Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Humility and Compassion are the Guardians of the Soul

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

(Someone has been asking me to write about humility. I don't actually know what I'll write about, let me percolate for a bit and see what happens.)

Good sense is not epidemic among the forceful and arrogant, who seem to have no boundaries at all for their pernicious intentions. They've jockeyed and maneuvered themselves into all the high postings of the temporal circus, with the serious wranglers, plying their trade from the box seats, transforming curds into whey. It seems to be some kind of a conspiracy between the consciously evil and the willfully ignorant. They hold these lies to be self-concealed, within the knapsacks of that terrible fate they carry upon their backs. They are shadowed by their fate, which is woven into their character. You are what you have allowed yourself to become. Even the stark, raving evidence of uninterrupted, cosmic defeat has not taught these miscreants restraint; conscious and aware, they ain't.

Humility is one of those things that will save you from any number of attendant shortcomings. Compassion is the other. These two seem to have some kind of fraternal association. They hang out together. I think they are in some kind of mutual approval society. They dance along to a soundtrack that is kind of like “Love and Marriage” but the music and the words are considerably different; not to take away anything from Love and Marriage but they're the devil's own inferno, without humility and compassion. We can be very generous with everyone except those closest to us. It's in these situations that the resentment and anger gain full sway and where they cut the deepest, right to the quick. It's got nearly everything to do with freedom lost. We build ruins in the paradise of the heart. Love gave us freedom and then the familiarity bred contempt. We only get to know ourselves through our failures with another. Since we can't accept that most of the time, we turn it back on them and ourselves in equal measure.

When you're humble, you don't mind reproof; not so much whether it is or is not deserved because, as the master said “all fall short of the glory”. Humble doesn't mind because it bears all things in similar measure. Its concern is not to reinforce the value of the personal self. It has seen a greater self and that is the essential genesis of humility. The planets may have pride in their singularity, as their collaboration and resistance to one another, create the dance of life in which we all engage but... they are nothing without The Sun. They all revolve around it. Humility seeks this as a career move. Pride wants to go its own way and sometimes manages to get out of orbit with unfortunate results.

The planets do what they do through us and upon us in two different octaves, which are significantly unlike one another. It is the difference between ease of passage and all the obstacles that are the routine of those who go against their own best interests. That is all there is to free will. You have the choice between cooperation and resistance. There is no more to free will than that. Humility recognizes this. It is the essence of understanding that leads to wisdom. They are the twin centers at the top of the tree of life. Beyond that is the ineffable, in all it's magnificent, incomprehensible being. This is the way the lowest leads to the highest. Humility makes itself low and compassion springs from that. Humility sees all of those who have been made low and will be made low and it is generous accordingly because it has mastered the art of not having to be brought low. It has brought itself low and gained an accurate perspective of one's place in the scheme of things. Humility is not a doormat. It gets lifted up above the rest and is crowed with an enduring royalty but it pays this cosmic homage no mind. It merely wants to sit nearby, in any corner of the room, wherever the presence extends. Even on the outermost edge, humility is content. It knows it will not be asked to step down. If it is lifted up by celebration or as a test, it sees itself as a steward of the moment's largesse.

It's simple. It's not complicated. Complications are of the mind and simplicity is resident in the heart. When the heart swallows the mind, it is illuminated. One can gain much of the knowledge and the understanding of the use and applications of the cosmos and consider themselves triumphant in every case.; a veritable Master of the Temple or Magus. One can follow the heart and learn none of these things but the former will have to return and learn what the heart teaches, whereas the heart will have all the rest of what the former has gained and much more added, without the need to acquire them.

Humility is the seat of wisdom and compassion is its heart. Wisdom cannot rest or be wisdom if it is not supported by humility. The primary status of wisdom is the realization of one's insignificance and the awareness that one does not even know all that it thinks it knows and in operation, it acts on the brimming knowing of the all knowing that rises from its mysterious origins, at every occasion of need. Wisdom is absolute reliance and a confidence in the appearance of what maintains the entirety in every moment in which it exists. Everything exist through the ceaseless meditation of the divine.

In times of greater light, the wise move freely among us. In times of darkness, they are cloaked and veiled and sometimes far off, having little to do with the follies of the world, in its present and personal night of ignorance.

All of the qualities of the divine are interdependent. Some are of greater importance, like the primary colors, which then transform by interaction into the secondary hues. All of our shortcomings are interdependent. Some are more enduring than the others and each of these are replaced in their time by the qualities of the divine, through the avenue of its mercy, peculiar to each of us. We are the manifest expression of the divine on this plane or, more likely in this time, the manifest expression of the adversary. The resolution of each is mathematical in its precision, involving camels and the eyes of needles and all manner of other formula that invariably adds up to the sum of its parts. In the matter of the divine, the sum of the parts is less than the entirety of the whole by mysterious design.

It's not complicated. It's simple. All the wealth of occult intricacy can be seen and even conferred on one in a moment, in a twinkling and some of us have seen the evidence of this in solitary visions that were too immense to gain permanent residence. However... you don't need any of that anyway. One sees that too, if they are the beneficiary of the friendship of the divine. One is protected against the ravages of one's own inevitable fall, in respect of what cannot be mastered and demonstrated, except by the one to whom they all belong. Only one hand wields the power, all presumptions to the contrary will sooner or later be shown to be false. Why pay that price?

This is why humility and compassion are the guardians of the soul. With them in attendance, your way is clear of the certain and unavoidable pitfalls of personal ambition. You can come to a very high place and still fall. It has happened and will happen again. It is for the purpose of demonstration.

One needs to keep in mind the first commandment ...and study the implications. It is called the first and 'greatest' commandment. If you want to understand a virtue, study its opposite number. Study pride and selfishness, if you want a deeper understanding of humility and compassion and ask yourself which you would rather be around. The divine is no different than you in this respect and you'll get nowhere near the divine with a proud and selfish nature. The divine cannot take residence there. That is a truth without exceptions. Humility is a welcome sign at the gateway of your being. Angels see this and bring it to the attention of the most high. That is their job, among other things (grin). If you exercise the virtues of the one who created them, in your own small and inefficient way, it's pretty certain the author will show up and demonstrate for you their true value and application. If what I say is not true, let it be on my head. Granted that, the divine will show up and inform me as well. Anything that draws the divine is a good thing, even if initially it is somewhat alarming. Your immediate surrender will take care of that. It's the holding on that brings the ripping sensation.

People whose names we have never heard, shine like pearls around the neck of the ineffable and they all possess a remarkable similarity, as do the bonafide heralds and workers among us that we do know. Every time you are wondering what you should do, don't. It happens on its own. We're just along for the ride. Your credentials are your ticket and that also determines your seat. If you get dropped off along the way, do not despair. You've been placed there for a very good reason and there is another train coming all the time. If we do what is in front of us, the future will take care of itself.

Humility is nothing more than recognition. It is the result of recognition. Compassion is the natural extension of what has already been conferred on you. Once you have seen greatness. you know the meaning of 'filthy rags'. The fitting reality of this is that the entire spectacle has been put together for you. The entire universe exists because you do. You could be in the middle of trackless sands, or an endless mountain range and the oasis will appear, as will sweet honey from a rock. There is nowhere you can be that the master of all things is not present. It is the seeing and believing that is difficult but... you're still here, aren't you?


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: Color Ball by Les Visible♫ Foolish Pride ♫
'Foolish Pride' is track no. 10 of 12 on Visible's 2007 album 'Color Ball'
Lyrics (pops up)

Color Ball by Les Visible

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Loss and Recovery in the Stream of Life

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

This posting is for all of you who have lost someone in recent times.

Another strange morning for me; they're all pretty strange these days. They're all pretty good too. Most of my mornings are influenced by the dreams that precede them. Those are also pretty strange. This morning I came to after a dream with a young lion. It just kind of appeared in an otherwise interpersonal scenario between me and people I've never met. I seldom dream about people I know. This lion was following me around and we would roughhouse a little. I was always aware that the lion had a certain power to harm me but it was nothing overt, just the sense of potential. It was around a year old and I was a mixture of delighted and apprehensive that it had keyed on me. I didn't know what it meant and I was aware of that. In any case, I woke up feeling the way I remember feeling years ago, when I would awaken to a world I hadn't had all that much to do with yet and there was this sense of all that possibility and promise that was out there somewhere. It's an odd thing when you suddenly find yourself feeling in ways you had forgotten over the passage of time.

Yet another wonderful person has passed on. There seems to be a lot of that recently. My friend David lost his Svetlana. Jabar and Marilyn lost Nastatia, Homer lost Frank. Esteban lost his mother. I lost Lily, who was more of a person than a pet to me and a teacher as well. Others have had pet friends departing of late too. It seems to me that we now approach a time of trial and tribulation on a grand scale. I do not expect the trial and tribulation to be that present in the lives of those who are more rooted in spiritual nature. I expect it more for those rioting over plastic garbage in big stores and those beating old people into the ground, sometimes killing them. I do expect some trial among us but that is a necessary testing. You can't grow strong without testing and trial. It doesn't happen any other way. So I think some of those who are leaving us now are a portion of a particular wave of departures. They are going to the bright side to await our eventual passing on as well.

This coming winter is going to prove to be off the charts in terms of change and transformation; fantastic change for those embracing the higher arc of it and devastating change for those magnetized by dust and the glimmer of fool's gold behind plastic wrap. It is as if there are two spirals going in opposite directions and pulling away from each other, as two separate planes of existence come more and more into view.

I do not subscribe to the idea that there will be global devastation or that most of us will be gone in a short time. I don't subscribe to most of what I hear being predicted by people. I don't know in a pretty deep way and that keeps me away from the prevaricating Ouija board of the susceptible side of the mind. It's enough for me to come into each day, looking to be informed and shown something within the events and conditions of what comes and goes within and without.

I find it amusing that I can make tentative plans to do certain things, while the whole planet teeters on a knife edge. It's times like this that a faith in the divine is a greater possession than anything I could imagine being in its place. I hunger for the qualities of the ineffable because of the ever present evidence of my shortcomings. I know they are kept in place now for a reason, even though I have seen a real diminishment in them over recent months. Some things are hard to lose and it isn't always about ourselves what causes them to remain. Sometimes they are a part of a larger drama and sometimes, often, they are for the purpose of demonstration.

Tying yourself to the ineffable comes with a certain order of complexity, until you can grasp the essential simplicity. We're condemned to make efforts on our own behalf, when the whole point of relying on the ineffable is to be free of that. Old habits die hard. The old and persistent, personal self that owns them, dies hard because we labor through a continuum of time. Time and gravity are siblings. Time varies due to location and perceptions. It's one thing watching a movie. It's another thing being in line at the DMV. It's one thing at a rave and another thing in a prison cell. It can vary in both directions, depending on the person involved; two different people in the same classroom, where one has a deep interest in the subject and the other has none. You can extend this concept on your own.

Love is the deepest and most primary generator of interest and that is why Love should be your singular and most important companion. In the deepest and most enduring part of ourselves, we are indistinguishable from Love. This is an extremely important thing to grasp. A part of us is separated from another part of us by veils that are composed of self interest, false self awareness and shortcomings we have embraced, to move through what we have allowed to become familiar to us. You might say we are hanging out with the wrong crowd. The terrible irony is that we sacrifice the priceless for the temporary and tawdry ...and fear... fear and its friends are a big part of the root cause. Some of those friends are; insecurity, uncertainty, lack of faith, AKA- doubt and you can probably extend that on your own too, because there are others.

People who dabble in philosophy and metaphysics are like part time lovers. Most of them arrive at one place or another with a relative comprehension of how things work and at that point they personalize it. Many of them like Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Hume and other word jugglers, create hopeless morasses of confusion. They'll have some grasp of a few things, along the lines of; just enough information to be dangerous and then they'll become pimps for their own celebrity, sunbathing in the admiration of their fellows and those fools who measure their own value and intelligence, according to their ability to expound upon and interpret them. All of them go to the grave, knowing less than they did when they started.

Some things you can't dabble in and be a part time lover about because you get exactly what you put into it. If you put your whole self into it that is precisely what you will get back, in more ways than one. You will also get your whole self, if you catch my drift. Certain sciences and fields of inquiry, as well as entities, where devotion is the measure of success ...are attended by angels who test the sincerity of the applicant. Without certain credentials at the onset (or gaining them as you go), you will only get so much and curiously, the majority of those, assume they got it all. There is ALWAYS something deeper than what you found and something deeper than that and that and that and that. This is what my friend, Mehemet Karagoz said and I doubt you can find much about him, if anything at all. He once lifted the top off of a mountain to make a point to some caliph or other. Once he was kidnapped by bandits in the mountains and he told the head of the gang that if he would release him then all would be well but if he did not release him he would be gone in the morning and the bandit chief would die at the hands of one of his own men before the next full moon. So it was.

There are people like Mehemet walking around today but you wouldn't know them unless they felt like getting your attention, which might happen if, let's say... you got their attention. I've got a certain amount of experience in respect of this so I can assure you it happens. In my experience, no one gets very far, in real terms, without the good offices of someone further on the way, so it behooves you to get in their way and that is easily done, or done with great difficulty, depending on how you understand it. Most of us see within the confines of a limited bandwidth. That is not the case with everyone. There are some who see us much more clearly than we see ourselves and others ...and there are things we can do to attract their attention. Sincere aspiration is one of them and you can also extend the list on your own.

There is a reason why all true teachers are possessed of a natural and true humility and that is not because they know it is the proper way to present themselves. It is because of what they have encountered and been shown. One would be hard pressed to be otherwise, afterward. None of us with any real talent, accomplish what we do on our own. We may have earned the right to do it but we don't actually do it. We have learned to get out of the way. There is only one real teacher and that teacher is highly selective about who hosts the presence. The classic relationship of Krishna and Arjuna should be taken for the cosmic guide. Of all the things we read and comprehend, no matter how much of that there may be, there is always far, far more that is unsaid and still to be comprehended. The journey does not end. It may plateau for a time but it does not end. I know there are those who become way stations and who may occupy positions for hundreds of millions of years but... you can extend on that concept also on your own.

For me, the highest and most desirable possibility is to be a friend of God and to have his/her favor. Each relationship with the divine involves things and conditions peculiar to it. You may not know that God often travels and walks about. Often he does this in the company of his friends and a great deal of teaching and fellowship occurs at these times. Can you imagine what it must be like to be named a friend of God? Can you imagine! Can you imagine what kind of a friend God is, in respect of what you know about friendship? Since this is a possibility, why would anyone be in pursuit of anything else? That is a real definition of insanity and... anything and everything you seek can be conferred on you by the divine, including all kinds of things you have no knowledge of and including the awareness of the PROPER USE AND ENJOYMENT OF THEM, without which, most of the time, it is a curse. Why is anyone doing anything else.

People have opinions on Rosicrucians who have never met one and there are many that pass themselves off as this or that. It's unlikely that a real one will claim to be one, except under certain circumstances for a 'very good reason'. People have opinions on different teachers and their relative position in respect of other teachers, without ever having met them. It is altogether possible that the greatest teacher of the last hundred years was someone's mother and no one even knows her name. The greatest teacher may be washing dishes in a diner and moving from one restaurant to another, or on to a warehouse or a library, serving as he goes. The idea of celebrity is lost on them. They know who the real celebrity is and have some idea of how that celebrity conducts itself, which is why The One is so choosy about where the presence goes. There is nothing more agonizing than to lose the presence, once you have experienced it. Sometimes this loss is not a punishment but only serves to accelerate the aspiration and longing to make it permanent because- and trust me on this- nothing compares, not even close. You can't even see the next thing from there.

For all those who have lost someone recently (and this is not limited to what we call death), or at any time, Know this, all separation of this kind is temporary. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. There are bright and shining worlds of reunion and that should be further inspiration to do our best. Of course we will fail time and time again but that is not the true marker of our enduringsuccess.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible♫ Listening to God in the Morning ♫
'Listening to God in the Morning' is track no. 13 of 13 on Visible's 2007 album
'The Sacred and The Profane'

Lyrics (pops up)

The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible


There will be radio show Sunday night.


In the spirit of this post, perhaps some of you might like to read this one. I will be reading it on the radio show tomorrow night, without a particular word that reoccurred a few times in the print version (grin). "Thank you for that", says James Jancik.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Walking with Ganesha in Top Hat and Tails

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

Tomorrow I go away for a few days to complete the next book. It's done but the last 6 or 7 chapters need polishing and fleshing out. The end is always the most important part of a book, besides the general content and the tone. We carry a tone with us and we harmonize or we don't. This harmonization is a tricky thing. Harmonization is about the most important point we can concern ourselves with, as we move through the outer world. It's not just thirds and fifths that harmonize. There are minor harmonies (The Beatles) and unusual harmonies and harmonies of harmonies. Sometimes harmonization is not the best thing you can accomplish, though a temporary form of it, when you are in the 'getting out of Dodge' motif, can be very advantageous. Somewhere in the Bible there is a reference to shaking the dust off of your sandals when you leave a city that is not welcoming to the divine harmonization. You don't want to get along with everyone but that doesn't mean you can't have the appearance of it. We endure and put up with a lot of things because of a fear of the unknown. That usually implies that the assurance of trustworthy guidance is unknown too.

In a little over a month I am going away for a much longer time of several months or so and spanning several continents. It's a wing and a prayer sort of a thing. I expect I'm going to meet a couple of shamans but that's not the intent of the trip, that's just one of the inevitable features. I'm taking the trip to take care of some business that is now coming into being; to see what's out there and to see what's in here. I'll be meeting with whoever wants to meet with me, in those places close enough for them to get to. That won't be the U.S. proper because there is nothing proper about the U.S. anymore. It's looking more and more like The Hindenburg and bears similarities, such as a whole lot of hot air and a dangerous combustibility.

I'm off in search of community possibilities, concerning a community, I may or may not spend a great deal of time at but am determined to see happen and I've been told that's okay. There are a lot of good ideas out there but they don't all have the imprimatur of the invisible on them, for any number of reasons and timing can certainly be one of them. It's possible that simply not asking the ineffable in the first place is reason enough. I try to run everything and anything I'm headed to or passing through, by the ineffable. It's okay to take this to the total extreme, depending on your understanding of what that implies. Some people might get frozen in their footsteps and that's not desirable but... ironically, in some cases, it is definitely preferable to their continuing on, only they don't know that yet but they will and this is another curious thing of which we are all familiar; we know when we're going the wrong way, often even if we've been deceived about it because something doesn't feel right. We soldier on (I believe that is the correct term) and battle our way for the purpose of self will run riot, for the purpose of satisfying some imagined need, for the purpose of proving a point (many have died on behalf of this) and there's seldom any real purpose behind any of it. This is why doing things for and in the name of the divine is the way to go. You summon the divine to your side. If you don't do that then the divine lets things take their course, so that you can learn the needed lesson and also because God likes to watch. He wants to see what happens. Of course, being God he can immediately compute all possibilities and well, that's just one way; my point is that God hides things from himself for the purpose of his own or her own entertainment.

Those who do not think that the divine has a sense of humor, of quick and abiding presence, are possibly those who also do not know that this is a divine comedy. One of our biggest and most costly mistakes involves the personage or appearance of the divine in the way we interact. You could say God dumbs down and that wouldn't be too far off; God dumbs down to be with us on our level, according to how we see any of the units of the family and other relationships outside of it. Think of your mother. God is just like her in her finest hour, all of the time. The same applies to your father. The same applies to your brothers and sisters. Think of your best friend and that single most important quality they possess, which is that they understand you. The divine is just like that in their finest hour all the time. We set God at a distance and that is a bad mistake. We set God so far above us that we counteract the possibility that God can be just as simple and otherwise as we are and anyone we know.

When God speaks with me it is in a certain language. It includes slang, territorial dialects and, on occasion, profanity as punctuation. The divine is a regular guy. Get used to it and see what happens and this brings me to the technique I gave out yesterday and the burning need to clarify a few things and that includes diet as well. I'll get to that in a moment. The divine is a clown sometimes and sometimes a character from a Broadway musical. The last couple of times I was down in Italy, as a result of Ganesha showing up in the Spring before last, when I nearly breathed my last (nobody but me will ever know how close I came and I probably dropped 30 pounds in five weeks, grin), Ganesha would usually make an appearance, when I went to take Poncho for that round walk that leads over the dirt road that passes through the olive and almond orchards and comes over to a concrete driveway that ends at the end of a certain field and then I hop over the stone wall back into our property. Anyway, Ganesha started showing up in a top hat and tails, with a cane that he twirled around. He'd do back-flips and all kinds of things and we would talk and he would reassure me about the appearance of what I have been striving for and waiting for lifetimes but... as I've mentioned several times before, the divine has his or her own sense of time. He would counsel me on procedure and also let me know that I was being looked out for and not to concern myself with that. In any case, the top hat and tails was a riot and of course he had all kinds of jokes that would crack me up. Sometimes at the tail end of a K session, as I lay in bed, the divine shows up as a stand-up comedian and might have a straight man or two around and I start laughing so hard in my bed for some time that sometimes I can barely catch my breath. I need to communicate to you the humanness of the divine in his/her relationship with us. The divine, in all likelihood will not appear to you as he/she does to me but there will be similarities.

The technique I gave out yesterday is not something you do for the rest of your life, although you can, do it right and the rest of your life could go on forever. It is not necessary to snort, so that things expel from your nose. I can do it all day long without that happening. It's just short bursts of breath, which are like unto a hand pushing something or someone through a door. It is necessary to do this until you gain emptiness and that may not even take a long time for some of you. It's at that point that you always focus on the divine and the presence of the divine and open to it in whatever way suits you best. You might have to bring yourself around to this state a few times but the divine will appear one way or another at some point and you will have the assurance of that connection. None of this contradicts what Homer was saying yesterday about loving everything as an extension of the divine. In fact it is all about this. This is not a philosophy. This is not a commitment to a particular practice for an extended period of time. Some of you are confused about what is going on here and quite possibly that is because I wasn't as clear as I could be. It could well be my fault, which doesn't mean what I am saying here is going to make it any better (grin). Should I encounter some of you I will also be glad to pass on a few other things that have been of benefit to me.

Look people, trouble is coming. You don't want any part of that. How do you avoid it? There are various ways and this is one of them. Nature abhors a vacuum. Once you push all the junk out of your head and your mind gets used to being in that state, someone is going to show. If you are calling out to your 'higher self', there's a good chance that will show up. It happened to me and I am not The Lone Ranger. Consider also that if you are headed (allegorically speaking) for a certain city for a certain reason, what you are after is not the only thing you will find there. There will be all kinds of variations on a theme and all kinds of possibilities, as is the case with the result of this practice and it is also one of the keys to telepathy as well. I'm giving this out because I'm not always going to be around. That's why I'm called Les Visible. Now there are those who don't care one way or another whether I am around or not and some who would prefer I left as soon as opportunity provides (grin). I can understand that, though why they come around here anyway is a bit of a mystery, well, not really.

Since I do not take myself seriously in terms of my personal importance, in relation to that which I find important, I can talk a certain way... because even if others don't understand where I am coming from all of the time, the divine does and that is all that counts because a lot of what gets said here are depth charges, for all of us, me included. I don't want to feel that I didn't leave you with useful things. They have proven useful to me. See this technique as a foyer of sorts that's all. It is an insistence on presence. Where you go from there, once the connection is made is something else. The key to anything of a higher nature has to do with the condition of your mind. If the contents of your mind are battling with the most desired occupant well, you got a problem and until you fix it, you got a problem.

Now, about diet and soybeans and all the rest of that, sure, diet requires a certain amount of attention and being informed. Meat is a corruption and it plugs you into certain things that I prefer to avoid and I don't eat what I wouldn't kill so that leaves me with fish at the moment. Meat corrupts in your system because of the much larger length of your intestines, as compared to that of an animal carnivore. The relative distance is significant. However, some people can assimilate this and some people need to continue at it for a time for various reasons. I just don't do it myself for very good reasons, one of them is all the animal, fear hormones. I don't need that but... there's a whole lot of reasons I don't need to get into at the moment.

The most critical thing to be aware of concerning diet is to bless your food and offer it to the divine and turn it into prasadam. This is a lot more important than organic vs commercially farmed or anything else. Yes, anything else is important but not nearly so much as offering the food to the divine and engaging in transubstantiation. I've eaten tofu for decades and it's been fine with me. You can find something wrong with anything if you want to and get bogged down in the details of this over that, until you don't know whether to shit or go blind. Bless your food and be filled with gratitude. Do this first and worry about the rest of it later. I'm aware of the intricacies that get mentioned here by a number of people. They just aren't important to me because the divine decides all those things for me. I'm a simple person and getting more so as there is less and less of me, thankfully. Bless your food.


End transmission.......

Visible sings: The eponymous Les Visible Music Album♫ Patterns ♫
'Patterns ' is track no. 10 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album

Lyrics (pops up)

The eponymous Les Visible Music Album


If you get the idea that you would like to get together in the deeper southwest in a month or two, let me know or make it known at www.les-visible.com and we'll see about it.

There will be a radio show Sunday night as usual, I'm going to get right on that because I'll be gone tomorrow. Erik the Good will be posting your comments during my absinthe (grin) so don't be shy. Have a good day and I'll see you next week, if there is one.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Highest Position is to be a Tool.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

A lot of people want to be proactive, engaged, involved, doing good works, somehow, someway, somewhere. People want to make a difference, act out in the world and have an effect on the conditions that we find ourselves in and that many another seems completely lost in, the key thought there is to 'find ourselves'. Maybe that should be the focus, period; finding ourselves. Presently, all of us are operating with some version of what we imagine we are and what composes us. This is the OS and avatar we bring to the particular reality world that we consider to be real. This is whatever it is, at whatever level it is at, that affects and is affected by the bump and grind of the Grand Guignol, strip tease show. We're in the audience. We're serving drinks. We're working in the kitchen or doing security at the front door. We're working on the performers in the back. We play in the band. We are the MC or we're doing the dance on the stage or the mirrored tables and runways where you can see the private parts or simply observe them in their mirror image if you are shy. Don't lose the mystery of it all though because that is the main enjoyment feature of the whole shebang. Once the mystery is gone you'd better be looking elsewhere and soon will in any case. That begs the question; “How much mystery is there in a strip tease parlor”?

A great scientist from former times said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind”. Some of us learned what we think we know at schools of one sort or another, some of us learned it as 'on the job training' and some of us did both. Some of us didn't learn anything in school but got papers to indicate that we did and then we went on to become experts in the field because those are the only experts being entertained these days in positions of power and influence. It begs the question of, “Is that the kind of expert you want to be”? There's no shortage of candidates so you won't be missed if you demur.

What this all comes down to is that if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself. The world then changes automatically. Here's an example that anyone who meditates will be aware of. Meditation, prior to setting out on your day, once you have progressed to a particular groove so that you would notice, has a pretty amazing tendency to elevate you above the roll and tumble of ordinary engagement. Let's say that, for whatever reason, you miss your meditation on a given day, all of a sudden you notice that conditions have reverted to something less than what you have become used to. Things don't go as well as they had been going. Continue to miss your meditations and your mindset integrates at a certain level and stays there, until trauma or some unpleasant condition intrudes and shakes up your long or short running circumstance.

Meditation and other spiritual practice, alters your position and perception in respect of the world. Things improve and improve, depending upon how authentic and effective your practices are. You don't always notice the improvements. They are gradual. I remember driving up the Haleakala Highway on Maui one day. It's a very gradual incline when you are running from the turnout off on Hana Highway to Pukalani. After even a few miles, if you pull off of the highway by the side of the road and get out of the car, as I did, you find yourself amazed at how high up you are. It doesn't seem possible that it could happen. That is how meditation and companion spiritual practices work.

Think of your spiritual practices as being a kind of generator where the machinery transforms according to the continued use of it. The generator, the storage battery and other features morph in the process of application. The generator becomes more and more powerful. The regular battery turns into a marine battery. The other components upgrade automatically too. Soon there are two marine batteries because, components reproduce as well, if the need is there. This is how an ordinary human being one day becomes a star in the heavens and do not doubt that this occurs, given that it does occur over a very long time.

Here's an example of that; Lord Surya is the regent of The Sun. That is the name of The Sun King for perpetuity but various entities come and go under that name sake. Presently, the personage acting as Lord Surya is Vivasvan. He continues as the sun regent for around four hundred million years and then is replaced by the next person who has earned that position. You might think that is a long time. It's not. That's all relative. Consider The Amitabha Buddha who is known for having taken a vow to eschew enlightenment until every other sentient being has gone through the door before him. He engaged in many, many kalpas of austerity and varieties of effort to come to that place. There's more to the tale of The Amitabha but you can look that up on your own, if it interests you.

I'm trying to give you a feel for the level of commitment necessary to get certain places, which amount to no more than greater service. You can get to no place of greater service, nor can you be of any great service until you transform who you are. Can you accomplish this on your own? No. You have to have a teacher, a master, a guru, however your label that facility which makes this possible. You already have one who is, in most cases, unknown and invisible to you. You have to cry out within and do what you can on your own to attract such a one.

I was talking with someone on the phone last night about these things and I mentioned that angels circumnavigate the globe at all times; on the lookout for all sorts of things. If your eyes were unveiled you could see these angels. Imagery of this sort has been expressed in the art of Gustave Dore and others. When the love and aspiration in the heart of any seeker reaches a certain point it sends out a light that can be seen by these angels, or devas and they report back The One and they also trigger a sympathetic, magnetic vibration between the seeker and those who are prepared to help this seeker according to the special needs of that specific seeker. It is all perfectly organized and operated by representatives of a divine hierarchy. If you can't see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there. It is. I have personal proof of this, well beyond the point of personal doubt. In the end it is only ourselves that we need to convince (keep that in mind). Others are convinced on their own, simply by your example if you are authentic. Authenticity is born of integrity and integrity is born out of endurance and restraint. This may not be comprehensive but it will do.

Look at the greatest among us who ever walked here. They are all about service and sacrifice. Is this not so? Look at the life of Jesus Christ, The Buddha, Krishna and there are many lesser lights who have performed in similar fashion. Does this not mean that service and sacrifice are the highest order of divine and personal expression? Yes it does. What motivates these? Love does and, as you may have heard, God is Love. That is true. The highest expression of truth is Love, whereas, the highest expression of Love is service and sacrifice. Love is eternal and immortal and so are those who are employed on its behalf.

There is no greater calling than to be useful. The highest position is to be a tool. Note that all true servants of The One are at pains to say that they do nothing by themselves. This is because it is true. Some might be a little confused about Buddha in this regard. Keep in mind that Buddha is the mind and Christ is the heart. When the heart swallows the mind you have wisdom and understanding; the twin highest goalposts just below the ineffable. I take nothing away from Buddha in respect of anything I have said here. There's more to all of it than can be said and there always will be, which is why you need a teacher. You need to make the acquaintance of one connected to The One.

Many trustfunders, dilettantes and the like, travel all over the world, seeking one teacher after another. We call them guru whores. One might think they have the advantage, being either financially stable or gifted at living off of those who are but one finds the real thing based on the sincerity of their heart and that can be accomplished wherever you are. You only have to travel inwardly to make contact and I assure you that is possible and guaranteed, dependent on your enthusiasm and realization that nothing is more important and... nothing is. There is no real enjoyment or value to be found in the world, unless you know how to enjoy and measure value to begin with.

I'm not suggesting that people with money cannot make the grade; anything but. I've nothing against wealthy people or money; that's their karma and they earned it, or were cursed with it, as you prefer and as individual conditions may show. I'm just saying that you don't need it to accomplish this. Famous, wealthy and powerful people all maintain the illusion that they have something you don't. That's not so except in a certain negative context. Who is the most famous, richest and powerful of all? That would be the divine. The divine can transfer and apportion any part of itself to anyone at any time, for whatever the reason may be. Whatever it is that you think you want, there is no better font of resource than the divine. Make the understanding of this your reality. Move through your life as if the divine accompanies you everywhere you go and is alive within and without you. At some point this will become true in some indescribably remarkable ways.

Wherever you are, the highway presents itself in all directions, How can you chose a course without a guide? Isn't the best way to get anywhere, to follow someone who has been there and back?

I'll end this with a comment recently left by my good friend Homer at The Hare Krishna poem at streams of consciousness blog. I'm not saying you should become a member of this group. That may not be your path. I am not a member in the temporal sense. What I am saying is that you should see the wisdom in what follows;


Mr. Faill: If we don't make the most of this life, do we get a second chance, in another life?

Srila Prabhupada: Yes. According to your desires at the time of death, you get another body. That body is not guaranteed to be a human body, however. As I've already explained, there are 8,400,000 different forms of life. You can enter any of them, according to your mental condition at death. What we think of at the time of death depends on how we act during our life.

As long as we are in material consciousness, our actions are under the control of the material nature, which is being conducted in three modes: goodness, passion, and ignorance. These modes are like the three basic colors--yellow, red, and blue. Just as one can mix red, yellow, and blue to produce millions of colors, the modes of nature are being mixed to produce many varieties of life. To stop the repetition of birth and death in different forms of life, we must transcend the covering of material nature and come to the platform of pure consciousness. But if we do not learn the transcendental science of Krsna consciousness, then at death we must transfer to another body, either better or worse than our present one.

If we cultivate the mode of goodness, then we are promoted to the higher planetary system, where there is a better standard of life. If we cultivate the mode of passion, then we will remain at the present stage. But if out of ignorance we commit sinful activities and violate nature's laws, then we will be degraded to animal or plant life. Then again we must evolve to the human form, a process that may take millions of years.

Therefore a human being must be responsible. He must take advantage of the rare opportunity of human life by understanding his relationship with God and acting accordingly. Then he can get out of the cycle of birth and death in different forms of life and go back home, back to Godhead.



End Transmission.......

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Ruminations on Nature and Ourselves

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet (R.I.P. Silky Lilly Nelson 11/11/11)

In my recent Smoking Mirrors of 11/11/11, I placed an obit reference as seen above, to the loss of our first and oldest dog, Silky Lilly Nelson and a possibly abstruse comment referring to it in the following text. It passed by without generating a comment by any of the readers. That's fine. I simply mention it in passing. Lilly was a great teacher to me and many a time on our walks (I would take her out alone) she was instrumental in bringing about a conversation between me and the angel that the divine uses to communicate with me. Some of the lessons were profound and had archetypal significance. Susanne was temporarily devastated by the loss. Lilly meant a great deal to her. Pets represent the subconscious and are one of the mechanisms that the ineffable uses to communicate with us. Everyone who has a pet is aware of this feature in one way or another.

It was evident to us that Lilly was on her way back to The Devic Realm. Lord Ganesh is the ruler of that kingdom. I had some talks with him about receiving her and that was yet one more teaching experience for me. I recognize that there are probably any number of people who think I'm a tad looney for carrying on conversations with my invisible friends but it's as real as real can be for me and has been for some time. That is just the course my life has taken and it is an option that is open for all of us who choose to take the trouble and make the effort to establish contact. The historical record is filled with individuals who have engaged in dialogue with the higher ups. You don't need temporal credentials or high born parents to achieve this. It's not an exclusive club, where membership is determined by the usual criteria we see down here; actually quite the reverse. All it takes is effort and sincerity. As I have mentioned in the past, it is like priming a pump. If you are familiar with the pumps, that used to provide water for homesteads in older times, then you are familiar with its primary above ground instrument; an extended arm that you pump up and down. No water comes at first but you just keep pumping. Then, dirty, discolored water will begin to appear. As you continue, the water will eventually run clean and clear and then you can take your hand off of it and the water will continue to run on its own. There is nothing more to any of it than that. If you are persistent, you will make contact.

I don't take any credit for being able to do this. It doesn't make me special among my fellows in any way. I had no choice. My life was so difficult and hard for so long that I had nowhere else to go. It just happened by default, given that all other doors were closed. Whatever we have is a gifting from the supreme lover. Our part in it might even be completely incidental but I suspect our response of enthusiasm and tenacity play an important part. Then there is the testing. Most people aren't determined and sincere enough to keep at it regardless of the trials and lack of initial success. Far more people pick up the guitar than learn to play it and the same can be said for anything. I just wanted this more than anything else and it is available to anyone who does. The divine used Lilly in our lives and our lives were made richer by her presence. She had to take those heart tablets that so many dogs require because of heart-worm, so we knew her days would be shorter than normal and they were. Toward the end she was taking a great many water tablets and that came with its own complications. Then she had that same coughing that eventually took Bessie the Hoover from us. She was so named because she was like a vacuum cleaner when she covered the surface of the floor looking for dropped food or whatever.

These are the things you deal with when your dogs are all recovered from the streets or from kennels. People who have been coming here for awhile will remember when I found The Little Guy in an olive grove in Italy. It had been raining and I saw this bedraggled little creature who was moving through the undergrowth. At first I thought it was following this old man with an umbrella, who was a little ahead of him but The Little Guy couldn't even make it up on to the sidewalk. Part of me thought to drive by but the other part of me wasn't going to allow that. There was no doubt in my mind that he was not going to last very long in a relatively indifferent landscape, where people toss their dogs on to the streets without an after thought when they tire of them. I took him home and cleaned him up and he was a lot of fun. A few weeks into his residence, I was sitting by one of the woodstoves and wondering what happened to one of my work gloves. I said it aloud. The Little Guy disappeared into another room and came out with my glove in his mouth. Consonant with that my jaw dropped. We found a fantastic home for The Little Guy, with a dog trainer and they love him so much. They even had a small book published, detailing the adventures of his arrival and time with them and gave us a copy, which brought both of us to tears. Now we hear that some kind of black stuff is coming out of his ears and they don't know what is happening. The doctors say he should be in terrible pain but he just acts normal. They've spent a lot of money trying to find a fix and have now turned to Ayurveda and are hopeful that all will be well. I am hopeful too but... such is life. Life has a dark companion we don't like to talk about and a sidekick called Loss that attends him wherever he goes.

A Jyotish astrologer told me I should be wearing emeralds and diamonds close to my skin (grin). He's been pretty spot on about everything. I laughed and said, “Sure, I've got plenty of those lying around”. I don't wear jewelry anyway but... a couple of weeks ago I found a piece of costume metal jewelry; a wide metal bracelet that kind of resembles the Native American work you see in the Southwest. It's green and gold and I said, “Well, let's see”. Strangely enough it comforted me. A few days ago I noticed it was no longer on my wrist and I thought, “Huh”? I looked around for it but couldn't find it. The night after Lilly passed, Susanne went down to take the dogs outside. When she came in she had left Poncho outside (she does that a lot-grin). So she went to let him back in and I heard her call, “Visible! You have to come here”. Then she said “Wait”. Then she came up and handed me the bracelet. She said, “Poncho just came in with this in his mouth. He wouldn't give it to me but went and laid it on his bed”. His bed is at a landing on the stairs coming up to where I was. He left it there and Susanne picked it up and brought it to me; shades of the glove. Events like this have become commonplace. I find myself saying “God is Great” many times a day. The degree of smooth running these days is off the charts. I wouldn't know where to begin to describe what my days are like recently. It all has a 'too good to be true' aura about it. The one I speak with told me, “Get used to it. You haven't seen anything yet. You have no idea”. I'd like to say this is very comforting but it is scary too. When you juxtapose it with the way my life has been in former times, it can be hair raising; if I had any hair.

A certain and very small quadrant of anonymous types have been at work lately in an effort to misrepresent and diminish me in various ways. Certain blog postings have been sent to me where people are complaining that I don't say the word, “Jew”. Well, of course I do. I just don't hate them entirely, like they wish I did but my life experience proves otherwise and I have to go with that. Some are objecting that I have a donate button on my site. Some are complaining that I am publishing books and might actually be making some money, overlooking the fact that I already set it up so that a significant portion of anything I make goes to others. Some are objecting to the spiritual angle because the spiritual world is bullshit, according to them and it might be true for them as well. I don't have all the details on how that works out. I do know that I personally possess very little in material terms but no one can or should argue in their own defense, when the intent of those attacking them aren't based on rational or evidence based arguments. To argue is to lose. Let the evidence speak for itself. In time it certainly will. Things like this come with the territory and wouldn't even happen if the divine didn't permit it so... there's a reason for all that and I suspect it is just another case of the divine checking to see what I will do about it. Nothing, I think, is my considered response. When I start driving Rolls Royces and flying in private planes, I'll take these criticisms under advisement. For the moment, I think I'll just sail on with the cosmic wind at my back, or find out otherwise.

The key to all of this is whether one is affected by any of it. The key to that is to hold only one opinion of being of any importance and that opinion is generated by the one who has everything under control at all times. People are very angry these days and the irony of those complaining about one not bringing water to people in the desert, or on the spot, physically feeding starving children is that they aren't doing it themselves. My position has always been that those so engaged are not having the time to criticize those they imagine are not working alongside them. They are too busy doing it. We are called to different things. The key is to be of service somehow in some way. Some of us bring things to people's attention and that improves the world if these things awaken useful understandings. Some of us donate our money. Some of us donate our effort to improve the lives of others in the necessary environments. Some of us protest and march against injustice. We all serve or do not serve, according to what does or does not motivate us. Accusations are one thing. Literal proof is quite another. Base emotions of jealousy on the one hand and a sense of non inclusiveness are generally at the heart of these things.

Many of those enraged are enraged at their own sense of impotence because they equate success and the positions they desire for themselves with a badly concealed desire for self promotion and the fulfillment of self interest. When they don't get it they scoff at those who do. Anyone can succeed at anything if Love motivates their efforts. Anyone can succeed in the marketplace and the newspapers if they are willing to pay the cost and many of them don't count the cost at all. The reality of the cost has yet to present itself. To quote an old Arab proverb, “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on”. Time and destiny will reveal the truth about all of us; what we did and what we didn't do, what we were publicly and privately. The past will accuse us. The present will reveal us and the future will judge us. There is no escaping this. It will come to each and everyone of us and most of us will be forgotten as if we never were for reasons that should be obvious but often are not.

This is another reason that I am at pains to say, “I don't know”. The contradiction here is that sometimes I indicate that I do know but contradiction is inherent in conversation. Then again, both may be true at different times or even in the same time. Some people want to understand and some do not and we have no control over that. We are supremely lucky if we even have some control over ourselves. Time and the river will sort us out and crush us or elevate us for whatever good or following ill it happens for. I like to think about it in terms of baseball, which I played for many years. If you can hear the noise of the crowd and opposing fans, you will not be able to fully concentrate on the ball. We used to call that 'rabbit ears'. It's not a good thing to have and if you are certain of your course you won't have that condition, on the field or in your life. It's not in our hands and never was.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: Almost A Capella by Les Visible♫ Brotherhood ♫
'Brotherhood' is track no. 9 of 12 on Visible's 2007 album 'Almost A Capella'
Lyrics (pops up)

Almost A Capella by Les Visible


There will be a radio show tonight.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Lost in the Libraries of the Dead

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

Scoffers are a dime a dozen and in an age of doubt and materialism they attach themselves to the ships of our industry and aspiration like barnacles, which they resemble in more ways than one. There is a very interesting quote in The New Testament that states, “faith is THE SUBSTANCE of things UNSEEN”. That goes along with the idea of precipitation. Everything that we have on this planet. All of the items and environments are the result of precipitation, which first emerges on the plane of ideas, moves then into the plane of plans and blueprints, then into the formative plane of action and construction and then the next step is the thing itself. We all engage in this in our own lives, individually and collectively and bring about conditions and situations for which we are altogether responsible. There's nothing wrong with the magic. It's the magicians that are the problem.

Depending on the connection established by the practitioner and the aggregate of virtues in the practitioners possession, on that the speed of actual manifestation depends. There are some among us, very few, who can do these things in a very short time. It's like when you see a portion of a film speeded up to show the progression of a day in a minute, via the change from light to darkness, the clouds whipping across the sky, or the cars moving so fast they are only blurs. The rest of us have to operate in degrees of real time or even less and quite often don't get what we visualized in the first place for a variety of reasons. I don't get into the applied end of this because I figure I'm going to get what I am supposed to, via the cosmic visualizer, so I visualize that.

The practice of visualization and applied magics are something I may or may not have engaged in in former times, with or without some form of success. Very few of us are called to operate with oversight in these areas and when we imagine we are called we are, more often than not, used as object lessons, primarily for ourselves. I've given a great deal of time and study to this field of endeavor and not just in this lifetime. I'm more of the Bhakti infused, Allah Akbar school, with no particular denomination because all religions are constructs built upon what can't be comprehensive ever. The time comes when the road appears that moves into the mysterious and the door closes behind you, although your footprints might remain, if that makes any kind of sense.

If one does not have faith in god and seek god's advice and direction, one is certain of getting lost and will become more lost and stay lost until one comes to such a state of desperation that they have no choice but to call out to God and then, depending on the circumstances, it can be a long walk home for the prodigal. Prudence insists that one does not come to such a pass, although it is my considered belief that all of us become lost at some point because God likes to play hide and seek. The whole point of existence in the first place is this. God separates into everything in existence and then, through the time continuum, goes about collecting it all back into the ineffable. It is the very lucky, fortunate for god's own reasons, or wise who get it in gear the moment the understanding comes upon them to meet the master halfway. One part of the divine is the manifest plane, including those portions hidden from the sensory operative eye. One part of the divine manifests as living things and one part of the divine remains apart. This description is more simplistic that it really is but it will do for the benefit of those actually interested in truth, however relative is may be at the level we are operating at here.

A great teacher told me that you must ask God for his qualities. He also said, “get wisdom, steal it if you have to”. The new age pundits and marketplace aficionados are all about how we can do all of these things on our own. It might look like that but that would only be for the purpose of demonstration to the effect that it is not true. You get lost and have to wander through the libraries of the dead searching for what isn't on the shelves. It is the library of the dead anyway, isn't it? I seem to remember something about 'search for me among the living' and 'let the dead bury the dead'. We've heard these quotes so many times over the years, when we were so many different people that we don't consider that they might mean something deeper and more revealing than what we used to get back when we were more into concealing. This is a primary consideration that ought to be near number one on everyone's list of things to consider; 'what am I hiding from myself'? This gains a super nova importance in the time of The Apocalypse, when uncovering and revealing becomes a cosmic dynamic instead of an occasional personal epiphany. Everywhere is potentially the road to Damascus these days, if you happen to be in the mood.

I'm not saying that the other paths are not effective, through time they have proven to be, in other times. These are not those times. Whatever you need from those other paths is automatically conferred as the result of awakened Love, which contains all of these things within it. This is just my take on it as it has been transmitted to me and that's all dependent on how close to the tap I am. We're all closer to that tap than we think but we don't accept that and operate as if it were true. Faith is required because we can't see it and that is the plane that scoffers operate out of. If they can't see it it isn't there. Obviously they haven't studied the frequency of rays and what they do, or any number of 'in your face' realities that can't be seen but actually can be seen by relationship to the seen and by inference accordingly. However, if you don't want to see then you won't, unless, of course, you are in the time of The Apocalypse, when you will see whether you like it or not and if you don't like it you aren't going to like it. If you do, it's going to be a wonderful thing, exponentially firing on all cylinders.

We don't only have believers and scoffers. We have the indifferent and the specifically obsessed with any one of the numerous distractions that have appeared in this time for that very purpose. Essentially we are engaged in a war for souls and The Synagogue of Satan has its preeminent power of the moment to work at effecting the downward pull of the DE-evolutionary spiral. That's why their control is so great in all of the areas that affect the senses for the purpose of misinformation, lies and the arousal of dark passions. As I have been at pains to state, this does not include everyone from any particular genetic code; especially so, since these malefics are not even representative of the code they present themselves as but are like a masking virus, such as we have seen appear in recent times; nor are even all of them representative, which makes for a sticky wicket in terms of sorting them out, which is not my job in any case; let God sort them out; to borrow a portion of a quote from times past.

The ill-doers hide among the clueless, whom they arouse in their own defense, while they practice their arts surrounded by human shields. The truth is concealed in the midst of ancient lies that have endured through the length of an age or more but the truth has its own way of exposing itself to the righteous seeker, once the motive has reached the level necessary to ignite the process. The whole process is effected by the angel in charge of it. The job of angels is to engage in the varieties of the expression of the will of the divine. They are extension of the divine, which they represent. They come from The Devic Realm. Devas are angels. You hear people talking about wanting to be angels and obviously they are unfamiliar with the higher destiny of the human being. The Devic Realm is a great place to visit but you don't want to stay there, given what is possible for you.

The amount of what we can discover on our own is very limited. The amount we can discover through the intuitive connection is without limit. The amount we can accomplish on our own is very limited. What we can accomplish under the aegis of the angelic extensions is without limit. You've heard it said that none of us have seen god at any time and that is because mortal eyes cannot perceive it. It's kind of like you can only see so much as you are now but there is no telling what you might see when you no longer are as you were, once you become what you are and you can't get there on your own. It's something that descends when the right part of you rises; possibly the way yeast operates for all I know.

We've been wandering all around the point today and that is because the point can't be expressed in words. It can only be inferred. The good news is that the historical record tells you that incredible individuals have walked here. You have the record of what they said. You have the record of what they did and whether it is analogy or fables, it indicates something. The symmetry of the cosmos indicates something . The urgings of your own heart indicates something . The strange coincidences, ironies and moments of inexplicable protection indicates something. Everything indicates something if you are in the mood to have it presented to you and if you are in the mood to comprehend it. Nothing indicates anything otherwise, except blind faith and random occurrence, regardless of how untrue it may actually be. It looks real to the people that believe in it and the ease of belief in the seen is far greater than the demands of belief in the unseen, especially when it is tested for the purpose of increasing the faith so that you can get into the position to reap the substance of things unseen.

Some portion of this is true, insofar as it can be relatively inferred. Some portion of this may or may not be true but still indicates something that is as true as your capacity to believe in it and some of this may well be nonsense but that is the totality of what you get from the world itself in its adapted form.


End Transmission.......

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

God in Country by Les Visible

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Life's on Base Percentages

Dog Poet Transmitting........

May your noses always be cold and wet.

I seem to be caught between two worlds and I am guessing that is the case with most of you. The two worlds are The World of the Last Gasp and The Morning of the World. The first world is a world of apprehension and pending loss of all the things never fully enjoyed or understood and the second world is a world of all things new and neither yet enjoyed or in a position to be understood. It's pretty much how I feel like I have experienced my life up to this point, with one foot in the world we all appear to be moving around in and one foot in a world unseen, or possibly one foot in the profane and one foot in the sacred, which I think is the situation for any poet whose poetry commences in one place and then appears in the other. There are any number of poetic types running around though I wouldn't consider most of them to be poets, according to my definition. I see poetry as a gift of the presence of a particular muse who chooses her residence according to certain mysterious criteria and who comes and goes according to the presence or departure of the same.

I harken back to the ancient Greek understandings of these things and the analogies, metaphors and myths of this tradition suit me just fine. When I was very young, I remember reading Edith Hamilton's, Mythology and Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. She was a very interesting woman with the perfect early environment and a first class education. Around this time, I was also reading Richard Halliburton’s, Book of Marvels. I guess I was about 12 years old. My reading was over a pretty wide range, including many biographies of noted early Americans and then a lot of escapist literature like Tom Swift and the books of Twain and Poe as well as most of the classical novelists of previous centuries. I had the complete collection of Classics Illustrated comics so I read a great many novels that way and don't feel like I missed much. It was sort of an early Cliff Notes introduction to great literature and it gave me primers for what I would later read in the full format.

My childhood was a pretty brutal affair so I escaped into books and sports. Upon reflection I have to say that being captive in such a terrible and relentless state of being, in a world of applied abuse, had its benefits and has paid off in time in many ways. I would have given most anything to trade my life for something more harmonious and human but I don't see it that way now. Once I had gotten away and on my own I met a lot of people who had wonderful parents and nearly all of them lacked spine, focus and endurance. There's a lot to consider concerning this and I'll leave it to the reader to see where their thoughts and speculations take them. None of these people have accomplished very much since, though there are one or two exceptions.

It's my considered opinion, based on experience and observation that those who have an easy time of it early in life have a hard time later on and the reverse also seems to be true. Of course, much of this rests on one's faith in the invisible and a proper relationship with and understanding of it. It's true that we can't comprehend it but it is possible to comprehend ourselves according to it. We hear a lot of things but real meaning is a personal affair and I sometimes think that one is most perfectly adjusted and related to everything based on ones full awareness that they don't know anything.

One of the biggest drawbacks to a more successful integration with life is to have some idea of your own level in respect of everything. Some number of us want to walk out of the world and live in some kind of Hermetic bubble and then again, don't even know what 'outside the world' actually means. I think it's fine to long for it and leave the details to the ineffable, as it guides us toward our particular destiny. Some of us want to succeed in the world and don't know what success is, so we make arrangements with our minds to bullshit ourselves into a workable rationale for what we do. This means rationalizing all kinds of things and possibly winding up like one of those new age fools who parrot whatever for expediency and profit and wind up with neither, insofar as real expediency and profit are to be understood.

People generally do not understand the perils and burdens of things like fame, wealth, personal power and all the things that seem so attractive and especially so in Kali Yuga which is designed to cause these states to be very difficult and not worth the effort because of where the effort leaves you in the context of the times. Some of us are meant to have more and some less and that doesn't mean you are necessarily being rewarded and valued more than others, because every state of being is attended by lessons having to do with being in that state. The best condition of possession and ownership is that of stewardship. It's there for awhile or longer but it never really belongs to you. It's there to see what you do with it.

As I have said over and over, life and the situations and circumstances caused in the existence of each and every one of us is only for the purpose of demonstration. No one wants to wind up an example of things done wrong and very few of us goes into anything with an awareness of this. We discover it on the backend, where we are also gifted with 20-20 hindsight. We are all competent Monday morning quarterbacks and experts after the fact. You can read these words and intuit that they are implicitly true but still not register the reality of it. We travel along knowing that this is so but continue to behave as if it were not. This is something we should think about and not on the backend when we could well wind up thinking of nothing else.

I do dumb things on a regular basis. The good news is that I do them with a lot less frequency. It's good to keep in mind that even our best intentions are useless if the ineffable makes us screw up for it's own purposes and this does happen. It's why the qualities of surrender, faith and compassion are so important. We get put through things for a very good reason and we are compelled to act wrongly on occasion for no other reason than to show us the meaning of our actions and to spare us a more critical and unfortunate demonstration further up the road.

People have a concept of God that is all about rigid right and wrong and inaccessible morality that we can't achieve or maintain. We seldom think of God the comedian; God the trickster, God the snare setter, God the uptown player or so many of the roles and dimensions of that which exists beyond our comprehension but we go right on putting limits on it and succeed in limiting what it can perform in our lives. We encounter misfortune and so label it when it isn't misfortune. We encounter good fortune and so label it when it isn't good fortune. This is why knowing that you don't know is so very important. We imagine that God is only looking at us some of the time because we are only thinking about God some of the time and God is looking at us and aware of us to a degree far beyond what we are able to be aware of all of the time. God is intimately present in our lives all of the time and realizing that is a key to some incredible possibilities. We are pretty much dumb shits all of the time but hardly see that even a little of the time.

The ordinary humans relationship with the divine is anthropomorphic. Basically what it is is you turn God into a big idiot. It is something to keep in mind that you are working with a mirroring situation and that should tell you a lot more than it usually tells people who hear it but don't get it, ignore it but can't avoid it and who nod their heads and don't digest it. It's also good to keep in mind what happens when you leave a mirror out in the open and after awhile it becomes covered with dust so that you can't see into it. Five hundred tons of dust lands on the Earth every day. It's something to think about but we just go on moving through time and circumstances and environments, without registering them and certainly not registering what exists behind the appearance of them.

My life just gets easier and easier and I find that difficult to accept while I'm looking at one shoe on the floor and wondering where the other one is (grin). Lately the synchronicity, coincidence and surprise factor have been off the charts. That implies I'm also not operating in any mapped out areas. Certain longstanding limitations and shortcomings attend me but since I now know they are in place for a reason, a good reason and there for the purpose of demonstration, I'm not overly discomfited. I can sense the resonance of atavistic paranoia and the general apprehension that comes with all of the too good to be true moments in life but... once again, it's all for a very good reason and I don't have to know what that is, like I would in any case.

One thing for sure, we have to keep our eye on the ball or we're not going to be successful in the game and it is a game. It's also a joke, given the eternal contradictions and it's a movie where not effectively playing your part, which is another way of keeping your eye on the ball, results in imperfect results and a possible strikeout as well. You have to get on base if you want to make it home. You could hit a home run and you wouldn't need collaboration or the assistance of team mates but often enough, we have to rely on each other to accomplish our ends and that's not such a bad thing for more reasons than I need to go into.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ Just Like a River ♫
'Just Like a River' is track no. 9 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible