Monday, February 28, 2005

"In My Father's House are Many Mansions-


-if it were not true I would not have told you so.”

There is a long standing tendency of certain religions to define salvation in terms of a given framework. You get the feeling of ‘my way or the highway’ I suppose it is easy to understand when you think of God as a larger version of yourself. What you’ve constructed is a God of prejudice; a God whose pronouncements dovetail with your preferences; a God who smites your enemies and bears you, the chosen, away into his kingdom in the sky. St. Paul writes for these people. You wind up with hierarchies and formulae that micro manage every aspect of existence.

I get by turns, amused and distressed by the orthodox Christian idea of Heaven. Somehow it doesn’t turn me on. Frankly, I can’t get a handle on most Heavens. Earth, we can see, is a place of personalized lifestyles and philosophies. There’s the idea that Heaven is a more impersonal sort of place where we all partake of the personality of the divine. I’m okay with that. That makes sense. Unfortunately in the minds of most, this impersonal state is personalized again into a structure that conforms to mortal ideas of what the everlasting implies. You can’t possibly graft the infinite upon the finite, nor expect that the latter can define the former.

I have to be careful expressing my next thought. I don’t want to give off the punk on the corner persona that I just don’t want to go to a place where these other people are so confident of going. But, through my life I’ve witnessed many an inconsistency in the behavior and collective pressures of the mass mind determining a conformity that doesn’t seem real to me in any eternal sense. The greater body of religious figures and their flocks strike me as people without any real insight into what it is all about. I’m not suggesting I do know myself. It’s just that I don’t buy the general picture, nor do any of them seem to agree with each other.

It’s odd to see a religious philosophy that is so rigid about sexual energy, when that sexual energy is basic to life. I see a lot of dead people littering the highway of the great moral exercises of this planet. Somehow it seems like their way of managing sexual force leads to outbreaks of violence due to a basic misunderstanding of this force. Repression of a basic instinct invariably leads to perverted explosions at the chains weakest link. It really does appear that religion and political structures are most directly concerned with temporal control. It’s a carrot and a stick process whereby you are propelled toward a promised ending while being managed through the interim. You arrive here convicted of some original sin and are then required to refrain from a vast litany of things in order to get to somewhere else and it makes me wonder what the point of being here is.

We rarely see common sense being applied to the question of why we are here. Some part of me is convinced that the only way to obtain to salvation is to generally do the opposite of everyone else. Peer pressure then indicates I’m going to the bad place because I refuse to get with the program. I don’t want to go to the place they think they’re going. It doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much fun there, not if these people are going to be there. They aren’t any fun here. Is that supposed to change? Is Heaven not supposed to be any fun? It seems to me that Heaven should be terrific fun.

I don’t know about all of this dreary nonsense I hear about. I wonder at all the tears at all of the funerals. I wonder about all the agony of loss that goes on here all the time, if none of this here is supposed to be important and if we can’t take any of it with us any way. It seems to me that the whole point of manifest life is in learning the lesson that there is no lasting satisfaction to be gained and that we are meant to be about the business of letting go of our attachment to the things of the flesh, since these things belong to the flesh and since the flesh isn’t going to be accompanying you. It seems like the job is to help in every way one can, giving an example of the service that is to be expected by a citizen of the kingdom of Heaven. Why then does so much of the assistance here have so many strings attached?

Over and over I see temporal force being applied to an arguably non-temporal state. And we’re told that there’s just this one means, this one port of entry for the life entire. I don’t doubt that each and every tradition at its highest expression will enter through the similar gate but... this would be a point beyond the capacity of intellectual definition. This would be a point that did not involve the confirmation of dogmas and paraphernalia. This would be a point beyond the disputation of contradictory creeds and the slow plodding tread of terrestrial conformities.

Genius may be sufficient to many of the tasks of existence but it is stripped of advantage when it comes to illumination. Some of the greatest spiritual minds have been owned by simple folk. Some of them couldn’t read or write.

As much as the realities of spiritual achievement may be an uncommon thing, I like to use common sense when trying to understand them; especially when I observe how common understandings play into higher understandings. It can’t possibly be that God is only Christian, only Muslim or only anything except God. It can’t be that God picked one group of people to be his folk and just wholesale damned the rest. It can’t be that fear of women is the official aperture to salvation; not when one appears again and again through their good office. It does appear that whatever salvation may be it must have a relationship to the resolution of all things into one.

If you’re headed to Kansas City and you live in LA then, you’re going to be approaching it from a different angle than you would if you were coming from NYC. If every human soul is a different point in relation to every other point in relation to Kansas City well then... it stands to reason that no one can unequivocally determine the route of another. We are not impressed with God as tattoo or branding imprint. It stands to reason that if God’s got a front porch then God’s got a back door. It stands to reason that all great religions must have a legitimate connection and therefore it is only one’s intensity that determines the degree of their success. No doubt the pursuit of excess may also lead to the palace of wisdom.

The way I see it, existence is like a giant building. Down in the basement are the boilers and all the hot machinery that pumps the heat. Unseen cables and pipes run throughout all the levels and bring the water and light. Elevators run to hundreds of floors. Each floor is a world unto itself. But the light and the heat and the water are all the same except for the quality of the energy. People are living on every floor and that is the reality of it. In some places the heat has a greater degree of smoke; the water is less clear and the light more or less bright. We can think of it as a body instead of a building. All of the floors could then be parts of the body. The people would be cells. The whole would make up the body of God. Some may be living in the stomach- and we see that don’t we? We see around us people living in a focus on particular areas of the body. The floors and body parts overlap and interpenetrate so that someone living in the heart may well be watching clouds pass through a window in a restaurant where everyone else is having lunch.

It’s a difficult thing to express in words the things for which words are not usually accustomed or for which only the idea itself will serve. This grand experiment is designed to make you familiar with the essential force which interpenetrates the whole. Sometimes it takes the shape of heat; sometimes light, sometimes sound, sometimes water or a person or a duck. Back behind or deep within there is a common essence that cannot be seen; only the effects are seen. The effects are not the thing.

All of these things are gathered together in the human form whose sole design is to one end- the apprehension of the purpose of the grand scheme, the realization of itself as the micro cosmic example of the originating consciousness. How this consciousness may choose to bring it’s expressions into an understanding of itself within it is not the province of the individual unit. It could happen in a million different ways and though it may bear some resemblance to things heard in religions and philosophies it will prove to be something uniquely independent of them.

In the Kingdom of Heaven one may pass through rooms without end, each of these rooms a Heaven unto itself. Some will have a greater access than others, though only for a time. Still, even to be the least of the residents must exceed any position we can know about here. It’s not something one will be motivated to make comparisons on. There is no sense of lack.

Here on this Earth, some are lighting up a room and some are contributing to the darkness. This doesn’t have any impact on the intentions of the building superintendent. You’ve got light and heat. It’s up to you if you turn them on or not. It may be you more greatly appreciate certain things in the dark. You’ve got your elevators and your stairwells. You can head off to a million different opportunities depending on your appetites or interests. You can study the containing apparatus. Maybe you’ll learn something about your own system thereby; after all, it’s based on it. If this is your motivation it’s good to remember that all the while you are living out whatever your interests may be, something is watching and listening and waiting. You might want to introduce yourself. You might want to get in the habit of reminding yourself that this is so.

In a certain sense the building super is busy. He’s not impressed with crank calls or a complaint about something he knows, far better than you, is working perfectly all of the time. If you can’t see this maybe you could ask him to explain how that is. He will get around to it. Some things work in the supernatural just the same as they do here. If you make a lot of noise, if you keep calling, if you just won’t quit, the super’s going to show up at your door. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ God's Not Dead ♫
'God's Not Dead' is track no. 3 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible

Friday, February 25, 2005

"Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right- Here I am.-

.
.
-stuck in the middle with you."

It’s amazing how many times the lyrics to a popular song apply to life. There was a period here where I was in danger of opening every post with a Beatles lyric. This one, I think was written by Gerry Rafferty when he was with Stealer’s Wheel but I’m guessing. Most people remember it from Reservoir Dogs but I intend a more benevolent aspect at this time. I’d like to think I intend a more benevolent aspect at all times. I’m probably not centered in the light at all times, probably, (smile) but I’m trying.

We were talking about being in the groove, that is, I was referring to staying the course; a bit of a tongue in cheek reference that you should be able to connect to on your own. How often are true statements found compromised in the mouths of false men? That would be, plenty of times. It is a common activity of pro-active ignorance to compromise the things we would aspire to believe by associating them with glaring examples of hypocrisy. This then kills our faith and drives us toward cynical judgments about life. Don’t let this happen to you. Just because you see self-proclaimed representatives of cherished ideals dragging the skirts of virtue through the gutter does not mean that virtue is compromised. Real virtue is untouchable. It’s not unreachable though as one would find could they get close enough to touch the hem of its garment.

The lessons in literature of characters like Elmer Gantry and the lessons in real life of Jim and Tammy and Jimmy Swaggart should not imply that the hoax being perpetrated is an indication that nothing is there to begin with. If that were the case you wouldn’t be reading this. You wouldn’t have the means to comprehend it. Every thing you can do comes about through the good offices of divine agency. Yes, even when you screw up. All that indicates is that you haven’t learned all the steps yet. But if we waited to learn it all before we started dancing we would never get on the floor. We learn by doing.

I mentioned staying the course and that would seem to say that the course itself is the thing itself. Perhaps to some degree this is true. More true though is the fact that while you are on the course you are centered in a way that the light can move through you. It is the light that accomplishes everything. You only make mistakes. Just as the light illumines everything is shines on, it also lights up the chamber through which is passes. Are you looking for kicks? Take it from one who has not missed out on any of the sensations available ‘out there’- there is no greater kick than this.

Contained in our personalities are dark spots. Dark spots are the food of light. In our imperfect view we associate ourselves with these dark spots. Subsequently, when the light is eating them up some discomfort may occur. To the degree that we can surrender, our discomfort is decreased. It’s all about attachment and attachment hurts. The motive intention of the life force is to take you to a place of greater freedom. Greater freedom can only be achieved by letting go of attachments. At one time some of these attachments seemed essential. You fully believed you needed a defense system to protect you from the raptors and reavers of this world. Your parents had them. Their parents had them. You inherited them. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Your parents and their parents aren’t your parents in fact though, not in the way you understand it. It’s better to think of your parents as teachers through whose hands you passed. Teachers don’t always teach useful things. Teachers can teach bad things and pass on erroneous information. It’s as much as they knew at the time.

You are a child of divinity. God is your mother and father. In your mind are both your mother and father. They have a position given by your experience of them. They continue to act in you. However, in nearly every case, your earthly parents passed on bad information with the good. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to reunite your parents inside your mind in their proper relationship. We need to recognize that there is a more perfect schematic, a more effective interface than the one we’ve been relying on.

How do we make that adjustment? We don’t. In the process of being on course this is an automatic byproduct. Your job is to stand still while your mother washes off the dirt you picked up playing with your rowdy friends. Of course, after you’re cleaned up and you’ve had your lunch you want to go back outside and see what you can get into. Your mother knows what is waiting out there for you. But what’s a mother to do? She lets you go; she lets you go to explore the world; to get knocked about, to have a cracking good adventure or a devastating, heartbroken passage over forty years of bad highway. She knows. She’s also waiting for you to come home. Father and mother sit on God’s Front Porch and wait for you. You may have gone far afield but that Love stretches across every darkness and defile. You’ve only got to get on the course and the slipstream will carry you home.

How did you learn? How did you get to be who you were at the different points that you became what you were? Many of the things you know did not come about through experience but rather from memory. You sit atop a vast sea of experiences, not all of them your own and not all of them from this present journey. At different points you suddenly knew things that changed you, yet you can’t seem to find the demarcation point. Though some of you seem to have grown by default, some of you moved in the direction of natural abilities or available opportunities. Things happened. You happened. You’ve found that the things you do best are the things you love. The things you learned most quickly were the things you loved. All of us have picked up the guitar; meddled with astronomy, fiddled about with all sorts of things we later abandoned by the way side. We didn’t love them. Love compels.

It stands to reason that you can grow into anything just by having it uppermost in your mind; by loving it. Love is the accelerator and the assimilator. We grow into what we love. We are the embodiment of what we love coming into being. If there were any one quality that one should work at increasing it would be love. Of course, most of us are selfish to some degree. Love and selfishness don’t play well together. The world is designed to inhibit love. The world is also set up to appear more powerful than love. Faith isn’t easy when results are not immediate. But, as we’ve been told, faith can tell a mountain to go and cast itself into the sea. The hardest work we do is to develop the faith to believe in what we have yet to see. It’s said that faith is the substance of things unseen. In other words, faith is the actual material out of which the product of its focus is made.

You can’t know what has value until you have been disappointed in everything else. You have to walk through the fire or burn. We spend far too much time berating ourselves for the mistakes we have made, never realizing that they were the agency that brought us to this moment. We are all the product of bad parenting. We have to forgive that. We have to look back down the way we have come and bless every single event. We have to declare that it was all good. Until you have proven to yourself that a given well is empty you have to go back time and time again. It is this suffering that will convince you of your right and destined road.

Speaking for myself, I cannot tell you how many times I have been disappointed in myself. For years I could not resolve the situations I passed through with the real and lasting intentions of my heart. At times, trying my hardest to find a place, to succeed at something, I was crashed to the ground. Believing that love would carry me I still found myself surrounded by shadows with no evidence that it would change. Something told me that I must never give up; I must never believe that the shortcomings of my nature and what seemed to be cruel and indifferent fate, were the final destiny of my life. However long we have labored in our deceptions and the blanketing ignorance of our surroundings, when we do find that groove, success can be very rapid indeed. That path opens for us when we recognize that we really just do not know. When we can surrender the false concepts that we have imprisoned ourselves with then we will hear the tinkling keys of the jailor as he moves toward our cell.

Trials and tests may yet remain but they are no longer our responsibility. We have handed that over to a more competent hand. There is such a comfort in the visceral grasp of our limitations; the acceptance of our helpless state. Faith is made into a rock when the willing heart can embrace the certain truth of what it cannot see.

A man must come to the desperate edge
Of the walls he’s built around himself
And beat with his hands on the cold hard stone
And cry for the years that he’s been alone
And break like a dry dead twig
Under the wheel of time
And rise
And live
And understand
The power of love in his masters’ hand.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Actually, we do have to 'stay the course'.

It’s a hard thing to determine where the responsibility lies. We look to individuals and to conditions, we look at events and the way they were and- were not -responded to. Top heavy intellectuals and bottom feeding opportunists both have their take on things seen from the perspective of uninvolved detachment or prospective gain, respectively. Viewpoints can be changed because of argument but... has the condition under discussion been altered? The conditions seem to remain. They take different names and they profess different motives. And the beat goes on.

One of the interesting ironies about life is that good things often result from the efforts of bad people. Actuaries can compute the cost of the venture that brought the blessings. They’ll tell us in dollars and sense talk about cost benefits and bottom lines. But it is left to each of us to measure our individual pain against the value of the thing learned. It is up to us collectively to see if the lesson has eased the pain of what we have been left with.

I don’t need a subject; something to use as an example of what I’m talking about, do I? Somehow it seems the mind can make all sorts of associations without any clear idea of what is being discussed. How much of this world is important to you? How did it get important? Many things are important only in their relationship to something else. Quite a few things are important in a general way because we are expected to value particular things. When a man’s pride is gone, his interest in the things that gave it meaning often go too. As hard as it may be to accept it, that man may be finally on the right track. Should he send a thank you note to the person or the circumstance that destroyed his life as he knew it?

Sometimes I think of people on their deathbed; people yanked violently from their focus of the moment, people in a real sense of death’s approximation, or any of the myriad possibilities of critical change. There was this man or this woman, they dreamed and labored and reacted through every day in pursuit of that important thing; that important thing that was defined for them as important or that important thing that was somehow more important to them than anything else. As I’ve said, many things are important only in their relationship to something else. It is staggering how trivial that important thing can be. It is baffling what pointless enterprises people will get up to. And they just fight and struggle and work toward it, long after the meaning is gone; if meaning there ever was. I think more and more that people have no idea why they do what they do. They have no idea why they want something. They have no idea how they got where they got. It just all seems to have a mind of its own. The passions cool, the compromises ensue and most wind up treading water until they drown.

It’s as clear as the noonday sun to me. I’m not supposing by this that I am right. I have no way of knowing that except subjectively. Right doesn’t have a universal definition anyway- casual observation shows that. But, in the midst of it all, it’s clear to me that there is only one thing that is important about this whole operation we call life. It’s clear to me that freedom is the most important thing. But you can’t have freedom without inhibition. You can’t have freedom without constraint of some sort. An airplane won’t fly unless it is held together and designed, shaped; restricted and limited in certain ways. So somehow discipline is the key to freedom. Proper limitation is the key to freedom.

In a strange way, the only real goal anyone should have; the only goal that ends in total satisfaction, is escape from this life as we know it. That is, escape from all the conditions and appetites that make this world seem desirable. Although generally unaccepted, it’s a fact that most of what we want hurts us. It’s certainly a riddle.

Although I’m not a mathematician, I tend to see the world through a mathematical lens much of the time. For me it all adds up perfectly. It has to. So if it isn’t adding up then there’s something wrong with my figures. Most people aren’t disposed toward adjusting their figures to get the right result. They want to cook the books in favor of what they hope to get out of the thing. Unfortunately, the thing doesn’t work if you use a corrupted abacus. You may surround yourself with riches and a cornucopia of delights but... you are going to be miserable; maybe not in the short run but assuredly when the novelty wears off and especially once your strength has been leached away. I guarantee it. For the vast majority who don’t get anywhere close to that there’s the pain of the want and the bitterness of failure.

There is a narrow course in front of you. It is always there. The degree of your pain and suffering is measured by the degree that you vary and the rate by which you vary away from this course. This course is not some arbitrary measurement set up by a spoilsport of a God, blind fate or capricious random circumstance. It is the course of your best interest and you set it up yourself. You just don’t remember. Many religious philosophies have mentioned it; The Golden Mean is a good example. Individuals have this course and nations have this course. People die in car crashes alone and with other riders. Planes crash with hundreds of people and nations crash; worlds collide. No calamity, no matter how great can affect the individual who is centered in their course.

Every circumstance and situation in your life is set up to narrow you to your course. There is no other reason why anything else happens to you. Karma is only the measurement of the distance between your position and the smooth sailing of your course. Perfect freedom exists in the adherence to your course. It may seem like a high wire act but there’s no falling off if you are on course. Lack of balance only intrudes when there is a question about your course. But, uh... hey, I don’t want to go that way. That’s it, isn’t it? You know better.

As the course sets in, a gentle nudge, a slight tug of the reins is enough to maintain the course. If that is not sufficient then the guidance is less gentle. The guiding hand can become severe as it shapes you to your course, to the limitations necessary for freedom. Why not move in the direction of your best interests? “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and ALL THESE THINGS will be added unto you.”

Every individual who has worked on the behalf of a greater individual and collective freedom has been jeered at and mocked and scorned. Look it up. You don’t like to be jeered at do you? You’re more comfortable in the holding pen outside the Judas Gate. You like the riotous splendor of the hog lagoon. It’s great to be in the ‘hail fellow well met’ Academy Awards celebration of thousands all catching the reflection of their importance in the mirror. We’re awfully vain aren’t we... when we’re going on about how much we’re doing for our families and the human race? Our contributions are registered. We’re fat and happy in our suits as we get our citations and accolades. It’s a bitch to be doing the right thing and getting stoned by the raving mob.

I am just beside myself at the degree to which people will accept a lie that has no possibility of success. I am endlessly astounded at the rationales given for why we have to have and do all of the things we have to. This certain course, this seeming bondage and exclusion of all life’s bounty is your greatest treasure. You never got anywhere worthwhile without limitation. What seems to be your worst enemy is your only true friend. I do not expect at this time that these ideas will gain any popular support. But there are always the few for whom such a thing is mothers milk. I thank with every particle of my being the kind and beneficent hand that has shown me this course. I am rocked with gratitude for this. I can only hope that you will recognize your friend and let it be his good pleasure to grant you the kingdom.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

St Frankenstein's Day in the Neuengamme Ring

How many bodies went floating down the Kupa River I cannot guess. The horrors of that whole affair, though much publicized in Sarajevo and Kosovo, were much the worse in the villages across the brief and then broken composite of Yugoslavia. The Serbs and the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims, hand in hand they danced a Virginia Reel of death. But death was not the worst of it by far. Though I am familiar with the degree of atrocity I will not share the specifics with you. Let it suffice to say that no nasty invention, no matter how terrible, was left unaccomplished. It can be said it began around 1387 but who knows where the genesis of such intent was authored.

The madness of blood ties and their association with the tragedies of life are everywhere to be seen. The Hatfield and McCoy’s, The Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s, The Arabs and the Jews; the world is filled with the battles of ours against theirs. One would be hard pressed to say whether religion or politics had the higher body count over time and they are both the invention of man’s imperfect sleep and his ongoing dream of red river valley’s to come.

Our heads are filled with things we have heard that are not true. We seem unable to separate the truth from the lies in this world of blind men gumming one another to death. The religions of today are no less barbaric than they ever were. They possess no virtue greater than that of the so-called pagans. Whether you kill outright or by sleight of hand, what’s the difference? Is there a difference between offering up a human sacrifice on an altar to the Sun or sending the myriad of fools to war under a banner of spurious advertising? Onward Christian Soldiers...

Many of our traditions are no more than a worship of the dead. It’s the Easter Island phenomena of building a bigger statue, a bigger mausoleum to their personal dead. Our tragedy was greater than your tragedy. Our people were more wronged. These dead are now all reincarnated and no doubt seeking new vengeance in another form. It’s all about getting revenge. Some perhaps have moved on. Massive organizations are devoted to remembering the injuries of the past. These injuries have more life and power than the life presently being lived.

Anyone who is more concerned with the agonies of the past; raising monuments to the so called honored dead, who were all crucified upon a common lie, who refuse to address the inequities in themselves, who refuse to address the injustices presently before them, who refuse to cooperate in a willing failure to further participate in the next killing field are just the present members of the zombie dead tit for tatting man’s inhumanity to man.

We hear about the so-called Holy Land, so many believe that there is some land more holy than another. Look at the mindset prevailing there and the ongoing behavior; the prosecution rests. There is no Holy Land. Every particle of Earth is holy and none more sacred than another. Every breath of sky is holy breath.

Mohammed preached against idolatry. I must wonder what that Kabba Stone signifies. I need not extrapolate concerning the graven images in abundance through every transvestite orgy dedicated to the benefit of the accountants of the creed.

The spirit of Christ is seen no more clearly than in the anonymous helping hand, devoid of catechism and the constraints of separating doctrines. It heals. It renews without an implied contract for compensation or reward. It is selfless as the melting snows. It works at the common level, anonymously extended from the abundance of the heart whose storehouse is increased with every selfless gift.

My temple is everywhere beneath the wide empyrean sky. The birds are my choir and giving way is my creed. I have no enemies I will recognize, no lands I must reclaim, no ancient wrongs to set right, no army to command that will force a peace upon the heart divided. I swim in the Gulf Stream through life’s cold currents.

A prancing, shameless fool speaks of extended democracy in Dutroux’s Belgium. He demands a wide freedom in fatuous words while crushing the poor in his own land and parceling out mischief abroad. Where is the courage of any one world leader to stand forth in a public moment in the presence of the world press and call this man for what he is? No, that would not be the action of diplomacy. Diplomacy must make nice in Chamberlain redux. Diplomacy must lift its skirts above the surface of the pooling blood. Diplomacy must put out its own eyes lest it see the evidence of hypocrisy on every side.

The waters of life do not someday magically clear by serendipitous event. The waters clear when righteous intent is active and maintained. When true and resolute leadership precipitates into the collective heart we will see the waters clear. There is a reason why. There is a reason why the waters are muddied. There is profit to be made. Many talk about the complexity of the thing. We hear often about how hard it is to satisfy all of the vested ends. It’s not hard to solve. It’s simply hard to be fair when you are seeking more than your share.

I do not know to what degree the horrors must proceed before the blinders are removed. I do not know if we must come to the last man standing. I do not know at what point critical mass is achieved. Frankly I do not know much of anything. I have found that the best I can manage is to give way. I must either believe in my own capacity for enterprise or I must believe I live only for greater instruction. I have seen what has come so often of the best intentions. Often enough, Hell is the aftermath of a proclaimed, necessary compromise.

For me the only work I have is what I can accomplish upon myself. I cannot convince or force another to embrace what I cannot even clearly see myself. I hold certain things to be true and before those things I give way. I find that my only ongoing moments of progress are to be found in a ceaseless giving way before that light whose presence I must take on faith. I find that my real impetus to action is to first do no harm. One might suppose such a thing might lead to personal entropy. I am tired of attempting to interpret what Edmund Burke really meant. I am more tired of seeing it selectively interpreted for the possibilities of craven gain.

It must be that there is a guiding force. We are here in this moment after all. Every possibility of the heart extends from this moment. Every one of us must determine where our priorities lay. I find that I can best determine for myself when I give way. I am satisfied with the left-hand portion of the bargain. I am not dissatisfied with my share. The myriad destinies work themselves out before our eyes every day. How very different they seem. Some of them are tragic and some seem to resolve themselves into a wonderful triumph of the better angels of our nature. I can only think that what good has come to me has come as a result of my giving way, of my maintaining an attitude of listening; let me be Nipper, the RCA Dog. I imagine I would do most anything to alleviate the suffering. My wiser self knows that such a thing is not in my hands. I do not make another’s choice for him. My interference is too often not seen as a kind nor informed hand.

It may be that we can save the world by giving way. No one has yet brought a universal peace. No effort yet has sustained a golden age. The Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King’s that have come to us have been the evidence of God’s hand at work in the midst. They have shown us what the best in us can achieve. I suspect though, that the work of these men and women who have labored and labor still, has always been first upon themselves. I suspect it was always accomplished by giving way. This is the first concern. What might follow and what we might achieve is not something for us to speculate on. This is something that will automatically follow in the process of our giving way.

Visible sings: Songwriter by Les Visible♫ And We Could All Be Free ♫
'And We Could All Be Free' is track no. 8 of 10 on Visible's 2006 album 'Songwriter'
Lyrics (pops up)

Songwriter by Les Visible

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Don't Look Back; The Thing Itself Might be Gaining on You, or-

-having to do with turning into a pillar of salt.

Don’t look back. You’ve heard that before. Bob Dylan said it for some reason. I figure he got it from Satchel Page whose admonition was based upon the fact that someone might be gaining on you. There are a lot of reasons not to look back. I’m less concerned about whether someone might be gaining on me as I might be about getting sucked back into the outgoing tide or inclined to repeat something whose result I forgot between the last occurrence and the one looking to happen again.

Nations repeat things. Religions repeat things. Individuals repeat things. Sometimes you repeat things to reinforce the message, like a good discipline or habit. Sometimes you do it because you just don’t know any better, or you do know better but you don’t care. Sometimes you repeat things because you just never get them and you think if you keep repeating them somehow it will one day make sense. That’s not out of the question.

There are people who think if they read Thomas Aquinas for a hundred years that they may come across some great truth. They think if they burn a lot of incense and focus real hard on the pageant that the baby Jesus is going to come out of the diorama and talk to them. Many like the sackcloth and ashes thing, or the dressed in black with veils and all sorts of sailboat rigging beneath. A death or a betrayal is a cause for great celebration in reverse. A close death can be good for years of despairing repetitions.

It could just be me. Then again, the chance that it may just be me in regard to anything is highly unlikely. But it seems to me that the billboard is not the product. What I mean is that the thing you are being sold in the ad it not the thing in fact. And further more, the thing in fact is not the thing that was advertised. What I mean is that Coke is NOT the real thing in the back of your mind. Everything that is being sold is generally being sold as more than it could ever possibly be, as something that looks and tastes better than it does, as both supple entwining lover and peace of mind.

The difference between the established churches of the world and Wal-Mart is that Wal-Mart is selling you something that you can take home and eat, or play with, or rub on your body and the church is selling you something that is supposed to make the time that happens in between all of this, and that time as well, worthwhile- and you also get a VIP ticket to the crossover world of whatever Disneyland they told you to be expecting.

The fact is, everything is selling you something. Even in nature, everything is clamoring for attention, whether by scent or color; what have you. At no point along the way is anything you are being offered the actual thing itself. How are you supposed to appreciate or understand the thing out of which everything is made when you only see it after something else has been made out of it?

Where’s the genie in the bottle?

Where is the living God on the altar, in the hymnal, in the air, or outside and down the road? Where is it?

Where is the essential thing that was before any of the things you brought out to your car from the shopping center? Where is and what is that shimmering malleable whiteness that is previous to the thing being tasted, or touched or studied?

What is it that is hiding around and inside of and behind everything?

Alright, is this just a Warner Brothers cartoon where explosions don’t hurt anyone? Is this one of those insane roadrunner things where Wylie Coyote gets destroyed a hundred times and nothing really happens to him? Or does it really hurt? Do you hurt? Are you aware of people hurting? Are you aware of people across the globe hurting because of something you support, practice, believe in? Is it for their own good? Are you confused?

When you broke someone’s heart, or made them cry, or broke their arm; were they a cartoon? Did you feel bad? Did you do it again anyway? Are you still doing it? For some people, other people aren’t real, not in the sense that it matters what happens to them.

Let’s take it on faith that the force or thing that all churches purport to represent actually exists. Let’s also take it on faith that it went somewhere else shortly before or after the church got built. Let’s assume that there is a basic contradiction between the thing and the organizations designed to contain and dispense it. What you see isn’t what you get. Caveat Emptor and yadda, yadda, yadda...

Perhaps the real source of all the heartbreak and cruelty in the world has to do with being sold a false bill of goods. All the disappointments in the world; all the finding out that what you thought was wrong, what you loved was false, what you did was meaningless; all this is based on having believed something that was falsely represented as something else. Have you ever felt like you were close to getting to the heart of thee matter? Have you seen that bright shimmering thing at the peripheral point- disappearing around the corner just when you turned to look? Have you felt it bubbling up from the deep internal springs? There is was and there it went away; where it came from and where it went remains a mystery.

The comfort of tradition and repetition; the solid feel of the pew and the pistol and the historical precedence and justifications for bad actions- or, just about anything you want to convolute into being perfectly okay, is not the thing it’s made out of. It’s not the thing itself. It’s a crystallization of something that is no longer breathing inside of it. God went dancing down the road just as soon as God was done with that particular story. God undressed and dropped those clothes that now hang behind glass, wreathed with incense and sometimes alleged to cry tears of blood.

It’s not the easiest thing to talk around and through the thing itself. I guess I just want to tell you that disappointment is to be expected when you buy the package that doesn’t contain the thing itself. You can look back forever. You can turn into salt. You can repeat the words and maybe get lucky, or maybe not... but it’s the thing itself that you are after and it is waiting for you to recognize a critical feature. It’s waiting for you to realize that this is an internal affair, that it is alive and that it is part of you and that it is listening in. It’s not outside there somewhere. It’s not in any of the places that are proclaiming the presence. It doesn’t satisfy out of a Coca Cola can; that way lies tooth decay and diabetes, period. You may get a taste of it in the presence of numbers reaching in a confined space, for part of a moment- but the actual possession of, the discovery of it requires a reach past the swirling clutter of the ages... constantly doing the ‘new and improved’ dance of Shake and Bake presto manifesto.

Sooner or later we got to leave some things behind and this may hurt. It hurts less depending on how you feel about leaving them. It may even feel really good. That’s up to you. I guess it’s because you can’t have the thing itself as long as... Well, I’ll stop there and let you take over.

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ When Darkness Falls ♫
'When Darkness Falls' is track no. 5 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave.

Lately it occurred to me that I should say one particular thing. This thing isn’t the easiest thing to say because there are as many ways to say it as there are to misunderstand it. Then again, there’s no guarantee that saying it makes any difference or that not saying it will make any difference. Understanding and misunderstanding have their own way of getting to where they are going. One is always arriving and the other is always leaving, until it understands and that could be considered the moment of arrival.

There’s no way that the things I discuss on this blog are designed for general consumption. However broad and embracing the principals may be they are not a Wal-Mart product. Organized religion and the variants of the day are engaged in specific routines for specific reasons. It hardly serves the purposes of any organization if their customers don’t need them any more. It’s said that the truth will set you free. This is true but it is not good business practice.

Organized religion is a training bike with bondage regalia built in. In some cases the wheels are in grooves and you only hold on to the handlebars for balance. God forbid you should actually steer. Balance is obviously a cause of concern if you’ve got to strap yourself down for the ride.

A number of organizations, seeing the sweet deal that organized religion has are determined to get into the game. Scientology is a great example. Well, great example of a bad example. It’s all about control; all of them, new and old; all about control. The Hubbardite’s have even gone to the priestly collar. Wow! Did I just say ‘collar’? Okay, moving right along... Whether you’re considering the Raelians, the Solar Temple or any quasi-established or emerging coagulate of doctrine on little toast sandwiches with the crusts cut off, it’s about control. Freedom is difficult to control. Of course, in order to have freedom, to really appreciate freedom, you have to have control. You have to be disciplined enough to experience freedom. Because otherwise, the speed and the lack of control lead very quickly into whatever environment there may be by the side of the road and beyond.

I’m not going to say I know where I’m going. I will say I know where I’m trying to go and I’m confident about where I’m getting my directions. It would be a real horror story by now otherwise, so I think I can be confident about where I’m getting my directions. I’m not getting my directions from organized religion.

Now, my point here is not to attack organized religion. At the elementary level it serves a purpose. It exercises a control over certain forces at a particular level of mind awareness and no doubt helps in the formation of character somewhat more than, hmmm, you know, I’m not even sure about that. There are dangers to organized religion because organized religion can get you killed. They’ll send you off to war after they’ve convinced you of the imprimatur of the divine upon the conflict. The church and state work together in many ways. They channel your natural aggression toward a selected enemy and they legislate and pontificate against the expression of natural sexual force.

You might say, Les, it would be Babylon out there without the good offices of the church and state to control against immoral behavior. I’d suggest you adjust your capacity to identify Babylon. You probably know that one of the chief by products of the Afghanistan war is the renewed flow of Opium. If you were more penetrating you’d know that a particular former high office holder has had long term ties with this particular substance. Opium is against the law unless you control the application of the law. A lot of things are against the law unless you control the application of the law.

Various sexual excesses, possibly all sexual excesses, are against the tenants of organized religion. My take is that all vice is against the tenants of organized religion. For however many years you have been here you have seen to what degree the representatives of organized religion have adhered to the rules of their organization. You can see too, how organized religion has directed the attention of its fellowship.

My interests and the interests of organized religion are different. For one thing, organized religion is not about the hereafter as you might suppose. It’s about the right here awaiting a promised somehow somewhere and the containment of the collective mind toward the growth and maintenance of the organization. Of course, I’m not about the hereafter either but I’m not cutting a deal with you about how doing what you’re told here will lead to a hereafter there. You don’t get there from here. Here is all there is. If you don’t get it here you won’t get it there. As Yogananda so astutely puts it, “If you don’t look for God in the springtime of your life, he won’t be there in the winter.”

Gee Les, but isn’t that what organized religion does? Well, the thing is, thinking about God is fine. Looking for God is fine. Defining God is not fine. Speaking for God, in (grin) his imagined absence and determining for you what God wants is not fine. The priesthood has set itself up as an intermediary between God and man. Yet if the intermediary is filtering the information, or creating the information according to constructs of its own design then it really isn’t about God. Either God is a part of you or not. If God is a part of you then desire for contact is like a phone ringing in the office.

We are passing from one age into the next. A huge change, generally unseen, is sweeping across the earth. It is working within the heart of humanity and upon the environment of humanity as well. The dry texts of a former time are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the needs of the present time. Some can see this, many can’t.

It may be that some of the things you read here strike a sympathetic chord. Then again it may be that the things said here create a reaction based on an attachment to a dogmatic position of apparent safety within an established purview. I can’t resolve the seeming contradiction for those whose investment lies in being told what to do by organizations devoted to mind control. There isn’t any way that what I have encountered can be easily melded with something that works against a greater freedom of thought and action.

It’s a hard thing to speak to the riddle of existence from one position when it all flies in the face of what is generally accepted. Perhaps you believe that Excedrin is what you need for that headache. Perhaps you believe that Faith of Our Fathers is a joyful sound that sets Heaven dancing. I don’t know what you think. For some it is no problem to reconcile bingo nights with edicts against gambling. Bill Bennett doesn’t have a problem with that. It may be that one should go in silence through the contradictions and leave those who remain to the fate of what they believe. Is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?

There are two Indian saints who come to mind; Ramana Maharshi and RamaKrishna. Both of them despaired of finding God and simply laid down refusing all food and drink, determined to find God or die. They both found God. Such intensity is necessary at some point. Anyone who would even go into a room, and spend several days ceaselessly calling out to the divine would receive a life changing experience. But who has that intensity? Who burns so with such a fire that they will go at such practices again and again? Who is driven in such a way that they ceaselessly bring their mind back to the thirst for God over and over again in every moment of every day? Such a number are very, very few. Organized religion is convenient. It gives the satisfaction of one foot in the water on certain repeating days. It allows for many things while it milks guilt and fear for the resources to maintain its presence. It’s big and it’s strong, or so it seems, and it can get pissed at you for setting up a contrast.

So this thing here, this website, is just a small thing in a backwater location of a wide internet. It’s not advertised. It’s not funded. It’s not about buildings and golden altar accoutrements or yearly celebrations of holidays that were once called pagan. It’s not about telling you what to do or even giving any more than guidelines. It’s just the personal ruminations of one who looks and the after-following reflections of that pursuit. If the water satisfies then help yourself. Otherwise, there are no lack of alternatives.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Now, how far up the road did you say that was?

Time and space are a lot like character actors. Often their persona changes completely depending on the film. Oh sure, you still recognize Harry Dean Stanton and Rip Torn but, most likely, you’ve adapted the role to your version of the cosmos which is conveniently being played out for you.

It is interesting to note that physicists, very often despite themselves, seem to be more and more in the business of proving the existence of God. It’s getting uncanny, and for some scary, how often metaphysics is proving to have been right ahead of time.

Of course, my job is not to talk about Griffith’s Consistent Histories, or Griffith Park. We won’t be taking a hike across the Hilbert Spaces or charting Bell’s Inequalities on a handy Bell Curve. Heisenberg may still be uncertain, but I’m not. The greatest value of Schrödinger’s Cat seems to be as a sort of house pet or witch’s familiar for pedants and pseudo-intellectuals. They love to talk about it and show you pictures. They love when it sits on their lap and they can stroke it; if the cats not there then one might ask what they are stroking. No doubt it’s not a real cat, more likely a ceramic cat, a mantelpiece dust catcher that sits next to the bust of Plato and concealing an algebra of forms gone missing in the conversations designed to associate and- when necessary- disassociate one from this revered personal friend or discredited hack, as the case may be.

We live in a world which seeming to prove Descartes wrong seems to make Pascal right; a world where the important things are the confusions and misinterpretations; they keep the wheels of industry turning, they get the book deals, they do the talk circuit. In the early part of the century Einstein worked mostly alone coming up with a theory of relativity. Over time, what you might call refutations, or possibly, amendments followed but we don’t know about the Aspects or even much understand Einstein except that it had something to do with passing train windows and atom bombs.

Scientists can and occasionally do get right up on the mystery of God. In some cases they can think around the corner and posit. This might be something like seeing the light of The Grail reflected. It’s also telling of why they can’t look upon it directly. They’ll never get the thing on paper, no matter what they find out. They’ll never be able to subvert it to their ends. They get pieces of the puzzles which operate according to observable laws and they can get these portions to perform but they’re forever behind the velvet rope when it comes to the main engine that both drives and contains them. It’s that Golden Goose thing.

Possibly the problem in comprehending is that it all resolves to one and that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. There the mystery sits in a cloud of unknowing. The sunlight will break through but only from the inside. You can play with the permutations of that if you like. In a sense, temporal scientists are just moths and other bugs flitting around the light fixture on God’s Front Porch; in many cases the back porch. Sure, the energy that drives and illuminates them is the same as that in the light bulb but... but... uh, it was just on the tip of my tongue, held back perhaps by the invisible finger pressed into the cleft above my lip. All I can remember now is the departing echo of beating wings.

We are either made in cooperation with God, endlessly surrendering to the new becoming of; we are either that or we are shaped by interests and appetites and God is given space in such a way so as not to conflict with the desired ends. All religious interpretations and all of the behaviors of those who purport to be representative are explained in one of these two ways. Both unleash waves of advocates on behalf of the POV.

Teachers I studied with in person, or by more indirect means, were, in my estimation, all illuminated beings. In one case, upon the physical passing of the teacher, the fellowship executives tore up a good portion of the front lawn and put in a parking lot for the fellowship executives. They even stenciled in their titles. All of these organizations have garnered millions of dollars. There seems no end to the donations and the products for sale. Another organization runs a propaganda war against another devotee; pointing out that he’s had a lot of wives and is a womanizer- that’s possibly true. I’ve found him to be, so far, a generous and sincere channel. Hell, we’ve all got our crosses to bear. Meanwhile, an oracle at the main site- the official site- comments on the spirituality of other teachers. In one case he points out that a particular teacher blinked when he was speaking to him. This indicated that he didn’t have perfect body control and therefore couldn’t be a master. All these organizations fight with the renegades and schisms over the authenticity of the lineage and the rights to make further millions.

Yes, you’re either giving way and being transformed, being relieved of your baggage or... you’re defining the thing entire according to the demands and potentials of the marketplace. Basically you’ve said that business is the essential creative and that the creative artist is merely a secondary extension of it; pretty much what you’ve got at the moment. “Mama’s little baby loves shortening, shortening. Mama’s little baby loves shortening bread.”

A year ago I was regularly declaiming against Bushco and pointing out the inconsistencies of the governments official fabrications concerning the truth about 9/11; I can’t say that I’ve changed my mind concerning the warp and the woof but I can say I hardly think about Bush these days. During the same period I used to welcome assaults in cyberspace so that I could play Cyrano of the Internet. Now I could care less. It seems like hardly any time has passed since I was learning to walk and talk; seems like hardly any time from here to there. It’s harder to grasp that it has only ever been ‘here’. We improve by compression; call it pain if you like and we slowly comprehend the purpose of our visit. Or, we spend our time making shit and selling it. On the one hand we are being turned into gold and on the other hand we are claiming to have it in stock or on backorder.

Speaking strictly for myself, if I can keep improving, keep giving way and being shaped by Love, that would be all I could ask; suspecting as I do that all good things accompany it and that anything I could ever need is anticipated in advance of my asking. Here’s hoping your Valentine didn’t come off the rack.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Part Two of... Being Smarter Than the Average Bear.

Being smart nearly always involves looking stupid. The fact is the smart thing to do is the opposite of what most people are doing. I’m not suggesting calling attention to yourself like the contrary Indian in Little Big Man by over dramatizing and acting out to an absurd degree; then again... heh heh.

We often don’t understand where the motive power comes from or how to use it to our advantage. If the truth exists at right angles to everything else -just making examples here- then everyone is going in the wrong direction more or less. Some wrong directions indicate a journey of serious length and some directions, since they are circular, indicate infinite length of travel until some force knocks the traveler off center. Perhaps the frustration of never getting anywhere increases the pace until the centrifugal force sends the gyro off to God knows where or turns the traveler into pancake syrup.

The larger body of humanity congregates in urban fantasies of dream engineering and appetite diversification. They fill stadiums and beach resorts. They pack into casino’s and Celine Dion concerts and don’t get the Titanic pun of the thing or even seem to mind being accompanied by a terrible soundtrack on their way down, incrementally or all at once; time lapse or fast forward... it’s like living with a chronic toothache. How long is too long?

The larger body of humanity shares a more or less common appetite for the same things. Society applies yellow tape around certain extremes and practices. Some things are a little out of bounds and some things are way out of bounds, unless you’re connected and then they are considered party favors. But sometimes the wind isn’t right no matter what. Michael Jackson might want to consider something more than a moonwalk and a studded glove for this one. I don’t get the outrage really. Who else would you expect Michael Jackson to have as a love interest? People who get all twisted into outrage over age of consent laws and sexual selection are pretty much standing around with their eyes squinched up in the middle of a stampede. You’d be no doubt quite surprised to find out what’s really going on and to what degree it is going on and at what level of society it is most prevalent. Michael Jackson’s a light weight. His real problem is the exposure. It’s a John Gotti sort of thing in a more cartoon realm.

Oops, I digressed. Anyway, there’s your generic humanity going cradle to grave through the amusement parks and the war zones and the occasional red light specials when they can manage it. There they go beer in one hand, baseball bat in the other. The Star Spangled Banner is playing over the land of sugar pops and curls in the center of their foreheads and the TV is just going on and on and the whole thing squeezes like tooth paste out of a tube until the things empty and then it gets thrown into the trash. And here comes another row of toothpaste tubes off the assembly line.

It’s like being on a merry go round and deciding when the best time to jump off is. After awhile you forget about jumping off. You forget that was ever an option and one day there’s nothing but skeletons holding on to the rails as the wheel turns in the cemetery. There’s the skeletons on the roller coaster and the skeletons in the house of mirrors and the skeletons in the funhouse and draped over the concessions stands and the cotton candy and the spider webs are indistinguishable and you see what you didn’t see then, that there are huge spiders moving across webs strung all across the amusement park. There are horrific creatures that you can’t quite make out because you’ve never seen the like before and can’t identify them.

There are huge halls in Berlin and Paris and New York and Milan and the glitterati are preening and air kissing to beat the band. Everything is dripping with color and there’s a sensual mucosa that is slithering over the forms and under the gowns and there’s a tension and a heat and sometimes the pressure of the heat is uncomfortable and it seems to be fighting with some other part of yourself that, wait a minute, that is yourself so what is that other thing... Somebody is getting an award and somebody has just unveiled a sculpture that consists of a bed on which the covers are twisted and its got half squeezed toothpaste tubes on it and several Tampax and various cosmetic containers and random stains and they’re getting an award too and the scene splinters into thousands of rooms like the facets of a spiders eye and they’re all getting awards, or gold watches more like, or nothing at all even and Ken Lay is smiling and he’s getting an award too.

On the face of it nothing seems sane or fair. But let’s be honest, if you’re in the middle of that you’re not sane or fair either. Part of the kick for the orchestrators is to see just how inane, absurd and unbelievable they can make it and still have you buy the whole thing. The ever increased pushing of the envelope is just a form of entertainment for those watching from another location and laughing about how unbelievable it really is and yet people are still watching and still buying and still dying to defend this wonderful land of opportunity to be free to die by any one of thousands of really unpleasant deaths while being attended to by physicians who don’t know what they’re doing and urged on in clueless humiliation to the grave. All those banquets and awards shows. All the preening glitterati are a hallucination. Looking at it directly, free of the special effects, it’s full of skeletons and bats and spiders traveling overhead. I’m not kidding here. I’m not kidding at all.

If you go running around, yelling out loud and telling everyone about it they’ll lock you up. You can get locked up for many different things and shot for a number of others. There’s a lot to be said for the wisdom of the phrase, “Be cool baby.” There is a system within the madness and there is a contact point within you. If you stand on a street corner and yell for a cop, a cop will show up sooner or later. If you call out inside yourself for whatever you hope or imagine may be there, it will show up too. The pressure to go with the tide of bodies pushing for a seat on the Titanic is fairly strong. It’s strong like the pull of the surrounding waters as you attempt to swim away from the thing as it’s going down. There is a strong magnetic pull from all the concessions and doorways into large collection areas. There’s a definite heat. There’s a definite pull. People are going to laugh at you if you are undulating while you eat, if you’re talking to the sun or people they can’t see, if you’ve got curious ways that don’t seem to make sense. But you can experience that laughter as if it were a pleasant rain falling from a benevolent sky. It’s really in the way you perceive it. I don’t mind skeletons myself. I used to take acid in graveyards. After all, that’s what this is, a graveyard. You are presently dead; you wake up when you die. It’s the reverse of what it appears to be.

I know there’s a God. Since I know this I consider romancing God to be my chief concern. If I associate God with every action I perform, every thought I think and word I speak, then it’s seems natural to assume that God will respond to me in kind. Somehow people got the idea to associate God with churches and rituals taking place at specific times. Unless it’s a full time reality it isn’t real, is it? Either God is everything all the time, or God is only this and that some of the time. One of these makes no sense.

Living and breathing God makes God more and more consciously present; the guide in these quarters and the ferryman into the next. As crazy as it may seem, the idea of associating God with every function, sex, elimination, eating, what have you- has a tendency to spiritualize the thing, heal the function, protect the container, evolve the inhabitant and integrate the process. You’ve got to decide at some point what’s crazy and what’s sane. And that may have a lot to do with your need to increase the pain. We do it to ourselves. When we’re going the wrong way, even if we won’t admit it, we are damn sure going to make sure we suffer from it until we catch on. Think about it, it’s not like it isn’t happening right in front of you this very minute.

The amount of bliss waiting to pour out, as I think it says somewhere in Malachi, is actually more than you can contain. You get in the way of that by associating everything you do with it. The idea of separation is the root of pain. The desire for union with the false image burns like a fire. Think about a real vacation, you’re sitting under a waterfall of nectar, there are angels tumbling inside the fluid as it falls all around you and your blood has turned to music as it courses through your veins.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Being Smarter Than the Average Bear- Part One.

I let a couple days slip by. I wasn’t busy. I just wasn’t in the mood. Although I know people commonly do it, I can’t see me doing it- if I’m not in the mood. I did learn a few things though. A man I thought had been dead these past ten years is, in fact, alive. That would be Bernard Stollman; head of ESP Disk and to the music industry what Hunter Thompson is to the realm of journalism; or rather I should say what Hunter Thompson used to be. I’ve no idea just what Hunter Thompson is supposed to be these days, except strange.

I’d been writing ESP Disk to get them to take my CDs off their web page since they no longer have a relationship with me. I never was getting any answers. I have a major landmark (no, not a birthday) approaching this summer and I want the decks cleared for what should prove to be a very interesting period. This is the time when my ships come in, laden with whatever, the harvest time approaches and we shall see what I have sown manifest. I thought all this time that the former psycho head of the company was responsible for the lack of communication as she had been for numerous injuries inflicted upon me and my career over time. She it was who told me Bernard was dead. I held a funeral for him in my head but Tom Sawyer wasn’t dead after all. This could be one of those things that changes everything and means nothing or, changes nothing and means everything.

So I mentioned that I might stop writing this blog at some point. It’s not because I’m lazy or fickle or on the verge of a new drug habit; a new drug would actually have to be discovered. It’s just that things change. I can feel them changing. Into what that may be I suppose I will find out. But I’ll always be doing something. At the moment I need to get my hands on about half a million Euro. Now, that may be a lot in some people’s minds but its chump change actually. I don’t usually concern myself with large sums of money because usually what I may need or want doesn’t cost a large sum of money. However it has come to pass that I have indeed encountered something that I want and need that costs more than usual. Actually, I can well get part of it without having to think too much about it but it seems practical to get it all. We’ll see. It’s neat to have these little challenges and to see how they work themselves out. I’m more excited about this landmark period coming this summer. I may wait for it on the docks or I may cloister myself in a remote location. Of course one can’t hide, nor in this case, does one wish to but... like they say in real estate, ‘location, location, location.’

Enough of this cryptic rambling down the lane. I’ve been thinking about something. You ought to be thinking about it too, if you like in AmeriKa. I’ve hear it said that most families spend 90% of their savings in the last year of their life on medical expenses. I know there’s this thing called medical insurance and even Medicaid but they don’t actually seem to exist. I know a person who has insurance on an apartment building that they own and something happened that cost a number of thousands of Euros. The person told me that they couldn’t actually use the insurance because if they did the carrier would cancel their insurance. I suspect there is quite a bit of this about.

Well, people losing all of their savings on health related issues may not be a surprise. It may not even be wrong. If you’ve invested all of your efforts into material gain and placed your faith in the medical system as if they had some contact with the healing arts, one might say you got what you deserved. However, the big thing... the really interesting thing that one ought to focus on is the food industry and the substances that the average bear is taking in for sustenance and growth. There’s the potato chip industry and the soft drink industry and they take up a sizable portion of the supermarket all by themselves. Then there’s the processed food section and the frozen processed food section and they, combined with the previous two industries and joined by the liquor section, take up most of the space in the supermarket. Real food, if you can find it, doesn’t take up much space. There’s the fresh vegetable and fruit section and the meats and poultry section and the fish section. I’m not too sure myself about the meat and poultry sections. I find that these things make me feel greasy and pumped full of mucus;

There’s probably a small section where you can buy dried beans and grains and such. It’s a small section and you might have to ask where you can find it.

In your country it seems that the industries that provide your food are in some sort of relationship with the medical industry. If they’re not then it’s certainly serendipitous for the latter. If you eat bad food and stuff it down your throat without chewing like a pig they now have a pill you can take to counteract the distress caused by your complete lack of dignity and control. My casual surface observation tells me that your country is engaged in making you weak and sick and then stripping you of your assets on the way to the grave. On the positive side there are government agencies devoted to a certain incoherent lip service that has something to do with dietary awareness, which if you could understand it, you would find, was completely wrong; so scratch that positive side thing.

Here’s what I do. You might think of a variation for yourself; and remember, when it comes to food; you can process about ten percent worth of garbage and still be okay. Being a radical nut job even with the best of intentions is never a good idea.

Most people when they eat are about as conscious of what they are doing as an animal. Often they’re reading the newspapers (it’s a little like putting hormones in beef), walking down the street, watching TV; doing something empty, mindless or trivial and assimilating their poorly digested food in the same fashion. Take a day and spend it at the mall just watching people. Pretend you are a scientist. It’s a real trip. Fifty percent of the digestion takes place in the mouth, however in most cases it hardly stays there any time at all.

Most people when having sex are engaged in it the same way they eat. I don’t need to get detailed here. Most people do not pay attention to things they are reading. Most people read crap and watch crap on TV. The crap they read and watch is getting worse with each passing day but that seems okay.

Although the diet you ingest is of real importance; especially when you have yet to learn real transubstantiation... it is attitude that is of at least equal importance. Food is the actual substance of; the body of God. The body and blood of God is there for ingestion every time you eat. I bless my food and then I eat and drink the body and blood of God. I close my eyes and surrender to the assimilation of the consciousness of God into the cells of my body. I sway imperceptibly in my seat. I am engaged in sex after a fashion. I maintain a state of ongoing gratitude, my heart swells with Love. Try it and see how quickly you forget you are doing it while you are trying to do it. But it can be done.

When I read important texts I focus directly upon the words and their intent and I digest them in my mind and make them a part of me. After a particular process the ideas that these words outlined comes to the surface of my mind in terms that I can understand; in new perspectives, as part of my very being.

When I sit in the sun I engage the sun in dialogue. It may not involve words but it does involve an exchange of energy. I know that the wind that blows about me and caresses my body is consciousness. I know that the birds sing for me and that the entire performance of nature is for my benefit.

There is a yoga you can practice twenty four hours a day and it will gradually lead you into conscious ecstasy. It will surround you with a protective fence. It will keep in you perfect health and it will do quite a few things you weren’t even aware were there to be done. But that’s as far as I’m going to go on it today. I just wanted to set the stage for it as I was rambling around on the lane here; more tomorrow.


Visible sings: ♫ The Walls ♫

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

You Can't Be Lost When You are the Thing You Seek...

If time is a river, then the truth is a pool. You can’t step into the same river twice but truth doesn’t change. It may pour in and out of something but it doesn’t vary depending on the container. This is the place where most minds go astray, by mistaking the container for the thing it contains. It’s where most love goes wrong as well. It takes no small amount of experience for caveat emptor to sink in.

Religion is a drag queen. It’s dressed up as something it is not. Its main concern is survival, the same as any other institution. Unlike most businesses its product is invisible. Its product can be made to appear to be anything and the place it appears is in your mind, or perhaps in your heart. They’re selling you the unknown. For most people there is a natural inclination to defer to the established tradition of those who present themselves as being in possession of a greater understanding of the unknown. There’s all that history and all those churches. They grew up with it. Their parents told them things. They believed them.

People with families want to believe in the good that the church has promised them. For many there is the belief that the morality affected by the church stands as a barrier against the depravities of the world. This didn’t work out for the altar boys but there you go.

Certain truths are observable. What I mean is, you can argue all you want to defend something you have an investment in, work and lobby to make it appear otherwise, but it doesn’t change the reality in front of you. You take a religious philosophy and set it up with celibate priests and principles and doctrines that fly in the face of normal human behavior and you are assured of creating a homosexual church. But that is not all you will create. Ask the Albigensian’s and the Templars. Cry havoc and let slip the Dominicans.

I’ve no argument about whether homosexuality is right or wrong; as I’ve said, it’s a phase in everyone’s cycle of lives. It also appears in a wider spread whenever a culture has a more materially oriented aspect and especially in its decline; or during an increase in the force of certain planetary aspects. We have both of those now. I’m pretty sure The Inquisition was wrong, along with a host of other suppressive activities. But the church does think homosexuality is wrong. So why is it that they’ve designed a church that promotes it? Sexual intercourse is a font of magical power. You don’t have to know this. It happens anyway. Every different type of sexual intercourse creates a different type of magic. The Catholic Church has a preference for a certain type of magic given the results it obtains.

God, the essential force of the whirlings that has set the galaxies in space, that omnipresent, omniscient consciousness penetrating everything; that which creates out of its own substance everything that is and contains it within itself entire; is the consciousness in it; that in which we move and live and have our being... is a binding unity of purpose with specific intent. This specific intent is to bring the entirety of everything into the shared realized consciousness of God. The point is that life should know itself as God and dance in the fullness of the liberating ecstasy of that knowledge. That’s the whole deal; all the sorrow and torment, all the fear and loss, every single event is working toward this end. Some achieve to it well in advance of the evolutionary tide of a given wave but every drop of water will, someday, know itself as the ocean complete.

This isn’t new information. This was known long before the Rishis were here. This was known before civilizations antecedent to Atlantis. This was known before the worlds were manifest. Is it some kind of a secret? Why isn’t it common knowledge? Why especially isn’t it proclaimed in the churches? Why does a tormented God hang upon the altar? Is it not a living God? Did not God made manifest bleed new life into creation, becoming the true coin of the realm that pays the freight? It is not in the interest of the church as a temporal power to broadcast a truth that makes them redundant. All the hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo is extant for the purpose of the enslavement of the human mind. It’s all about control. This is why there have been secret societies through the millennia. This is why the archetypes were hidden with the gypsy’s.

God is bliss. God is liberty. God is unity and God is Love. The fountains of the church flow with the waters of grief. The Sanhedrin and all of the thrones of darkness have not changed. The present rise in fundamentalist power, Christian, Muslim et al, has behind it the same force that has ever been most concerned with obfuscation and suppression. The apparent immorality of the world, so very much in evidence, is fueled by the same force at either end. As I’ve said, God is on both sides of the equation; it might be better said that the devil is God as the wicked see him.

Why do so many priests and religious leaders go about in black? Why do they make funerals an occasion of sorrow? Why do they wield the whip of Hell and Purgatory and yet behave in such a manner as to be its most deserving residents? Why are all the hymns so grim? Why is there such a thick, dead, dreary atmosphere of stifling resignation? Why is the whole thing designed to make you feel guilty? They say you were born guilty. How did life’s eternal message of hope and immortal life get turned into a morass of grief?

My purpose is not to overthrow the traditions of the world. This happens in its appointed time regardless. Earth is not Heaven save for the heart that resides there. Heaven and Hell are both here simultaneously. The destruction of one gang of fools only assures their replacement by the next bunch. When the tables are turned the same people are still sitting there. This is the world. It is what it is. It does evolve and it devolves too. As it is it is for the purpose of what occurs. It’s a training camp.

My purpose is just to point out that, although many have chosen to suffer, depending on belief systems, desires, appetites, stupidity, avarice, ambitions of all sorts; what have you, the list is long; even though many choose to suffer and to cause suffering, you do not have to. It may be that you have become entangled in thorns. It could be that some time is required to navigate your way out of the briar patch. Some zealous hearts will rip themselves free; caring not for their wounds- I’ve no quarrel with that. But sometimes these briars are attached to the hearts of others and therein lies the concern. Anyone can extricate themselves with determination and patience. It takes a leap of faith. Rest assured, that in which you have faith is real; more real than anything you see or can imagine. You may be certain of powerful help. The fact is that, long before your intention to do so- your intention was known. It could well be, and I suspect that it is, that everything is so completely under control that even the course of each separate trembling hair on your head is known to a perfect exactitude. One of the most powerful mental practices we can engage in is to reaffirm to our minds on every occasion that ‘every single event in our lives, no matter how inconsequential it may seem, is a particular dealing of God with our souls.’

So why am I writing this? And why bother to do anything if everything is already perfect? I’m not going to address that. Some things should be left hanging in the air waiting for the lightning.

You may know better than to eat bad food. You may have learned what comes of bad company. You may understand that bank robbery is a bad career move and that politicians lie. But all of us would probably be improved by taking a closer look at what we believe and at what influences us. It’s altogether possible that for everything we think we see we are missing just as much. Experience and knowledge aren’t the only things that come with a price tag but they’re the byproduct of all the rest. Realization is the end product. The best things in life are free. You’re free too, right now.

Visible and The Critical List: Not Politically Correct by Les Visible and The Critical List♫ Surfer Joe ♫
'Surfer Joe' is track no. 6 of 12 on Visible and The Critical List's 1992 album
'Not Politically Correct'

About this song (pops up)

Not Politically Correct by Les Visible and The Critical List

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Shine on, Shine on Harvest Moon.

I’ve been doing a refresher in esoteric astrology. That led me to a consideration of my natal chart. I looked at all those planets in Leo and Libra, except for the rising sign, the moon and lonely Uranus, that’s where they all are. Everything is sitting in the fifth and eighth house. The eighth house is ruled by Scorpio. You may not be well versed in these things but Libra has to do with balance or the lack thereof and Leo has to do with the vital life force.

I noticed how the whole movement of my life had to do with bringing the vital life force into balance. The eighth house deals with things like reincarnation, legacies, death- or the state of transition that it implies and the use of practical occult forces. There’s a far greater wealth of detail that relates to all of these than this simplistic overview but that remains available for the curious. I’m not an astrologer in the usual sense but I am very curious about planetary forces and acquiring a greater skill in adjusting to their actions in my life.

I had intended to continue in summating from the series of posts dealing with my passage through the phenomenal realm but... Nah... I find myself moving on, or in, without any great concern for where I’ve been or who I might have been for whatever while that occurred. Personal history can always serve as an example but I’m not a collector of toenail clippings or locks of hair. I don’t muse over photo albums or reminisce about glory days over a beer at the pub. I don’t need to reinforce the evidence that I was an idiot at times or dispense self-abuse over mistakes in judgment. We all make them based on what we thought was real at the time. Then we learn.

My feeling is that God has a lot more interest in the passage of those who risk mistakes; who live in the teeth of it in pursuit of the heart of it. Those who love much are forgiven much. I think God is less proactive in the lives of those who cower in fear of error and embarrassment and who remain content to serve temporal interests. Passion is a fine thing and desire is the medium for the expression of God’s will. Everyone has their period of passion. It usually comes in tandem with rebellion, which is usually the process by which the personal self defines itself, until... settling for some compromise of arrangement between the impossible dream and the demands of the marketplace. Very seldom do individuals carry their passion with them the entire way. You see it in the lives of artists, true spiritual seekers and others whose avocation is a burning need.

Zeal, by its precipitate nature, can take you very quickly to your destination. That’s wonderful if you’re headed the right way and very possibly calamitous if you’re not. Even so, once you find you’ve been wrong you may instantly become right, with the added benefit of the wisdom your mistake has conferred upon you.

The greatest benefit of spiritual zeal is realized when it has surrender as a companion. How can you receive understanding of the thing you pursue if you don’t give way before it? You cannot hope to comprehend in advance of the things arrival. It has to interpret itself to you. That which you pursue resides beyond the parameters of ordinary reason and logic. You can’t analyze the brimming unknown from a position of limited knowing. It is the surrender which accompanies zeal/passion which provides the posture of humility necessary for understanding.

We have gotten so used to the self we have assumed; this masking persona, that we are generally unaware of the presence of the real self that interpenetrates and surrounds. The assumed self has defined conditions and things according to the limits of its understanding and the definitions of good and evil assigned by personal preference or accepted wholesale from the messages of the big billboards of the day. This efficiently imprisons the assumed self in a confinement of its own definitions. Sooner or later, the sense of this confinement brings about the thirst for a greater freedom; the passion or zeal to pursue it. This confinement then becomes a good thing because it sets the stage for the real effort of this life, of every life. Hey! It’s all part of the service, thank you very much. And please, don’t come back.

You might say that the devil pushes and God leads “Get thee behind me Satan.” It really comes down to good driving skills or a clearer perspective of your place in the vehicle. The horses of appetite are very strong and the shoulder of the road falls immediately away into a quick darkness. Lucky for you that the guy behind the wheel knows where he’s going. You’re even luckier if you’re not involved in grabbing for the wheel; screaming, shouting, jumping all about, fighting in the back seat or throwing beer cans out of the window.

I can see where I went wrong- if such a judgment can be made; let me rather say, I see how I made my ride less pleasant than it might have been. But there is no wrong direction if you are looking for God. Going faster though can make for a scarier ride and harder bumps.

Pain is a focusing of the mind upon a point of tension or tearing caused by an extreme. Balance is the key. Certain oriental medicines take this as their main intent. Balance however is not a stationary state; scales unmoving. It is a constant adjusting back to center. God the center may be motionless and precede all action but you are not, do not; at least for the sake of this argument. You get to a point, if your zeal continued to travel with surrender, where you can experience and witness the adjustment without interference.

Let’s imagine that you are standing at the midpoint of a see saw with one foot on either side of center. Imagine that there is a pipe rising from the Earth and that it feeds upward from a wellspring of bliss. There is a hole in the center of the see saw and the pipe mouth rests a small distance below this hole. When one side of your nature or the other moves toward an extreme that part of the see saw will go down and simultaneously slide incrementally in the other direction as well, thereby obscuring the hole. Within a certain range the bliss will flow, then not. It is not only individuals who close off these holes, but communities and countries and cultures.

All our experiments with government, religion and social engineering are meant to be an effort toward a greater flow of whatever the bliss stands for to a larger or smaller segment of the population. Definitions of what this bliss is differ. The location of this bliss has been spotted everywhere. This bliss dresses as harlot, harridan and queen. This bliss is one thing at the source and everything at the mouth. This bliss is folded, bent, spindled and mutilated. Like quicksilver it has a tendency to rejoin itself. It never gets dirty no matter how foul it appears.

The key thing to remember is that the bliss is looking for you at the same time. In the process it may change into anything to entertain, instruct or seemingly torment you on the way. Remembrance is a certain guarantee of discovery. If you practice the presence of it, it will tend to appear with increasing frequency. It understands the degree and quality of your interest. It knows far more about your intentions than you ever will. It can’t be fooled. It appears in front of you in every moment in myriad disguise. You have seen it in disgraceful garments and rejected it out of hand. It is radiant beyond measure. It is encompassing and lit up like the sun in every molecule of your frame. Your fear is the measure of its distance apart and your ignorance the veil upon its face.


Visible sings: ♫ Something New ♫
Lyrics (pops up)

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Summation, Part 1- The Party of the First Part.

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As quiet and unhasseled as my life is there are flurries of action since life does require my attendance for some things; like this post. Whether there is some broader more embracing importance is irrelevant. Life seems inclined to pressure me in certain areas and I am inclined to follow, depending. So, I’ve been doing other things and sometimes thinking about what I would say here- but I never know till I start writing it down.

I doubt that my reason for the protracted sketch of my life was evident on the face of it. The truth is that I know my life better than I do anyone else’s. If I’m going to make an example of a life for the purpose of demonstrating a point it is reasonable to assume I would use my own. It’s really that simple. My life has been very different than the main but there have certainly been more exceptional lives.

It’s consistent with human behavior to always look outside oneself for an explanation of events and conditions. We say we are the way we are because of our environment, or particular events, or the basic makeup of our personality. However, no two people would have reacted to the same thing in the same way. So actually the reasons would really be you, not what happened to you. You can look at your country; your circumstances of birth, your race or your creed, inopportune or fortuitous events and say; here’s why and here’s how. But you got how you are because of who you are, ultimately.

This gives us two ways to look at things. We can measure our results by how they compare with what we wanted, or we can measure them according to the intentions of something deeper inside us; call it God, the demiurge, fate, whatever you want. Is this life just an opportunity to achieve personal satisfactions or is it about something else altogether? Is it possible that both are connected? It comes down to the old question; Who are we? It’s hard to imagine that the things we think we want are valid if we don’t know who it is that wants them.

The early portion of my life was a very painful period. Most of the periods of my life have had a good portion of pain. But it wasn’t pain actually, it was compression. If I hadn’t been brutalized like I was I wouldn’t have spent so much time escaping into books. I wouldn’t have been driven to inquire with such intensity into the meaning of life. I was compressed much as grapes are in a press. I was forced down and into.

If we recognize that we are God putting himself through circumstance in order to understand, then everything makes sense. Otherwise you have no real answers and inevitably become disappointed, bitter, disillusioned and disassociated from life; except for the pathologies you picked up in defense of yourself.

Seen from one perspective my life is one of failure in every respect. I don’t count small passing achievements or wisdom gained in the process. I’m using the yardstick the world uses to measure success. Seen from a general perspective I’m a criminal madman; a threat to society, a bad example, a fickle- self indulgent sensation seeking wastrel destined for a bad end. I’ve been irresponsible, reckless, contemptuous of institutions and mores and too clever by half.

I don’t know if anyone noticed that I never mentioned my mother in my tale. My mother is what would be called a God-fearing Christian woman. She raised 6 kids under the most horrific circumstances and generally got called a liar and a whore without ever having been either, except inasmuch as she might have lied to protect someone. She’s about as selfless as they get.

One of the things that happened to me when my Kundalini woke up was that I no longer felt any family affiliations. Pretty much everyone became a part of my family with the entire spectrum of the dysfunctional laid out on the worktable. I realized that I had birthed myself and formed myself with intentions beyond anything I realized, or realize as yet. When my Kundalini woke up I became as female as any woman while gravitating back and forth from the male pole. It took me a long time to realize an essential facet of the entire matter. The war inside me that manifested into a war outside of me was nothing more than the ongoing argument between my mother and my father. I’d say every life is a case of this to a greater or lesser degree.

In the Tibetan tradition it is said that a soul on the brink of reincarnation sees its father and mother making love prior to conception. The choice of the mother and father is specific to the intentions of the soul in its ongoing progress. Most lives continue with this polarity as a constant throughout the life. However, some lives, in accelerated circumstance, in a hot-housed condition, may experience quite a number of lives in one. There really isn’t a limit. One who is jivanmukti may be many things but one thing they are is still bound to the continuation of events, even if he be consciously immortal he has to play out the movie- he does not escape the necessary examples that are the footprints of his progress.

I know now that my job, everyone’s job, is to reunite the mother and the father in a perfect harmony within. The agony of this work, given all the permutations and surrenders necessary, are considerable. But it is certain that progress is made and that whatever pain may exist in the ongoing clumsiness of fusion, it is by degrees less than it was.

There are many niches, high and low, from which to observe life, as many as there are lives and each is a philosophy and a perspective. However much wisdom any one of them may contain they are all flawed, either in principle, or in the limitations placed upon ones capacity to express it. They’re all seats in the crowd no matter how far you are seated from the action. None of them are 360 degrees of absorption.

Someone made a reference a little while ago that I was perceived as anti-gay. I imagine I’ve been perceived as anti-just about anything at one time or another because my take on what I’m looking at doesn’t jibe with the way the vested have fashioned the view to accommodate their interests. I’ve no problem with loving my brother but I’m not certain sucking his cock is the highest possible expression of it. I had thought it was laying down your life for him, which doesn’t automatically mean dying in fact but might imply a number of possible expressions which come to the same thing. A simple investigation of a penis inserted into another’s ass provides certain evidences regarding what lies in both areas. Careful thought on the matter brings up a number of possible speculations upon results. But that’s all Kundalini too. It’s Kundalini in reverse. In this transiting time of Aquarian emergence there is a gravitating toward the feminine and an acting out on the material in respect of it. Given the excessive pressure of the material world upon the psyche it is not hard to understand how things get this way. Most of the people who claim to be gay aren’t gay at all but this isn’t the place to investigate it more deeply.

For me, gay is a phase. It’s a process one goes through and EVERYONE goes through it. It’s not something for me to judge or diminish and anyone who thinks I do this is missing the point of my argument; intentionally in some instances.

There are good reasons to be anti-Semitic. I can clearly see why some would feel as they do. I understand the fear that makes a white suburban Republican (or Democrat) hate blacks. I can understand why anyone hates or fears anyone for any reason. Rather than dismiss why someone feels as they do, or censure them (from an assumed high ground) I look into their reasoning. Anything can be made to seem irrefutably anything given the usual blinders that are ubiquitous. These are all phases and life is designed to put you through your paces in addressing them. The real error is in evading the search for a deeper truth. The real sorrow is in the length of the term in which one remains ignorant of ones condition.

Life moves through constant change. Look at music. You have the idealism of the 60’s that moved into the hedonism of the 70’s. The 80’s brought a self-involved condition fueled by the greed of the marketplace. Then came the whining of the 90’s- a further push into ‘me’ focus; we’ve now moved into the thumping redundancy of violent demeaning of everything (or saccharine glorification of the trivial)- principally the feminine because it’s all her fault apparently. That will change too.

I remember sitting in a room in Palm Springs alone, tripping, I became a woman in her fifties, cosmeticized, draped in jewelry; an old queen who is the queen inside the archetype of the locale. I knew her and who she was. I experienced her in every permutation in so many different locales; she, the form giving mother of the defining stereotypes of the passing circumstance.

I can’t discount the truths I’ve gained at a deeper position just to accommodate the desires of anyone to have things a certain way for the convenience of their desire for how it should be. But it doesn’t make me judge them, or anyone who is anything for the time they have to be that. They are me. When the man and the woman come together in me then I’m in bliss. When they are not, I’m in and a part of all of the conflicts, misunderstandings and prejudices of my time- but at least these days I know it is happening.

I got put through everything I got put through by myself for myself. It was really important to me to succeed at different things to prove my father wrong. It was also impossible for me to avoid expressing things that we the natural expression of the music as it flowed through the flute of my being; whether that was music, or writing, or acting or any of the mechanisms I gravitated to and worked through.

None of that’s important anymore. I don’t play my guitar anymore, or my piano. I don’t write my books. I don’t dream about the working out of whatever these things might have once implied. I seldom think about my walled garden. I used to think about it all the time. One day I came across the phrase ‘para-deez’ it means walled garden; paradise- that made me laugh. The thing I thought I wanted was not the thing I wanted. The things I thought I knew I didn’t know. The person I thought I was was not the person I am. But everything I went through was designed specifically for me to be able to see more clearly. In that respect my life is a success.

I take real success to be how you feel. How do you feel? I don’t think I have to explain this.

I did not think I would be very successful at making my point here today. There is just too much to say in too many different ways. I’m left making an outline of an outline.

A person can live in the most exceptional opulence. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch can have at their behest every convenience and luxury that the times have so far developed. And a man can sit in a cave in the Himalayas before a fire and possess an external beauty, atmosphere and radiance beyond anything the others might enjoy while at the same time possessing an internal state of rapture inexpressible to the common mind. He may have this in a little beach house or a cabin in the woods without possessing anything else. He may have this in a crowd or alone. It is no burden to carry and does not require a delivery truck to replenish, as it never runs out. He may sing in an empty field to an audience larger than the population of the Earth. He comes and goes without a cell-phone. He is without anguish for union. He is complete.

I fell like I should go on but I’m going to stop, because I can go on again tomorrow and for as long as I continue to do this. We’ll leave off for now because I want to go sit in the sun and feel the things I feel.