Friday, February 29, 2008

All Life is Pain Caused by Ignorant Desire.

That is what Gautama Buddha said. He said other things and quite a few of them were unspoken. Much of what was said, so that you could hear it in the usual way, was the same sort of thing you hear from all the rest of them; your Jesus Christ, your Mohammad and your Krishna. The other things, the sub rosa communiques that were transmitted by gesture or intuition are out of print; never having found their way into that medium to begin with. Only those seriously intent on hearing these things will hear them.

In a way it is like the news of the world. There is what you hear reported and explained by the official organs of your time and there is what actually happened but doesn’t get reported.

In a way it’s like the different governments. There is the physical presence of the institutions and their legislative and enforcement arms and then there are the invisible governments that actually operate the people that operate the machinery. There are two kingdoms of residence and where you live depends on who you take your orders from. Do you act according to appearances by reflex, within or outside of the official parameters of what passes for right and wrong ...or are you dancing to a different drummer altogether?

While people live and die; disappear and reappear, expand and contract, there is a common reality of dream stuff that is always being molded to accommodate the appetites and ambitions of the day. Imagine an enormous spider. You could think of it as a kind of darkness that is discernable by degrees of shadow from which everything your senses report is spun out on to a trembling web; life’s cornucopia of never ending things.

Just as any movement on its web alerts the spider, the same can be said of this web. Everything you do is transmitted on the web; just like email, only you don’t have to send the email to telegraph your presence. All you have to do is think, or speak, or move.

Operating in one of the theaters where I operate; hey, call it an operating theater. I hear a lot of things. I hear about how we are all screwed and I hear about concentration camps and worldwide famine on the horizon. I hear about economic collapse and I can almost hear armies of jackbooted thugs from nowhere marching across the landscape. I hear about a small cadre of the elite who control everything. I hear that everyone who is anyone and even those who are no one are all tools of sinister forces who are going to put us in pods; or we are already in pods... and suck us dry or chain us to a wheel like young Conan and force us to drive the wheels of their fell industries... or we are already doing that. I even heard that I was a tool because someone didn’t understand my Obama post at another blog; actually, very few got the gist of that. Maybe I’m too subtle for my own good.

The fact of the matter is that a government far, far more powerful than anything you can imagine; a government, a regent and his emissaries and armies have always controlled and always will control everything. Even the trembling of a single blade of grass is noted within the awareness of this all encompassing, all controlling mind... consciousness.

It is true that there is a temporal collection of beings that are busy with the appearance of terrestrial mismanagement. It is true that they themselves are controlled by invisible entities who manipulate the selfish intentions of separated minds. It is true that unpleasant things happen because of this. It is true that everyone who is involved in this is affected by this.

But... that’s under control too. That is firmly under the control of this single power that is always in control. It just looks like they are in control of your world and when you give them the power that their appearance of power demands then you seem to be a helpless pawn of their rapacious intent. Here is where you get compromised. You let your fear of their appearance of power sway your essential allegiance. In this manner, the shadow cast by the light assumes the appearance of power which belongs only to the light which casts the shadow.

Here’s the deal people; “All life is pain caused by ignorant desire.” And you can also say that civilization is our reaction to pain in our pursuit of comfort. You need food and a market appears. You need shoes and a shoe store appears. You want to dance and a nightclub appears. You want excitement but you would rather watch and so movie studios appear. You’d rather live by proxy and whomph! There you are on the couch in front of the TV.

You want sex and casinos and drugs and so those things appear. Those parts of town appear. Along the way are those souls who want the influence and power that money brings from the wheeling and dealing of the industries that provide the things you want and desire. Enter the devil, Saturn, who limits into form the objects of your desire. Enter in all of those who serve this force in order to acquire the particularization of power they seek from the possession of the coin of the realm and Presto! Black magic... dark lodges, Luciferian brotherhoods, O.T.O. The Rothschild’s, the military/industrial complex, the pharmaceutical/medical combine and so on and so on.

Because you want what you want, it appears. It is because of what you want that you have what you have, or desire what you do not have, that actually chains you to the wheel that turns the industries that manufacture what you want.

The kicker is that they all work for you. These massive jinn’s, demons and elementals are at your command and all the movers and shakers of this world are employed by them and they are employed by the shadow thrown by the light and the light rules over all of it. If you knew who you were you could ask a mountain to cast itself into the sea and it would; somebody or other said that. As it is, because you don’t know who you are, your servants are running the show and they have thrown you out of the castle and you’re blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other. They’re drinking your wine and eating your food and laughing at you. That’s right, they’re laughing at you. Every now and then one of them says, “Boo!” and you go running off in search of a hiding place and they all burst into another gale of laughter.

Angels and demons are a matter of perception. There is an outline of light that glimmers behind every fright mask and that is the angel. What you want determines who you are and what presentation you serve. “Even the devil is transformed into an angel of light at the given moment, be not deceived.” They’ve been editing that out of the Bible the last so many years and you can’t much find it now. It’s been reworked. Check it out.

You are the bank of the divine. There’s a lot invested in you. It’s a shame to see you rag-picking among the prodigals in the dustbins ...but so it is. The good news is that sooner or later the dawn will break upon the darkness of the mind and you’ll be able to hear all of the things these emissaries of light didn’t say to the general public because now you’re tired of processed food and what it’s done to you.

All these things you want are variations of nature... once removed, twice removed and thrice removed and mutated from mutations. In order to fill the orders, the Queen of Heaven must unnaturally turn into a whore... angels turn into demons... Heaven turns into Hell.

Hunger after something finer and you might be surprised. Think you can do better than Lot’s wife? To do a more perfect dance you need a timeless composition; to paraphrase one particular emissary, pick up your lead sheets and follow me.

Visible sings: Too Long on Maui by Les Visible♫ Too Long on Maui ♫

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Is it Real or am I Dreaming?

Lately at a forum that I post at, probably for reasons of nostalgia more than anything else, people were talking about God and not-God, God’s existence and God’s non-existence. I try to stay away from these conversations because nothing is ever gained by my participating in them.

I find it amusing whenever people parade their limited intellects in posturing declarations of what is and what is not in relation to the incomprehensible; the unknown. This is not to excuse my own efforts in that direction. I’m just as limited when it comes to painting the 360 degree canvas of ever changing circumstance and color, using what we all use within the limited bandwidth to describe that which is neither circumstance, color nor anything else that is manifest. How do you describe the blank screen on which existence takes place? This is what it emerges from and what it is absorbed back into. This blank screen, brimming with life force; quick and sudden to expression... retreating endlessly before the probe of science, the press of thought, the reach of emotion. It’s as shy as it is bold and you can’t define it because it is always more and always something else at the same time.

When I see people argue about the existence of God it becomes immediately apparent that they aren’t talking about God. They are talking about religion. Would any of us feel comfortable being described according to the clothes that we wear? Would you think that accurately summed you up? If someone were to say, “He’s that guy with the salt and pepper hair that always wears a blue suit. You know... that guy in accounting that’s always talking about sailing?” Would that be the measure of the man? That’s what happens when we describe the indescribable according to seeming appearance and the impressions of our childhood, our parents, our society and our pre-dispositions.

No sane person is going to believe that the pope, dressed as he is and behaving as he does, has the ear of God, nor that God has his ear. Common sense tells you that when an old man is dozing on the dais and drooling into his raiment that he’s not emblematic of cosmic consciousness. I’ve actually seen this by the way. Common sense tells you that religions which are filled with perversion and dreadful behavior are not expressions of what the words of the founders declared. Does anyone imagine that, if God does exist, he is as boring as the people who drone on and on about cant and dogma; their words falling upon your minds like cinderblocks hitting the ground?

Because there has been so much bloodshed and brutality, so many lies and venality, it’s a sure bet that either it has nothing to do with God or that God is actually like this.

I have a certain advantage in respect of the great question. I have conclusively proven certain things to myself and I can do it again and again at will, just about any time. I found a doorway in my mind, my heart and I can pass through it much of the time. It could be this is some personal fantasy. It could be delusional. It doesn’t matter. I’ve no inclination or need to prove it to anyone else. It is me only who must be convinced and I have achieved that. If my life then serves as some kind of evidence of something, so be it. That’s not a concern either.

I do not expect that I will ever comprehend the ineffable. It could hardly be that if I could. Neither I nor anyone else will ever define it. Whatever it is, it is. Can anyone say that the unknown does not exist? If the unknown does exist and I think we can all agree to that, we also must agree that we don’t know what the unknown contains because it is unknown.

Most people are not all that concerned about God’s existence one way or the other. Most people are concerned with putting food on their families (grin), living well, having sex, being important to someone, avoiding pain and scandal and fitting in... humanity, unlike God, is not difficult to figure out. Among the human foliage are concealed terrible vipers. About six percent of us are psychopaths and they account for most of the darkness in life. The rest is the product of collective ignorance and fear.

I am a student of the Hindu tradition. For me it is easy to understand existence because it is all reincarnation and karma. Karma creates veils called ‘samskaras’. In times of greater material darkness these samskaras can be very thick. Think of gossamer scarves with one placed over another until vision is impossible. Some few have few of these scarves and different degrees of light can pass through. Imagine the difficulty of describing something to a person who cannot see. Karma eventually resolves all of this. The education of pain burns away the veils. We don’t like pain and as a result we are usually dragged kicking and screaming toward understanding.

We can argue about God’s existence or non existence but all of us will admit to the existence of Love. We all know about cases where people have sacrificed their lives for love. We all know that wisdom and knowledge exist. We know that things happen which cannot be explained. We know that mercy and kindness exist. We know these virtues are real and we know that the darker perversions of these virtues also exist. Ergo...

For myself I wish to move in the direction of more love, more wisdom, more of the better qualities that can be acquired. I want to move away from the other things. Like any of you I will fail repeatedly in my efforts. Some of us are relentless and we will pick ourselves up ten thousand times and more and continue. We will not be denied. Something waits for those who persevere. Why else would we proceed?

When I look at the inspiration contained in the lives of great examples, when I see the power of true art and the elegant beauty of nature, I am moved. With all of the heinous outrages of the day there is so much that is remarkable in counterpoint. Let me go that way. Others can make their own decision. Everyone who survives to a greater age will find themselves sitting on some porch front of their minds wondering about what they have done and what the memory of their lives will tell them about themselves.

Since I have come face to face with a particular force many times I have no question about whether it exists or not. I am confident that reincarnation and karma will afford every single soul the same type of encounters tailored to their needs. It’s not important to argue about something when there is no possibility of agreement. Sooner or later, on up the road we will all meet up with each other again and everything will be different.

Rather than acting like clumsy skaters as just another version of the woman in the Robert Burns poem, sitting in the church with the louse crawling on her... pirouetting and falling on our asses... rather than winding up like Isadora Duncan, samskara scarf tangled in the wheel, it’s probably better to just skate for the enjoyment of it apart from the performance angle. Many a graceful turn has been seen and done. Far more have come up painfully short. It takes tremendous dedication to gain mastery of your art and it is unlikely you will do so when the focus is on the people watching you. You have to get lost in it as if you were all alone in the moment for the sake of the moment alone.

As far as I have been able to determine, we are God in the making. That sound, that ancient and enduring vibration is resonating in all of us. It is our reactions to it, our ability to be in concert with, or dissonant by choice, that indicates our understanding of the perfection we have yet to realize. Harmony is the key and balance is not a static thing. It’s always reaching for itself like the Two of Pentacles in the Rider Waite deck. The spirit of God sings through everyone but sometimes it carries a tune.

Visible sings: I Love You by Les Visible♫ I Love You ♫

Thursday, February 14, 2008

On the Sunny Side of your Mind.

There are these construction puzzles, games, whatever they are... where you pull away pieces of the structure and the object is not to be the one who pulls away the piece that causes what’s left to tumble to the surface on which the game is played. There are other games where pieces are piled on to pieces and you try not to be the player who puts on the piece that causes everything to crumble. It’s the same game.

Basic social systems are built around the collective urges of a similar people. Larger systems contain sub-systems. All the sub-systems have their unique colorations, dances and languages but the urges are the same. Some languages like music transcend the common barriers of understanding; barriers like language and color and creed.

The urges for expression and acquisition of goods and family and friends; property, protection... the list isn’t very large... back and forth, up and down, loop de loop; child dance, self-definition dance, sex dance, acquisitions dance, death dance... fini ...Game over... new game.

Ten years ago you knew these people. Ten years before that you knew these people. Fifty years from now you won’t know any of these people. You had a special toy that you liked better than anything else and now you can’t remember what it was. You were deeply in love with someone and now you don’t know why. You believed a number of things deeply and you found out they were not true. You hurt people and you don’t know why you did that. People hurt you and you can’t figure that out either.

There’s an entire world inside your head but you only spend your time in a few rooms on the second floor. There’s another world outside your head, even though according to the way your eyes work that is also in your head. You spend your time in a few rooms with the occasional two week variations on a theme. You’ve got the sensation of some personal force and you use that to carry out your business. There are these much larger forces impacting on you and your personal force is in a continuous state of adjustment to them.

It seems like there’s nothing you can do about a great many things. You’re resigned to that. You try to stabilize conditions as best you can manage. You want to get through it. You don’t know what’s on the other side of what you’re going through but you know you have to go through it. Sometimes you knew who you were and sometimes you didn’t.

Someone said this to me yesterday at Smoking Mirrors;

“I want to start off by saying I am on your side about all the crazy shit going on these days. I ask you as a former sheep, I took my wool off about 8 years ago, what are we supposed to do.

1. know about the issues - check
2. talk to others about it - check
3. write every politician and bitch - check
4. vote - check
5. get on/make a website and bitch - check
6. donate to Ron Paul - check
7. talk to relatives and they hate you - check
8. lose all your friends talking about issues - check
9. get depression - check
10. get in a protest that the media doesn’t cover, so its a non event - check

now that I have nothing left, someone tell me what to do, something real, maybe I missed something. I am not shitting neither someone has to tell me.”

I suspect this in not an uncommon state for many to be in at this time. I have not been in the United States for awhile and there’s no telling when it will be safe to do so again. For those in the cauldron of darkness it can’t be easy if you see what’s going on. If you don’t see what’s going on it doesn’t matter I suppose. You’ll just go on rooting through the underbrush satisfying needs. For others it’s like a cold wind across the Kansas plains; sitting in a swing chair on the Clutter Family porch.

I imagine it as being like a changing line in one of the less attractive hexagrams. On the other hand there are people swelling with the signs of new found hope. They believe they’ve found their man and that the world will be right again. Others believe that they too have found their man or woman. For others their man isn’t around any more.

I’m going to try to answer this fellow’s plea. It’s heartfelt and I can understand the situation. First let me say, “I don’t know.” I can tell you what I would do, what I do.

Let’s put aside the appearance of the world and just how dark it has become over the last seven years. You have to do that. It’s too big for you or me or anyone. It is said that there is another who carries this weight. He is known by several names depending on the way he needed to present himself according to the culture and the languages in a given place and time. If you think you have to carry it, it will crush you.

Get small. Realize what a tiny thing you are in an incomprehensible vastness and just let go. Attend to the small matters before you. Go about your business as if everything were perfect. Realize that you didn’t get here by yourself and that you have no idea how all of these things happened but that you’re still here. Just because lunatics have been loosed for a time does not mean you are riding in the same car. Shit happens... for a reason. Hold to that.

It is hard to accept one’s impotence in the face of grave wrongs which they cannot address. But you do address them by acting in all ways contrary to them. Within every life is ample opportunity for profound impact. It exists in every moment you meet each situation. Your smile and reassurance of unshakeable good offered to everyone you meet will ripple across the world on unseen winds. Your eyes opened to the injury in every heart you encounter will fill your life with chances to say the right thing and to help as you go and you will soon forget about yourself in the realization that you can move like the sun through every situation.

Meditate... there isn’t anything that has more magic and well being in it and you can’t exhaust it. The more you take, the more there is. Don’t look at the fright screen of goblin dancers with no more real substance than mist. The only life they have is your attention. Don’t give them any. Everyone you know is on their way beyond your sight. Everything you have is returning into the substance it was formed out of. Nothing you can see is permanent. It’s all going. Let it go gladly. Wave goodbye. Bon voyage. Dance and sing. Better to look like a fool than to be a fool.

You are on a fantastic journey. Welcome it. Your job is to shine. The job of the world is to wipe that smile off your face. Keep smiling. You have more power in your heart than all the wickedness of the world put together. It isn’t easy to do this right away. This is why so few are about this work. You want to have an impact and do something special, be someone special? Do this. It’s not easy but it does get easier. You really have to want to. After that it seems to have a mind of its own.

It could be that the point of this world and its darkness it for the sole purpose of letting you shine. It could be that all the evil is there so that you can provide the contrast. Pretend you are the sun. You don’t have to say anything. There’s something about shining that bleeds into everything. It sneaks into locked hearts and it mends lives. You could do worse and frankly, I don’t know anything better.

Visible sings: When I Lose You by Les Visible♫ When I Lose You ♫

Friday, February 01, 2008

In Pursuit of the Simplest Thing

There is something that is so simple that it cannot be analyzed. It cannot be taken apart for the parts to be compared. It might separate itself into everything that can be imagined but it remains itself at a place or point beyond its qualities and creations. Religion is an attempt at explaining it or creating a medium of access to it. Metaphysics is a science which can grant some insight into conditions and positions and paths that might be taken. Religion has metaphysics in it.

For some few there are understandings possible concerning occult operations and the determinant of one’s direction and conclusion in this field are the result of the degree of virtue in the one who inquires. One might say this is the key entire and a key one would be foolish to journey without. Virtue is no easy thing to accomplish in these times. Despite appearances, this is a dark age.

I have a large collection of texts from every religion and science mentioned here and some that have not been but are adjuncts of those mentioned. My collection is small compared to what has been and is available. There are larger collections in many places and in the Vatican there is a much larger collection still. In temples and libraries across the world there are collections of texts that no one could read in an ordinary lifetime and I speak of just one of any religion or area of metaphysics... or the realm of what is occult. The information concerning all of these subjects that is contained in this simple thing dwarfs the manifest collection of texts in this and any world the way the Sun dwarfs a microbe.

This simple thing from which emerges the vast complexity of existence is a living, conscious thing. It knows right where you are this very minute, where you have been and where you are headed. It knows what you are thinking. It knows of things within you that you have no awareness of. When you approach it, it recedes. It continues to recede as you approach and that is ‘the path’. Though you think that you are charting a course or studying a mystery you are actually being led. In the process of this, phenomena appear to draw the mind away from the focus upon the thing under consideration. The leading and the projection are both actions of this simple thing.

Though it appears one is approaching something external, something internal is actually approaching. Even when moving within, the thing they pursue is moving behind them in pursuit of itself. Many souls have pondered these things and most have spent some moments contemplating the nature of their existence. In most cases they have given more thought to what they plan on eating and accomplishing than they do upon that upon which their existence hinges. They spend their brief hours repeating the cycle of appetites. If you had access to time lapse photography of a life you would see an interesting loop. Something would uncurl and then curl up again.

Even if one had the most brilliant mind one could not uncover the secret of the texts concerning the single thing that is the object and question of all religious, metaphysical and occult pursuit. The secret that wraps itself in and hides behind the words is guarded by agencies that are projections of this simple thing. Comprehension is not possible unless it is granted. It would therefore seem wise to seek the necessary permissions first. Some have found many curious potencies and possibilities in their inquiries into this simple thing. Unfortunately for most, the result of the information discovered results in bondage or destruction because the necessary virtue or protection was not there.

All power and all knowledge of the application and control of power exist within this simple thing and only this simple thing can safely practice any of it. There are those who have reached the heights of what is possible for a human being but they have done so by permission and it was accomplished by this simple thing, not by them. There has never been a human being who has achieved anything on their own. They have done it through the agency of the power of the simple thing. They have done good, or evil or anything that they have done by some agency of the power of this simple thing.

As you read these words this simple thing is aware of all that you think concerning this or anything. As you read any words, or watch, or touch, or hear or smell or taste anything it is aware of you doing so.

Books are here for a reason. Everything is here for a reason, no matter how trivial the thing may be. It is all the result of an act of creation; directly from this simple thing or through any of the agencies expressing the power of this simple thing and that includes you.

There is what you know... and that determines exactly where you are right now. I should more properly have said, “What you think you know.” There is a reason why the name Adam translates into “namer of things”.

No one who has sincerely pursued this simple thing has been left wanting. Throughout history and throughout the world of today, there are and have been many brilliant minds and deep thinkers who have filled the void with words. They rarely found that simple thing. What they found was what reputation they have as someone wise in a subject they did not, or do not, fully comprehend. Time and time again this simple thing has confounded these august personages by selecting those who do not know what they know, who sometimes could not read or write and who expressed themselves in the simplest terms and transformed the world.

Since this power is the source of all power it is not possible for anything to harm the ones about which I speak. Tales are told of trials and executions and the like. One would be much profited by realizing that the world lies. Not a single tale told about any of these souls is true in the manner in which it is given by the agency of words. There is a great deal more and less to all of it.

One has only to pursue this simple thing within them and to do so with surrender, humility and awe and they will understand much that they do not understand now. It comes down to what is important to anyone. What is the value of anything achieved in a life that will end and leave the consciousness of the life without the possession of any thing but what it is in itself? What is the good of any wealth or temporary power or position; any award, any favor, any appearance when it will soon be gone? What gift could possible match the capacity to love? What is there in life that can compete with the possibility of eternity? What is this thing that deceives us through an entire life and leaves us so perplexed at its end? What joy could possibly exceed the possession of a natural generosity to all things? What possession could grant a security as great as the security of divine protection?

There is many a Fata Morgana on the trackless sands. Beautiful women are draped like cobwebs in leather booths; across the globe they dine and dance in the exclusive clubs of the world. Powerful men and women work their magic upon each other. Their fountain pens execute death warrants upon the population of the world. Their greatest pleasure is in the exclusivity of their position. It could be said that the chief joy is that they possess what you do not. It has no value unless it is denied to someone else.

They do not have this simple thing and the time will come that they will yearn for this more than for anything they have had or ever desired. The time to find that simple thing is always now and the possibility exists for as long as you are here. There is no injury you have done until this moment that cannot be undone by this simple thing. The gift of forgiveness is beyond anyone’s capacity to understand. It is best to just accept that it is so. It’s a very simple thing.

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