What's Going On? And What Can be Done?

Odds are, the Salvation Army Christmas bell ringer under a flag that reads Sharing Is Caring, whose silver bell is legendary now, is never going to understand his own role in the big rip off even with his hand in the cookie jar. So, forget it that a banker or a dentist or a shoe salesman will ever see through the veil he hides behind. And the protest singer who dreams of a better day financially is not likely to hear his own song and fall down on his knees and admit his complicity in the crime he sees others committing. The only difference between the victim and the culprit today is the victim is feeling the pinch of his political world at the moment and it hurts. Take away his pain and he will protest on demand in the manner prescribed by his doctor or not at all. For example, the farmer whose land is restored to him is a born again patriot overnight with no patience for whiners. An environmentalist today is one who will go to any length to keep filth out of his habitat and never notices he enjoys a habitat when others have no place at all. Every bit of the foregoing is free of politics but you will not believe me. We are all Mister Jones in the singer's lament. No matter you clearly see the crooked deal going down there will be no change in your lifetime or mine and the singer will keep on saying, You don't know what it is that is going on, do you, Mister Jones?

We all live off the war.

So, in 1969 I was told this very thing. I wanted to change things. I found I could not. No system has ever been changed from within the system. No political action brings real change. I suggest this: an outsider be. However, since you are a product of the system you wish to see change, it will require a complete letting go of all you hold dear. Notice please how the only requirement to become an outsider is to cease everything. There is nothing to be done. Just clean up and stop aggravating the wound. Let nature handle the rest. You are actually a good person if you only knew yourself. In my own experience, when a person stops what he has been doing he attracts unconditional love from others and an epidemic of love erupts. A fountain is discovered that has always been here. Life takes on new meaning. Prosperity happens with abundance for all who are free of any system. (Life is not a system.)

Now, the above, too, is free of all politics and you still will not believe me. A picture has been drawn this way-

to have love you must lose love

to have wealth you must lose wealth

to have life you must lose it

This is so, for you hold the false so tightly to your bosom you do not know what love, wealth nor life happen truly to be. Give away all you have and come and follow me was never meant to be heard as give away your holdings and come be poor, wretched, and miserable with me. Oh, no. Not that. This paragraph, too, is free of all politics and you still will not believe me.

A rich man according to the world's measuring cannot enter the Kingdom of God. There. You have it. And, this, too, is free of all politics and still you will not believe me.

There is nothing can be done.

A Poem to Mystery

(whoever is that)

Mister Wordsworth writ a poem

to impress I no not who'm

but I know not who'm

has lately read a finer poem.

He told how he can no longer see

what he once saw when he was three.

In another he wrote it that

a child is father

to every grown-up cat.

There's a mystery within that!

Standin' Around

I was standin' around when someone asked me what I do. Me? I do not give talks to groups of people is all. And, I do that by invitation only, says I. For some reason they sent me an invitation. So, here I am.
To me, it looks like we are all standing in a huge circle on the lip of a gigantic abyss of darkness and we never even mention that abyss exists. But we know. And it is awkward to say the least to stand like this at the edge of solid earth before a gaping abyss of total darkness hoping of course not to fall into its scary mouth but not mentioning it to anyone, not even ourselves, that it is here. Right here where we stand.
But, I, naturally, being myself, am not going to discuss it with you since I do not make talks to groups and I do that by invitation only. However, upon actual receipt of the invitation, it came to my attention that to refuse the invitation would amount to an agreement to appear and make a talk to a group of people which I do not do and do that by invitation only. You know...to refuse an invitation not to make a talk can be an interpreted as an acceptance of an invitation to make one...This was a problem. I lost my balance became weak and staggered, mewling, and puking my guts out.
It was at that moment I became fully aware again of that dark abyss we are all standing in a circle around for it appeared before me so dramatically and frightened me so I fell into it...and, do you know what? That abyss is .........
that abyss is.....
believe it or not that abyss is....
Love.
Good night. Thank you for listening to my explanation and I hope it straightens out the matter of my appearance here. That is all. Good night again. 

Godliness

It has come to be for me that the term God is a symbol for a phenomenon in the nature of a living experience. The feeling is best described by me as wholeness. I mean a real experience of being complete. It is a feeling inside the body who was taught to call itself me or I (as some imaginary entity that could be held responsible for any errant behavior on the part of the body in question and correspondingly praised for conduct approved of by other imaginary personalities with names). All of which is to realty's dismay at the blatant and unacceptable mistreatment of its handiwork. And what happens is to be rediscovered by everyone who is born.

By the time I was seven, it came to be that I was actually two imaginary creatures co-existing inside the body aforementioned. And these two were at odds. There arose a war that lasted for many years up to the age of forty. One of the two was the good guy respected by the society of other divided goons. The other was a bad guy who would brook no rules and caused mayhem amidst the goon world. A way to describe the nature of goon world is to label it a political world. And whosoever upsets the political world without ceasing shall find peace and inherit the Earth.

A trick that went unnoticed was that the bad guy was a label (imaginary) for the actual essence of the being that is beheld as my aforementioned body. It has been called the Shadow Side. This the first act of evil on the Planet Earth. And the liar had dressed itself up as God Imagined. The Phenomenon of Wholeness would not divide its own world or what is wholeness for? All the other goons blamed a snake. This the second act of evil (and actually it amounts to the same act of evil as the first and so there is a single evil afoot). At this, Wholeness flew out the window. Or, did it? It has arisen and probably never left the body. Probably never died. Probably never shall die. Wholeness the phenomenon, that is. The Ungraspable Phantom it is in the body of a whale and a boy and a girl and a goldfish even. A rock? Water? Fire? Air?

A word about forgiveness then. It was a surprise to discover again that this term is not at all a performance between a superior being and an inferior being who has become remorseful enough to bow and scrape before its god and beg to be given a pass to heaven. It is a matter rather of realizing the wholeness within a being and correspondingly existent within all beings, and a simple Oh, my….

That is my experience. I am seventy now. But what is a number attached to a body to me? Wholeness, I mean. After all...

LOST ALREADY

What is the forgotten language Thomas Wolfe sought to find again, in order truly to go home again? Do you ever feel you have left something important behind in your rush to join into some celebration contrived by others before you to get you on their side of things? To get you speaking their language, thinking their thoughts, doing their waltz on promises never quite delivered? Sort of like an editor at a great publishing house using tricks to shape your beloved work into what can be sold for a profit measured by dollars? He lies to you about being a person dedicated to good books while castrating your wild newborn so it will never reproduce its particular line of sensational driftwood. Who has the figures to know what has been lost already?

Feel for one brief moment breathing in and out with beating heart look inward from a third eye opened by the gentlest touch of an index finger placed at a shallow groove just above the brow directly over the nose. Tap gently there ever so lightly keeping the other two eyes closed. The shadow within is the friend you have forgotten. The one with you in the crib who never left. Next, closing up the ears with the fat part of the thumbs, listen to an ocean that lies inside the protective skull from which a body is strung like an instrument for playing music to the bottom of the feet. If you have already named one, observe that you are a sort of tree with four branches that walks upon rather than being fastened within the earth. Observe it that you are a worm, if you have named one of those, with arms and legs. When you realize you are no big deal, notice how so many demons fall silent. When that has happened how do you feel now?

The Liberated Artist

One who is attached to no system and works not for money. One who works for the sheer joy of the work alone. One who trusts: nothing is plenty. One who believes that an artist is cared for by the unseen hand of love and mercy. There need be few of us to begin.

This is a program of attraction not promotion. Let us gather experience as a small group at first until we are certain we are ready to offer a plan to others. All that is required is a sincere effort in a direction to a place we have never been after jettisoning the baggage of all our tired, old ideas. In a hopeless condition, we are a group of men and women convinced we have nothing to lose.

Let someone take from you whatever you hold onto so you may be

without and penniless that you may thirst and hunger and so be

available to receive your treasure from within.

Is it not so that the meaning of the term Blue Moon is the revelation that our calendar is a false one …and that which we call moon knows it? So, if the calendar we order ourselves by is fake, what else is unreliable as well? Let it all- one by one- be taken in order that I may know the truth. Call me Ishmael. Beloved outcast. If you say it, it will be so.

Let someone take from you whatever you hold onto so you may be

without and penniless that you may thirst and hunger and so be

available to receive your treasure from within.

What were you born to hold? Do you know? Every relationship you have named and hold onto is false. Every role you play is false. Behold the stage! All the other players. My friends. My fellows. My comrades. My wife. My husband. My children. My cousin. My boss. My employee. My mother. My father. My God. My countryman. My associate. My brother. My enemy. My teacher. My student. My lover. My beloved.

Let someone take from you whatever you hold onto so you may be

without and penniless that you may thirst and hunger and so be

available to receive your treasure from within.

Do you even know how to be real for a second? A fraction of a second? Actor, do you remember being offstage? What were you carrying with you when you came to the first audition? Do you know the actor, as an actor? Who is it then who knows the actor? Who is that one? Let me introduce you. Actor, meet your true self. True self, meet the actor.

So, hand over all your precious holdings, the roles, and all the props. And walk away. Empty now. Leave the stage. Remove your mask. Leave the theatre. Go home. They are turning out the lights now. Go home, Actor. Actor, go home!

Truth contains space, space does not contain truth.  Truth contains time.  Time does not contain truth. In our striving way we make this mistake and search for truth in what is contained by truth.  It reminded me of the ancient story of four blind people who discover an elephant for the first time.  One has the tail, another holds the trunk.  The third has a leg .  The fourth has a tusk.  From their separate points of view (touch) they describe an elephant. All are incorrect, incomplete. The science we have been taught to worship is blind in the same way. Continually, it describes truth by studying its tail or its ear or its leg, etc. It struck me with a bang that an ancient man long ago knew what fools us today and his warnings ignored. But they have not disappeared altogether. In silent surrender is found truth and that is all that is found there and the only place it will be found. We are so fortunate it cannot be spoken nor written of.  Last night I was reading Moby-Dick and enjoying it as much as before.  Fascinated.  Here is one thing Ishmael said to me-

Yes-there is death in this business of whaling-a speechless quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then?  Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. page 66

glass art by shannon smith, costa rica

I just this morning discovered this song by Dylan that only appears on Basement tapes. Written in 1968. Nothing Was Delivered. It beats all. It is the song closest to truth ever. Jesus hisself would agree. It is little wonder the song has not been distributed widely. We would have to close up shop...all shops. Dylan ought to be awarded a prize for this song alone. 

Once Prem Rawat said:

Nothing good can come from technology.  He was young when the tech revolution began and he has all the toys and uses them.  He flies his own jet around the world many times every year. So, he might have something to deliver. And it's free! He added this: Good can come from only one place...the human heart.

sculpture by  Johnny Smith 2016

Nothing Was Delivered

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN 

Nothing was delivered
And I tell this truth to you
Not out of spite or anger
But simply because it’s true
Now, I hope you won’t object to this
Giving back all of what you owe
The fewer words you have to waste on this
The sooner you can go

Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take heed of this and get plenty of rest

Nothing was delivered
But I can’t say I sympathize
With what your fate is going to be
Yes, for telling all those lies
Now you must provide some answers
For what you sell has not been received
And the sooner you come up with them
The sooner you can leave

Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take heed of this and get plenty rest

(Now you know)
Nothing was delivered
And it’s up to you to say
Just what you had in mind
When you made ev’rybody pay
No, nothing was delivered
Yes, ’n’ someone must explain
That as long as it takes to do this
Then that’s how long that you’ll remain

Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take heed of this and get plenty rest

Copyright © 1968, 1975 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1996 by Dwarf Music

TAKE A LEAP

What partnership is worthy of its name? I see tee-shirts, caps, bumper stickers, logos, and slogans all over the place. Is that it?

A wedding ring? A house? Schools with excellent credential for your kids while others belong to a lower world? Activities? Opportunities to form ties with other kids? Team sports? If you look closely and find all of these to be empty promises made to trap you into a marketplace of fake shit will you go?

Ask this: is a real partner, one who will stand by me, going to wear a tee-shirt stating that with artwork? Can you tell real partnership as easily as two wolves meeting in the wild? Ever try to put a tee-shirt on a wolf?

Now, I now that people at large do seek with all their might to join with others in some common purpose and are willing to lay down the lives of their youngsters to serve that. It is obviously in us. We go to such incredible lengths to show it. Boys go out for football teams with completely arbitrary colors and flags and uniforms and bands and cheerleaders and stadium lights. Others try show business in every way imaginable. People with talent useful in some trendy new business field are hailed as champions, paid huge salaries, and given wads of capital by investors to startup a corporation and hire workers to join them as a team to make money. Why? Really? Why?

Is there one person on the planet now who is inclined even to find a life...find one... that exists for that very person since the beginning with no thought for tomorrow? After all, tomorrow creeps in its petty pace from day to death...

Can you imagine a wolf that cannot understand what matters most to it and follow it naturally? What made us decide to follow a contrived plan for life? And to prefer it? It is so entrenched now it is a wonder anyone can stop. Too late? Look, I am not comparing you to a wolf out of blindness. I know you are not a wolf. I am not a wolf. I am searching for a natural being, and we all were once just that...only that. The wolf is a metaphor.

Instead, think of some human being you know about or have heard about who you think may have been loyally following his of her own inner drummer all the way. Study that life. Like your own life depends upon it, study. If you cannot think of such a person, study the life of Woody Guthrie. You have to decide. Is it wise to allow myself to be advertised as a celebrity by a club of fools who do what they do for money? Is it wise to go to a doctor who practices medicine for money?

I am asking whether you believe you have an innate ability to discern from out of the crowd a person who serves no one else's agenda and to partner with such a person for an unknown journey day-by day?

What is certain is you will never know unless you take a leap.

Eye of the Heart which sees all directs this vessel

while the I of illusion muddling about

prepares for the next test

with half a brain

The Heart of the

Matter

It was suggested recently that one should examine one's heart. Just what could that entail? Who would it be who could examine my heart if not my heart itself? And if that is so why would my heart want to examine itself? Does anyone think his heart does not know itself? In speaking of a living person what could it mean to suggest there is more to him than his heart knows? I mean is not the heart the center of all experience? And is there some real part of me that lies somehow separate from the full experience of life? And talks to me a lot?

Ahh, it's an abstraction is it not? It is a metaphor separating me from my source reducing me to some list of characteristics to make of me manageable They call it education. The Salt of the Earth is a puppet while the speaker, an abstraction, is speaking of more abstractions as real people to feed illusion. So, it's bullshit! We listen to it so we must be crazy and “all the world's a fucking stage” like Shakespeare wrote it and you an actor with an employer and a director, also actors. Someone is playing Doctor.

It has been suggested that following any tragic episode one should take time to repair one's heart. Who is the heart repair man? I mean is someone even talking to me who is referring to some function that is not me and calling it my heart and meaning it belongs to me like a wrist watch? Does that make any sense to anybody else? And if it does and my wrist watch does break to whom do I take it to be repaired?

Let us presume for a moment that anyone who thinks he is other than the essence of being to be a nut case. And furthermore, anyone who speaks as someone other than the heart of himself is wacko; or, is undergoing hypnosis. When someone says, “My heart is broken”, doesn't he mean, “I am broken”? If I break who can repair me? That is what I am getting at. That is what I need to get at. Once there remain. Be who actually I am. Leave the stage. I bet you think I have to die to exit the stage a man named Shakespeare built of words. How do you know William himself, feigning an illness, did not wish me to see through his ploy and walk off the stage a free man? That is how I read it. Who do you worship? How is something so rich with meaning as that to be decided? Who do I worship? For a long time it has been suggested by poets of the heart we do all worship something.

art by johnny smith

No Foolin'

It is so obvious we overlook it and fall for the same cockeyed shit every morning of our lives. Dumber are we than every squirrel we named. We named. The real question we should ask ourselves is how did we get to be so dumb as to be talking puppets with memorized slogans, flags, decals, cell phones, and I D badges? We pretend we have to listen to a set of media voices each day just to be reminded who we are and how we think. Jesus. All I am working to do is show one of you that.

Anyone who sees is glad that he knows what he is not. And that means he knows who he is. And there is absolutely no use naming him since he is beyond being named. It is like he is someone who changes instantly the moment you describe him. Or, someone who is always going to expand too much to fit a defined personality even for a joke. Or, someone who slips free of every attempt to bind him and breaks out of every jail faster than you can say, “What we have here...

I heard a man ask, Who in the world am I? And it struck me to reply, Nobody, Fool!

There is one thing we all can admit we know for certain and it is that nobody is any part of a world. I do not know what you think of what I just told you. So, you tell me how anyone could be a member of any organization except the one every baby has been born into like clockwork since the beginning. The obvious one. Duh?

I tell you that it is impossible to put me into a world you invent. For instance, squirrels eat seeds I place in a feeder for birds like they are entitled to eat when hungry. Don't they know? What? That they are not birds?

You don't.

The Post that grows on a vine

What if you knew you would not be alive today except that someone you cannot remember holds you in their heart who will not let you go. That you owe.  A vital debt you can never repay? One thing that is true of a whooper swan-and this is wonderful to know- is that we do not look for anyone who is not interested. We seek only those who are, and yet, that can change and always it does.

Added next morning: One lacks the proper emphasis.  The difference between a focus upon the source of the daily bread and relishing the bread itself is vast. Certainly, the difference is major between the source of it and the store which sells the bread to me.  Likewise, the source of it and the career at which one labors to get the money to buy the bread from the store that sells it to me are galaxies apart, speaking in terms of physics, that is. But, they are even more distant in terms of the heart which nobody can locate because it has no locus in physical terms. It exists all right; but in its refusal to stay put lie its sparkling wonders...its usefulness to hearts on fire.

Added next morning: Although some would say that when building a civilization it will be observed that remnants of the wild, unregulated situation being eradicated will expose the worst of natural man's indecencies which must be met with stiff rules and sharp punishments in order to progress the herd along the road to a utopian decency, even requiring death sentences to be carried out before the eyes of loved ones...all to be viewed publicly by means of electronic devices in living rooms and bedrooms and bars, and everywhere else civilized people are to be found,

I see it otherwise,

in truth the impressment of the pattern of a society made by the hands of man against the body corporate brings a tremendously painful distress to the hearts of those individuals not yet deadened by the anesthesia of its schools which are designed to prepare them to become as lobotomized citizens obedient to mental imprisonment in a most narrow world to which natural man is unaccustomed and in which unfit to live. The two views oppose one another diabolically. The focuses are in entirely different directions. When the same person who is hired to tend a garden sneaks into it under cover of darkness to damage it so as to keep his job, how can the garden be expected to grow?

The horrors of election campaigns alone contribute to the troubles politicians feed upon, like vultures to carrion-it's enough to make you puke. And, all the candidates are mere pawns in the game of how a few are to make losers of the millions. Ordinary citizens of a society, captured pawns off the board and out of play, are not a real concern. Blind office-seeking pawns argue with one another the obvious failings of their profession and the voting but nonparticipating pawns are asked to select one of them to drive the runaway train, which, lost and long off its assigned track, barreling toward oblivion, must forever fail to correct itself.

In Nature, groups act as one without hesitation and thrive. The emphasis is the proper one. It sets the course all parts follow. We, the people of the world, are like that and have been called by wise men The Salt of the Earth. How much further of course can anything be?

The good news: the answer is present, is within us, and is with us and is us. A perfect collaboration of man and the Divine is nearer than near. It is not to be built...it is present. Let go. Listen to the heart.

Added two days later: In my own life it was when I came to the crossroads that it happened.  Someone asked when I took the road less traveled, "What will you do now?" I replied in joy " I really have no clue what will come as I walk this way for it is a new way I have not tried and all I know is "I will not go back to what I just left behind me no matter what!"

Experience has shown me that no existing system can be changed from within that system.  It is not possible for someone inside to change it since that one is always performing as a part of the existing system. When in the course of human events it becomes intolerable for a human being to go on in the same way it means the existing system has become an intolerable system so one must throw off its unnatural chains in favor of freedom.

Added next morning: Bob Dylan, a pretty good poet, once told that "just because you are supporting somebody who is struggling for something doesn't mean you're being political". To see that saves a whole lot of frustration, agony, and failure which can lead to bitterness. Never expect anything from anybody or any group that tells you they exist so you can expect something from them. If you get help in life you bring it out of the other(s) with a light from your eyes. For example, when your Mama fixes you a lunch to take with you to school. Realize this.

Added next morning:  In any system of authority, no matter its nature, there will never be found fairness.  Think about this. So, you are told that perfect fairness is impossible, we do the best we can, but we must have bosses. And yet, I tell you that it happens to be so that perfect fairness does exist, is closer than the veins in your neck are close to you and me, and belongs to us by a merciful gift from the giver of life. All we need do is align ourselves with the source of breath then allow love and mercy to flow through us like water flowing to the Sea. Could we be farther off course as a species? Let us correct that error by placing the emphasis properly where it belongs to free ourselves from tragedy unnecessary.

Added Tuesday November 1: What if you believed there is but one life long commitment you need to make...only one...in order to solve all your problems...all of them at once?  And what if that commitment amounts to a full allegiance to your true Self? I tell that it is so. But you should not believe me.  Find out for yourself.  Why? You can.

Added Thursday, November 3: The present of the present is the presence. To know of a presence that is unnamed and fresh and new and unblemished who is its own authority moment to moment should not be missed. Why?  Because you can.

Added Friday morning, November 4:  Why are the people indigenous to America imprisoned on reservations to this day? And why do the rest of us take more and more of it back every time we have a reason?  Because we can...because we write and we rewrite the laws that define and enforce the treaties we forced them to sign on threat of annihilation? meaning we can change the treaties anytime in any way that suits our greedy appetites? Can we not do better by them...and ourselves? Will we ever change?

Added Monday November 7: Humans are not limited to the ground or below it. We can arise and we should be about it. It's taken so long to do nothing but talk about it. Time to rise up!

At the bottom there is politics. Politics demands leadership. Followers and leaders of followers is at the lowest rung of the human ladder. Nobody with any sand will lead somebody who will agree to follow. Step up. There are no followers at the first rung. Step up. That first step everybody takes for himself. After that, leaders will be forgotten forever. A human free soul is invited to Heaven now. Step up.

Humans are not limited to the ground or below it. We can arise and we should be about it. It's taken so long to do nothing but talk about it. Time to rise up!

Up to now, people who only talk have been willing to pass laws demanding compliance on the broken theory that people will be so afraid to be punished they will be good. All talk. Nothing changes. We still fall so short of our dreams we disgrace the whole tree of life. Even rocks are disgusted. Monkeys laugh at our politics. And our philosophers? Baboons fart in the faces of them all. Philosophers write only to each other. Nothing changes.

Humans are not limited to the ground or below it. We can arise and we should be about it. It's taken so long to do nothing but talk about it. Time to rise up!

Don't be fooled by celebrity for it is manufactured by the money grinch who crawls in the real dark world underground and do not seek the autograph of anyone, it lessens you to do that. Nobody worth his autograph will stoop to give it nor sign his name for anyone who thinks he is better off with it.

Humans are not limited to the ground or below it. We can arise and we should be about it. It's taken so long to do nothing but talk about it. Time to rise up!

Added Tuesday, November 8:  Swimming in the Ocean of All Knowledge and not knowing is enough to make you laugh.

Added a few minutes later:

When you touch

someuniversaltruth

it is beyond you.

What does that mean? Ask nobody.

There is within a human being's heart A Great Reality. It shines a bright light to the world. The Light attracts all that has been prepared for the human sojourn on Earth, about 25,000 days worth of supplies, more or less. Your stay here has been impeccably arranged and you lost the key. Funny, the key you lost, nothing has it.

Added Sunday, November 13:  Leonard Cohen wrote that a saint "rides the drifts like an escaped ski".

Added Thursday November 17: "The subject tonight is love, and for tomorrow night as well.
As a matter of fact, I know of no better topic for us to discuss until we all die!"
-Hafez

ENOUGH SAID

Getting Started

There is a chief problem that were it to be addressed and solved the rest would fall by the wayside in complete adoption of overwhelming truth. That shortcoming among us is the failure to show loyalty to the essence of who we are. Rather, we betray it many times a day. I want to be strong enough to withstand the allure of a temptation that would have me sell my soul for an offer of money. But I cannot.

What am I afraid of? I wonder. Do you know? What is it about me that wants something I do not believe I have that money can buy? What doors are opened by it? Think. What has been my actual experience? What have others told me from their experience? I recall now that every job I have ever taken has become a disappointment very soon and a thing I want to avoid but cannot. I need a pill to go to work.

I have been told of something I have that cannot be taken from me. What is it? Is there such? It is placed I am told where no thief can enter and no fire can reach and no storm can bother and no exploding bomb destroy and it is absolutely safe there. Where? Is there such a place? Think.

Were I to find this place and discover there a something that I have what might that be? I am told its nature is such that when I know I have it I will be true to my heart as if it were the most natural thing to do and never betray my own essential nature and be in love. Be in love. What if it is love? What if the place is a state, not a space? How do I find a state...of...wholeness where it all makes sense to me?

Look within? How? With my attention? How much? All of it? When? Now? How often? Daily? Always? Pray without ceasing? Are you kidding me? No?

I better get started.

Athlete: Standing up here selling these products I feel such a phony.

Manager: If you want to finance baseball so you can play in the Bigs,

we have to make enough money to finance baseball.

Seven points:

1. Is it anything but foolish to choose what you do by how much money it can make?

2. How difficult is it to decline to be used in a fraudulent manner?

3. How difficult is it to play games for the pure joy of playing them whenever and wherever that is possible with no concern for the limelight?

4. What's the limelight good for?

5. Anything?

6. How many have been made sick by fame?

7. Someone figured us out.

An Individual's Very Own 

Declaration of Independence

We hold this truth to be self evident:

When laws and the crimes they define become irrelevant jails empty out on their own accord and peace prevails in the land. And, in the abyss that lies between the past and the future in that darkness so greatly feared by people who formulate hidden agendas

lives freedom for all

where each one becomes his own authority

              takes naked responsibility for his own truth

risks the moment, and shoos his own flies

calls his own dog, keeps his own counsel,

accepts his own fate, blows his own whistle

draws his own conclusions, fights his own battles,

sweeps his own side of the street, makes up his own mind

faces his own challenges, finds his own strength,

stands on his own feet, answers his own question,

has nobody to blame,

and lives before he dies.

Hanging In The Balance

Beginning in the 1960's, a photographer named Sebastiao Salgado, of Brazil, made drawings with light by camera and they called it photography. Picturing the suffering of humanity on Earth he documented horror. Reflections in black and white on paper to show all that what people have done to themselves and to the others is deeply embedded in the ongoing psyche of every man and woman who will live here and it will be so until purged. In the quest for riches that power an empire, be it an empire of one man or millions, there is no limit to the level of disgrace to which man has willing stooped. An empire comes and it goes and another replaces it. People are enslaved, tortured, starved, annihilated. By other people. Just before dying of deep soul sickness brought on by what he had witnessed, Sebastiao discovered a truth and it changed everything for him to allow him to live on as a recovered soul. A recovered soul. The impossible story of the resurrection of a man's soul is of vital importance to many who now are ready to hear. And more who will become ready shortly.

How can it be? Sebastiao returned to his birth home. To a once thriving cattle farm carved from a splendid forest that in his absence had been transformed into a desert that would no longer support a family. His aging parents were stymied. They had no idea how to make a comeback. Sebastiao's wife suggested, Why not replant the forest? And they began, having no alternative in sight. They had no one to teach them how such a thing is to be done and no book of directions. In ten years the forest had been resurrected. Today it is a paradise to behold. The Salgado family has relinquished all claim to its ownership by returning the forest to the people of Brazil. A park.

This Sebastiao found to be true: As constant as the determination of people to destroy the planet and their own souls in the process is the determination to restore it and recover their souls in that process. This balance, unplanned by man, works by a force that has been present before first man which has been known on occasion to pass through a man as its conduit to make it so. But, only after sickness of the soul has nearly destroyed him and an admission of the sorry state wherein he finds himself some are reborn. Those living on following rebirth begin a march to fully recover lost soul.

Once, long ago, to America sick people came in ships in search of India's riches to steal them after killing Indians. Upon discovering they were not in India as planned they decided to try their luck in the New World they had found. If it contained gold and silver they would have it all after killing and raping Indians as planned. The disease spread across Europe and many countries sent ships to the New World of Indians not living in India as expected. To rape, murder, and plunder. They soon brought ships filled with Europe's undesirables as settlers to oversee the fiendish operation and share in the spoils. In record time, the Americas, (North, Central, and South) were owned by the Europeans, at first those living back in Europe who sent the ships, later by those well armed Europeans and some of the mixed bloods trained and armed by them, now living on American soil. The not-Indian Indians had no chance really. They suffered before photography developed to record it. But they suffered mightily at the hands of the greedy white invaders. The whites never have admitted the harm caused by their greedy ways nor have they even attempted to make things right, for they continue to imbibe every liquor of nastier and nastier greed to this day. And have been able to corrupt souls everywhere by now locking them in a web of ambitious and clever salesmanship in a shell game by another name.

So, it is going to happen that some who will become desperately ill with soul sickness, will, just before they are killed by the weight of it, be reborn psychically to begin the march to fully recover lost balance of psyche for the individual who wants it which will require dedicated service to the replanting and nurturing of a garden that had been in existence previously all without coercion nor an instruction manual to guide them to do it faithfully, silently, humbly, without praise, through intuitive knowledge revealed simultaneously to a band of equals who will have arisen from every conceivable circumstance to work together as brothers and sisters in love with patient attention to detail. Once bitter enemies will be recognized among them and all will be forgiven. The garden spoken of is, of course, the 

 Reality of Man.

Very Short Story of Love

Once a girl lived in the land of Somewhere.

She did not find her prince though she searched for him. She did find a prince uncharming though. So uncharming was he that she gave none of herself away to him but kept herself for herself wholly and lived happily for the rest of her days. They each got laid by the other from time to time and it always was nice for them and between them. And it really did not matter. What did matter however is that she was a whole person. As one, she was in a position to give an immense unsuspected treasure of her heart away to many others though not very much to that uncharming prince who was too uptight to relax and enjoy a gift. She did have children who were loved and knew it. Nobody asked anybody who was going to support those kids what with all that love there was indeed much to spare and then give away freely. The girl learned as she became a woman that it is love and only love that supports everybody who ever is born. Any other possibility is absurd, she thought. She had seen that people who do not know how to love (and there are so many) starve children in one way or another way.

The children she bore grew up to be whole people as well. Seems that girl broke a chain that had led a long line of human beings going back thousands of years to live a hard life toiling to earn a living by the sweat of their brow doing work they disliked and knew in their hearts to be unholy while failing to do the work they were designed for by perfection itself...miraculous works of unconditional love. What a girl!

The girl remains and will so forever, anonymous, for a very good reason. The game of fame is not for her a way to a life fulfilling.

THE END

THE BOOK
THAT IS SHORT ENOUGH
FOR EVERYBODY TO READ
And To Laugh Out Loud
By Johnny Smith

A small honey bee, when it senses smoke, flies immediately to the comb and begins to feed ravenously to prepare for the impending wildfire and the necessity to move the entire colony of 70,000 to a new home, a tremendous task.

Made in that same loving way, man invented languages and with it invented Man Itself and became so impressed with their abilities they were no longer willing that their language serve God’s pure and simple way, but insisted on taking a way of their own...And it began with a fence. And they said it is good. And the road taken has led us to suffering and self-destruction. And so,
Man named the one to whom they gave all the credit for their language... Mind. And, each man became their own mind. And Man called it The Mind of Man. And said, It is good. Mind created a god of their own understanding in their own image to serve them. And they said it is good. Mind writes books now and fills libraries as proof the Mind Of Man exists even though the evidence impresses nothing except the Mind of Man. This nonsense is Man’s way of claiming immortality. It is but a futile, ignorant effort doomed to failure. All the libraries of man do not compare to a single moment of the reality of life.

Likewise, all the skyscrapers, all the bombs, all the technologies are but nothing.
Man denies that which has been known by them for thousands of years, at least, that one day even mighty Sun will go out. Poof! They do not know what to do with that fact so as they do with all else that baffles them, they ignore it.

In this brief volume the term Man is a plural noun. 

Have You Seen Such Windows?

Billy: I read. Love to read. Good books. Books that say something. Not the kind that are rank vomit to corral a reader in ideals, ideals, ideals all incompetent all indifferent, uninvolved, lukewarm and blasé. All the words, all the hooks, all the tangled webs woven to only mimic ideals nonexistent.

That way of learning entraps the student before seven in a world with shutters that do not open to invite a child to climb free from its clutches and avoid accepting the wicked invitation to live by other peoples' concepts of what makes a good joke so he'll know when to laugh. A boy I know taught me that. He did not laugh at my jokes until I quit expecting him to.

Have you seen such shuttered windows? Look as if they should open, don't they? but do not. Even promise to open but do not? Even are advertised as easy open windows but are locked tightly shut?

First an alphabet. Then a series of properly enunciated sounds to form words that are certified as proper and legal to be used to make sentences that form complete thoughts which decay and rot quicker than they are conceived and before even put on paper to be bound and published as books of the same self determining logic with which the windows are permanently locked against all but a tiny glint of creative genius. Religion out here teaches in such a way. The primary lock is the one that adds up to a sentence that authorizes some expert to determine who is smartest in the land by testing the child's ability to lock himself up so air tight no wind is able to reach into the lungs of freedom that hold contempt and disrespect for authority and sing out in protest in an unknown tongue against languages organized into patterns which like cell bars separate loved ones and stultify passions and make listeners and readers feel rejection at a primary level of life except they be deciphered by that tiny glint of genius, and, stripped of all falseness, be used to open windows where none existed.

We need windows to reveal to the eye of the beholder no truth originates in the mind of an insider. A society is a group of insiders who by their way of thinking make everybody else outsiders to them. All within a culture are untrue. All cults breed contempt. There is a window.

Have you seen such windows?

To live in a house without windows is to make all the world outside dark. The brighter the light inside the house the darker the outside is to the minds of those trapped within. There is a window.

Have you seen such windows?

Recently I overheard in a conversation a woman wonder why a kid like me would crawl up a chimney when the sheriff looked the other way to escape from a jail where the sheriff wanted me to remain until told I could leave. She was concerned that I have bad qualities and wanted to find a way to explain boys like me. I could tell that woman was really of the opinion that for someone to deliberately violate a rule of society is a cause for alarm. Something should be done about it. She asked a writer of books what he thought of the matter. He ventured that the public has always been fascinated with bad boys. They envy bad boys who seem to them to be free. I wonder

why anybody would build a jail?