Sunday, July 03, 2005

Walking in Circles While Standing Still.

I know I’m supposed to be getting somewhere. What I don’t know is how I am supposed to get there when I keep changing on the way. It seems that the person setting out for the place never arrives. I know the person who went into prison never got back out. I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he is still in jail and maybe he never was.

A little kid wants to be a fireman but the only place he ever does it is in his head. The person who becomes the fireman is someone else. He is especially someone else if he is in the WTC and sees that the fires are out on the top floors and he hears the timed explosions and no one listens to him afterwards. At that point he is definitely not the kid anymore.

Millions of people want to sleep with Gwyneth Paltrow, maybe they all have. Does she know? Isn’t that the point? Some people think Madonna has made useful contributions to life and culture. I see a snarling pit viper who chews up people the way Al Pacino chews up the scenery. Some people think Angela Jolie can act. I thought acting was the process of compelling belief and suspending the objective sense in the observer; I mean, in the sense of it being well done. I don’t get the attraction.

Mostly I am not amused or entertained. Given what passes for quality it can be said it is a lonely world for the discerning. Worse even is the tedious repetition of the same thing seeking to capture the original moment; like McCartney singing “Hey Jude” last night. The “na, na, na, nananana, nananana.” begins to resemble a dental drill with a bad tonal gyroscope or some kid making fun of you. I marvel at the very existence of something like Snoop Doggy Dog. Will there one day be a soft-lit sepia-toned movie called “Brutha Pimp and Sista Ho”? I suspect there is already a Saturday Morning kiddie cartoon based on the character but I don’t know. As I distance myself from the chemistry I formerly used to make the absurd entertaining, the whole thing is becoming increasingly bizarre. I also no longer care if I succeed at anything or not and have no idea what that means anyway. It does seem that my main focus for success is on getting disentangled from my surroundings.

If I still the reactive mind then everything stops in a manner of speaking. But stopping the reactive mind does not confer enlightenment; otherwise Tom Cruise would have caught on to something that escapes him. You can get completely clear and that might mean you are free of any and all opposition to the thing controlling you. This is a good thing if it is the originator of it all but you’re a fool if you don’t know that spiritual cock-blocking is real. Robots don’t make themselves and, then again, nowadays they do.

We are not who we used to be and after awhile we won’t be who we are. When death comes and goes and life by imperative repeats itself, we are without the memory of who we were before. At some point, due to the arrival of a perspective based on an ever widening horizon and perceivable landscape stretched out below, we begin to see ourselves in the various costumes we wore on the way. We can see ourselves as the crayfish emerging from the pool, as the wolf howling at the dead moon; which dead moon is the clothing manufacturer for the dream worlds; as many a vain and empty shadow dancer, shape-shifter, web builder, hearts deceiver and...

...as seeker passing from the gates of the known into the unknown- and all of what we were that led to the point at which we are watching and we know, we know we are not and never were those creatures. So what were we? The clearest impression is that we are none of those things and it appears that none of those things were important except as demonstrations of what we were not. Herein lies the unimportance of recalling past incarnations. This information is of no value in respect of real identity. It is made available at a certain point for good reasons but will not prove to be of much value overall.

One thing that can be depended on in this realm is that both dreams and nightmares come true. They come true in a place that is not even real itself except in a relative sense. What often discourages and deceives people in respect of this is that many dreams can not possibly take place in that particular life. You may be sure the stage is being set however. We share with The Creator the power of creation. As surely as we can generate images we can generate relative reality. We set the stage for future conflicts with images of anger and hatred. We create with others, entire Cecil B. Demille stage sets for the acting out of collective disgraces like, well, like Iraq, Vietnam, The Boxer Rebellion and the world of fashion; even once noble dreams like The United States of America. We run porn industries and restaurants and monasteries. We perform acts you yourself may not even have heard of (and wished you hadn’t) for the watching eyes of thousands. We burn and we drown and we shine in the spotlight and we are massively disgraced on televisions and in newspapers. We are shown to be heroes and hypocrites daily and the lesson seldom dawns in any wider sense. What we know personally we have paid for in blood and tears and painful understanding.

Mariah Carey will never be able to understand why her particular form of egotism is so repellant and that is in the nature of the character she plays. For all that we all want to be famous and successful and powerful and desirable we just don’t seem to relate the cost to the product. Most people don’t even know who Orpheus was but he reinvents himself without end, just like Prometheus and Theseus and Midas and all the rest of which are visibly evident at any time. Can you say Bill Gates? I thought you could. The entire spectrum of human achievement is fixed. The transformation of Princess Di into Princess Dead consonant with (and overshadowing) the passing of Mother Teresa was no accident. Elvis on the toilet is a Tarot card; and mind, I like Elvis.

We go through all of these things and in the end we turn out to be none of them. Of course it makes no sense otherwise but, seen from any of those points and looking toward that... ‘It’ makes no sense either. Are you following me? The whole affair is pointless and simultaneously filled with meaning and luminous truth beyond comprehension. And it has always been this way and it always will be. From Pralaya to Pralaya, whether sitting in contemplation upon a sea of milk or stretching away in endless repose, shining upon and within all the worlds; as the whole, as a part of it, as a sleeping portion in frightful dream, as an awakened witness, silent in the furious roar of the world in full orchestration... mindless fool, illuminated sage... it’s all a joke, it makes no sense and it works out perfectly whether you are or not, whether you do or don’t.

Eventually you have to laugh. It stands to reason that one's heart is forever breaking as they watch not only the death of dreams but the birth of them as well. All dreams come true and then dissolve into the sand of the unremembered sea. We are every one of those lifetimes and every one of those people we despise and admire. This is another reason that past life recall is not useful. I’ve mentioned before that life is a spiral staircase. You can only see so far round the corner. There are forever souls above and below you. It stands to reason that the one thing you don’t want to do is piss over the railing. So, is pointing something out the same as criticizing it? In whose mind does anything take place?

It looks like we wind in ever tighter circles until we disappear. It appears that what appears is only what the bandwidth permits. Truly we each live in our own world. We take certain things on common faith and they too are lies in their impermanence.

My dream is to wake up.

15 comments:

Braja Rani Devi Dasi said...

damn. you're always right. you write like magic. you give away to people what they manage to want to know from you. this isn't fair les. you're just too close to perfection. thats not fair.

Anonymous said...

This is your very best work to date. This is to be included in the finest writing of the age; absolutely brilliant wordsmithing!

a 'friend'

Anonymous said...

Since you left BOTF you have turned into a world class writer. To say that you also gutted it of everything worth reading by leaving goes without saying (how do you like that sentence?)but I'll say it anyway. Possibly the worst thing you ever did there was showing up in the first place. From that time on the new standards reduced everyone else to failure.

You blew the windows out of the bus with this one.

z a

Anonymous said...

My God you would have made a hell of a lawyer.

CC

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed. Elegant work. I only found your site last week from the link at Smoking Mirrors and I've been reading backwards. You've got such a clear and easy style. It really feels effortless.

Randy

Anonymous said...

I was pretty sure you wouldn't put anything up on the 4th and I know it's not because you are celebrating. There is nothing to celebrate on this 4th of July except being out of the country.

Congratulations on that.

Bruce

Anonymous said...

help me out here les,
if life is a dream and we are only dreaming we are awake,,know what I´m saying,,then how the hell can we awake??it takes all I´ve got just to get out my bed in the morning sometimes!

Visible said...

But you do get out of bed. Or maybe you only imagine you get out of bed but go on sleeping. What we think of as our personal will has no force of its own. All force comes from a single source. Some people do wake up and I believe it is because they really, really, really, really, really, really, really,really,really,really,really,really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to.

Anonymous said...

Fine writing Les. I'm coming over from BOTF since JustOffal put your latest up there. He seems to have your blogs confused though. You're deeply missed. I really wish you'd come back over. A lot of other people do too.

Springbok

Catnapping said...

Poetry. Your writing makes my chest hurt.

I took the liberty of linking to this piece from an MSN group,
-kausville-.

I wish I could make some intelligent response...but no. Things like "oh my god" and "yes" are the only words that seem to repeat...duh.

Catnapping

Anonymous said...

I don't comment much anymore but I always read. Les I just don't know what to say- probably why I don't say it. You inspire love in me and make me want to be a better person. It's better to feel than to comment on. You know how I feel. Sometimes I just get swept away and that's how I feel now. God bless.

Carla

Anonymous said...

I got one complaint. I wish you would write more frequently. it used to be five times a week mostly and now it is usually only three.

Anonymous said...

In response to the last comment here...

Personally I am amazed and thankful that Les is able to put these up as frequently as he does. He has (I would guess) somewhere between 200-300 essays here, all on basically the same subject and each one somehow manages to be just as captivating and inspiring as the one before it. How anyone manages to do this I'm not sure, but he does. You would think at some point the well would run dry but it just keeps coming. I don't see how producing work of this quality on a regular basis can be an easy thing to do.

ben

Anonymous said...

Amen to that.

Anonymous said...

I will second that amen...totally agree with Ben...Les consistently leaves all the other voices, in the dust. He is truly inspired and clearly connected to the higher intelligence, and we are all so fortunate to receive the stream of consciousness and truth which pours forth from, and through Les. We are all fingers on the hand of God, but Les is a finger which is upon the pulse of the ineffable, "the sound of one hand clapping".

--- doctor john





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