three separate countries. That would be one for the Shia and one for the Sunni and one for the Kurds.

We have heard, over and over and over about, “staying the course.” We have heard about free elections and democracy and we have heard whatever was possible in the realm of hyperbole in terms of the grand ideals of the kingdom of materialism in its altruistic largesse for the great oppressed, unwashed at a distance; neighbors and brothers and sisters in Iraq. We’ve had funny math that computes 3.5 dead Iraqis as actually equaling 1 dead Iraqi. We’ve had a whole lot things and we’ve had some results... but the real results were always off in the distance; seen through the wise and compassionate, far reaching and visionary eyes of the Mad Hatter with the Shroud of Turin elbow patches on his bombers jacket.

Well, the results are coming in and, as Gomer might have said, “Well, suuurprise, suuurprise!” Rather than argue the case I am just going to give you a hotlink

HERE

and you can read some of what you are going to be reading more and more about soon; or not... or might get through filters or re-shaped to reflect or represent how it might look if you lean over real hard and then bend down and look between your legs while holding your breath and closing one eye with the goats closing in from the sides. I’ve watched people spin this and spin that with the net result of a folded, mutilated origami project that got some passionate attention from the aforementioned goats.

You’ll probably want to read that link so that you can get an idea of the case I am making. Then again, it may be immaterial to my point; which is not the same as the case I am making except that they touch, as all things touch, in the world where everything is made out of the same stuff.

Some have had the majestic hubris to refer to Captain Flight Deck as a spiritual or religious man. I suppose his constant church attendance might speak to that to a degree. Then again, observing his works would certainly tell us something. Then again, his associates and their collective intentions would tell us something. Results, period, definitely tell us something. We’ve been told we must support the dupes. We’ve had many a flag, after the goats got through with them; waved in our faces. We’ve... we’ve... we’ve been had... or not. Some fight, some flee, some flee to fight and some... well, yeah.

The God that Captain Mission Accomplished refers to does not exist. I can tell you with real authority that this God does not exist. I can tell you that the God of Pat Robertson and many, many of the organizational front-bots for the Hollywood façade of a God tangled in the two by four supports behind the “Hello sailor” kabuki mask, does not exist. I can tell you that the God of the Wahabi Muslims does not exist. I can tell you that the God of the Zionists does not exist. I can tell you that 99% of the God defined is either non-existent or a badly drawn boy. What I cannot tell you is what God is. I still know the difference however.

For quite a very long time there have been... how shall I put this? There have been imposters... monkeys in the mirror... poseurs... astral con artists and elemental forces of considerable powers; such as you might see in the wind and the waters and the like, who have put upon themselves the costume of The One. And this accounts for the results. This accounts for the blood and the iron tongs and the courtrooms and fires, the bombs and the screams and the tears. Because every false God has its particular preferred sacrifice; it’s ‘burnt offerings’ if you will. Did you really think that a God of transcendent radiance far, far behind our comprehension would be attracted to this landfill by the smoke and stench of burning flesh? Who might be attracted to such a thing?

The most pleasant offering is a contrite human heart, its offering of unconditional love and the service provoked thereby; if you’re talking about The One. If you’re talking about the others, well, just take a look around. The key to The One is the restoration of the true regent to the throne. Following that it is all ‘self’ explanatory. Everything else on the throne prior to this restoration speaks for itself... in every way.

Do you imagine in your anthropomorphic dreaming that God is just a big YOU? Isn’t that how most people see God; who can’t be seen? ...As a larger version of themselves? Could anyone imagine that God would be represented by men dressed up like Elton John in concert? It’s funny when you read the so called actual words of The One and compare them to the actions that got interpreted; how the letter of the thing became the result.

That’s how you get God on your side. When you wonder how obvious hypocrites can reconcile scripture with bad actions... wonder no more.

Call it what you will. Don’t call it at all. Go on with your business in your brief hour or inquire as deep as your heart may compel... we all got to do something. There is something deep in the mix... deep in the center of all things; making them out of itself under every novice potters hand for a... demonstration... other... than... It makes everything, regardless of intentions and results, serve to demonstrate that there is something deep in the mix... deep in the center of all things. We may not see the mover but we do see the things that are moved. It certainly is fascinating. It certainly isn’t over; except for that timeless battle. It was won long ago. It’s the idea it is otherwise that accounts for everything else ongoing.

Visible sings: The eponymous Les Visible Music Album♫ In That Shape Again ♫
'In That Shape Again' is track no. 8 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album

Lyrics (pops up)

The eponymous Les Visible Music Album

Saturday, December 17, 2005

To be or not to be... Possessed by Demons.

For a long, long time; longer than any of us can remember and far longer than it has been recorded, humanity, or what passes for humanity, has believed in demonic possession as the cause of insanity and aberrant behavior. Basically, the devil made them do it.

On a parallel course there has been the consideration; maybe it came from the Greeks and maybe the Greeks got it from somebody else- that a lot of people’s problems had to do with the way certain internal forces combined. The Id and the ego, the super-ego, the libido and sundry and the way they operated with and against each other were the causes of problems and conditions; though they may have named them differently at the time.

Not so long ago, with the birth and refinement of certain sciences like psychology and psychiatry, the general world view was that personal problems were just that; personal problems. They came out of the way people were raised and how they adapted, or didn’t adapt, to society. Along came sociologists to add their two cents; adjusted for inflation.

Still, religionists and cults and the esoteric world continued to state that there were more supernatural reasons for human behavior; these ranged from the ridiculous interpretations of the purely dogmatic; the Rush Limbaugh as Father Flanagan mindsets, to the pronouncements of the Theosophists and New Thought movement. In our modern times we have new systems like Scientology and The First Church of Satan, along with things like The Solar Temple and the Raelians; these latter constructs bear enough similarity to each other that they could probably combine without too much conflict in doctrine.

Society is made up of people. People with similarities in purpose and principle make up societies. People with conflicting purposes and principles also make up societies. Just as the thoughts in a person’s head can be considered the individuals that make up the society of the person, people are themselves individual thoughts in the body of society. You get rules and regulations that define the permissible parameters of action on the part of these ‘thoughts’ as they move through the mind of the society. The cells in the human body make up societies within the systems that also make up societies within the body. They are complex things whether the system is large or small. Wars in the larger society are mirrors of wars in the smaller societies. Systems war against systems in the human body; cells war against cells. People kill themselves and each other, often working at both simultaneously. One strange feature is how the tiniest systems are composed of the same features and symmetries of behavior as the largest systems and that they are all made out of the same basic stuff; but is that strange? The only anomaly is in the human system and how it fails to adapt within all the other systems which, may actually only be one system after all.

Like clockwork, people appear in society bearing new ideas. Let the record of history show what happens to these people. If the person heralds a message that suggests changes in a social system and those changes are based on the greatest good for the greatest number of people, that person is usually subject to tremendous resistance on the part of those individuals who operate the control machinery of the society in which it takes place. Reflexively the larger body of society joins in this resistance at the encouragement of their controllers.

If the person appearing has a system or practice that benefits only a small group of individuals, beginning with themselves... or seeks to introduce a political system that means no good for humanity in any location where it is introduced, that individual usually finds a large support system for their venue. And regardless of the evidence of the past in respect of these things, off they go to power and riches.

Is it some evil in the basic makeup of humanity that continuously permits what is contrary to their good to flourish? Are there living forces, invisible or otherwise, that are not human, which engineer these conditions and cause them to flourish? Philosophers of all stripes have argued about this for a long, long time. Sociologists and economists and representatives of every area of speculation upon the nature of human events all have their ideas of what and why. Most of them have agendas too.

My question to you is; does it matter if it is demons or psychological components who urge a large portion of humanity to their destruction? Does it matter which one you believe to be the cause? Is it possible that the focus of the former is the manipulation of the latter?

Those schools of thought that argue for demons also include angels as agents of a divine regent. The rational schools maintain that the regent is all powerful. This implies that anything and everything that happens and exists, does so by permission of the regent. You can take all of this and re-interpret it into a psychological system, with you as the regent, and get the same thing. In the one case a God is responsible and in the other, you are. There is a God or you are the God. It is also possible, once again, that both of these are true. Possibly the problem with defining what is true is, most likely, that more than one thing is true; that contradictory things are eternal and true. It’s also possible, and likely, that one’s definition of things turns out to be the system by which ones life is defined and by which one’s fate is determined.

Does it matter whether the president of the United States is insane or possessed? Insanity seems to be contagious. We note that demonic possession has often proved to be as well; regardless of proof of demonic possession. Well, there’s Loudon and all those Hindu’s who used to march into the ocean by the hundreds and feed themselves to the sharks and then there are those entire countries and societies that used to be but aren’t now.

Religions seem to possess a great propensity for both insanity and demonic possession. We’ve seen the madness sweep across the plains/planes. A certain psychiatrist would have told you that this had something to do with the sex force being bent through inadequate tubing or directed wrong according to pressures. Political systems are the same.

My observations have led me to conclude that very few people are sane and that very few people are not possessed and that those individuals are in a constant danger from the inmates. My observations have indicated to me that sane people have to pretend to be insane while moving through dangerous coordinates. Unfortunately for some of these individuals there is an impetus toward healing and enlightenment. It may be that the one is uncalled for and that the other is forever premature.

How can you tell what is sane and possessed of a higher, rather than a lower order? You can judge this by the amount of people laughing at it, mocking it and being enraged by it. Why do systems allegedly set up for the greater benefit of all always seek to kill those individuals who work for the implementation of the essential tenets of the system; whether it be a creed or a constitution? If certain principles are collectively agreed upon to be in our best interest; to be right and fair, to be the ideal, then; why are those who work on behalf of, and in the interest of the spirit of these principles so often jailed, exiled and killed?

How can a system that espouses particular principles as truth, use those principles against themselves and go on appearing representative of those principles? How can simple truths be interpreted in so many diverse ways to justify anything; anything at all? Why does a society that includes some amount of intelligent members, consistently allow for the worst exceptions to the commonly accepted principles to flourish? Indeed, how can they applaud it as well?

Would you call this insanity of possession? Does it matter?

Sunday, December 11, 2005

A Place Called Gratitude

Malachi 3:10

"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."



Possibly the emotion I experience most often is gratitude. Sometimes it goes on for a length of time and I discover many other things in the process. It is as if Gratitude is a room, dimly lit. As you stand there your presence begins to emit more and more light and to reveal more and more of the contents of the room. Gratitude has attendants and handmaidens; joy, serenity, a feeling of awesome protection. I don’t notice these things initially. If my gratitude goes away too soon I do not see to the further reaches of the room. It takes a while for the dynamo to wind up and bring on the full orchestra of sights and sounds.

I’ve been in the presence of realized masters and it is evident to me, as it is to most people in the room, that there is something different about them. Probably one of the finest talents a person can acquire is to become a ‘trained observer’. In order to be a trained observer one needs to relinquish pre-conceived assumptions and natural prejudice because they taint the quality of your research. It could be said that when the gravity of our assumptions begins to outweigh our capacity to learn, then we no longer grow. Since growth is an imperative, pain enters the picture to offset that gravity. It’s apparent to me that many people have a higher pain threshold than I do. I can’t take it. Why should I? Why should I, when there are so many more refined stations of being than that of being whipped along the way?

So in watching masters and in reflecting afterwards; where real learning takes place ...because you can’t always remain objective in overwhelming presence. I have come to a conclusion about the way they breathe. The state of our minds and our emotions affect the regularity and depth of our breath. Alternatively, the way we breathe affects the quality of our mind and emotions. So I think about gratitude when I am breathing in and out. I am grateful when I eat and I imagine the food as being divine substance. I have to do this. It is a matter of self defense. If I am not eating and breathing consciously then some other agency may be doing it for me. Thoughts like this appear delusional to some and the example of new age mandarins also work against credibility on the part of those who have seen the naked emperor.

These masters didn’t get where they are in an afternoon or at a weekend seminar. Of course these things are advertised; like the Thighmaster and those round cages that do your sit-ups for you. My favorites are the patches with the electrodes that stimulate the muscles and turn you into Adonis while you are watching TV. The slenderizer creams are pretty neat and so are the space suits that eventually return you to needing only one airline seat. I haven’t seen Shamoo’s magic crystal and wealth amulets but I know they are around even if Shamoo is going by another name now.

It comes down to work and there is where problem #1 gives birth to a lot of other problems and the discouraging catcalls from the peanut gallery of entropic recidivism. There must be an easier way. And this is where gratitude comes in. Gratitude takes the inertia and resistance out of the ride. Gratitude promotes an eager willingness. Gratitude makes it feel good. We’ve no problem engaging in the things we love to do. If we don’t love it then it becomes work. I work all day long every day, a lot more than eight hours. I don’t get paid for my work in the way most people do but I do get paid. I get paid in gratitude; in the increased capacity to feel gratitude.

Gratitude changes you. It changes the cells in your body and makes you flexible and young. It neutralizes anger. Most people aren’t aware that depression is the result of turning your anger inward; turning it upon yourself. Most people also don’t realize that much of their anger comes from their sense of being denied something they insist upon having; whether that is an object, a world view, someone’s attention or their right of way on the way to whatever it is that they want or wherever it is they wish to be. Gratitude makes all of that unnecessary. The more grateful you are the more reasons you are going to have to feel that way. This follows observable laws of physics. As above, so below; what you observe taking place here takes place everywhere, whether you can see it or not. This is one of the scientific truths about faith. We take things that are only mathematical theory as everyday fact. We are probably unaware of this but we do. Many people would be quite surprised to find that they regularly practice things that they firmly attest they do not believe in.

If you would simply practice feeling gratitude, breathing it in and out, you would rather quickly become enlightened; or, if you prefer, more enlightened. As good as it feels, why would you want it all at once? Shouldn’t the increase in the increments of bliss take forever? Gratitude is a pair of rose colored glasses and a certain biblical coat. That’s what I call haute couture. Why wear sunglasses in a dark room? Because when you are cool the sun is always shining.

I don’t know it beyond a ‘shadow’ of a doubt but I strongly suspect that this is what masters do when they breathe in and out. Of course it may be Love and it may be Peace or Compassion but the origin of every virtue is in the ineffable, just as the colors, pre-prism, are in the white light. There isn’t any spiritual thing that can’t be understood in a practical, scientific way ...if you are so inclined.

Gratitude greases the wheels of movement into a better state of being. It is a sort of cosmic three-in-one oil. In this time of spiritual crisis you need all the help you can get. I do anyway. But none of this is relevant to my feelings of gratitude; merely attendant to them. I feel grateful because I am grateful. Of all the things that I could be engaged in, of all the people I could have been; see, even now parts of me are departing and I speak of myself as if I were in the past. Of all the things I could have, to have gratitude, well... that makes me a hundred times more grateful just thinking about it.

I feel held. I feel something inexpressible and the very best part is that I know I am not nearly grateful enough. No, I’m just playing at the margins of gratitude. Further on, the room changes into a world of music; the sounds of planets rubbing together, the liquid radiance of stars pouring into an empty cup and over-spilling beyond boundaries and limits. And this is only what I can imagine from the margins. This is only what I can see in the lens of imagination. Once again, science tells me that it moves beyond that. We know a great many things about the universe that we cannot see. How did we come to know these things? Scientific inquiry and tools adapted to the pursuit made it possible.

Thinking about this has had the result of making me even more grateful than I was and so the room has gotten larger. That’s good, because my gratitude makes me want to dance and sing and I need the extra room for that. Every breath of gratitude alters my cells some infinitesimal amount so that critical mass gets closer. This seems to tell me that, “It’s getting better all the time.” Will shadows fall? Sure... just as darkness will turn into light when darkness falls. Be grateful.

Patrick Willis narrates:



Visible sings:



Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Pale Rider

You look at the blue sky; if your eyes aren’t permanently affixed to the concrete below... but the sky isn’t blue, it only looks blue. It appears to be blue. This is just one example that can be given to ‘show’ that things are not ‘as’ they appear. Optical illusions indicate that comparable misinterpretations abound in the other senses as well; a woman screaming in the swamp is not a woman screaming but a form of wildlife. The wind can do amazing tricks with shapes that it moves over... my hand defines the symmetry of skin...my eyes are the guide dog of the mind. I am led as I am convinced of my way but is the path convinced as well? Is it the best thing for me or is it only what I want? Why do I want it? That is a very good question. That is the question few wish to ask. It might compromise the outcome.

If we have always known where we were going then we have always arrived where we chose to be. This must account for all of the happy and contented people that abound on all sides. If we have always known what we were talking about then the world is living proof of our prophecy. If the results of faith are certain then we have never known fear. Perhaps the greatest confusion is confusing something with itself. One serpent out of focus gives two serpents. The job of the surface parallels and exemplifies the work below. The serpent has often been called a worm. The same thing that trips us lifts us up.

Essssence always rules subsssstance. So the real problem with false idols is their lack of power to accomplish. “My daddy can beat up your daddy.” is sometimes true, depending on the answer to, “Who’s your daddy?” Conversely... or is it inversely; they seem to mean the same thing if you think about it in focus... the bigger the hoopla... the bigger the lie. The stars in the sky don’t have a soundtrack like the ones on the stage; and which is more enduring?

The problem lies with our wanting to be different and be appreciated for it as opposed to being ourselves. Being ourselves is not a demotion as it might appear to be. Falling back into the quietude doesn’t mean we don’t get heard.

You’ve got one thing you are dealing with and it’s got two applications. There really isn’t any more to it. As complex as it seems it really is nothing but ‘1’s and ‘0’s. I am. I am not. You are. You are not. Out of this comes the colorful disorder of the world and its unshakeable unity. Your question should be, “Who has the elixir?” Both claim to have the elixir... well, one claims to have the elixir and one isn’t claiming anything except the imperative of its existence. One is telling you, “You have a problem.” One is telling you, “There is no problem.” Then again, someone is telling you, “You do have a problem but we can fix it.” If you still have a problem after, then someone lied to you. But do not be dismayed, they say they can fix it again; ‘in for a penny in for a pound.’

It ‘appears’ that who you think you are needs to have an angle to make itself heard. It has to demonstrate its unique quality of being real in a triumph over everything else that just isn’t as real. You have convinced yourself that blondes have more fun and so you are blond, even if you weren’t blond before. You have convinced yourself that peace will come if the bad guys are eliminated. You have convinced yourself that being rich is somehow a protection against the dangers in yourself; a protection against everything really. You have convinced yourself of everything you needed to convince yourself of in order to possess it. But, let’s be frank here... you had help. From somewhere there came the convincing argument that you agreed must be the real deal because it justified everything you wanted. The golden calf stands a mile high in front of you and shines from coast to coast but you can’t see it because, “first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there it.” And dragons are mountains dreaming in temporary repose.

Who told you all the things that you came to believe? If life is perfect then never mind the rest of this. You can tell who is lying to you by the efforts they are making to convince you. You may not ‘want’ to believe this but it is true. There is a reason you don’t want the things you wanted as a child. You’re in a different market demographic now. If you refute the lie of transformed subsssstance on behalf of essssence you render the false power mute. You control the world.

The reason that Luddite forces have crystallized into landfills of defecating rumor and self defense is that they are passing and they don’t want to go. In a New York Minute, everything that was even older than that is attempting a comeback. Now you’ve got the pagans to deal with too and cannibalism and all the strange features of sex feedback are bringing you vampire rites and radio stations that give new meaning to the terms ‘underground’ and ‘offshore’.

Behind the noise and confusion is a quiet rider on a strong horse. He squints like Clint at the landscape. He’ll move when he’s ready. You can ride that horse as long as you know the horse listens only to Clint. Maybe you can’t see Clint but you have to know he’s there. If you try to ride the horse otherwise... heh heh, good luck.

If it’s confusing you it’s reaching for your pocket. If it’s not confusing you it’s got no need of anything in your pockets. You might say that the latter is the best friend you ever had but he’s the quiet type so that’s how you wound up on Broadway. Yeah, bright lights, big city, here I come. It reminds me of that Stevie Wonder song... there in the beginning where somebody wants you to carry this package across the street. “Living for the City” I think it’s called.

Now a whole lot of people don’t want to hear about all this and the reasons why have already been covered. Galileo is still a problem. Even if Clint showed them the holes in his hands it wouldn’t be enough.

So, how do you get to where you can see and not react? You have to meditate on it just like you are ‘already’ meditating on the other. It is a simple switch of focus. For thousands of years masters have declared that they can’t tell you; that you have to discover the truth for yourself. That sounds like a copout. Until the reality of what that actually means dawns over the banquet table in the cemetery and you really do see dead people everywhere, all the words in the world won’t allow the heart to swallow the mind. Come out Lazarus.

Some could say that these words are confusing and that they are therefore originating from the same place as the rest. I’ve been fond of repeating that, “What’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.” The thing is that you can’t ever know for sure until you find out on your own; which isn’t to say that Clint hasn’t been at the reins the whole time. How you can be a little more certain is to assess what it is that they want. It’s in the agenda and the shearing that you find out the intentions. You have to ask yourself, “What does this cat want?” “What does this organization want?” If you watch what they do it will become clear to you. There is a disappointment that comes when you find out the game is not only rigged but actually no fun. There is that period in which the green shoot cannot be seen above the ground. There is that period where the taste buds are in transition. You got to tough it out. You got to walk that lonesome mile and know you’re not alone.

In our struggle to be free we are torn by thorns. Clint knows the desert and he knows all about thorns. If you call out for Clint he’s gonna patiently disentangle you from the briar patch you threw yourself into and... no blame. Don’t let your guilt over your stupidity deny you the right to be free. Clint knew we were going to make mistakes. There isn’t any other reason he would spend so much time riding through dangerous country. It's what he does.

Visible sings: Songwriter by Les Visible♫ Gone Baby Gone ♫
'Gone Baby Gone' is track no. 6 of 10 on Visible's 2006 album 'Songwriter'
Lyrics (pops up)

Songwriter by Les Visible

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Stand on Zanzibar meets Childhood's End.

My days are long and I’m free range. Only so much happens inside the coop. In the coop time presses down on the captive flock, making them wider and, I suppose, juicier for the palate of other coop dwellers higher on the food chain. But all coops have some things in common and their share of pecking deaths. The more they press together, the tighter the insanity and the more combustive the explosions against the resistance of the mass.

In rat experiments, when rats are confined in a small space, the larger male rats will lose all interest in the females and begin to rape the younger males. Life-forms in captivity exhibit common pathologies that are mirrored in prison life and congested cities. Weird tics become commonplace and people talk to themselves. If you can’t go out and you get pushed in, alcohol and sundry open a larger landscape by altering the headroom of the earphones. Of course this is just a way of giving a different separation to the sound. It’s an appearance; an impression. It isn’t real. It gets less real as different unrealities are compared.

When insanity becomes the norm interesting rules of behavior emerge. Coping devices come into play to order irrational behavior along predictable lines. The cops can’t pull you over in your living room. If you need to color your world because of the chiaroscuro effect, that’s understandable. If it’s illegal but ubiquitous, then further adjustments are made to demarcate when and how you allow the unallowable. If the pressure to kill for space becomes too great it makes sense to do the killing somewhere else. The resulting pressure decrease is then felt at a distance from the blood-spattered walls of the proxy killing fields.

Pipelines of hatred and love are no different than oil and gas pipelines. Breathing allowances have to be made and the technology is formed to compensate for the vagaries of the product. The sex pipeline is the big one. The boiler room is impressive and the dials remind one of the cockpit of a 747. As the natural flow of the sex oil is routed through increasingly complex ways the interpretation of the following behaviors becomes equally complex. New rationalizations are required for things that people do; things that were once considered strange, even pathological, have to be discussed and described and made reasonable. Somewhere between Jerry Springer and the soccer-mom Wicca-weekends lies the holiday table set with the bounty of the land.

As the rules become increasingly complex the reactions from the overview multiply. The message on the t-shirt has to pass through filters. The conversation has to ride on rails. The eye contact must steady at neutral or go to pre-fab. While the controls on the personal tighten, the controls on the broadcasts become more lax. You can’t say what you hear. You can’t behave as you observe. Television is one thing, real life is another. So... the objective mind becomes a camouflaged, hunted beast and the subjective mind becomes a deranged wolverine.

Everything gets mirrored so, if you can’t see it, you’re not watching. Well, it’s not surprising when your entire makeup becomes defensive that you would lose objectivity; and then there’s all the makeup too. And you are told that what you see is not what you see. You are told what you hear is not what you hear and what you think is not what you think. You are even told you are not you. The outsider is way outside. As the press for individuality meets the resistance of enforced conformity, terrorism comes after the pipelines of human expression. It’s not terrorism actually; it’s the self looking for a way out. The individual route is perilous indeed. So group individuality takes over. Individual groups now compete where individuals once did. The pack mentality rises. Scientology Black is playing Raelian Red on ESP this Sunday. The tattooed biker moms merge with the pierced death rockers in detailed legal documents filed in the courts. A new lobby is born and the power of collected masses against collected masses wearing team colors fills the stands. A strange glossolalia of the new Pentecost is forming a holographic Jesus in the air above the high tension lines. This Jesus wears shades. This Jesus pimp dances with the Whore of Babylon. When you’re drowning in the ocean inside yourself and you don’t want to die you’ve got to split in two to find a helping hand and maybe split again. Not everybody likes everybody here. Somebody has to die.

As each new weird replaces the old, an army of therapists sort out the minutiae and new allowances are made. The bottom line in every transition is the adaptation of market forces to how the cereal box is going to be designed; Brother Love’s anal lube for the backdoor kundalini facing in. As the lost is more lost the private intensity must mirror your face alone. Everything else is too strange and so the image must increasingly be the solitary intensity of your face upon itself.

In strange tropical landscapes. market forces have determined that regulated bacchanalias are pipelining requirements to off-set the cubicle pressure and the polyester rash. Mad power presses against mad power presses have dictated the need for whips and chains and the ugly definitions of your bad self at the hands of Domination Mom. As the instantaneous appearance of products on the shelf meets the transforming puberty of the generational edge the mall becomes the paper route and the baby-sitting gig as the currency of flesh is exchanged for the currency of product and youth is recaptured by old men with money. It’s okay but it’s against the law. It’s really okay if your selective group mass has merged with the enforcement-end group mass. No matter what, examples have to be made, just for the salacity of the headlines and market forces. Sooner or later, Stand on Zanzibar meets Childhood’s End.

And what is all of this? How important is this moment and its strange apparel? It’s a belch at one end and a fart at the other. It’s just a temporary digestive condition brought about by a wide diet and stress at work. The six pack didn’t help but a good nights sleep will; pretty colorful dreams though, not that you can remember them now. The system is self-regulating. It wants to come back to the center. Of course, the constant repetition of behavior is where chronic got its name... but even that gets regulated. Everything gets regulated. Little systems get big attitudes. It probably comes about because the little system thinks it’s a big system. It’s like the kid in 3rd grade who insisted he was Superman. And as long as he didn’t try to fly from the top of the house it would probably pass. Some times it doesn’t and Superman has to get clever when he grows up.

Looking into the wheels in the watch can be a fascinating exercise. Nobody sane wants to be a cog and yet they never make the association between what they see and where they are. It’s as if they don’t think they are really there even though they discuss the details of the process more than anything else with everyone else. Minniver Cheevy dances with Paris Hilton in The Overlook Hotel ballroom. You would have to be drunk wouldn’t you?

Ah well, there’s nothing wrong with longing to escape. The problem is more a matter of how and where. In the meantime, one machine stamps out the goods and, at the other end, the same machine reduces the product back to the original elements and then feeds it on to a conveyer belt that loops back to the beginning. The soundtrack changes along with the lights until there’s nothing but the whirring of the projector in a dark room somewhere in LA as The Son of Group Therapy meets It Came from Beneath the Sea of Recovery.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Red Haze in a White Room... and so it goes.

He was born into a red haze in a white room, like most of us, and so was she- some distance apart and some time apart but none of that mattered in the small frame of their time and distance measured against immeasurable time and distance. And the both of them cried as they were forced from their nest into an upside down world full of new sensations that had to be catalogued and compared and somehow a sense of order and rhythm got into the mix. In the process pain pushed on one side and pleasure pulled on the other and the desire to know was greater than it would ever be again.

The two of them turned the world right side up and this allowed them to learn to walk- cause we all see upside down to begin with, just like those old cameras. And later it wouldn’t occur to them or us that learning to walk was a huge accomplishment. But there were so many huge accomplishments in that time, it was just another one and all the things ahead compromised any self reflection at the time, nor was there a capacity for it. In fact, the sense of self was very much a part of others. Later came the isolation consonant with the magnetic attraction.

They learned as they came to understand the language, that there were things they could do and things they shouldn’t do. Later they learned that these things were different for different people. One thing they knew at the time was that they wanted to belong. They wanted to be loved and needed and they never did get over that. It was a hard thing to learn. You had to pretend a lot of things so that similarities that didn’t exist would appear to exist. Some of them played nice and some of them didn’t. Some of them felt good about where they were and who they thought they were and some of them didn’t. There wasn’t any other world, just the world out there. And they forgot about the world they had been looking out of in their increasing identification with the world they were looking into.

After awhile their world divided. Where before they only had the occasional awareness of difference another curiosity began to flower; it was a part of the red haze from the white room. Now they had to learn to walk all over again and it was harder this time because they were thinking about it all the time. But they sort of got it, though some sort of didn’t get it and some never really got it at all. Time moves on though. It seems like just when you’re getting used to this you got to get used to that.

Hearts were broken in the process and with each new fascination part of the innocence from before died because they were finding out that things don’t go the way you want them to all the time, not even most of the time. And the harder you want it the more you have to push aside and the more you injure in two directions as you burn away whatever comes between you and what you want. And every time a part of the innocence died something disappeared until most of what they were was defined by what they saw. And most of what they saw was changing as they looked at it.

Whatever they had been was gone and now they were something else. She got a job and he went into the military and she learned that sometimes you can do something where you never see the meaning of what you do in terms of yourself. He found out that the spirited music in the movie soundtrack didn’t play in his own movie and that there are parts of yourself you never see until the red haze takes over and puts an end to white rooms and teaches you that the stars which shine in the gutter do so with a reflected light. He learned that you can do things you don’t want to remember and it made him wish that he had children so that he could teach them not to be like him.

She went on working and she gave herself away a few times while the interest rates kept dropping and then she met him in a bar where he was working while the thing that changed him sent him to school to learn to survive in another war where the enemy consists of the things you want. And they fell in love and didn’t stop falling after that; just falling away by increments from the point at which they met and the road divided- running parallel for a long time if you compare yourself to a butterfly.

They had a boy and they had a girl and they had a life that was framed by what they knew measured against what they hadn’t learned. So it was a blessing and a curse to find everything out after it had already happened and you couldn’t fix it. The furniture kept rearranging itself to accommodate the injuries and it got better and it got worse. Mostly it got wider and more compressed as the circumstances were to far apart to knit together and the people inside couldn’t get out.

The son went into the army and he died there somewhere in a desert and the daughter went off with someone who wanted to be far away and so there was nothing to hold them together and the roads bent away until you couldn’t see the other side.

Some years later they met at an internet forum and wrote touching things to one another because they sensed a kindred spirit but they didn’t know who they were talking to so nothing had changed except the way that it looked which may be one of the most important things and the reason why people lie to themselves. So they never knew and it’s for the best that they never met. They wanted to but he died from the drink and she cried when she heard and she wished so hard that she could have met this man instead and that her life could have gone another way. He died in a red haze in a white room and sirens caroled him to the bed.

She went on reaching but the weariness in her face only brought her into the company of people who made her more tired than she already was and so she watched television and her dreams became so real as they were played out by actors in a revolving script that she came to believe she was living them too. She began to forget the simple things you have to do to be independent; no matter how forgotten you are and so they took her to a place with other people who had lost their way and there they all talked at one another and the words hung in the air and pressed down.

When he died the last thing in his mind was that he didn’t know who his life had happened to or why it had happened. When she died it was the same. Bits and pieces of things swirled around on her exit and they blew away like confetti as she reached for them. She believed if she could hold any one part that the rest of it would come together but she caught at nothing until she blew away herself.

The fire in the haze... that burns in the gut... sets the world on fire when the eyes are young. As the fire is pushed from the eyes to the chest... and the heavy heart presses the dangerous flames downward... for safety from the intentions of the thing that endangers the norm with the risk of feeling... outside the parameters where pain is known to wait. That risk that was life became too much to risk and so...

The fire sucked inward and bent the frame and the body stooped and the shoulders curled and the spine twisted to one side or the other in view of escape and it went on and on playing hide and seek... going in and out... sweet to sour like the breath of age that has tendered permanence to form and all along the way if they had only asked, “Who am I?” “Who am I?” “Who am I?” Not the white room; not the red haze that blankets the world and courses through the rivers inside.

And they could have asked at any time and they could have gone on asking as if no single question had ever been so important. The pressure that was pushing them to ask got confused with the gravity that held the world in place and they will circle until the end of time, in and out of the seagull’s cry and the longing of the ocean. Someday there will be peace.

Friday, November 25, 2005

The Same Old Same Old Blue Plate Special.

Many people are uneasy about the world situation. It does appear that some very unpleasant individuals have come to power and are promoting agendas that work against traditional impulses for freedom and democracy. Consideration for the displaced and unfortunate has taken a back seat to the enrichment of the minority at the expense of the majority. We’ve always known that the world appears unfair. These days it has become a justification to grab hold of everything that isn’t nailed down and to come back with crowbars for the rest. The implication that the world is unfair further implies that justice and retribution are illusions to be casually discarded in the process of doing business. Never has there been such shameless demagoguery in defense of personal excess.

When we look at the world in terms of observable phenomena is can be a discouraging picture. However, as many have said at one time or the other, in many different ways; “Things are not what they seem.” One of my catchphrases which I place here and there in my journey through the realm is, Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there and just because you can doesn’t mean it is.

Things aren’t what they seem. Sure, the Iraq incursion was about oil to fuel the excesses of Western Culture and to maintain control over the reserves. Other features enter into to the mix but essentially this is the key. Certainly the present administration of the United States is a criminal cabal devoted to enriching themselves and their supporters; all the information corroborates this. Certainly the majority are confused even with the evidence in front of them. You can blame this on their parents having taught them to respect authority. Respect for authority is important. It gives order to our lives. At the same time, “disobedience to tyrants is the will of God.” And, “occasionally the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants.”

One might think of the tree of life as having two sides that flow to and from the middle trunk. This is true. One could see the excesses of liberalism and the parsimony of conservatism as being on opposing sides. Mercy must always be balanced by severity. There is a difference between the pure ideas of generosity and restraint and the actual evidence of behavior where some preach fiscal conservation among the citizenry while enriching themselves beyond all restraint. This is commonly called hypocrisy and...so it is.

One side bankrupts its good will through observable corruption. The other side comes to power and does the same; back and forth. A system is only as good as the people who regulate it. In the interest of self will and personal profit it is necessary to believe one of two things; that there is no cosmic regulating justice or... that cosmic regulating justice is on your side. If all justice is a matter of external regulation and you control the enforcement arm... that’s okay too.

This isn’t true in reality and history gives us one example after another. Unfortunately some are allowed to continue and prosper for some length of time; injuring the lives and persons of many people before they are sent on their way; this is one of the greater curiosities. It has to be assumed that the corruptions of the leaders are somehow mirrored in the corruptions of the people and that they share together in the drama of the day.

Everything in the outer world has emerged from the inner world. Everything you perceive is a creation of the mind. The high and low of the possibilities of existence are all contained within us at two different locations. We have that choice; which one we will respond to and represent. Sometimes the balance in aggregate humanity critically shifts off center. Is it because of ignorance? Assuredly... but there are many features that affect the mix; fear, misinformation, appetite and others all play a part.

What we see as world events, world leaders, natural calamities; the whole spectrum of observable players, environments and events are actually the elements of a magical war. Nothing is what it seems. The good and the bad are all orchestrated from the inner planes by entities whose names you are unfamiliar with. Does this sound like science fiction? Well, your life and the success and failure of it; for as long as that lasts is all the result of what you believe and you may believe what you will.

At this time a great power for change is moving from deep within the core of our collective being into outward manifestation. It is driving everything before it. It is forcing it all outward for judgment on the manifest realm. As it presses forward with the power of its light it is pressing dark things from their cubbyholes into the physical plane. At the same time, the confusion and intense materialism of the day has made the unwary easy pickings. These entities hijack bodies the way carjackers take cars.

On the political and religious scene we are seeing much evidence of this. From the callous and blatant criminality of governments to the sexual excesses of the clergy and their dogmatic insanities; madness walks the earth. You may think of every human being as a light bulb that will soon be illuminated or burnt out; depending on their capacity to contain and channel the light.

On the superficial level is can be a scary time. In fact, that which is coming is bringing wonder, joy and liberation to everyone who desires it. It is also bringing total and absolute judgment of the reality and value of every state of mind and form of behavior. Those who have studied existence know that this is not an anomaly. It is always happening over large periods of time and then repeating itself. Think of it as a process of continuous adjustment and re-informing. There’s nothing unusual about it.

The magic war is in our minds, on our televisions; in the streets and supermarkets, in the fashion industries, in the cultures and languages... in our essential differences at every level; in the appearance of our difference. Some work these differences to their personal advantage. Some work for the common good of all. Light is stronger than darkness so don’t ask me who wins. At the same time, the deeper you go in a certain direction, the more you see of certain conditions; these are the things that happen at that level. The higher you go, the more you see of certain conditions; these are the things that happen at this level.

Preparing for ones retirement and maintaining the externals are concerns we all deal with in one way or another. Certainly there are chores and realities that face us every day of our lives. Since these particular lives end, one must have some sort of a value system in respect of that. Everyone makes a decision about this; willingly or unwillingly- based on what they value. It’s a certain state of mind that believes the perishable has value over the imperishable; that the temporary is beautiful. It is a fever that sweeps the world at times. In a way it results in getting to far outside the protection of the coast and into the deeper currents of the ocean. And this is true at both levels. It depends on what you want to drown in.

Worrying about the world is futile. The world is the world; sometimes it goes like this and sometimes it goes like that. It’s where you are standing that is of key importance and whether you certain and sure departure is ticketed through to the next destination. One way or another that ticket gets punched; you go by intention or you go by default.

This won’t mean much to those whose investments and desires are focused on the place they are in the process of leaving as we speak; ironic. They will believe and persist in the idea that one mindset holds more importance than another. Certainly this world trumpets it from every conning tower. For the rest... it’s a good time to conserve the oil in your lamp.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

"M is for the Million Things She Gave Me."

From the outside in or from the inside out; these are the two perspectives of life. The former are what the latter become once they have exhausted the process, or let us say, once disenchantment has set in. You get this in each life regardless. Life automatically draws within at the closing of a cycle. However, there are larger cycles of greater importance; at least according to the party of the first part; those who are tired of hanging out at the mall.

Western religious culture is a big penis alpha male who doesn’t always gift his offspring with similar attributes; this leads to a whole area of psychology of which I am sure a great many readers are familiar. If this makes you smile that’s good, if not, keep scratching your head. You probably didn’t get any thunderbolts either.

For those looking outside, the chariot of desire is usually a ‘Hummer’ with or without the double entendre attached; or it could be a Ferrari or some Matchbox vehicle. For those looking within it’s another vehicle whose highways are the heavens. There are traffic cops in both areas.

This brings me to the main body of my interest today; God as the mother. Much is made of the goddess lately in fringe areas of western spiritual interest and a lot has been written on her; mostly by women with names like Sapphire Moon or Rainbow Hallelujah Morning. Sometimes they just have a lot of hyphens in the name and that’s followed by degrees in dance, massage therapy and psychology. This goddess costs money and is usually quite personalized, with or without her consent. But she’s pretty forgiving; after all, she is a mother.

Now, in this world- and I am talking about the West... but it could be anywhere, there are mother lovers and motherfuckers. We have seen strange prayers and poems by the latter written on bathroom walls, often accompanied by iconographic portrayals by the artist. The former are often corrupted by an inadequate understanding of the mother due to confusions arising in their relationship to their birth mother; how and why they came here and whether it really isn’t all about Mom, God bless her.

In mainstream religious oatmeal, the mother is commonly seen as The Virgin Mary in a blue light. This has been somewhat annotated by the Beatles song, “Let it Be.”. Things change of course and, of course, the more things change the more the thing behind the things remains the same. We’ve sanitized the mother in the established church and generally don’t want to know about all of the things she does besides the night-light effect in the kid’s bedroom. We also usually don’t want to know how her relationship to us is directly connected to the way we see her and how we feel about her.

This Virgin Mary is an image set to represent the pure matter out of which everything is formed. Depending on the seed implanted and the idea it contains you can get a cornucopia of health and well being or... a hairnet of mosquitoes and a lot of internal disorder working its way outside. Sometimes this thing called prayer works and sometimes it doesn’t because theurgy has rules just like everything does and you need the right tool for the right job. You get one exception and that’s a product of virtue; no elaboration given.

This mother can be scary beyond the capacity of the rational mind to endure or accept; so, put a pretty face on it. It helps in the early going. The final clarity no doubt involves seeing and understanding the Kali and Tara in the graveyard ritual but... who’s that driven? You’d have to be mad wouldn’t you; especially if you took acid and went looking for her there at night. Well, some people do but you won’t be meeting them down at the Kiwanis or Burger King.

When you were a kid did your mother often half scare and half delight you by saying, “I’m going to eat you up?” Believe it. It’s true union for the praying mantis among us; besides that? It happens anyway; might as well enjoy it.

It’s rough for the rational souls to comprehend that this lady fulfills the role of every single female relationship in your life and that it’s all the same energy being. No wonder you’re conflicted. However, when I was talking about ‘motherfuckers’ that isn’t what I meant. Then I was talking about people who do bad things. You really don’t want to piss her off. And now we come to the justice aspect.

Mother Nature, at least in the common parlance, has a lot to do with our health. I’m under the impression that the closer we stay to her, the healthier we are. You can make a lot of things out of Mother Nature. There are the things she comes with, the raw materials... there are the hidden aspects secreted in amongst the raw materials and sometimes deeper secrets vibrate outside the common bandwidth but interpenetrate with the raw materials... and then... you get the things we make out of combinations of the raw materials; with or without the addition and assistance of the secret ingredients.

While you are making things, selling things; products, ideas, agendas... you are also preparing a mask for the mother you are going to meet. In the beginning you were inside her. Then you came through her and then she was all around you and then... and then she’s still all around you but the focus and awareness has changed. Well... that’s at the other end too. Is she waiting with open arms? Are you afraid to go? A lot of people don’t think about that much because as the stork told one of The Pandavas, “The greatest mystery is that you see people dying all around you and don’t think that you yourself will die.”

Well, you don’t die... not in the sense of total finito; you just get repackaged based on where you thought you were headed and sent off with a new suit of clothes.

It’s probably the hardest thing in the world to accept the fact that everything is our own damn fault. Our insistence on knowing what we know, based on the partial information from which we formed our perspective, is the catalyst for the things we suffer. As soon as we don’t know that shit anymore our destiny changes immediately. This is the sort of thing we see happen when someone’s denial breaks; when they wake up to something, when their heart is broken- oh... there are a lot of ways. We’re not always improved then either, because once again we’re only seeing a portion- it may just be a larger piece.

One aspect of this mother is called Sophia; the aspect of Wisdom. I’ll bet a lot of people who don’t have it think that it is something you get, like an air conditioner or a suitcase and you just have it. Actually it is a relationship. You get into this place where you hear it more or less of the time. You can also lose it. People do when they all of a sudden know something again; wisdom backs off.

When we appreciate a great musician or any sort of exceptional soul- even if we don’t know this... it isn’t ‘their ability’ that we appreciate. It is rather their capacity to channel. This is how come some people can’t write anymore. It was there and then... the well went dry. It’s how we make fools of ourselves and how we get into the idea that we did something. We never did and we never do. For myself, I love the idea of being with my mother. Words could never describe all the wonderful things she does for me every day and, like most mothers, she doesn’t expect any thanks... she knows better. But I will tell you that she appreciates it. And if she sees that you know and appreciate it... even if you can’t see her; if you know she’s around and you are grateful... well then... words fail.

I know for some this seems silly. Grown men know better... all stiff and stern and knowing... Invictus-armored... but I think it’s always best to be a little boy. She just loves that. It’s okay to pretend with everyone else.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Spirtual Survival Techniques, Part Three.

We live in the midst of processing matter at four different levels; four different worlds, if you will, at all times. Various ‘things’, states of being and emerging conditions are at any one of these levels on their way out. Any and everything finally winds up in the perishable realm of time and gravity; although these both exist in some form at every level.

Gravitational attraction, whether we recognize it as so or not, is an expression of universal love which attracts everything to everything. The hydrogen atom with its one positive proton and the circling electron is the most basic expression of this. This is science, not voodoo. Science proves everything that metaphysics states if... you are looking to see it.

The father, mother principle of interaction which is the basis for all cosmic activity is operative in every action life commits; through you, around you, wherever. Life is an on going sex act and the sex act is everything. It’s a holy thing. It’s there at the smallest and the greatest perceivable levels from the core to the circumference. If you’re having a bad life you are basically having bad sex.

These four worlds I mention, described in the last installment, are the conditions through which everything passes on its way to your breakfast table. No matter if it is your corn flakes or the process server. Think of it like water in its various states. It is always still water (grin- well, actually not always ‘still’ though)

Think of sitting. On the first level is the pure idea of sitting; on the next, all the forms of things one can sit on, on the next, the process by which the chair is constructed, on the next, voila, the chair. Consider all that is in this respect, that’s how it got here; war, marriage, children, divorce and banana cream pie.

There’s nothing wrong with the magic. There is something wrong with the magician. We are clumsy dancers learning our steps. We are The Sorcerers Apprentice.

We are always desiring and forming images and winding up, often, with something we say we didn’t order. Or perhaps we ordered it and then moved. The postman shows up but you are gone.

Take the matter of success, fame, such conditions; what I call the mosquito factor. How many mosquitoes can you handle? Do you like them buzzing around your head? Do you want to spend your days in a May Fly convention with a living head net? What’s the real value of a star on Hollywood Blvd or a pigeon dump statue in the park? Some praise and disgrace may attend our lives due to the nature of our work. It’s not a good idea to go chasing after it. Nature is well aware of our efforts. If she chooses to point us out that’s the best way. Banging on pots outside the worlds bedroom window might not be the best career move.

Will I have enough money? Have I got enough love? Love is money. You’ll never run out of whatever it is that money is supposed to represent if you never run out of Love. Love’s not hard to find. It can be hard to identify.

The collective pressure of the world upon our minds; to have, to acquire, to put away for a rainy day- the fear of lack and loss... the whips of paranoia that fall like rain; what if? There’s that old song, “Que Sera Sera...”

I always have to laugh when people say there is no God. Especially since they don’t have any idea of what it is they are talking about. They’re talking about the wounds inside their head and heart and their inability to love. Most don’t love, they desire. It’s the difference between wanting to have and wanting to give. If you gave away everything for ever there would always be more left than however much you gave away.

It’s really humorous to see a tiny moving speck proclaim that that which encircles and surrounds it does not exist. The vanity of our temporary, uniformed selves is a Saturday morning cartoon. What is true is that the God you don’t believe in does not exist. That which you say, and define by saying, “it is not”, is not. The God the atheist does not believe in does not exist. We are in agreement on that. However, that which you do not understand, will never comprehend, that’s there alright; just like gravity. Understanding gravity should be a priority. Understanding what limits us is a sure course to greater and greater freedom.

I’ve less attraction for religion than anyone I know. I stay away from priests and all representatives of the status quo spider web of delusion which is woven for the control of the populace. Religion is a veil. It is true though that you can come through it but you must always step outside of it in the end.

The thing is, everyone gets there, just not at the same time. Nature shows you that not all buds open together. Then there are those who are ‘hot-housing’ their evolution. The Bhagavad-Gita says that “success is speedy for the energetic”. After awhile, everything else just isn’t important, nor nearly so satisfying.

Surely you know that it isn’t the mistakes we make along the way that define us. It’s the way we adjust to them. No one starts out as a Zen archer. I don’t get the Dalai Lama any more than I get the Pope. And you couldn’t get me to dress up like that for anything.

One could consider themselves lucky indeed if they are pressed by circumstance into a place where they despair utterly. The light is less likely to break in Malibu than it is in Sing Sing. You can’t build a new house until you tear down the old one. The self indulgence that has come upon humanity because of the convenience of civilization has turned us into whiners and wankers. Certainly the New Age industries show us how comical and self-indulgent we have become. Well, if we won’t work to tear down our walls they will be torn down for us. Your freedom, whether you want it or not, is your destiny; like it or not. You will be torn from your prison cell.

Close your fist and look at the spiral it makes. That is the secret of the universe; a whirling spiral. It makes you see dervishes in a whole new light. That’s the same spiral coming up the kundalini channel and making you ‘self’ realized. Life has a purpose, reincarnation is a fact; observable in nature. You are at some point between deep sleep and total awakening. We see what is below us, even if we don’t identify it correctly. We seldom see what is above us.

I’ve said it before. Life is a spiral staircase; think of Durer and Escher. At every point on the staircase there are people above and below us. The trick is not to piss over the railing.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Spiritual Survival Techniques, Part Two.

I notice old people, how they get around and what seems to occupy their minds. What I notice even more are the way young people consider old people, the way they often treat them, as if by some magical event they will never be an old person.

People develop a style of living to which they become attached. They don’t want to give it up. I’ve heard people say, “Well, if I can’t live the way I want to then I don’t want to live at all.” Things we can easily get away with when we are young become increasingly difficult to maintain as time moves on.

People eat a lot of meat. Your digestive system throws up a lot of mucus to deal with it. Maybe you have noticed this after eating a steak. Because of poor dietary choice people create a swamp in their bodies. Things breed in the swamp. So you get people hacking into their hands as soon as the weather changes. The aging process accelerates.

The main reason that people get obese is from drinking soda. More than anything else it is your Big Gulp pit stops that give you the wide load. People don’t make that association. Some of them think diet soda is the answer. I’m not going to deal with aspartame here. You can find out the ugly details on your own.

Designer coffee is the rage now; Coffee Anan double dense fruit surprise or what have you. What coffee does is fire your adrenals. It’s like starting your car over and over until you might even burn it out. Nobody think about this. No doubt there was an article recently about how coffee reduces heart attacks or improves you sex life. Actually it radically decreases sexual function at a certain point, as do cigarettes.

“I did it my way.” seems to be the theme these days. Your body is like a car. A new car can take a lot of abuse. The one thing most important in car maintenance is changing the oil. Impurities have the same effect on you that they have on a car. It’s a simple thing to keep your car running well. If you keep pouring bad gas into it; if you don’t flush it out and pay attention then you need to go to the mechanics.

I watch spiritual teachers. What is it that they do differently? One of the things is that they eat very little and not very often. This would of itself provide a healthy and long life. What’s the point of working yourself to death while consuming bad fuel so that you can live with chronic health concerns in your golden years?

I hesitate to use the word God sometimes because of all the bad associations religion has placed into intelligent minds. Let us think rather of an all embracing consciousness that is in everything and that it is possible, by letting go of the individual identity, to achieve a cosmic identity by uniting with it. This essence, this all pervading awareness is closer to you, at all times, than you imagine. Sometimes you may be closer to it and you notice something. Other times you do not but it is still there. You wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t alive inside you. It is the very life you live. It is in your mind and intimately aware of your thoughts.

If you were to assume what I say is true; you don’t need any facts to back it up... if you would just assume this and remind yourself of it constantly a dialogue would ensue. Like priming a pump, you get no water at first. If you talk to yourself in the mirror for awhile you come to notice at a certain point that someone is looking back at you and listening. You can talk yourself into anything. You have, you do.

I have said before that Heaven is not up in the sky. It begins where your feet touch the Earth. You don’t go anywhere when you appear to die. You go where you are. You are in Heaven already or you are not. You could be there quite soon actually. It’s a matter of aspiration. You already aspire to things and there you are. There isn’t anything here that is worth having except peace of mind. Out of the tranquility of merger with the one comes the magical vision of a new and shining world. We cheapen our vision by the quality of our desire. Some fires put out more smoke than others. It depends on the fuel.

Besides a rigidity of mind and a tighter circle of pattern reoccurrence, old people can count on a number of problems that affect nearly everyone. One of these things is the loss of range of motion. This is where a dance of some sort comes in. Daily limbering will add years of effective life. Even if you have lost considerable range of motion you can get a good deal of it back. The defeat in the mind from the memory of the life that led us to the point of despairing in our own efforts is what resists our capacity to renew.

The lure of cheap food and entertainments coupled with the innate laziness of a person, who is planning to change tomorrow, have never been more ubiquitous. It all hurts. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

It is the pain we experience from ignorant desire that drives us to freedom eventually. Eventually, nothing is better than wanting nothing. There are hidden springs in the human system that pours forth incredible states of being. They can be tapped. You might have to dig out the well. You might have to dig. Eventually you will. Eventually the drive for freedom becomes everything. Eventually you can’t take the smoke and the noise any more. I’m not inferring that you can’t live in it and be out of it. These days sanctuary is a hard discovery.

I know these things because of my mistakes. I have made a lot of mistakes. Sorting out what doesn’t work often reveals what does. How often do you catch yourself in the midst of your life and ask, “What am I doing?” Everything we do leads to the specific resolution of what we do. Ignoring it, mocking it, disputing it, these don’t affect it. It is inexorable.

For a legitimate system of escape go to BOTA; It takes years but it will delight those so inclined. Tai Chi is easily learned and satisfying beyond what you might imagine. It’s much more user friendly than yoga. Liberal macrobiotics is a fabulous health choice. It takes ten days for your taste buds to change. Remember this before you give up. A constant awareness that you are accompanied opens an internal phone line. The answers are all there to be had. It’s the motivation that is lacking. It is peculiar that people would prefer a state of bondage over the promise of freedom but so they do.

We don’t see things as they are. We see them through colored lenses. The whole of life is no more than a game of hide and seek. It brings me back to that Biblical phrase, “Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven and all these things will be added unto you.” People don’t’ seem to get that. If you find the source, the cornucopia appears. You literally get it all. It isn’t necessary to see this in a religious sense. See it as a practical application of a universal truth. These spiritual teachers aren’t trying to get you to the dinner table with Pat Robertson. They just want you to grasp certain truths that will grant you the keys to the kingdom. All manner of worlds overlap here.

Some burn with an intensity for a love affair with the divine. Some dispassionately seek it through intellectual inquiry. Some discover it through the practice of particular rituals. That it has been discovered we know. We have the life examples of these people. Don’t say there isn’t anything out there, or in there, until you have looked; until you have looked as hard as you can. Or you can just remember that it fills and surrounds you all the time. It doesn’t have to be discovered. It has always been there. Practice its presence and it will reveal itself.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Spritual Survival Techniques, Part One.

Lately my critics, at a place I post called The Best of the Fray at www.slate.com under the posting name of appolonius_ (taken from apollonius of Tyana) - please note the underline at the end of the name if you use the search function and for whatever reason you want to go there- have been taking a number of wacks at me.

It’s an appropriate place for many Lamia dwell there and several Grendels as well; if you are thinking of the Keats poem or ponderous English literature that might even cause John Milton to throwup. Today I’m going to write about common physical survival on this plane. Because of the nature of the post and the fact that I am my own best example of what I am going to write I will necessarily be talking about myself and conditions that have come about from my practices and how they have impacted on my physical constitution. Since I am going to also post this at Best of the Fray where I get excoriated for the use of the word ‘I’ I (heh heh) have included the first paragraph.

Many of you are familiar with forums and those souls who either through fear or lack of understanding grow into automatic attack mold. It’s not as easy to remove it as the kind that grows in the cracks of your bathroom tile. Potentially human they have sought out internet cubbyholes much like a part of the minds own design and wage imaginary battles with imaginary foes who answer them through a medium similar to the astral body. These are great locations for personal growth though; rich with mineral life and the sort of life forms that make the Earth an abundant and fecund place.

No matter what we say we are talking about ourselves. There’s the high flying alpha presentation; the, I’m humble as the earth version, the please don’t hurt me anymore version, the Invictus version, the “Everyday I am getting better and better.” and that American standard perversion of the ‘don’t tread on me’ headspace complete with the gun-rack balloon overhead. Plus everything within the parameters of the “Don’t Mess with Mr. Inbetween” lyrics and whatever got left without. We present ourselves according to the correct (or incorrect) assessment of the relationship between what we know and do not know. In fact we don’t know much of what we think we know and using “I don’t know.” as a mantra can restore us to sanity because we are corrupted by assumptions that are invalid.

Before I get into what I’m going to say here, go to this recent headline which stands as some of the increasingly evident physical proof of metaphysical theorems. If would serve everyone well to study contemporary physics and see where God is now proven to exist and that the universe is conscious and every object in our world is thought born and an extension of light. Everything is composed of light condensed into form. Further, the impact of thought on objects and the focus of conscious as expressed in Pantajali’s Yoga Aphorisms (Alice Bailey version please) serves to prove that the Western alchemical traditions and Eastern Yoga are one and the same, differently expressed and represent living truth; just as you do, who are also an extension of life and the embodiment of the living God. Check it out.

I am God, you are God... in the bud. What we need to do is to act as if we are God, putting on the whole armor of God which are God’s qualities. The alchemical doctrine of transmutating lead into gold is just a metaphor for the lead of Saturn being reconstituted into sunlight; just as the maiden in the tower held captive by the black knight is an analogy for out kundalini sealed in the tower of ignorance. We are the thing that needs to be transmuted. This does not infer that gold cannot be manifested out of anything. Everything is made out of the same thing and you only need to manipulate the vibration to alter the composition. Believe me, there are people who can. Certain yogis in possession of the right siddhis can hear the treasures of the earth crying out from where they are buried. There are thousands of king’s ransoms below the surface of the earth. One can also precipitate anything from out of the ethers into physical manifestation by working on the Atzilutic plane through Briah, Yetzirah and into physical presence on the manifest plane of Assiah- “word...” as the homies like to say; a strangely interesting approximation of the ‘word’ of God. “As above, so below, for the performance of the miracle of the one thing.” You already do all of this all the time. You just often do it wrong; visualizing what you don’t actually want and being dissatisfied with the results.

Now to the painful, for some people, subject of ‘me’. I will not give out my actual age because I believe myself to be 18 forever. However, people consistently place me at 20 years younger than I am. This condition exists despite years of intense dissolute behavior. I drank a river and I snorted a mountain and took everything you’ve heard about and things you haven’t, including eating entire pages of acid. How is it possible that I have maintained myself so well (or been maintained) under such circumstances?

Several key elements are control of the sexual force, diet, spiritual practice and the martial arts. Although I have had a lot of sex with hundreds of partners, through my Jim Morrison redux period, I seldom had orgasms and regularly maintain sexual continence. This is the force that, in different permutations, is responsible for everything we do. It is what turns us into God. It begins as one kind of serpent and turns into the flowering hood of the risen kundalini. It is both tempter and messiah. God sets both the light and the darkness. The Devil is the way the wicked see God. The illusion of the devil conceals the light of the angel. “Even the devil is transformed into an angel of light at the given moment.” There has been a huge concentration of energy to have this verse rewritten. You can hardly find it. The Bible is filled with alchemical secrets. The Old Testament is a work of Gematria which explains many of the absurdities in the passages. Most of out problems in this life come about through perversions of truths by cabals who use our ignorance as a wand of control. Subsequently people throw out the baby with the bathwater because religion is absurd; more correctly it veils. If you could say, “I don’t know” whatever you are confronted with anything and by an expelling of breath, force every thought from your mind... relentlessly, you would soon encounter the divine. It’s looking for you harder than you are looking for it. There’s more to it but this is enough for starters. Who would want to do such a thing? There you have it.

Diet... I have been more or less a vegetarian (except for fish) for many years and try to stay somewhere within the parameters of macrobiotics. Macrobiotics correctly practiced; not in the manner of faddish food, Nazi’s is awesome.

Spiritual practice... I have practiced meditation and a form of yoga given to me by a master that I met on the beach in Big Sur. I have yet to know who he was but some months later he awakened my kundalini at a house in the Virginia countryside. A number of people were there and I am sure they have not forgotten. One of them was John Hall who played with the band “Orleans”. It would take an entire essay to describe this meeting and this man who, whoever he was, was unlike anyone I ever met before. Well, meditation is dealt with in the headline I gave above and you should have some idea of what it is. I want to point out that everyone meditates, they just happen to engage in negative meditation.

The martial arts... I received a comprehensive awareness of the martial arts through the kundalini transmission and have practiced it since. You have to keep you body strong. The grace and self confidence that mastering a defense system gives is incalculable. Certain things are a necessity.

I see that I have already completed today’s piece size-wise so I will give you part two tomorrow. I suspect that will be more interesting because we are going to deal with things that are wrong with most of us and the final result of our failing health and departure of consciousness as a result of being stupid about certain verities. You may discount me, do not discount what I am giving you. It can change your life. Whether this takes two or three more essays you will have them soon. Cave Dei Videt...