Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Meeting it at the Marrow.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

Imagine that you have a fire within you and that what you feed the fire, determines the quality of the flame and the degree of smoke that comes off of it. This is a multi-dimensional fire that burns on several levels of being and it is fed by thoughts; words, deeds and what you put into your body. Everything you eat has a vibrationary signature; a chemical integrity that makes it different from everything else. There are cows, pigs and rabbits, as well as all the other ‘meats’ that people consume. There are the bird meats and fish meats as well. Each of these meats has a personality to it and at some level it combines with your own personality. Vegetables and grains have a personality too.

A certain quality of being and energy is created by whatever combination you accustom yourself to and over the course of time you become what you are in respect of what you’ve taken in. There is a reverse course to this as well. Everything that comes out of you impresses your environment and over time your image hardens into what you look like to others. Everyone having an impression of you is influenced by their own intake and outflow too. It can be complicated and it usually is. Still, there’s a general impression that we give and then there are the extremes of others who like and dislike us.

What we think and say and do is probably more important than what we eat and drink but everything has some degree of effect on the overall experience.

We see the beasts, the birds and the fishes as creatures involved in basic activities that don’t change. They eat and sleep and reproduce and they protect and educate their offspring in the simple routines of their lives. They learn and teach about danger. They communicate among themselves in a very simple way... or so it seems. Some animals have fairly complex social worlds and some do not. No one could possibly study the whole of Nature. One might say no one could possibly study the whole of the nature within them either and... their conclusions about their observations are going to be colored by what they eat and drink; think, say and do and the quality of the reasoning which comes from what they arrived with and what they grew into.

The times in which you live have a lot to do with what and how you think you are. Events that happen to you and events you witness or hear about have a big influence on what and who you think you are. We are all shaped by our environment and we unconsciously accommodate ourselves to it in order to move through it. Each of us strives for a state of harmony and security according to what we think we want and... what we think we want is based on many things, including what has happened to us as well as what we have witnessed and heard.

There are a number of factors that can be brought to bear on this subject and many books have been written about it. None of the books are fully comprehensive so it would be ludicrous to image that 1500 words would serve... unless one could count upon the intelligence of the reader to see beyond the need for endless comparisons and arguments as well as the presentation of some enormous body of evidence that would turn the whole matter into a mare’s nest.

I have a preference for Alexander’s treatment of The Gordian Knot, which is like cutting through the bullshit. Sometimes there’s more bullshit than at other times and these times certainly qualify in that regard.

When I looked at life and the situations it created for others and myself, I wondered what it meant. What was the purpose of it? This is a critical thing. Some people wonder about the meaning of life and some people just want to create a space for themselves in which to live it... nothing more.

People are very quick to criticize what they see and hear around them and they base it on whatever personal standards they came up with. They are far less likely to criticize themselves because that it human nature. Most of the judgments that people make are directly tied to their need for security; the security of their physical person, the security of their position, the security of their reputation... all the parts of themselves that need protecting. What are they protecting and how effective is anyone at this in the end result? Almost no one is effective at all of these things and even when you are effective at it, most of us aren’t even remembered for very long after we were done with all of our efforts and ...gone to an unknown location or... according to some; simply gone to rot in the Earth with no follow-up.

It is a very rare person who is consumed in the search for meaning and who makes that the purpose of their life. These people are going to experience real difficulty because their search is going to put them at odds with the world in which they live, sooner or later. They are also going to be at odds with their fellows because their thoughts and words and deeds are a reminder of something that everyone senses but few wish to acknowledge. Most of us do not want to be reminded about what is all means because that calls into question and diminishes the efforts and accomplishments that are so important to so many of us. Everyone wants validation and they usually find it on the world’s terms.

Success on the world’s terms requires compromise. It requires making arrangements with certain market forces which drive the world’s economies. Most people look at successful entertainers, sports figures, business people and all the variations of power and prominence as a desirable end. Most people do not see the advertising written on their clothing and often their person as well... or know what that implies. Most people do not realize the amount of accommodation that has to be made in order to maintain one’s status in the world. Deals have to be made along the way. People think that these icons are free but they are not free at all. It is one of life’s most powerful illusions and what causes it to fill the dreams and occupy the efforts of so many who do not possess it... the idea that it is something it is not.

You can only be free if you are free of it; free of the desire for it and free of the nagging persistence of the world and your own thoughts which tell you that you missed it, as if ‘it’ were the object of life, even though it will all be taken from you at some point, no matter what.

It comes down to whether you believe in a Supreme Being or not. It comes down to whether there is a Supreme Being or not. I happen to know that there is. In the process of discovering this and having it irrefutably proven, I thought and said and did things that were considered illegal and socially unacceptable. They may or may not have been essentially wrong. It depends on whether one succeeded or not... the same way it does in the world. I see illegal and socially unacceptable activities at work every day and the final interpretation depends on the power and position of the person performing them... or it has for a long time ...but that is about to change.

If there is a Supreme Being (and there is), that is who will judge us... or rather, that is the only judgment that counts. We need to think about who we are pleasing as we proceed because we cannot please both the world and the Supreme Being. We will be judging ourselves in the final analysis but that judgment will come as a result of the truth being revealed to us by the one whose job it is to do so.

We do not know others any better than we know ourselves. We measure everything and judge everything according to what we assume to be true about ourselves. In most cases it does not take a great deal of trauma or sudden dread to peel away the thin veneer we have convinced ourselves is what we are. All of our self assurance and professed ideals can vanish in a heartbeat. They are only as real as the environment that supports and feeds them.

One thing life does is test the power and integrity of what we believe in and rely upon. Life shows us if what we serve and believe in is real. The meaning of life and the purpose of life is the discovery of the meaning and purpose of life. There is no other reason and everything and anything that happens is connected only to this. The sooner one comes to this understanding, the better it is for them in every respect; better to meet it at the marrow than to live in the thinness of your skin.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: The Tangled Woods by Les Visible♫ The Tangled Woods ♫

The New Shangri-La


I have to go somewhere shortly and there is no internet (at the moment) there. This may be very temporary and there will be only a short hiatus. It could prove longer and that’s just the way it is. I have no idea how long or short it will be. I tell you this by way of explaining my absence for whatever period of time that involves. Please continue to post your comments as they will all be posted one way or another. This will take place sometime next week. I’m just giving due notice ahead of time.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Practicing the Presence of the Ineffable Divine

I was going to write something on Political Correctness and Multiculturalism at Petri Dish today but my mood is definitely in Origami Land so we’ll come here today.


Dog Poet Transmitting.......

Maybe it’s always been there. Well, of course it has but it was inaccessible much of the time, even though I knew it was there. I am talking about the ‘presence’ of the divine. A fellow for whom I was developing an incremental degree of affection took me to task for what amounted to a problem of syntax. It could have been gender specific too. Whatever it was, it was an insurmountable problem for the fellow and I regret what followed as a result.

I had apparently given the impression that I did not view the divine as a personality. This, of course, is not true. I talk to the divine and, I can assure you, when I do it is very definitely a being. I talk to the divine ineffable the same way I talk to you. I might say different things and the relationship may be different but it is a ‘living being’ and I have manifested all the degrees of positive and negative passion in respect of it on my way to the moment I am in.

However, if the divine is all in all, then the divine is in everything; sleeping in the rock, dreaming less deeply, as he goes up through the plant, the animal and the human being, until realized as himself in the consciousness of anyone in whom he awakens and even here, it is a matter of degrees. Not all realization is the same. Some are more fully realized than others and every master, no matter how wise or realized, has a master still and is a master only to the degree that he/she allows the one all pervading master to move freely within. We obtain mastery in only one way... submission. Call it surrender if that seems less obsequious. After all, there’s your pride to consider.

I try to stay away from religious terminology because I do not want to alienate anyone who might prefer a different icon or manifest garment in which one clothes the invisible ineffable to suit their upbringing or their tastes. The One is resident in all and therefore there is no conflict. I am partial to Krishna as the supreme personality but that’s just me. I am also drawn to Tara and other personifications of the mother, depending on my state of mind and also to the Amitabha Buddha and Lord Ganapati. It’s like having a family or a circle of friends. They’re all the same being but the seeming differences makes for a larger group. It’s like Christmas dinner. It’s far nicer to have a dozen people around the table rather than just two.

In one of my songs, “The Love”, there is the line, “One love falls and breaks into pieces everywhere and one love collects them all again.” This is what is going on. The divine manifested itself into many expressions for the purpose of seeking itself and gathers all the parts of itself back together in the process. Some pieces are gathered earlier and that is the preferable thing for any sane mind. Any sane mind would, perforce, be considered insane by the world and those in whom the world holds sway.

I said in a fairly recent posting that I had been engaged in various spiritual practices over the course of my life. Some of them lasted longer than others. Some I engaged in and then left by the side of the road and some came and went and came again. Over the last several years I have been through a series of relationships that were each intense for their time.

One of the jobs that Tara performs (and this posting is not about Tara), besides protection, is to route you to the Supreme Being. She takes you in hand and arranges for conditions that make you ready for the encounter. She presents you to your guru who is the particular mask worn by the divine ineffable for the purpose of conferring realization.

I have been at pains asking her again and again for this and it has brought me to a curious place for which I have a great gratitude. Over the course of this period I have become more and more aware of the concept of ‘presence’. Brother Lawrence wrote a powerful little book called, “The Practice of the Presence of God”. It’s well worth your time, as is “The Door to Everything” by Ruby Nelson.

During the last 16 months, I have experienced various periods of deep unease and discomfort. I wouldn’t know how to describe it but you are all familiar with similar things in your own lives. Recently, I had another one of these inexplicable misfortunes and it came at a time when I was trying very hard to reach the goal. These times have come no matter how devoted or well behaved I might have been seeking to be. It caused a sense of hopelessness now and again as if nothing I could do would make the slightest difference in what happened to me. That may be true. Luckily (if it is luck) for me, I am an irrepressible sort and just can’t stay down for very long. It’s just not in my nature. So, I always get back up and press forward with confidence and faith.

Over the last however long it’s been (grin) when I lay down in bed at night my mind turns immediately to the divine and I find myself saying things like, “I know you are there and I know you hear me. I know you have given me distractions the way a mother does with a child when it is pestering her. Sometimes these distractions have worked for a little while but they never last. I am incapable of being distracted for long and you know this.

“It could be that you are testing me to see my resolve and you might be busy but I don’t think it’s the latter. I have been asking you to give me your presence but I am realizing that you are always present and that I am not asking as precisely as I might. What I want is for you to awaken me to your presence. I want you to make it possible for me to be aware of your presence at all times and in all places. You are already here. Please make it possible for me to perceive that. I don’t want anything else. You know this. You know my heart and you know that nothing else will satisfy this need which I realize you placed in me to begin with.

“I understand that you could- and possibly will- create more powerful and attractive distractions but I don’t think even they will work now. I have looked at them and I see the downside before I see the upside and there is not much upside to any of it. Grant me the ability to feel your presence. You know it is my inheritance. You know I will be given this, sooner or later, so give it to me now”.

There’s more than that, of course. It goes on for hours. I find myself waking up as many as six or more times in the night and being immediately engaged in it; coming right out of whatever dream I am in... right back into it. There may be several hours before I fall asleep initially and I am pressing with a strong intensity in this way; the mind is pointed, the heart is inflamed and the body is contracting and digging into itself. The combination of all three is collectively much greater than the sum of the parts.

You have read in various scriptures some permutation of, “seek me with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole being”. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says, “Success is speedy for the energetic”. Those are powerful words and they are true words. Many people scoff and mock but they have not tested the thing. They have not given it everything or even been capable of small disappointments, much less the greater challenges that take us to the point of letting go of everything, as we must or... we shall not arrive. We shall not arrive otherwise.

The reason I am even mentioning this is because of certain things that have been happening because of it ...and I won’t elaborate on them. For some reason, it is much more accessible and much more possible now than it has ever been and I cannot remember many times in my life when I found myself in states of being I could not have visited previously without psychedelic booster rockets.

It really is happening and it is there for any who might desire it more than they do whatever else is available; on a showroom floor, in a room of glitter, in a velvet box, a velvet outfit, wrapped in plastic or made out of it altogether. Many of us are experiencing grave trial and internal torment fueled by the negative emotions we have brought with us in our luggage. Toss your luggage in the sea and set your heart free. Press on within from this dream that holds you captive and see if you are not heard and answered in some fashion. Our difficulties here are of no real matter because all of this is temporary anyway. Some creations are not temporary and you are one of them.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ The Love ♫
'The Love' is track no. 2 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
About this song (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible


The New Shangri-La (here we build the community in virtual space until the concept begins to crystallize and precipitate down into manifestation).

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Wisdom and Folly and the Spaces in Between.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

When it’s outside of us we call it Nature. When it’s within we call it God. We’re the medium between. When the divine flows unobstructed through us, then Nature becomes a perfect mirror. Nature has no secrets from her lord. When the divine does not flow through us unobstructed, then the mirror is distorted and veils fall over her secrets. The Earth is a sacred being and she hides herself from the profane.

Anything that gets accomplished here gets accomplished by divine agency. There’s only one power and only one doer. When we act as if we were doing the accomplishing, according to our personal ambitions, we become the devil. That’s all the devil really is; one who sets their own interests against those of the cosmos. The irony is that the divine will intends for everyone to have what they truly want and works toward that end. We go contrary to this, seeking to gain what we think we want and believing we won’t get it otherwise. All of a sudden everything becomes sinful. Sin means, ‘missing the mark’.

All evidence of enduring art, everything great and lasting is done by the divine through human agency. If it’s worth hearing, seeing; or by whatever means of perception, the divine did it. Every true science and every understanding of every natural process and what is called supernatural but is simply what has yet to be understood, is brought to us by divine agency. Every corruption of everything mentioned so far, comes about by human agency set against divine agency and is doomed to perish and to fail.

Every divine agency ever named or dressed in any tapestry of religion is the same divine agency. Every religion is a blind that conceals this unity. Still, that unity can be found in any religion for those who can read the true intent of the scripture. The true intent of the scripture can not be understood or comprehended unless it is revealed by the agency that caused it to be authored. All doors to all rarified realms are closed until they are opened by the one entrusted to do so. Anyone who seeks to pick the locks does so at their peril.

What is called magic or miraculous in the higher sense is impossible unless divine agency is working through the practitioner; everything else which is called magic or the occult or by any name that defines the performance of the will upon matter or mind is a perversion.

I sound pretty definite, don’t I? I just wanted to see what it felt like to say these things and speak like that (grin). I believe all of what I said to be sure but there are a lot of ways to say it.

There are millions of artists, scientists and sundry who are looking to excel in their profession or their craft. They work hard at it. They lay awake at night thinking about it. They might make any kind of an arrangement with anyone just to get the opportunity to succeed at what they want to do so badly. They go about in all directions looking for inspiration and assistance and whatever means and monies are necessary to the fulfillment of what they are after and they are wasting their time. The ability to become a legend or to light up or transform the world comes from only one place.

There are millions of writers who want to capture the imagination of the world and dozens of them might say the same thing but only one power can put the resonance in so that the impact will be felt and remembered.

People succeed beyond their wildest dreams only to die on a toilet seat. People attain to fame in such a way that their names are on everyone’s lips and they die alone and besieged or with a shotgun in their mouths. People become rich so that it would last a thousand lifetimes and must live in suspicion of everyone they meet. Only one force knows how to live with these conditions. Only one force controls the force that is the energy which composes and animates the people and the environments. Only divine agency is strong enough to control Maya.

We imagine attractive destinies for ourselves and think how wonderful it would be to achieve them. What a deep sorrow we encounter when we do, unless divine agency is living it in us. We’re free to seek these things and some of us are always getting them but the history of the players is not a happy one.

Anyone who is not seeking the company and favor of the divine is a fool. Anyone who think there isn’t one is an even greater fool. Anyone who can’t see how absolutely certain it is that divine agency is real ...is having it concealed from them. Everyone who argues about it with no more information than what they learned from people with no information has had that argument put into their heads.

We do well to tremble and surrender in all things to the one that is the one. The possibilities of the ways in which our lessons can be learned are infinite. Think for just a moment of all the tales you have read and heard about. Think, if you have experienced it, about all the Sufi tales and Biblical tales, Hindu and Buddhist tales and then consider Shakespeare and all of the other writers and all of the stories they have told. Move along to real life and the records of lives and what the newspapers report and what history has recorded and consider that any one of these end results might be your own. Consider how many of these stories and tales are happy ones.

I look in awe upon all the confident souls who go about their personal business and know so much about everything. They even know all about the things they know nothing about; you have only to ask them. I shudder to see the rich and powerful as they command the world and do the things they do and believe that they are the one who is doing what they are doing and that they are the final judge for the deeds they have done. They scare the shit out of me.

I watch the endless sexual dances, which are the life and death magnets of this magic show in the world of illusion; in this world of dreams, in this world of sleepwalkers writhing in secret fires, whose completion in the act leaves them on glue boards, while regret grows like kudzu in their hearts. I watch the cocky and beautiful turn into the confused and unbeautiful and old and weary and longing for death. It’s a different sexual act that now approaches.

A proper prayer would go something like this; “My Lord... do not give me anything but your company and advice. Whatever else you may give me; let it not come between you and I. Spare me fame and fortune and any position of power unless you are in command. Do not give me passionate love in this world unless it is to teach me what I do not know and do not let the desire linger past the lesson; rather give me friendship and companionship and yours before all others. Keep me from strange attractions.

“Please do not let me come to believe in my own power. Please do not let me act on my own accord. Please remove my shortcomings and grant me your qualities. Protect me from any sense of self importance. Remind me unceasingly of my errors and grant me wisdom and understanding. Lord, let me walk in the kingdom of God while I am walking on this Earth. Let me serve in whatever small way I am capable of. Let me forget myself. Teach me to love without condition and to fear nothing except that I might displease you. Conquer me from within and let me have no freedom but what you celebrate in me. Destroy my false self and break the hinges on the door to my heart. Live your life in me and I will want nothing more”.

This isn’t what people usually ask for, though some do. There are happy and successful lives but we don’t usually hear about them. Those kinds of lives are bad for business.


End Transmission.......

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

The New Shangri-La

Saturday, January 16, 2010

There can be no Darkness more Powerful than Light

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

I don’t know if conditions and events come in waves or cycles. Maybe they come in cycles and there are waves within them or maybe there is cycling going on in the waves; like the Tour De France under water or something. What I do know is that things come and go and sometimes the same kinds of events and conditions pop up all over the place. It happens in the world and it probably happens in outer space. I know it happens in inner space and I know it happens at blogs.

I know at these blogs, as I have observed in my life, that sometimes those events and conditions are triggered by me and sometimes not. Sometimes I trigger them intentionally and sometimes not. I haven’t figured out what to do about any of it. I haven’t figured out what to call the ineffable divine or what shape or personality to keep in mind because that changes too. What I have discovered is that just keeping it in mind seems to work better than running around confused about what he or she is. I’ve been given to understand that I will never figure that out anyway and that all I do know about the matter usually explains itself in human terms or some element of Nature, unless the super conscious comes into play and then it’s all about serpents. They coil up and that could imply cycles but they also move in waves so... let’s not get any further up the road with this at the moment.

In the blog world just like in real life, sometimes we’re on the mark and sometimes we’re not. In these days there are a lot of people running around calling themselves ‘healers’ but they aren’t healing anybody, not even themselves. There are a lot of people running around calling themselves teachers and sometimes they teach you something and usually, in the process, they teach you about themselves too. Hard times are circling the planet and suffering seems to be at an all time high. Hypocrisy and self interest are epidemic and even in the midst of great tragedies you see them as the greatest by product.

It’s easy to become depressed and looking forward the indication is that much worse is on the horizon. I’ve seen these things come and go in my own life and buckled beneath the weight of it a couple of times in recent memory.

In the process of going through what I have had to go through, or put myself through I’ve resorted to a number of different practices in hopes of keeping certain forces at bay. It’s hard to know if these forces are visiting themselves upon you from external locations or rising up from within. We are told that the planets which pass by one another in the solar system create aspects which affect the human condition in positive and negative ways. We are told these planets are also located within us in locations known as chakras or ‘interior stars’. Depending on when we were born and where we are at the time, different pressures come upon us. I’ve looked into this science and come to believe there’s something to it but when you consult people who have studied this science of planetary relationships you never hear the same thing from any two of them. What is one to think?

I’ve studied the various religious traditions and their exoteric and esoteric aspects and I’ve spent considerable time studying certain hidden traditions and there are similarities in all of them but all of them are different. I’ve studied with certain teachers from different traditions; in person and at a distance through their written works. Some of them had already departed long before I got here this time so there was no great chance of running into them, although I did manage to meet some of them on other planes of being for brief periods of time and I have had the sense of being overshadowed by entities on occasion who have advised and protected me. At least it seemed so. Still, I don’t know much more about any of it; how or why it happens.

These teachers had different perspectives and ways of saying and doing things. I’ve looked into teachers whose work had no affect on me at all and quite the opposite at other times. Others have gotten a great deal from the former, or say they have and nothing from the latter. Life’s a big place. Death is a mystery. Birth is at one end and death at the other and I suppose that implies cycles or waves again. I don’t see much that moves in a straight line for too long before it bends one way or another and I suspect that should tell us something if we were inclined to listen.

For as long as recorded history has been around there have been orders, brotherhoods, schools of thought, which have influenced the human theater of operations. Some of them are secret societies that involve initiation rites and levels of awareness that go deeper and deeper into the peculiar path or understanding upon which they are based. These days there are an increasing number of people who think all of these societies are evil. The ancient sign of an awakened kundalini has come to signify evil because certain corrupt leaders are seen flashing what is called, ‘the Devil’s Horns’. I’ve been taught that everything the dark side has appropriated, it has stolen from the fellowships of light and then perverted the knowledge for purposes of self-interest or harm to others.

It stands to reason that, if there are dark fellowships, then there must be fellowships of light. It stands to reason just the same way that day follows night. However, these days there are more and more people who believe all these organizations are evil. I’ve heard people say that the Tibetan lamas were evil and it was a good thing the Chinese got after them; as if the Chinese brought something better to Tibet afterwards.

I’ve had people get after me for embracing Eastern Thought because there is some kind of rule I never heard of which demands I stay within the precepts of Western thought, which leaves me cold. I’ve noticed an increasing cynicism, accompanied by a perception of knowing everything, without even having experienced it. I could go on at length about the things I notice and observe but I’ve done that already more times than I can remember.

What I have found lately and been aware of for a lot of my life is that the real teachers, traditions and fellowships, known and unknown, have only one purpose and that is to bring you into the presence of the divine within you. They accomplish this in many different ways. Sometimes they hit you with a bamboo stick and sometimes they trigger awareness through a sequence of thought. Sometimes they get you there by removing thought altogether. I’ve noticed that a few people seem to get it but most don’t. Most just want to hang around the teacher as if somehow the presence within was the presence without. I can understand how they might be both but it does seem to me that the primary thing of value is what awakens or comes forward from within.

I think I’ve had several purposes in mind in writing this today/this evening. One of them is to say that I am finding an increasing comfort in simply practicing presence without much attending it in terms of ritual or tradition. I keep bringing my mind back to it whatever I am doing and reminding myself that I’m not actually doing anything; that there’s only one primary mover.

I keep reminding myself that I don’t actually know anything. I don’t know if the hidden government actually caused the Haitian earthquake. I don’t doubt their capacity for violence on a massive scale. You can see what they’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no doubt that there are some bad- or miss-’guided’ people around. We are in a dark age and the appearance of darkness is greater than the appearance of light. This, by no means, is evidence that the darkness is stronger than the light. Any time light appears the darkness recedes. The trick of it is to have a light. If you don’t, then the darkness could appear to overwhelm you, make you believe you were like it or manipulate you through fear of it.

If you had that light, which I think of in terms of the awakened divine within, then you wouldn’t need to be concerned with the darkness unless you set your light aside, or didn’t have a light... unless you were following someone with a light... like a teacher, perhaps. Still, it’s so much better to have your own light, which you only get by a continuous practice of the presence. It’s kind of like a bicycle generator if you are peddling around at night, which seems to imply some effort on our part or maybe it only seems like that because as long as we think we’re peddling there’s effort in it and maybe even personal satisfaction too and maybe that leads into darkness, I just don’t know.

I get so tired of hearing about how evil everyone is. I get tired of hearing that everyone I ever mention; someone thinks is a tool of the darkness. They can’t all be tools of the darkness. All these societies can’t be devilish. It doesn’t work like that. I think people are gravely misleading themselves by knowing everything all the time, including people they’ve never met, places they’ve never been and things they’re never done. I’m going to try to undo my knowing with a little positive unknowing and the greater presence of what we must all be in truth once we let this little self ...and what little it thinks it knows ...let go into that greater self that knows it all.... governs it all and composes it all and is the very essence of light.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: The eponymous Les Visible Music Album♫ Who do You Love? ♫
'Who do You Love?' is track no. 5 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album

Lyrics (pops up)

The eponymous Les Visible Music Album


There will be a radio show tomorrow night. Follow the usual procedures.

The New Shangri-La.

Friday, January 08, 2010

Things to Come and the Perfect Storm.

Well, I am in the soup again and make no mistake about that. Most appropriately the wind is howling outside my door. Perhaps it is the wolf. It might be the wolf given what I have experienced in the last couple of days.

I got an email telling me my sweetie was dead and I got some posts to that effect as well. Unfortunately I couldn’t reach Susanne by phone until late in the night of a day that started early. I called the town police but couldn’t get an answer. There’s no crime there. I should have called the larger town but I was befuddled to put it mildly. By now I was sure she was dead.

I had to get dog food and I had no money and then I found that none of my cards would work. This seemed to play into the general aura of the thing. Then I found about 30 Euro in change which I keep in the car for driving and never think about otherwise so, the dogs are okay.

I don’t know how many of you rely on the other side of your life like I do but suffice it to say that this came as a tremendous blow. It was coming from so many directions at the same time that it just had to be true. Let’s add in that last week Susanne told me she was having dreams about dying. She’s so much younger than I that I found that mystifying. She had stopped smoking and was doing all the right things and I happen to know that stopping smoking can be as bad as doing it; shock to the system and all of that. This was all swirling in the air and I can always reach her usually but not this time.

So I had to live with this thing which even a couple of astrologers told me might happen and I couldn’t believe it but I knew it had to be true by this time. It’s like all of the air and light in my life just disappeared in a puff of smoke. I thought to myself that I had only been holding on with a couple of fingers anyway and now I wasn’t holding on at all. She’s the anchor of my life and things just don’t work without her and then I thought, if she’s gone what about her mother; what about the dogs?

I couldn’t accept that it was true so I held off going batshit crazy and I probably couldn’t anyway. I already went batshit crazy at least a dozen times before and I wasn’t sure I had any batshit crazy left in me. I knew there were deep pools of remorse and regret waiting for me but I’ve managed to avoid swimming there because that is no kind of place for an already depressed personality. I figure God is going to probably be kinder to me than I am. I treat myself pretty bad on the best of days. Some injuries are very hard to overcome and my childhood was a nightmare. That might be why I am still only 12 years old.

When I heard Susanne’s voice on the phone I felt like an incandescent light. Maybe it was going to come on and maybe it wasn’t. I was already dead in ways too numerous to count. I don’t like being alive. I often wish I was dead and I take no pleasure in just about anything. I like my succulents and I like the fauna that I wind up with somehow too but I don’t enjoy it here and so I am probably lying to you to a lot of the time. No... I really believe the things I tell you and they keep me going so... I’m probably not lying but I think I come off sounding stronger than I am.

I never asked to get so many readers and now I feel responsible for you too. If I’m not strong and steady then I feel like you might not be either. I realize that that sounds pretty arrogant and I apologize for that. I’m not thinking very clearly right now so I could say anything. The wind is supremely howling outside the door. Susanne called a moment ago and then all the electricity went off. I walked outside to talk to her and this big wheel of a table top that I had put up against the wall of the house just spun around in front of me and rolled right past the car. I stepped on both dogs at least once because they were so excited... but not afraid so I know there’s an excess of ozone.

Now I’m stuck in Italy with no money and I’m going to have to figure that out. I will so don’t get worked up about it on your end. Thousands of Germans are experiencing this. Someone hacked into the main system and so it goes. Paypal is useless and I don’t have an account in this country. As far as they know I’m not even here. I’ve made low profile a lifestyle. Only one country in Europe has me on the books because you have to be on the books somewhere unless you are a real Rosicrucian and I’m still a quart low in that department.

Life is pain and some of us transform our suffering into art and some of us make it an art to abuse our fellows. We never have enough of the one and always too much of the other. I’ve come to a place where I’m not afraid of anyone one on one or maybe even if they brought their friends but I think I might still be afraid of personal loss; not that anything actually belongs to me. I know that. I’ve lost everything more than once already. It doesn’t get easier when you get older. When you’re young you laugh at death and risk is a rite of passage.

I’m not sure that I am doing you or myself much good with these blogs. They occupy my life and it’s all without return and I could just as well be making a living; if that’s what you call it. I promised myself that I would give myself away and never be like everyone else who is always out for themselves. If anything pissed me off in life it was selfishness and self interest. The single quality that all of my real friends have is a lack of both. I would die for them and they know that. I count the value of my life based on what I would spend it on and friendship and brotherhood are supreme among my values. I probably would have made a good soldier but they kicked me out for being sane.

The reason I am writing this post is that I am going to have to rethink a lot of things. I can’t think right now because I am too fucked up but eventually I will be un-fucked. This is one of the many reasons that I know there is a God. Given what I have done to myself it is amazing I can still walk, much less the antics I pull off on my deck when I feel like it. Surely God makes this possible and I look at those who could be my grandchildren and they are slugs that can’t dance and I don’t think God is a priority for them either. I think God is the last thing on their mind. It shows.

Everything shows eventually. I’m going to try to keep doing this but I am very mercurial at the moment and I don’t know who is going to be thinking in my head later on. I’ve written so much I really don’t need to write anymore but somehow a lot of us are connected and I don’t want to chickenshit out on the right thing to do.

I guess I just want to say that I’m not half as noble or courageous as a lot of you think I am. I’m just one more determined soul walking toward something I can’t see. I have to clench my teeth and I have to drive on when there seems no point in doing so. Where did it get me? It got me where I am right now and I have no idea where that is. It’s like all the places I’ve been and passed through and all those lives and names that have nothing to do with right now but maybe they are stepping stones on the way and I will admit to that. I’m not despairing or giving up. It’s not in my nature. God alone can beat me down or retard my passage and no one else or all the armies on Earth could do that.

But is can get scary and I think it is going to do that. You should step outside my door right now and check it out. I’ve had this place for four years now and I have never seen anything like this. The air is crackling. It is electric.

I‘ve run out of steam and I think I’ll just watch one of my movies or plug in the keyboard and howl at the coming night. I’m just like you my friends; god keep us safe.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Flying in a Cloudbank.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

New Year’s Day and a tabla rasa of possibilities extend before us. In some cases we can initiate conditions and changes within ourselves and in some cases we are changed and our conditions are changed by the manner in which we rise up to the unexpected, or let it slip by with no reaction at all. Command of one’s self has been likened to mastering a team of unruly horses who symbolize the senses. It seems to be the primary duty of life because there is Arjuna in the chariot, overshadowed by Krishna. Self mastery is the difference between success and failure in anything and everything.

The mind is connected to the senses. You might say the senses are the mind’s feelers. How we analyze and respond to the information received makes all the difference in our state of being. The wheel of birth and death will just keep turning as long as the desire body clouds the mind and operates the senses in pursuit of the objects of desire.

I mentioned that self-mastery seems to be the primary duty of life. Krishna is behind Arjuna. It implies to me that wherever Arjuna is, or wherever Arjuna goes, Krishna is still there. Anyone who is reading these words has evidence that life can be easy and life can be hard. Somehow, at least to me, this seems to be tied in with self-mastery. All of the stress; uncertainty, fear and discomfort of life is made more or less intense depending on ones degree of self mastery. Meanwhile all of these conditions are set into being for the purpose of accomplishing self mastery. It doesn’t seem fair does it (grin)?

Some will be more comfortable thinking of Jesus Christ or whatever your particular brand of breakfast food might be... that’s all it is really... the package and contents you prefer. It’s all made from the same thing and it all has the same enduring purpose but we like to particularize it and it particularizes itself for us.

I prefer the Hindu presentation myself because it is what I have encountered in altered states, both natural and chemical. It’s what I have seen when I was able to travel outside of the bandwidth of the senses or to increase that bandwidth, which was something that attracted me most of the time. The objects and opportunities of ordinary life did not have sufficient pull on me to keep my attention. There must be something more is what I told myself and there was more, a great deal more. In the end it may well come back to ordinary life again but it won’t be ordinary any more. It might look ordinary to everyone else but it will not be ordinary for you because of who is riding in the chariot behind you. Some might prefer the term, “inside you” and some might prefer “above you”. I think if you throw in the term “all around you” and then add the others as well it will fall short of the reality.

I have found myself placed in a certain state of being lately and it’s there when I lay down and when I get up. I don’t know what the reason is for it. Am I supposed to do something or am I just supposed to go through it? We all find ourselves in states of being that we don’t understand. It’s certainly not uncommon for me. Ordinary life is going on around me, from what I can see of it. I have a number of ordinary chores and duties that concern me but I don’t have much enthusiasm for them. I will do them but the inertia is pretty terrific.

Because I write about what is happening in the world, I find myself reading about what’s happening in the world. I don’t finish most of what I am reading because I know they’re lying and usually I know why they are lying. Last week it was Pakistan and this week it is Yemen. Other sites which receive a small fraction of the attention of the full on, committed, mass media, lie and disinfo sites are not lying but sometimes they aren’t right either and, yes... sometimes they are lying too.

It goes without saying that I would like to change the world. It is probably truer that I would just prefer to leave it and go somewhere else. Neither of these is operative at the moment. Turn in what direction I will, Krishna is still behind me; behind ‘the me’ inside me, or back of and within the projected personality that is overshadowed by the pervasive personality that is working itself into full bloom within all of us... say it however you like. You have to made sense to yourself.

I don’t know if the way I am feeling is because of the way the world is at the moment or because of the way I am, as the planets exert their influence and I try to listen to the being within, as I am affected by the conditions without. I am supposed to take the reins and I accept without question that everything is under control. I know that everything works out in the long term while appearing as if nothing is working out in the short term. It is a little like flying without instruments in a cloud bank when you know the sky is not empty.

I am unable to directly state anything here because of the immensity of what I don’t know. I have a months worth of emails waiting for replies and I suspect they will continue to wait. Things have to be done here but they aren’t getting done. Of course, what must be done is getting done but everything has the sense of just being gotten out of the way so that I can sit and wonder about why I feel the way I do and how to position myself accordingly but not being able to.

I have heard it said in many different ways that when God appears to be absent that he is closer than he has ever been and that it is in times of struggle and unknowing that the greatest amount of work is being accomplished. I have heard a lot of variations of this. What is working for me is not thinking and not being concerned about what I think I should be doing, even if I am sure I should be doing certain things.

Large forces are loose in the world and lost souls are riding at the helm, with victory just beyond their grasp. They too are flying through a cloudbank. They have plenty of instruments and they are flying in a sky that is not empty. They are supremely confident of the outcome even though the same consciousness that is behind me in the chariot is behind them too. I do not see their confidence as being justified. We can’t both be right.

We’ve all heard about how we should ‘know ourselves’ and that the “proper study of mankind is man”. We don’t know what that means exactly but we all have some idea about it. Mostly we hear it and nod our heads as another thought replaces it. I think it means that we are supposed to seek contact with that which has authored us and knows us entirely. In achieving this we come to know ourselves. I don’t think we just suddenly discover ourselves one day, apart from everything else. I get the feeling that it’s a guided tour.

I started writing this on New Year’s Day and then wandered off somewhere. I’ve thought about other things I might have written but didn’t get around to writing since. I had to finish this today because I have the radio show tonight and I always write a post so that I can announce it; another one of those things I’m supposed to do.

In the past I would just change my location or do something wild and crazy to force the hand of circumstance but those are not attractive options for me now. What I am doing is just getting really small inside myself and letting everything go by except for what I have to do or in relation to lives that might depend on me for something to eat. I’ll be changing location anyway in a relatively short period of time and wild and crazy is happening all by itself, at some remove.

I can’t second guess the guy behind me but I am under no illusions that he can’t second guess me, so maybe I’ll just keep my eyes open inside and out and I might see something and I might not but I do know that just about everything changes and this will too.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible♫ Gone Too Far in Front ♫
'Gone Too Far in Front' is track no. 2 of 13 on Visible's 2007 album 'The Sacred and The Profane'

The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible

The New Shangri-La