Monday, December 24, 2007

The Day after the Night Before Christmas

Tonight one of the grand traditions of American culture will repeat itself once again. In the morning it will spread its wings. In some homes you will see abundance magically transformed into shared treasures. In some it will be to excess and in others it will resemble what we read about in “The Gift of the Magi”, often the conditions will be the same but the impulse for sharing anything beyond the cold touch of objects will be missing. In many cases the objects will be missing too.

America is some kind of a Christmas gift for some. It seems to be a Christmas gift for those who will not share and also for those who don’t celebrate it. I understand perfectly why people don’t believe in God. I’m also glad I’m not like them. I have the benefit of having encountered God and there can be no mistake about that should one be that fortunate. For those who aren’t really motivated to that end or lack the perseverance required, it isn’t my job to do the work for them.

Finding God isn’t the same thing as learning how to play the guitar. Learning to play the guitar is not easy. I’ve seen all the ‘would be’ guitar players and writers and artists. I’ve seen why people have to settle for second best or less because that is what they gave. Finding God is a lot harder than playing the guitar and I would be a much better guitar player today if it had been my priority.

People bitch about their lives yet fail to put what’s necessary into it in order to make their lives worth living. They bitch about their companions and those who did not become their companions; the one’s they longed for and the one’s they failed to impress with their lack of passion and it never occurred to them that maybe they should have wanted them more. Maybe their love should have been a little more intense. God is like that and less easy to impress than the heiress down the street is by the boy from ‘down in the boondocks’.

When I see people with marginal intellects and small accomplishments get all puffed up like a pigeon in rut about how there is no God I just have to smile. I love it when people who are, in the words of the Bible, “Blind and naked” and unable to change the color of one hair upon their head except by cosmetic agency... I love it when they use the benefit of their few years in school and little learning since to expound upon what they haven’t a clue about. It makes me laugh. I’m laughing right now.

I love watching people like Donald Trump with his hair, Paris Hilton with her classy style, Larry King in his James Dean bomber jacket and George Bush doing a poor imitation of Paul Newman... I love watching these people. I look at them. I look at the clock. I look at them. I look at the clock. Clockwatching doesn’t bother me because time is irrelevant but for these... oh... time is not irrelevant at all.

If none of these people believe in God- and I submit that they do not- all protestations aside- then why do they all go around behaving like a bad imitation of God? Is it that splendor thing about God that bothers all the peacocks? Is it that 8th sephirah? You’ll note; if you had any wit that that is the path assigned to what you call The Devil.

I have the benefit of knowing absolutely that there is a God. I know it for a fact. I am more certain of that than I am of the world I am presently embodied in. I assure you that the actual splendor of God far exceeds anything you could possibly imagine and bears no resemblance to the mimicry practiced in the various manifest kingdoms.

Self-acknowledged intelligent people like to point out inconsistencies in the Bible. Well whoop de do... What’s the Bible got to do with God? What’s a road map got to do with an actual highway? It’s still not the highway pilgrim. And what if the location is off road? What possible good could a Bible be unless it was written into your heart; or did you miss the point about the blood?

We’ve got some blood religions on this planet but they have nothing to do with God. The same people calling out the name of God while dressed in finery- stepping over the bodies of those trampled on- are the same people who crucify the God they call out to.

You’re smart enough to catch that? Hmmmm... that must mean there’s no God. Before I start saying that something isn’t I would first be expected to define what it is. Who are more people going to be thinking about a hundred years from now... you, or God?

So, you’re all self-reliant and brave that you can face black eternity with your faith in nothing. That’s just swell. Is there a particular reason that anyone should care? Isn’t that your affair? Go for it.

The thing about the people who throw the baby out with the bath-water is that they often throw the baby out regardless of whether it is in the bath.

I don’t love God because I am supposed to. I don’t follow religions and I break the rich man’s laws every day. I love God because God is that part of me apart from the presentation and skilled or less skilled ability to get in or out of other people’s ways here in the darkness of the material realm. I love God because it is the eternal resting moment of that which set me forth and gathers me in.

I dance with witches who are unaware of what they are and with those who claim to be and know jack shit about real Wicca. I’ve been in graveyards when Smashan Tara appeared and if you weren’t mad before you were after.

Everyone talks a good game about this and that; “I went to war.” I worked hard.” “I love my country.” “I’m important.” “I’m influential.” “I’m pretty.” “I love God.” “Godamn it listen to me.” Everybody talks. They get all misty eyed about their deodorants and their therapists. They get kissy-faced about people they can’t stand. They lie and pretend and put a good face on an ugly lie and they just don’t understand why you don’t love them with their garish rings on their fat fingers and their faces that bleed like a burning painting every time they are moved to cry about how unfair life is to them.

God isn’t anything like that. You’ve been told how to find God but you won’t do it. You’d rather be all intellectual about shit you’ve put two or three weeks into. It’s because you never suffered for the things that you should have that you will most certainly suffer for the things that you did. So go ahead people... jabber on about what you have no more experience of than words in a book you read between the time you last thought about fucking somebody and the last time you thought about fucking somebody else. The strangest thing is that the desires on both sides of the desire you don’t exercise are the same desire only it is just enough to make you a bad guitar player.

It’s all too much like the film, “The Last American Virgin.” It’s a flawed film and the fact that Gary was gay might have had something to do with it except he didn’t play one in the movie. But when he walks into the party at the end and sees’s Rick kissing Karen after he just paid for her abortion- that Rick made necessary and then dumped her- and is carrying the etched heart in his pocket... you’re thinking God’s like that, because you think you’re Gary and you’ve got no clue about God. All you know is how you’ve treated others. God’s not like that... you’re like that. THAT is the difference.

Don’t go describing or denying God according to what you know about yourself and the world. When you do, the God you fabricate is you. We certainly don’t need any more of those... just pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV.

Let the love be born... it’s a long way between the discovery of life’s most precious jewel and a Calvary somebody already walked for you. You’ll be tough enough when the time comes to see that nothing more is required of you.

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ Spread Your Wings ♫
'Spread Your Wings' is track no. 1 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible

Friday, December 21, 2007

Here Comes that Day Again

Well... it’s getting down to the wire, that thing we call Christmas. There’s going to be all those sentimentalized opinion pieces about how we’ve lost the real spirit of Christmas because of the over commercialization of the material world. Oprah’s going to give everybody in the audience a Swatch watch or something. There will be some kind of heroic effort by someone who saved Christmas for someone. There will be the tender tales of families united. Celebrities will be photo-opting at the children’s cancer wards. We’ll be hoping for peace on Earth which is an unreachable fantasy and people will be nicer to each other for a few days and others will be less nice than normal because of the pressure.

Some people will go off on a bender and wake up on the far side of New Year’s Day. People will miss each other. Some will spend Christmas alone; I’ll be one of those since everyone here is flying north for the holidays and I’ve got to man the bridge. I’ll make myself a nice Aubergine Parmesan and unfold into the day, maybe call some friends. I’ll be looking for that special feeling that I sometimes get. It does exist because it’s happened a few times... Christmas spirit.

I don’t think there’s a more controversial figure than Jesus Christ. He wasn’t fooling around when he said he was bringing a sword. Kahlil Gibran wrote a book called, “Jesus, the Son of Man." It’s a beautiful thing and if you haven’t read it you really ought to. From what I can remember a fellow goes around and talks with people that met Jesus Christ and they each describe to him what they experienced, always in terms of who they are or what they did. Gibran was a remarkable writer. I once lived with a man called Father Francis. He was an archbishop in the Old Catholic Church. He lived on top of Meads Mountain in Woodstock in a quasi-medieval church that he built with his own hands. He was in his late 80’s when I knew him.

Father Francis had been quite a socialite in his day. He moved about among The Vanderbilt’s and others. He loved to tell stories about those days. Apparently Gibran came to visit him. I asked him what he thought of him and he told me that he was a very sweet man but that he drank too much wine. Digressing...

I’m not a Christian. I don’t think I am anyway. But Jesus Christ is one of my heroes none the less. There’s no real evidence that he ever existed, unless you count The Bible. Someone like him certainly was around. You look at the impact he made on history and it’s apparent that some force is at work. The story of his life is a seamless allegory. It’s a beautiful tapestry of events that covers everything everyone needs to know about how to live a better life and get into trouble at the same time. If you follow Jesus according to the establishment you should be alright; maybe even a ‘well respected man’. If you follow him according to the things he said and did you will probably get into trouble.

Not too many people actually follow Jesus Christ the way he said they should. It’s pretty extreme when you think about it. Sell everything you have and give it to the poor and then pick up your cross and follow me. I’m thinking the cross is actually the body. The soul is crucified on it. The earthly passions war in their vehicle against the higher nature.

Lately there’s been news about these televangelists. Some lawmaker has gone after them and their lush lifestyles, private jets etc. Apparently they’re living high on God’s dime and it all becomes necessary expenses. I’ve listened to a few of them explain about why they have carry on like rock stars. There’s one particularly odious representative of this form of excess; that would be Paula White. It’s fascinating to watch her freaking out with the spirit and howling out in a voice very much like a crows with the audience filled with black people. Paula’s whiter than Wonder Bread. She’s got the de rigueur Kabuki mask and a personal life chock full of a lot of the things Christians aren’t supposed to be doing. But she’s down with it.

I look at the present pope’s face. Benedict is the one who single-handedly controlled the pedophile phenomena for the church. I look at his face and I don’t see what I think you’re supposed to see. I see someone dark and devious. Maybe I’m projecting but that iconic halo glow is not happening. When they killed my friend Giordano Bruno, that was the last straw for me. Don’t ask me to explain that.

I know there are some real Christians around. I’ve met them. I’ve also been petitioning the Invisible Rosicrucian order for some contact but that hasn’t happened yet or I didn't notice at the time. I like The Rosicrucians. They exemplify what I think a Christian should be.

There’s no doubt in my mind that there is a Jesus Christ. I think about the life of the man who wrote Amazing Grace and all the tales of redemption; some of which are amazing. I look at the music and the art and architecture that this one man/God inspired. When I was a child I used to go to various cathedrals in Paris and wander about. Sainte Chapelle was one of them. There was a lot of awe in that for me. I’d go to the Louvre and look at the paintings. Back in those days an eleven year old kid could just go in and out of these places. I loved the light coming through the stained glass windows. I think of our personalities as windows that either allow or block the light. Our auras are what occur when the white light personalizes in us. Sometimes you see people with that radiance where the light is moving freely through them.

I think about the odd similarity in sound between Krishna and Christ. That’s not an accident I don’t think. So many religions have these same themes, even the pagan rites over which the church grafted their own holidays; but that’s all astrology and the implication of the planetary forces moving through human affairs.

To me the birth of Jesus is symbolic of the potential in everyone. The infant Jesus can be born in the heart of a person and then finally mature into the thing itself. It’s a white malleable softness that melts the heart into a chalice brimming with light.

So many people will try to put aside their personal trials and strife for Christmas Day. Some will succeed and some won’t. Some will go berserk in drunken outrage. Dinners will be ruined, possibly lives. Some will capture that special joy that filters from the faces of children. Well, there are presents and the presence. The presence is the present.

I’ve heard and I do believe that if you practice the presence of God that sooner or later you will be in that presence. After all, we are in the presence at all times. It’s the recognition that we don’t have. That means always bringing the mind back to the thought that ‘the one’ is listening through your ears, seeing through your eyes and that we are all brothers and sisters beneath the skin. What a marvelous thing that must be... to actually feel that everyone is a welcome part of you. How fantastic must it be to be without judgment or censure of anyone? It would be like walking through the Kingdom of Heaven while still on the Earth.

For brief periods I have felt that overwhelming love that encompasses everything. It’s a piercing thing. There’s a keen sorrow in it but it is wrapped in joy and the meld makes for an exquisite experience which can’t be duplicated by anything else. If you’ve got love in your heart you have it all. It you don’t you have nothing. Why it is so hard for us to share without restraint and to yield without conflict; to shine upon everyone as a manifestation of the divine... I don’t know. I just know it’s the hardest and simplest of things.

Here’s wishing all of you get a taste of that at some point between here and Christmas Day and that it will take root and grow. Here’s the hope that we find what is valuable and cleave so fast that we cannot tell where it begins and we leave off.


Merry Christmas.

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ I Need More Light ♫
'I Need More Light' is track no. 4 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

You Can't Levitate if you don't Meditate

It always seem like a wheel to me... the operation of the manifest world. The operation of creation always seems like a spiral. I know that there are undiscovered laws that apply to all of this and though I can sense and sometimes see their operation I don’t understand them. I don’t have to understand them. I just have to be aware of the one and cooperating with the other.

You can see this wheel of the manifest going on all of the time. You can see it on a great many levels. You see it in the seasons and the cycle of day and night. You see it in the predictability of patterns. You see it in the way people repeat themselves. You see it in the sameness of appetite and all the things that repeat in the lives of people, animals, plants and rocks.

Things grow strong in the turning of the wheel. Patterns reinforced by repetition become more difficult to break; like a rut made in a dirt road. The idea of moving the vehicle out of the rut over and over until a new rut is formed is not something most people get into and not something they like to have visited upon them by outside force. Parents discover this when they raise their children. You can discover it in marriage and in prison. Sometimes the patterns replacing patterns are worse than the ones replaced.

The wheel’s on fire. You can’t get motion without desire or some kind of power to turn the wheel. You could call it a wheel of confusion. It always keeps moving through some kind of countryside of color and sound. All these things are happening. You weren’t here and now you are. You’re young. You’re in the middle. You’re old. You seem to be gone and then you’re right back on the wheel again. Now a wheel can turn forever and still never be anything but a wheel. A spiral is a different matter, even if it does have characteristics similar to a wheel.

If you tell people they are on a wheel to nowhere they might agree with you and they might get annoyed with you. In many cases they won’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is when they know what you are talking about but don’t do anything about it. Another interesting feature is the way the mind slips around considering it. The mind doesn’t like to contemplate this because it interferes with the familiar.

For thousands of years the wheel of the manifest continues to turn. It’s probably much longer than that but the different periods of existence only record so much of it in their history before some new cycle with new history replaces any memory of what came before. During any particular cycle, if you were to speed up the movie, it would be like riding the rapids through wild gorges. Cities and cultures would rise and fall like undulating waves. Every drama imaginable would repeat in new costumes with all manner of technologies. They’d be the same dramas regardless of the time period. Finally it would all end somehow and then begin again.

You have to ask yourself what the point of this is. The same things keep happening. There’s an endless agony of pain and loss counter-pointing an endless continuum of pleasure and gain. They’d be changing places routinely within the lives of every living thing. What is the point? Seen from a wide perspective there wouldn’t be much point besides the desire to go through it. One could speculate that any and all of the souls involved just didn’t get what they were looking for so they kept coming back again and again in the hope of finding whatever that was. For some it was enough just to keep doing it. From the wider perspective that would seem insane.

It comes back to that interesting feature about the mind slipping around the consideration of its situation. Maybe all that the mind can know about anything is confined within the operation of the wheel. I don’t think it matters what is the cause of the confinement and endless repeating as much as whether there’s a way out of the loop.

You can’t talk about these things in any satisfactory way. You can only hint at something. If you’re successful with the hint it triggers the image factory and then the mind so activated is able to carry on with the process according to its own means of interpretation.

Almost all of the time, almost all of the minds have only so long to consider anything outside of the usual turning before the wheel slips right back into the rut. When you cut your finger you are constantly aware of it for a while, then less so, then less so, then not at all.

It stands to reason that this wheel is a location where the same things repeat over and over again. Sometimes it’s enjoyable and sometimes it isn’t but it’s always more or less the same. Even in terms of what is called ‘progress’ and as the scenery is continuously altered because of new implements and environments... the dramas do not essentially change. As long as you’re on the wheel you are going to keep recycling and being recycled. You might eventually be everyone and everything if no great epiphany occurs before that.

Talking to people on a wheel about a spiral can be a delicate art. It’s probably best to just rely on depth charges and go your way.

Existence and consciousness seem to have a spiraling relationship. The more conscious you are the more existence tends to appear differently than it does to those less conscious. Consciousness is something that can be increased and decreased. Let’s use meditation on the one hand and alcohol on the other as examples of this.

If you consistently meditate you are going to become more aware of something that doesn’t make itself apparent unless you do meditate. If you keep drinking alcohol at some point you will pass out. You could pass out completely for that matter.

It seems to me- and of course, that’s subjective but never-the-less, it seems to me that we are dealing with degrees of density; for some the greater the density the greater the security. Some people put on large masses of flesh to protect their feelings. It doesn’t achieve anything but it is the motivation. Density is imprisonment. It is also a kind of security. The less dense you become the wider the vista and the greater the potential for a certain kind of giddiness. This is a scary thing for those reliant upon solid and substantial circumstances. In a way you could say that the pursuit of money is a desire for density.

The only important thing to take from this is that there is a way out. There is a way off of the wheel. But you will not get off of the wheel by applying actions that are connected to the wheel. To get off of the wheel you have to take action connected to the manner in which a spiral works.

Sooner or later everyone discovers this. They discover it because the pain has become too much to bear. They discover it because they lost everything they cherished. They discover it through trauma and sometimes through grace. It’s there all of the time regardless of whether it’s been forcefully brought to your attention. Anyone could set out for freedom at any time. They would have to be inclined to lift the carriage from the ruts as a full time consideration. There would be significant work and attention required but it could be done. Faithful meditation will take you there, regardless of your faith in divinity or anything else, so long as you were practicing it correctly.

Well, it’s a matter of choice and only relevant to those interested. In the meantime the wheel will roll on forever so don’t worry about missing anything other than the way out.

Visible sings: The eponymous Les Visible Music Album♫ Sing it Loud ♫
'Sing it Loud' is track no. 6 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album

Lyrics (pops up)

The eponymous Les Visible Music Album

Monday, December 10, 2007

The Unseen Side of the Mobius Strip.

There is a very important thing that every human being should understand before they set out to do anything. You cannot change the world into something that it is not. Because there is a natural enmity between the elements that compose the world, peace is a personal affair. You can attain peace. You can effect a limited peace. You can carry peace with you but... you cannot accomplish peace on Earth nor universal brotherhood. You may strive for it and improve the lives of everyone you touch but there are limits to everything... except to the consciousness and being of that which originates everything which has limits. And, “first do no harm.”

As long as any human being seeks power over their fellows or desires to have more of something than another, there will be conflict. As long as different languages are spoken there will be conflicts in understanding. If you want to build a city there will be conflict from those who oppose your vision of it and oppose your desire to build it in the first place.

Desire on anyone’s part will create conflict in another. To postulate that people should live without desire means the end of the world because the world cannot exist without desire. Nothing would get done. There would be no succeeding generations. An individual can aspire to desirelessness (now that’s a funny line; to ‘aspire’ to end desire) and slip right out of this world. That’s possible. Is it desirable? (grin)

Any person’s vision of peace is not the same as everyone else’s. Everyone’s vision of Heaven is not the same, which is why there are so many of them. You can have Heaven on Earth but you cannot grant it a universal contagion. You can form an envelope that will contain others. You can become a doorway into a Heaven greater than your capacity to comprehend but you cannot expect everyone to recognize or appreciate it, given the present state of- and wide variation to every mind here. But you can make it available to every mind here and you can wait forever, extending welcome to all.

Think of life on Earth as one half of a Mobius strip. It is shrouded in mystery where it departs and where it re-enters this world. What happens on the invisible side of the Mobius strip is known to a few and unknown to the rest. The speculation on what exists on the unseen side of the Mobius strip is the basis of every religion. These speculations are based on the words of those who have seen or been informed about what exists there. They are the titular founders of these different religions.

Before the establishment of these religions there were the Rishis. The Rishis propounded what is known as ‘ageless wisdom’. Ageless wisdom weaves through the fabric of every religion like an illuminated thread. The rest of the fabric of these religious tapestries is not illuminated and is composed of genealogical listings, codes of conduct, rituals and ceremonies. These tapestries of religion hang upon a wall of being that is the living essence of existence and which cannot be defined in any terms that we understand. The illuminated threads lead directly into this wall of being and once again... disappear.

It can be speculated that this wall of being is itself resting upon or an extension of something deeper and it can be speculated that that too rests upon something else. In the legitimate Hebrew tradition there are the concepts of Ain... Ain Sof... and ...Ain Sof Aur. Similar terms exist in other traditions.

In the Buddhist tradition there is a mantra that goes. “Gate, Gate, Paragate...” which translates into ‘gone, gone, gone beyond’. You could say that it also translates into ‘far out’ (grin).

Conflict exists in this world between the perspectives of depth concerning what is. Conflict exists at some many levels because of the many levels. People possess varying degrees of depth depending on how far they have allowed the ineffable to penetrate into them, or you could say, depending on how far they have penetrated into the ineffable.

I like the word ‘ineffable’ and prefer to use it in place of God which seems to be a catchall for all manner of things. I used to use the word DAP which stands for ‘divine animating principle’ but that isn’t a very romantic or attractive word. In this world DAP is a manufacturer of plastic wood. Don’t go looking for hidden meaning there, although I won’t say there isn’t any. How would I know?

I will tell you what is on the other side of the Mobius strip in a general way. It can’t be done specifically because it will appear differently due to your cultural veils. It may include Mohammed and it may include Jesus. It might have Krishna and it might have Buddha. It will be the same thing but it will appear according to your disposition. Your inner arbiter of fate; your conscience, will dictate the level of your circumstance. Imagine the face of Jesus going through a series of morphings... gradual morphings from effulgent, inexpressible perfection and lightness of features to something increasingly darker and more intimidating. As the light leaves the image, the image is more shrouded in shadows and the shadows then take on a more and more fearful aspect (but still only shadows), even though the original is still there... you can no longer see it.

The other side of the Mobius consists of highway systems and cities... landscapes and degrees of substantiality. These highways will lead across worlds and on to other worlds beyond count. It’s like here, only it isn’t. Just as you have senses to interpret what you experience here you will have senses there. If you haven’t done anything to develop these senses here you are going to be at a disadvantage there, in terms of movement, perception and so on. Of course there are guides there... but...

Your score here (think of it as a video game) determines your level and your time in residence there. When the time runs out on the meter you head toward the moon for the preparation of another body to use here. At some point you will see your future parents making love and you will be pulled in... well, you get the picture, or you don’t.

This is all necessarily simplistic. I’ve only got the space I allow myself in these posts to discuss these things.

Some do not return but they departed before they left. Some enter into a place they already reside in. You won’t be going anywhere you haven’t already been spending some time in consciously. You want justice, truly? “Justice is mine.” God has reportedly said. Justice is found there and further carried out in the person of the new life following... every jot and tittle, dear heart.

There are review boards and courts there, just like here. Eye has not seen nor ear heard what is stored up in further locations. You want Santa Claus to come to town then it is time for you to start acting like Santa Claus. How about giving the whole world away to every one you meet? What I mean is... the best part of the world; that which they are really seeking whether they know it or not. You don’t have to say anything. You might not seem to be doing anything but... something happens. This is a power every one of us has but we keep thinking there are supposed to be flashing lights and orchestras. Just do it.

People do all kinds of things with higher math that postulate things that can’t be arrived at otherwise. Just think of what math makes possible; seeing around corners... multi-dimensional constructs... inventions of all manner of devices and... like that. So why shouldn’t one also be able to accurately envision what takes place on the other side of the Mobius strip? Of course, I have the advantage of the evidence of far greater minds than my own and, interestingly... they agree with each other, though their definitions may ‘appear’ to be different. Be nicer to yourself by being nicer to others and who knows where you may wind up.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Part 2 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On.

I was talking about sex and... religion, art and music ...and God and how they’re connected. The things in the middle are an expression of sex sublimated. The latter manifests its will through the action of the former; desire being the agent of God’s will. Everything you want, the divine wants for you but often not in the same way.

Sex is the push for union. In a way you could say it’s a desire to become one. There’s a process of uniting the urges of the subconscious with the direction of the conscious so that internal harmony is achieved. It’s a rare thing but it happens and generally there is a ‘whole lotta shakin’’ first; shaken and then stirred- much like Bond’s cocktail and much like the way a spiral and a spin relate to a stirring.

Religions are all about sex and they have particular temporal expressions that could well be understood in a Freudian sense or in any number of perspectives where the parts are considered in relation to the whole. Christianity is a hysterical religion, so is Mohammedanism. This is because the drive toward the higher goal is always in conflict with the world through which it is pushing. These are religions about what you can’t do and all of which is defined as sin. Guilt is a big part of these religions.

Guilt is an even bigger part of Judaism and Catholicism. These are more temporal religions. The Sanhedrin orchestrated the death of Jesus Christ- contrary to contemporary historical revisionism- because he was a threat to the temporal powers of the priesthood. The Jews wanted an earthly king like David and there are deeper meanings to this that have much to do with contemporary Judaism. True Torah Jews are the exponents of authentic Judaism and the rest is more or less devoted to the Golden Calf. Catholicism is a dank well; a ponderous intricacy of little lead Aquinas-soldiers marching on a wheel to nowhere.

Buddhism seeks to achieve harmony with the inner and outer life. These days it rivals the Catholics in minutiae. They’re generally more peaceful than anyone else but the complexity is something a real seeker will avoid. It does attract the scholars though. Hinduism- regardless of historical revisionism- is the oldest and in its pure sense; apart from the millions of Gods and rituals, is most connected to the timeless.

Taoism has degenerated into magic and superstition. In essence there is nothing simpler or more truthful.

All of these religions are just a way of romancing the ineffable. They’re peacocks hoping that the sun is watching them. More or less they are bad lovers; these religionists. Because we are naturally anthropomorphic we think God likes what we like and doesn’t like what we don’t like. This changes depending on where you are and what’s being used for social control and whatever arrangements have been made with the commercial arena.

For the temporal world to operate effectively religion is necessary; so is business and war and all the colorful panorama of what passes for civilization but which is often anything but civilized.

For the individual soul making its way and seeking the fulfillments of the physical dream, the symbols of outer power are what it takes for a guide to behavior. It may cooperate entirely and consider itself a properly constrained moral being empowered to judge and disdain everyone else or it may choose the outlaw way. Most souls fall somewhere in the middle; behaving while under observation and cutting corners when they can. What passes in the ordinary separated human mind and what occurs in their speech and action are often two different things; many hungers burn below the surface, one day to find expression.

I’m not concerned with these lives. The Lord’s of Karma and reincarnation have that all in hand. I’m concerned with those who want a way out and that, as expeditiously as possible. Therefore... ...Love. Love is the attractive force on ALL planes. You want it quick then increase your love. This is a plumbing operation. Love with all the intensity you can manage and the intensity will increase and so will the love. As the Love refines- given that it is transformed by the object of its attention, a new intelligence will appear in the love. The instinctive mating instinct of the animal world and what is also predominant in the human sphere moves from instinct to intelligence and beyond. You become what you love. This is going to precipitate a whole lot more shakin’ going on.

You will be transported into realms of ecstasy that were previously unknown. This comes at a cost to the mundane desires but the payoff is incalculable. Most people don’t want to hear this. The enforced celibacy of the church is not the same as a consciously applied brahmacharya.

This is not to say that physical love is anathema. This is to say that for a certain period all of this energy should be directed elsewhere. A particular transformation has to occur. In the occult tradition this is a period of time- more or less, depending on the individual- after that it is altogether possible to operate like a ‘normal’ person without the attendant risks. Until this transformation has occurred, death is the only resolution to ordinary desire. Separation and loss as well as the eventual annihilation of all of one’s works are a guarantee on the plane of the elemental war.

As I’ve said, most people don’t want to hear these things because they get in the way of what they want right now, tomorrow and the day after. Even if they were bothered to ponder these things they wouldn’t make sense to then. These things would be scary and the Divine a scary unknown thing. People want their God defined in human terms; enter religion.

You can become the master of any drama that plays out on earth- walk anywhere and be free of all complications –anything you have ever heard or read about, by mastering the sex force. You’ll have to rock out in your own secret garden. The word from which ‘paradise’ originates means ‘walled garden’.

The much maligned and misunderstood tree in the Garden of Eden was not the only tree there. There are people walking in The Garden of Eden at this moment. They found their way back. They might walk past you in the course of your day. We seem to be somewhere else because of the particular instruments of perception that we are using.

The fabled Rosicrucians wear no identifiable uniform and practice only one power, that of healing. Anonymity seems to be the garb of those who have attained. Every one of them has learned how to harness the primal urge and utilize it to achieve divinity.

It’s possible to have sex with everyone and with great intimacy; mating one’s love with the love sleeping in all life and causing an awakening in the passage with a ‘Hi ho Silver” echoing behind. One constantly filled with gratitude has little interest in being praised. Some people make love to everyone they meet.

It doesn’t matter what time one has spent in the flesh pots or engaged in the myriad carnalities. One who loves much is forgiven much. There’s more than one kind of Casanova. From the moment one recognizes their state and sets out upon the journey home like the Prodigal Son, all the forces of good gather at their side. It may be the process of more than a lifetime; this journey home, but... it is a sure thing. That which passes by the way side becomes a distant image in the rear view mirror until it has disappeared altogether.

Meanwhile the world goes on and on and those so inclined follow the revolutions of it through the costumes of available roles for as long as it contents them to do so. Nothing more can be said about this. It’s what it is for those who find their interests below.

Friday, November 30, 2007

The Truth about a Whole Lotta Shakin going on.

PART ONE

It’s funny how the mind separates many of the more enjoyable aspects of manifest existence from the presence and blessing of God, even to the point of calling certain features evil which may be anything but. Take rock and roll for instance. When it appeared on the scene it was defined as evil by the repressed forces of established religion. Hell, singin’ and dancin’ were a sure sign that the devil was having his way with you; according to those ‘in the know’ about what was right and proper.

That "shaking’, ‘trembling" energy is the radiant 'serpent power' looking for a way out; looking to celebrate the fire in the flesh. God is a serpent, inasmuch as God can be defined as anything. This is not to say that God is a snake but that the energy which we experience as God behaves in a coiling and uncoiling serpentine way.

Ancient occult texts in all major religions depict this energy behaving in this way. In the ‘real’ Hebrew tradition there is an underlying connection between numbers and letters which shows that that which liberates and deceives humanity has the same number. The tempter and the messiah are apparently the same thing. You see variations in the Gnostic tradition and you certainly see it in all things Hindu. So the serpent in the Garden of Eden was... drum roll please.

Tempter and Messiah are two functions of the same thing. God is one, ‘appearing’ differently to different perspectives. The Devil is God as the wicked perceive him. Everything is under the control of one force, one mind and there is only one mind as there is the ‘appearance’ of billions of minds. There is only one self as there is the ‘appearance’ of billions of selves.


"There is nothing new under the sun; all things have been from of old."

Prophecy can be accurate because everything repeats itself. There goes your Nostradamus recycling the unavoidable. Wrath is a vibration, a stirring up. The same fire that the so-called sinners burn in (and various colorful images like that lake of eternally unrequited desire- or hatred being love repressed) is the same fire that the so--called saints rejoice in.


"Those whom the lord loves he chasteneth."

Whirlwinds are spirals.

"Whole lotta shaking going on”, think about it. Remember The Shakers? This single force is approached by many a concept and therefore so many religions and smaller venues. The clothing is a covering to the body before the eyes of the shameful since it is also clothing. The essence of the thing has as much to do with rock and roll as it has to do with any hymn, as much to do with sex as abstinence and even abstinence is a form of sex. Desire itself is something that can be modified according to the 'cultivated' intentions of the one experiencing it. Like a dancing bear.... Like the highest sacrifice of love... Like great art.... Like teaching your dog to roll over... Like rock and roll...

It's all okay. The whole world can go up in flames and you can be dancing in ecstasy within it. Mountains can fall and not one stone hit you. It really all depends on what you depend on and life is here to test your faith in that until it becomes one..... Ehben

Intelligence is the source of existence, not the result of it. Serpent with tail in mouth; endless, enduring consciousness... only the phenomena changes, not the essence. It stays the same. Analyzing the ineffable, incomprehensible, is the cause of all that noise off screen that we mistake as thunder and earthquake and which is actually God's laughter. Great Caesar’s ghost! Look at all those spiraling Om’s... Look at the dervishes spinning the way they do. Look at the waterspouts and tornadoes. From children’s Slinkys to galaxies in space the imprimatur is on and in everything. It’s microscopic! It’s macroscopic! It’s new and improved and never new and improved because it only is.

So, yeah, it all comes down to sex. That is why established religions are all about suppressing it, except in the sacristy. This is why, in its own ‘bent’ way you get all those pedophile priests and The Golden Calf is a headliner again. You had better teach it to dance upward. This is why the advertising world sells sex in every product. This is how you get Las Vegas and that other Las Vegas, the Vatican. They’re the same thing in a different package and they’re both all about the spectacle and money.

It’s said that the love of money is the root of all evil and that’s sex too. You can’t make the creative energy denser and more imprisoned than in money; it’s the currency of the physical world. (Somebody call Caesar’s ghost back in here. Caesar has NOT left the building.) You wind up worshiping your own enslavement. Bondage, baby... and you see a lot of that going around right now in the sexual realm.

This energy goes in one direction or the other and... it will go somewhere- no matter what. One had better get into the business of channeling it or it will recycle you in any one of a myriad of unpleasant ways. It’s the sexual force that is behind the attachment to things or any attachments at all. It’s the sexual force that opens the gates of Heaven and Hell.

This force has to rise up. You have the snake crawling through the grass or you have the cobra with its hood raised. You can see these cobras behind the heads of the Hindu deities. This is the only battle or appearance of battle that you will ever experience, no matter how is ‘appears’. There is no enemy but you wrestling with yourself according to the temptations that stand in the way of liberation. The force goes in and up or the force goes down and out. Fantasy and imagination are both products of the sex force and the sex force feeds them. It feeds everything and it feeds on itself. The lowest of depravities and the highest of art and culture we possess come out of it.

Guilt and shame come from a misunderstanding of this force and these emotions are preyed upon by those institutions that milk it for profit. One of the reasons that alcohol is celebrated and legitimized over all of the other intoxicating substances is that it feeds guilt and shame more than any other. It’s the perfect fuel for the control mechanisms of social control. I just switched on the TV for no reason I can think of and there is Larry King talking to Paula White (poster-girl for the latest in personal profiteering through religion). Now that’s a nice timely coincidence. Damn! Look at her. She can spin faster than an astronaut’s centrifuge. Check out the polyurethane Kabuki Mask. This is just too unreal... click.

In the yogic tradition they say it takes forty drops of blood to make one drop of sexual fluid and forty drops of sexual fluid to make one drop of Ojas- spiritual fluid. This is what lights the lamp. If you can’t see into the celestial realm or be aware of the presence of it your fluids aren’t taking the right direction; you’re probably at least a quart low and getting the same results. This is the meaning of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins and their lanterns.

Mystics and similar types have often compared experiencing the presence of God with sexual ecstasy. Though it is so much more than this it definitely bears comparison. This is blasphemy to the uniformed but truth to those who have experienced it. The halos around the heads of the saints are emblematic of the light generated by properly channeled sexual force. This is too much for one post and so we will leave off here. Presently much seems like diverse fish caught in a wide net. Much seems elusive and potpourri-like in this offering but we will connect the dots in the next segment.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Welcome to the Bandwidth.

I’m not much interested in the details and histories of academic and technical pursuits. These deal with professions that provide people with income. Generations pass on their perspectives and the tricks of the trade to succeeding generations. People get jobs and build and/or destroy their lives in the process of their personal movie. Sometimes they make their world a better place and sometimes they make it worse and mostly they have little impact in either direction. None of these things are ‘the thing itself’ and they are only useful in the sensory realm.

Various people are passionate about sciences of all types, the various ‘ologies, medicine and the law, politics, religion- whatever the world contains has some field of inquiry, commerce and creative production about it. Some study and some teach and some do both. It’s the manifest world as it exists within the bandwidth of the senses of those perceiving it. It goes on every day, it’s been going on since the goings-on started to be recorded and was going on before that; civilizations rising and falling like heartbeats, like breaths, like ocean waves. It will continue to go on, rising and falling like the aforementioned examples... world without end.

In a sense, the world does end... it ends parameter-wise where the next world begins; even if that world is overlapping and/or interpenetrative. There are different worlds right within this world- some of them within the bandwidth of the senses that perceive it. There are emotional and mental worlds that interpret and respond; are attracted and repelled and develop judgments, reactions, phobias, pathologies and all of the intricacies of worlds within worlds, overlapping and interpenetrating worlds. None of these things and places is the thing they are made out of.

There’s matter and there’s energy and bandwidth and all the things that go on with matter and energy within the bandwidth of their theater of operation as observed and identified by the senses that perceive the changes. Every observer in every world has sensory apparatus that allows for the observer to be aware of conditions that exist in that world. These are the tools they measure and define with.

It is understandable that those limited to specific bandwidths would be unaware of worlds existing outside of that bandwidth. It is expected that they would be suspicious of those who are aware of other realms of existence when they themselves cannot perceive them and who are wholly in the thrall of academic and technical explanations whose measuring tools are relevant only to the bandwidth in which they exist and which are not the thing which they are woven out of.

We’ve been around for this particular circuit for around six thousand years, give or take. In that time we’ve see a whole lot of philosophical speculation upon the meaning and origins of existence that amounts to squat. We’ve seen the emergence of religions and political movements whose purpose generally has been plundering and confusion perpetrated for the purpose of plunder and... control.

Just as we have periods of calm and stormy weather in the natural world we have the same in the human theater. Some times are better than other times overall but in all times things are better for some and worse for others.

Whatever you’re doing for a living here, for better or worse, criminally or legally- according to your times... that’s just your routine here in the bandwidth and you get paid for that in the coin of the realm. Every realm has its coin and it’s a sad state of affairs when people make the coin of one realm off of the promise of another realm. That currency doesn’t convert anyway- just thought I’d point it out. For some, this bandwidth is all that concerns them at the present; regardless of their pending transition out of it. For some this world is a hollow land of hungry ghosts dining in a graveyard. These things matter only to those they matter to and most people shake their heads about each other as they go about their day.

In these times there are a lot of people presenting themselves as representatives of bandwidths that can’t be defined or measured and getting paid on one plane for their presentations of life on another. Seems I said something like that a moment ago. These are times of enormous transformation and upheaval and a great many people are running around selling the answer to something they have no contact with. Nothing said can be the thing behind the thing that comes before the thought that forms the words.

It stands to reason that if something is, then it is. If it is then it is. People telling and selling you something are not telling or selling you the thing itself. Huddling together in common confusion and fear may give some succor in numbers but you’re still huddling. The sales force knows this. If the thing being offered is only useful when it’s free it makes little sense to bind it; and... it ‘cannot’ be bound. Then all you’ll have is a new bound version of what is not the boundless; congratulations.

There’s no way to say what’s being said here. It can only be talked around or alluded to. It’s at right angles to everything in your bandwidth. If it could have been explained or defined it would have been; as per all the philosophers and religions mentioned earlier. It hasn’t been. Some say it has, mostly your fundamentalists- letter of the law types. But it hasn’t been and it never will be. Portions of it can be understood in a general population way and some of it can be understood by those initiated into a perspective or school of thought but the greater portion of ‘it’ will always be beyond the capacity of the mortal mind or... any mind to define or comprehend.

There’s only one way to get the value of the thing and that is by personal experience of it. It’s been said that two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time. You can’t have an explanation for the unexplainable occupying the same space as the unexplainable at the same time. You can’t have the thing and its description operative within the same space. You are merged or you are apart from. You are a part of it or you are apart from it. ...think about it.

A book can spark the inquiry. A speaker can trip a switch. An event or trauma can open a door. Every and any moment of epiphany can also fade unless there is an intensity to proceed in the heart and mind of the one affected. Unless there is a diligence in the life then the sensory life will eventually prevail again until death releases it to the moon to make another body.

In order to grasp the reality for yourself you must eventually discard everything you have assumed to be true and embrace the thing on its own terms. Sooner or later you must withdraw from everything around you (for a time) and seek ‘it’ with all the force you can muster. There are those who can make the leap from within the mix of existence but they are few.

Though there are many among us who possess some idea of the thing and who do good in their daily efforts, there are very, very few in any generation who come into permanent conscious contact with it. If you would only lock yourself in a room- or go into the wilderness- with nothing but water and call out without ceasing (for as long as it takes; right up against the boundary of physical life if necessary) you will absolutely make the connection. You are always under observation. You have no life except that it is maintained by the attention of what is maintaining it. Attempting this will show you just what you are up against; who you are and what you are not. Anything short of this kind of commitment is just some form of lying to yourself.

All the books, words and structures, all the symbols and ideas ...the stained glass... the finely robed priests and mysterious objects on the altar are just visible evidence of something invisible; they are not the thing itself. These things clutter the bandwidth of the senses and are hawked in the marketplace as items of power. They are nothing. You have to press inward until you make contact. Everything else is just shopping for an outfit to wear at the dance. Everything else is just a series of ‘moves’ aimed at impressing the other dancers. Everything else is everything else. Everything else is everything else because they are not ‘it’. That is what makes everything else, ‘everything else’.

Friday, November 23, 2007

I Wonder...

I wonder a lot about a lot of things. I guess I could call it thinking outside the box except that I dislike that phrase almost as much as things like “on the ground” or “boots on the ground”. The idea that we are in a box to begin with makes me wonder. I wonder what that box is. I assume it means the contours of thought as they are shaped by the force of the world in its ordinary way of being. If the idea of thinking outside the box is something understood by most people then I wonder where most people think they are? Are they inside the box thinking about thinking outside the box? Do they think they are thinking outside the box while everyone else is inside the box? What happens if everyone thinks outside of the box? What happens to the box?

It’s like getting a tattoo or a piercing and thinking that it sets you apart from the other one hundred million who had the same original idea. It’s like getting that hairdo I’ve seen the last several years where they hack your hair off in uneven segments and get rats to shit in it then spray it with crazy glue so it looks like you just got out of bed with several rats and a tube of Crazy Glue. This is a guy’s haircut. My favorite female hairdo is the one where they cover up one of your eyes to conceal the mystery of a mirror that reflects a shop window.

Being without internet gives me a lot of time to wonder. Add to that the near absence of TV and the total absence of radio along with very limited social contact and it puts me a little more inside my head that I imagine most people are. There are those long gaps of time where I’m not at work like everyone else; not dodging traffic, not going out to dinner- not going out to anything except a store once or twice a week and here at the internet café for an hour or two every several days- ...long periods of time go by in a creative process or in thinking about some creative process or... wondering about things.

I wonder if it matters if the elephants disappear; or the whales or the Palestinians or the Myanmar monks. Does it actually matter, anything... except to those so affected? History tells us that life is a controlled turmoil that, like incipient madness, is always on the verge. It’s more on the verge now because the wider world is known and demarcated; mostly. Also the population is immense, mostly crowded into urban cauldrons making heat by friction.

I think there’s less general wondering going on than ever before because the struggle for survival (or an increased buffer zone), in most cases, precludes that luxury. The intensity of commercial chatter is far greater than it has ever been. The competition for attention is greater too.

I wonder about the need for growth. Every industry seems obsessed with it. You have to grow. You have to expand. It all has to get bigger and bigger in order to survive. So we are told. The general population seems to have taken this to heart by a horizontal widening that is epidemic. I don’t understand the math. I really don’t. It’s like the recent increase in oil prices. It has nothing to do with supply. It seems to be about speculators paying outrageous prices for stock, betting that there will soon be very little oil and that the consumer will pay astronomically for the product. The oddest thing is that the price of gas and related things has increased to reflect these high prices being paid for something that is still in good supply and prior to the much anticipated and salivated-after war has even happened. That’s the part I don’t get.

I wonder about all of the things that make no sense but which go on without question in the wider world. I can’t tell if people are dreaming or hypnotized, not paying attention or just not interested.

I wonder about the size of the Milky Way and how it is so big that another Milky Way could easily pass through it without any of the stars hitting each other. Then I think about what an infinitesimal portion of the universe the Milky Way occupies and about the nature of a spiral and the possible dimensions of the universe and what is outside of it. Doesn’t there have to be something outside of it? If it goes on forever then what is it reaching ‘out to’ ‘into’... and what is beyond that? For anything to exist something has to contain it and something has to be outside of that. That’s simplistic but it seems so to me.

I wonder about the fact that we are crystallized sunlight animated by living light and if that means that the stars are living beings. I wonder about how the idea of devils and angels is consistent in every religion and how that relates to the good and evil so apparent in human behavior. I wonder who I am talking to whenever I am talking to someone.

I wonder about the energy in the Earth and how it is that the elements conspire to form everything we perceive in a manifest way. There must be some enormous secrets hidden within the possibilities of their interaction. There has to be something that we don’t perceive that is a motivating force for the creation and dissolution of these forms.

There is this sense that everything is part of everything. This theater of operation that we are in has natural laws that control and limit, that compresses and expands, or else things couldn’t be what they are. Things are what they are essentially; whatever that is and then things are what we say they are. Some say this and some say that according to what they’ve learned and been told and what they want out of it.

I make no secret of the fact that I don’t like it here. I wish I hadn’t come here but I did. The reason I did escapes me. This is an inconvenient planet for my purposes and I will be well quit of it when I am graced with that opportunity. I can’t think what the best purpose for a person sentenced here for the space of a lifetime (or more) can be except for service of some kind. Ninety nine point 99999999999999999% of the people here relentlessly want something until they want something else and the heat of their need is large enough to count for an alternative energy source.

I feel like I am surrounded by bonfires of human desire that burns from the inside out until it consumes the vehicle and I wonder about that. I also wonder about how nothing that people get when they get what they want serves to make them happy. Observation tells me that some people are just naturally happy and some are not; independent of things going their way.

An astrologer once told me that if you were on one of the other planets in the system and you had your chart done that Earth would be a malefic as opposed to a benefic force; along the lines of Saturn and Mars. Jupiter and Venus are considered benefic.

In the process of my wondering it has become clear to me that everything is just the way it is supposed to be here, according to the way people are. They came here to work something out. They’re all here working on the same thing, though it may appear different to them. Actually, everything that everyone is doing is all about the same thing, regardless of what they may think they are up to or intending. A few people figure it out in each generation. They may or may not try to tell others about it but others will take what they are told and translate it into the context of their desires. They’ll put a familiar face on it so that it works according to what they plan on doing anyway, like g.w.b being a Christian. Of course, the majority of people will most likely never come across the majority of these people who are never in any kind of a majority.

Irony is an archetype; no mistake about that. In order to achieve what everyone strives for and calls by so many different names you have to not want anything that is available. You have to be completely at home with your inner nature and indifferent to what surrounds you; in terms of the need and desire to acquire any of it. Then you can say that you’ve got it all.

I wonder... and I heard once that “from wonder into wonder existence unfolds”. For me, living on this planet is similar to being a matador but comparable to the way five dimensional chess would relate to ordinary chess. I sense that once the dance is perfected that time stops... at least it does for you. I think that’s when it all starts to look like a big wheel of fire into which the fabric of life is intricately woven. Cue the Tandava dancers.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Thinking About the Breath of Life.

People can go for weeks without food, only a few days without water and... only a few minutes without air. It stands to reason that breathing is the most critical of human functions; of course... you can miss only a few heartbeats but let’s not confuse apples and oranges. You don’t consciously cause your heart to beat. You can control your breathing and you can do quite a few arcane things with the breath. Then again, the breath has a great deal to do with the heart rate and many other related events. Most people are okay with however they happen to breathe and don’t think too much about it.

Most people don’t observe what is going on around them with any degree of concentration. They don’t give much more thought to what is going on inside of them. They just react to discomfort and comfort, trying to avoid the one and achieve the other. Of course, many people think that the thoughts that enter their minds are actually their own thoughts. I find this a curious and tragic condition ...but that’s me.

If you were to observe other people you would find that they are in several breathing categories. There’s high breathing, middle breathing and low-breathing; one or more of these can include mouth-breathing which is the unhealthiest of the lot. You can find out why that is on your own, should you care to do so. High breathing types- those who only use the upper part of the lungs are often found with sunken chests and narrow shoulders. You know the consumptive type. Each type has its pathology and some types are generally healthier than others.

There are other ways to breathe. There’s complete breathing which uses all portions of the lungs in a fluid sweep and which is a source of great power and vitality to those who practice it. There are other forms of breathing tailored to specific results. There are some forms of breathing that perform literal magic upon the person and in the life of the practitioner.

Do people think about this? They probably think less about these possibilities than they do what they eat and, these days... it appears that they don’t think much about that either. There’s a breathing practice with which I am familiar where you cast out thoughts from your mind with the expelling of the breath. It’s a remarkable thing and has a large impact on the life of the practitioner. Remarkable is a good word for it.

Those of us who study the martial arts know a few things about breath control. Swimmers know some things about breath control, so do runners and others whose fields of endeavor call upon the breath for success in their efforts. Those who dabble in the areas of esoteric sexual congress also know something about breath-work.

You should ask yourself when the last time was that you thought about how you breathe. It’s a strong possibility that in most cases it has been a long time, if ever. Weird that so many would give so little thought to something they do all of the time. It’s the same with so many things that people have to do or want to do. We seldom give much thought to the effect of our behavior upon our life. Some of us are reckless in the extreme; I’ve been one of those people. William Blake once said something to the effect that the temple of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. That seems a little like the fool who persists in his folly becoming wise. Then again, William Blake used to answer his door naked so...

I often wonder about the lack of curiosity possessed by most people. I wonder about their extreme reactions to things they do not understand- counter-pointed by their capacity to be bilked and bewildered by every fast operator who comes along.

It is possible to breathe in such a way that by doing nothing else you can make your life exceedingly tranquil. Reactions to this statement will run the gamut between, “Bullshit” and “Really?” Yeah, really... It’s possible through breath control to perform remarkable feats. It’s possible to order your life in ways that many people cannot imagine just by paying attention to the way you breathe.

I’ve smoked very strong cigarettes through much of my life, nothing with filters to be sure. Of course, this is mostly naturally grown tobacco, hand rolled, but it’s still a breath stealer. Yet I can manage to do things that many non-smokers cannot and this is because of breathing. Is smoking bad for you? Life is terminal in the physical sense... keep that in mind. Still, it’s good to flow through it with a minimum of discomfort.

It’s not all in your breathing. Keeping a youthful mind is very important. Believing in what is real and making it a conscious part of your life is very, very important. As Paramahansa Yogananda once said (and I’ve mentioned this before), “If you don’t look for God in the spring time of your life, he won’t be there in the winter.”

The yogis know a lot about breath control. They’ve known about these methods for thousands of years. You need to find the right resource of course. These days everybody is a guru. Well, everybody is a guru of something or other, even if they are nothing more than a bad example they are teaching you something.

It’s not my place to teach people about the techniques of breath control, how to meditate or to expound upon practices that I may or may not know something about. I like to think it’s my place to remind people to look and to look deeper than they are accustomed to. I believe they will certainly find the information they need just by doing so. That’s how I found out much of what I have discovered and I suspect that holds true for many another as well.

I believe it is possible to breathe in such a way that God breathes in you. Where else would God be located? ...In the sky? ...In a church? What is the first temple? What is the true adytum? What does Emmanuel mean? Why would there be such a word?

Children are full of questions and so, it is useful to have a youthful mind. It is also good to come to a place where there are no longer any questions.

We’re all preparing for flight... for exit. We may be preparing by being ignorant and indifferent to it but that still results in whatever you are when the moment for flight occurs... and it will occur... There would be some sense in accumulating wealth and position here if... you were going to be staying here but you’re not. Making yourself well equipped to remain somewhere you are leaving, while ignoring and being unprepared for your pending exit strikes me as madness. Yet it passes for perfectly sane in these environs and those who focus upon the other are deemed mad. Millions deny the existence of God or accept him/her as some sort of strange anthropomorphic construct and yet they are riveted by the advertisements from corporations who constantly present themselves as god. Pay attention to the wording and intent of television commercials for a few days. Concentrate on what they are saying and you will see what I mean. You may have been unaware of this but it will become quite clear by watching with attention.

Breathing is such a simple affair. You’re doing it right now. How are you breathing? What does it feel like? How does it affect your posture and your vitality? Hmmm.

Breathing from the bottom up and smoothly flooding the apparatus... resting and breathing and resting... and going ever deeper into the experience can lead to some surprising results. This is probably less important to most people than whatever they’ve got lined up for the evening. Interestingly, the quality of the evening very much depends on it.

Breathe deeply... Seek deeply... Live deeply ...and bon voyage.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Serpent With Tail in Mouth; a still life.

Sometimes a person can wonder what the point of the truth is if no one wants to hear it. I shouldn’t say ‘no one’ because that wouldn’t be the truth. It is true however that the truth is not generally welcome. In Hindu metaphysics, Lord Shiva represents the truth; the truth as destroyer. It’s true that the truth destroys illusion and there is nothing in this world that is not an illusion because everything here changes and the truth never changes.

When there are celebrations, Lord Shiva is seldom invited because the truth compromises the festivity of the moment. No one who is alive wants to be reminded that they are going to die. The funny thing is that you don’t die, you just cast off garments. It makes the whole funereal sorrow of the loss of loved ones into a sham really. Why weep for what you cannot lose?

Some might say the truth is different according to circumstance and occasion but... that would be relative truth and not the truth being referenced here. Relative truth is not the truth because that changes too. So, if you’re going to pursue the truth. If you are going to speak the truth, you are going to be generally unwelcome.

As mysterious and complex as existence seems to be it is really a simple affair. What makes it complex is that we want things to conform to our desires. We want to have what we want and do what we want and we want it all to fit in with what we believe to be true and what we believe to be true is only a fabricated construct that permits everything we want to have and do. We explain and define things according to our desires. Since there are a number of desires common to everyone it makes the world appear sane when it is in fact, a madhouse.

We get born into one religion or another and grow up in one country or another, speaking one language or another and if we just can’t bear some aspect of this we change it. We get another religion or we get rid of religion altogether or we keep our early years in a hideaway basket to trot out on ceremonial occasions or when we are in danger or troubled. It’s the same for all the rest of it.

Understanding the cosmos and our place in it is a simple affair. There is an operating system that moves everything and it has been going on for a long time. It moves the planets and it fuels the stars. It holds us on the ground with gravity and it brings night and day and maintains us between many poles of opposites both within and without us. According to what we want, comes whatever moral code we possess. Our moral code is directly defined by the lengths we will go to get what we want and the degree of cost we are willing to incur; who and what we are willing to sacrifice.

Some of us are restrained, to a greater or lesser degree by a conscience and some of us- far more of us lately- possess very little conscience at all; if any.

The one thing you notice more than anything else when you are observing Nature is that it is cyclic. Planets have their courses. Animals have their routines. Everything has a routine according to its nature. You also notice that things repeat which is certainly a feature of cyclic operation. You might also notice that some things are obvious and can be apprehended by the sense and that some things are not palpable but their effects can be witnessed. Hey, you can’t see the wind but you can see what it does.

You notice generation, you notice aging and you notice dissolution. You notice that everything seems to be connected somehow. Then again, most people notice none of this and are not very curious about it either because it doesn’t have anything to do with what they want. There are more shoppers than philosophers and there is more selfishness than selflessness. There are more people in and around the cities than outside of them and there are more people in towns than there are in the more remote countryside.

In spiritual things there are more people concerned with religious forms than are concerned with the essence upon which these are based. There are more people who are prepared to accept than there are those who question. It makes for a ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ kind of format for the predators among us.

Given that everything is cyclic it stands to reason that the life force in us does not dissipate into the atmosphere upon death. It goes somewhere. Given that we can see some part of the bandwidth of existence and given that everything is cyclic it stands to reason that the life force that is you returns here again given the way nature operates and given that nature is a mirror. Did I say these things were ‘given’? They are.

I could use up a lot of virtual ink laying out a groundwork for understanding but I’d rather just get to the point. It doesn’t matter to me if you believe me or not. All that matters to me is if what I say is true. If it’s true, well... it will be demonstrated sooner or later and seen with whatever sense is operating in whatever field it applies to.

Reincarnation is a fact. You can see more examples than you could possibly catalogue just by observing nature. I know it to be a fact because I have first hand experience of it. I am not the only one. There are others with far more bonafides than I who also say that it is true. There are unimpeachable sources who say this and one finds that it can be found in the testimony of the founders of every major religion. It’s expressed differently but that’s why religions differ. They say the same thing another way. Those who are not able to connect the dots get the idea that there’s more than one source, more than one truth and so on.

There’s only one source for everything and everything is composed out of it. It’s a living thing. It never dies and neither do you. You either keep coming back to experience the things you want or you move on to other locations because that is what you want. No matter where you are you have a body that is experiencing life which is a portion of the one life that permeates and composes everything.

This truth and all attendant features of this truth; because the truth is like a diamond or a disco-ball with many facets through with shines a single light... this truth is inconvenient to the desires of the majority of people and that is why it is complex. It is complex because it is inconvenient. If you accept the truth then you have to let go of the things you think you want. People will kill to protect this right; nations war upon nations in order to preserve their assumed right to look out for their interests.

There is a unity that connects all things and that is why you hear that God is Love; despite all of the contrary evidence that this world provides to those who put their desires before the greater unity of life. Yes, God is Love but a great deal more than that; given that we no more understand Love than we do God. God, Truth, Love, these are incomprehensible to the mortal mind. And there is a clear delineation between a mortal and immortal mind. I’ll leave the import of that to the inquiring mind that needs look no further than the mind inquiring to discover it.

We don’t see and we don’t comprehend because we don’t want to. It costs more than we want to spend. The irony is that it actually costs a great deal more not to and the payoff for understanding is incomprehensibly larger. Well, we’ll leave it at that for now. It’s not going anywhere. Everything else may move around and play musical chairs for eons and epochs and kalpas beyond count but the prime mover isn’t going anywhere. Sooner or later, no matter what direction you head in and no matter what you are you will encounter it. And what a surprise that is going to prove to be.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

One Thing Follows Another Till the Circle is Complete

I’ve been thinking about the state of the world a lot these days. It is hard not to and I suspect this condition is world wide among the thinking classes. Although this class is increasingly shrinking in terms of objective thinking, we do not live entirely in the Republic of Idiocracy just yet; moving there certainly but as yet un-arrived.

People are thinking all of the time. They think without knowing they are thinking. Thinking and the distraction of thought in respect of attention and focus, never mind actual concentration, is epidemic and some who have tuned their attitude of listening, can actually hear the chatter moving on the wind. The one mind containing all of the little minds which contain all of the thoughts that may well contain thoughts of their own is a soundboard upon which, like sympathetic strings, the chatter counterpoints against the spiraling OM.

You may not live in a city but you’ve been there once or twice. Nearly everyone has had an apartment or a house or a hotel room during a period where the street was being torn up for one reason or another. You can recall, as I write these words, the sounds of the jackhammers and digging machines and all the varieties of machines that might engage in this sort of work. This is what it is like to live in this world at this time. The streets of the world are being torn up inside the mind, without the mind’s conscious awareness of it in most cases.

The impact of cell-phone conversations, radio and television waves and all of the rest wafting on the ethers are making their mark and generating urgency and uncertainty on the mind; not on the one mind, on all the little minds that do not know how to defense against it. The hammer and tongs of industry bang out their ever increasing crescendos; onward... onward comrades... into the future!

Noise can be intimidating. Sound is a weapon being developed and refined at this moment in military laboratories. Sound can kill, quickly or more slowly and it certainly creates a variety of pathologies on the mental, emotional and physical planes.

We’ve all walked through these building sites. For some it is a daily affair because it never seems to end and they experience ‘accommodation’ after awhile. They don’t even hear it any more. This is the case with information as well. This is the case with the slow loss of human liberty. This is the case with everything that you hear and see all the time. Eventually it becomes part of the background even when the foreground is disappearing; even as you can hear cell doors slamming and people screaming it still appears to be part of the machinery that has been going on long enough for everyone to get comfy about it because they have become accommodated to it.

The thing about the world getting crazy is that it does it by degrees. Because of this it always seems normal, as if it had always been happening or as if this were the way things should be because of the way things have been in leading up to it. Absurdity is piled upon absurdity and it all seems natural because it’s all a part of the mix. It’s kinky! It’s fun! It’s entertainment! It’s hot! It’s hot alright.

We’ve all seen paintings depicting Hell. Those of us who read have come across descriptions. Whether there is an actual Hell somewhere, there can be no doubt that it does appear on Earth. We can also be certain that it lives in the minds of some who suffer its torments without the need for anything external to visit it upon them.

Something is always on the way and something is always leaving. We don’t always remember what is gone because of what has replaced it. When there’s a lot of noise it is harder to pay attention. There’s a big difference between being in a crowded nightclub and being in the Oregon rain forest. But no matter where you go there is noise. Even silence is filled with noise. True silence is a rare experience and does not come about by accident.

Whenever I get to this point in one of these things I can hear people saying, “What’s his point?” Not infrequently I ask myself the same question. Well, it’s not hard to weave in any direction from here. I could go anywhere from here. I could insert sound files or video. I could make this whole affair a commentary on the works of Beethoven if I so desire. Just so, the mind can go in any direction at any time and keep right on going. It is only conditioning, habit and fear (justified or otherwise) that might circumscribe it.

Life is struggle, ergo- life is war. Life is war on most every level whether it is in the elements, the plant and animal kingdom or the human plane. Peace is impossible except over an interim in the external world because the components of that world are at war with each other for survival and also because it feeds on itself. Peace is possible only on a personal level or occasionally within a limited like-minded community and the latter would be rare despite the best intentions of the participants.

A nation founded on the principles of personal liberty will inevitably migrate toward tyranny. Sooner or later it will appear necessary to instill tyranny to protect liberty. This is where we are today and it will move to ever greater degrees of repression unless there is revolution. Revolution is also a constant. One can see it in the solar system as its defining characteristic. One sees it in the seasons.

Pressure, noises and images can create panic. Panic has various levels. If it isn’t dispersed it will finalize in wild-eyed screaming insanity. One might not be able to breathe. They will almost certainly hurt themselves and others depending on the circumstances. It is possible to walk through the pounding machinery without fear or injury if the attention to the basic soundboard of the OM is greater- in the personal sense- than to the sympathetic chatter.

We choose the times in which we live and we have some say in the roles we play. The denser the karma and the greater the debt the less freedom we have to change; therefore, “father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

There is neither rhyme nor reason to the madness of those in the seat of temporal control. The justification is one of naked self-interest and psychopathic indifference to the consequences. They are mad. The reality that- what is loosely called evil- will destroy itself is based on this fact. It is what is meant in the quote that “those whom the Gods would destroy they first drive mad.” The terrible side effect of the madness of the few is that millions are swept up in the game. Millions rise up on one side or another to counteract an opposite number about something that doesn’t even exist. It was manufactured to that end. This is the thing about madness; there is no sane reason in it.

For any man or woman to imagine that they might alter the course of planetary madness is also madness. Those engaged within it have some valued thing or condition that keeps them in play. There is always something, someone that they fear to lose. The show must go on. And the show will go on. It is a symphony with softer and harder moments. The changing from one to the other is inevitable. The most important thing is how much poise we possess. Is our destiny reliant upon the conditions outside of us or... is it firmly in the hands of that upon which we focus our attention?

People have debated this for centuries. People have died in the arguments and because of the arguments. Are we okay or is everything always uncertain? That is for every one of us to 'inquire after' and decide for ourselves. The world presents the evidence every day. These are the most important questions everyone must answer; are the principles I live by real? What is real? What is most valuable? According to what am I sheltered or lost? Is the whole of it a living thing or is it a chemistry experiment? How sure are you of anything? The world is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that so few are asking themselves these questions and that accounts for the world.

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

Friday, October 12, 2007

Me First, you later... maybe.

The world is a stressed out place filled with shrill and angry people yelling at each other about things that aren’t even the problems causing ‘their’ stress in the first place.

Today a man delivered a specialized mowing machine to my door which I am taking to Italy to mow the grounds. There’s 2.5 acres of ground and last year I did it with a weed wacker and the time and effort involved was considerable and I had to do it a number of times.

This man was under whatever pressure deliverymen imagine themselves to be under. The package that held the blade was broken open on the side and as I carried it in small metal pieces fell from the package and vanished. While I helped the man carry the heavy body of this machine into the house his impatience endangered me. He was reckless and driven the way I imagine most of the evil in the world comes about. I used what I know about adapting quickly to a threat created by another person and I got through it; but I wasn’t pleased.

Susanne called the seller on the phone and he said that there weren’t any small parts that could get lost from the blade. Okay... but then she picked up the box and more stuff fell out. So it comes to the reality that a bag of screws in the box must have broken open. Meanwhile the moving guy is dancing around like a hornet on meth. Because there is a lot of confusion we decide to send it back. I was saying that we should just have him send another bag of screws but no one was paying much attention to me with the phone going and the moving man about to have an aneurism.

So we are sending it back. Now the moving guy is freaking and I go to help him and he jerks this heavy box forward, pulling me along with 80 kilos of dead weight and extending my arm so that all sorts of unpleasant pressures are placed in a dangerous way. I let go to save myself and then I let him have it. It wasn’t a situation where I could have done much else to get his attention. Now he realized that his impatience was putting him in danger. Although I didn’t actually do anything it looked like I might. That is the impression I wanted to give. Sometimes being pleasant isn’t the answer. I went inside and he did whatever he had to do to get the thing back on the truck.

The mover goes and Susanne calls the seller again. Of course the seller says he would have sent another bag of screws (which he didn’t say when he should have) and that he can’t send the machine again because paying the extra shipping will ruin his profit margin; we were getting the thing at a very good price. We have no problem paying to have it reshipped but now he can’t locate (he says) the specific shipping company because of yadda yadda... and we are under time constraints that make the whole arrangement questionable.

This isn’t about whether I get my necessary tool that will make my life much easier. That will sort itself out. It’s about the event itself. It’s about the harm that many another person might have experienced who was not as quick about the situation as I fortunately was. I cared less about the machine and more about being pushed around than some others might have. And stress was to be had all around because stress is in the air and it gets shared out. Stress is something the human race shares with one another because somewhere along the line the pressure for money and time became more important than our well being.

I see this stress every day. I try to live my life in such a way that I can avoid it and mostly I do. I see it on the highway when people press and press on their journey nowhere. I let them go by. I stay out of their way. I see it waiting in line for one thing or another. I see it in the eyes of people everywhere as this impatience without legitimate purpose propels them recklessly forward. I see it in the sexual urgency and every other urgency that destroys their opportunity to enjoy their lives.

I see people angry about things that have nothing to do with why they are angry. I see people on crusades about things they are never going to change and I see them making themselves and others miserable ranting on about the social order and all their imagined oppressions; how unfair life is to them. I see them seething about imagined injuries and fabricating injuries to justify a shrieking insistence that they be heard concerning facts and figures that add up to nothing but a perspective they assumed in order to demand that someone listen to them when their whole point is to get others to validate them as something they are not.

There are legitimate conditions in life that should be addressed and there are people doing what they can to the extent that they know what they are doing. Every one of them encounters this stress and they handle it to the extent that they know how. As the stress mounts- and it will continue to mount- due to the press of people pressed against each other in competition for space and gain and time and the pursuit of whatever the internal fires demand, we find that the manner in which their duties and pursuits are carried out are becoming less friendly.

At the same time, the paperwork that accompanies the jobs that must be done becomes increasingly complex and those who handle the paper have another sense of time than the people moving the things that the paper is about. There are also different understandings of time depending on the industry; government, commerce and sundry. Paying out and paying in also have their different perspectives on how important the process is. It’s apparent that it is much more important to get paid than it is to pay; except that each one is alternatively on the other side of the same thing which makes more stress.

To me, quality of life is more important than the pressure of appetite and appetite itself is going to become as important as you allow it to be. It has the propensity to become so important that nothing else factors in. Quality of life is more important than gain or fame, more important than any of the temporary trinkets the body and emotions and mind wish to demand because somehow the idea of need got implanted and then amplified to the point where common sense and survival became secondary concerns.

So, because of this urge... this need... this pressure and impatience... life becomes unfriendly. Corners get cut. Risk gives an edge. Manners are time-consuming. People in government and law enforcement; shopkeepers and sundry have seen every different scam and seven hundred colors of assholes and have decided they might as well become one too. They don’t care if they see you again. Next.

There’s a self indulging need and hysteria afoot and they insist that you listen to them. Here’s an injustice, there’s an injustice and all of these injustices are somebody’s darling little offspring and you’d better pay attention. The thing is that there are millions of these things screaming in a god-awful cacophony so that no one hears or feels anything but the pressure of their own demands rising up into the chorus.

People have lost their way. They are angry, frustrated and often alone- no matter how many people surround them. They could recognize that the whole process is a scam to milk them of their fear, anger, frustration and loneliness because there are living things that you cannot see which feed off of them. There are creatures on the battlefield that feed on the suffering and blood. There are creatures in the bedroom, the bathroom, on the highway and everywhere you go that sustain themselves on the energies expended in those locations. Depending on where you are coming from determines what level of energy is feeding off of you.

After awhile the things you are feeding get large. They get large because you feed them and they will die if you don’t. Maybe they should die. But there is an urgency in their insistence. You fed them before. You HAVE TO feed them NOW. But you don’t. You don’t have to feed them again. You don’t have to bang the drum either. You don’t HAVE TO do anything but breathe and that might be the key to the whole thing. You don’t have to get carried away. You don’t have to... have to... uh... What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?

As far as I’m concerned you can have it all. Go ahead, take it. It’s yours. I’ll look elsewhere. It’s not going to slow down unless you do. It’s not going to stop coming around unless you stop feeding it. None of it is real and it is quite capable of working itself out if you stop interfering with it. Well, you can’t tell people anything and that works itself out too... eventually.

Visible sings: The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible♫ You Wanna Dance ♫
'You Wanna Dance' is track no. 10 of 13 on Visible's 2007 album 'The Sacred and The Profane'
Lyrics (pops up)

The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible