My Story Of Darkness

I am reading a good novel, Love in the Time of Cholera. I am only beginning it. But, it turned me to writing. There seems to be a common fear of death in the form of a fear of darkness, death as a darkness, in other words. The chief character of the novel so far, an old man in his eighties, tells that he fears death because of his fear he will not find God in that darkness. I remember my mother at that age telling me she was afraid. “Of what?” I asked her. She replied, “Of what everybody fears I suppose, death.”

In old age we begin to forget. We lose our learned skill of keeping up with life by treating everybody and everything we encounter in the way we treat a story as we read one. We begin to notice we are returning to a child like world we had forgotten. Now, my question is this: whether we comprehend by reading in accordance with the experiences we have had in life or is it the other way around? Does the practice of reading (and especially the experiences of being tested on the book) train us to live in a false way regarding the things of reality? To treat them by false ideals, I mean, by what we come to call by reading more and more, our good judgment? And, sound principles. What excites me here is really the notion we acquire our judgment falsely because it, reading, reveals a world we can seem to control. Therefore, we like it! So, could the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Bible actually be a metaphor for a book? Could a book held in one's hands be telling that a book is going to curse you soon in a terrible way and you will be cast out of paradise and left to earn your living by your wits? What a funny joke that would be! (All I know is there are two ways to read the scriptures and they are vastly different.)

What about this? I read a book to find out whether the author knows me rather than to read a book to find out whether the author can teach me what I do not know to help me understand how to control myself. In the first way, I am looking for a friend. In the second I am looking for a teacher who knows what is the matter with me who can straighten me out.

If I were a swan...I might ask why there is a darkness in the first place. And, why do I fear it? My friend urged me to meet the darkness now, while alive, and find out its nature. Asked me whether I thought it better to wait until death to find out. I was able then only to see: I want now to know! How about you?

(hmmm...notice the silent letter k is all that separates the words now from know.)

That leads me to suggest to you that you have encountered trouble when you have tried to meet the dark one, the one who does not speak your language, does not even think at all, never scolds and never asks questions; and that trouble has come from your trained mind which comes up with all manner of things for you to consider other than that. Correct? Why would you not want to meet the rest of you so much that you would interfere with an honest wish on your own part just to prevent it? You know, it takes a lot of attention and hard work to keep somebody from just sitting still for a little while. Must be a real threat, huh? A threat to what do you suppose? 

I met the dark void and knew it had been banished by my own decision to engage in selfish struggles to earn my living here by my wits; banished to a dungeon in the soul of me where it had remained until I found it and asked what it was doing there and would it like to be my friend. It had been waiting is what it made me to understand.

For what?

For you. What took you so long? 

That is my story of darkness.

The Strange History of Human Beings

Peopel began in the wilderness only because what is called wild now was all there was then. Peopel lesrned to spell correctly. Then they became real people.

Before, they played together in paradise. They made each other laugh and want to keep on laughing so they did and then they fell in love. Laughing.

Then they started to make each other cry. There is something wrong now. A mistake was made. What was the mistake? This cannot be love. Love does not make anyone sad. People are sad when love is not around them. Inside them.

When people fell in love the next thing that happened was a monarch appeared out of nowhere. Every nation had one. An emperor or czar or king who was supposed to have unquestioned authority ruled them all. He could make anybody rich if he wanted to and he could kill anybody if he wanted to do that. Before, nobody had any authority except what is recognized naturally as authority that everybody has. Like anarchy. Not anarchy as power but anarchy as no power. There is a force that arises from powerlessness that nobody can deny. Is that love? There is a power that is debatable and there is another power that is undebatable. The first is majority rule and the second is law by consensus. In the latter, only a law that nobody denies can be enforced. So, no law need ever be enforced, silly. In the former, laws are made by a voting process and then those laws are denied and denied and denied...more often than not by the very people who voted for them are they broken. In fact, I would have to say always, invariably, those laws are broken by everyone who ever makes one. For example, take the case of President Andrew Jackson who swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States as a condition for assuming his office and then before you could say “Jimmy Crack Corn", with military force he removed all Indians across the Mississippi River into Indian Territory in violation of the very Constitution he had sworn to uphold. If you do not believe me, ask any redskin in Oklahoma how their ancestors happened to all move there and call it Indian Territory. But don't ask how many died on the trail unless you are willing to cry.

It happens that ever since history began it has told the same story. Told it again and again. Everywhere on Earth. Same. It amounts to this-the fair minded framers of the Constitution wanted only that, to frame it and hang it on the wall. Never did intend to live by it. Marriages are like that. People who spell correctly tend to embarrass themselves. Better to get kicked out of school for poor spelling than to live a lie. Love has an all or nothing at all nature people who spell correctly cannot accept. Fukit!

Love is all that matters...if you do not have it, nothing else will matter to you

and, if you do have it, nothing else will matter to you. By the way, you will know love

by its all or nothing at all nature.

A Simple Peek Into the Soul of What You Know To Be So

A stranger has been invited into the house. The doctor asks the lady of the house, “What are you going to do with him?”

Lady: Do with him? You don't do something with someone. My God, he's just like you. Mostly he's water. You're mostly water. Eighty percent water. Both of you. You know how to treat someone who's that much like you, surely.

Doctor: It's the other twenty percent I'm concerned about. He's not me all together. He's different.

Lady: Different? Well, that other twenty percent is practically all empty space. Check your science before you speak with such certainty. His nothing is not different from yours is about all there is to it. Relax.

Doctor: That's not what I mean and you know it. He is from someplace else and speaks a different language and has a different upbringing and has a strange religion and…

Lady: Is that all? Poppycock! That you refer to has all been taught to him. It's not real. It's poppycock! Inside he'e just like you.

Doctor: But outside he's not!

Lady: Okay. We can deal with that quickly enough. Take off your clothes. I'll undress the stranger. You'll see for yourself he is much like you on the outside as well. I bet he's not got anything you've not seen already.

Doctor: I have business elsewhere. I'll show myself out. Good day, Madame.

The Race Human

Can there be suffering when no sufferer is present? Does nothing suffer ever? Close your eyes. What if you open them to the discovery there are no humans, no human race exists? What if you knew somebody made that up and it acts like a veil that covers and distorts pure vision? Suppose you really did know that. In that case, what you saw as a three year old is true and what you have been trained to see since is false, malarky, or nonsense.

Once a three year old boy was given a gift by his parents of several new pairs of socks the parents intended to be worn on his feet. After the parents left the child alone with his new socks, the child saw a pair of scissors nearby and was delighted to cut the toes off the socks in a motion he had seen mother do often with scissors which he never had before tried out for himself. He was so proud! When the parents looked back and saw what the child had done to the new socks they cried out and suffered. “Why, did you cut up your new socks?” they cried. “Those socks cost us money!” The boy was so upset by the question and by his parents' suffering he knew not how to reply. Then, he suddenly knew. “Because I wanted to?” he offered in a question. And he began to sob himself.

Next, someone is seeing again. Clearly, now, one sees the idea of a human race has been creating its own sufferers where there are none. This leads to the realization that the thinking people (the ones who tell me with certainty what is what) are creating the suffering for which they are then researching the ideas book to find some cures. It's like they create jobs for themselves and a whole bunch of customers where there were none. A wise man once told us, “Nobody wanted a light bulb.” He looked around the room at each person and repeated more slowly this time, “Nobody wanted a light bulb.” What else could he do for us?

Think of a person suffering; ask me how come?

My answer is I do not know; but do know a thing one.

I know of a way suffering ceases to be.

Is that enough for thee?

Why did they call it the human race?

Is it because I am graded by my pace?

What if I stop running?

Just slow down and stop running for no reason?

Decide to relinquish any claim to a crown that winners wear?

Decide to go out without combing my hair?

Mosey over to join the losers. See what they are doing.

Who will take my place in the race? Who cares?

It Is Happening

There could be no people to be called artists where all people were living art fully.

Is it too soon? Too late?

What if every moment of every day of one's life were a brilliance? No performers, people living brilliantly?

Is it too soon? Too late?

What if all the world were a stage where nobody was a player because everybody was a player? If everybody were fully engaged by his own life who would be purchasing tickets to sit passively only to serve as the audience?

What if the script has been written on your foreheads? What if the scenery of the perfect setting for a play of a lifetime were present before your five senses complete and music plays all around you and you are, all of you, stars?

photo by Jon Wharton

Who would come to a show in a world filled with brilliance? Who is it would care? I was loading wash into a machine at the laundromat when I noticed a small grey haired woman folding clothes in a tall pile that grew to a point of tipping and her nonchalant response when the laundry tower she carefully built tumbled down. She dutifully picked it all back up and built two new piles. While my laundry was washing I listened to a woman in the room play a guitar who told me she would teach me for free. She said her music is her joy and she did not want it burdened with issues concerning money. We heard the sound that is made when a large drink spills on a floor and turned to see the older lady hobbling ever so quickly with paper towels to clean up her mess. Drawn automatically to be a part of the drama, and seeing the very tiny woman had four enormous baskets of wash, I scrambled to carry a load to her car. This happened somewhere on Earth yesterday so it is not too soon nor is it too late. It is happening as you sit and read. Get with it!

GLUM PASSIVITY

Consider whether anyone can teach you how to be you. You are a surprise that arrived with a timing that permits you the ability to respond to the environment which is ever changing so as to deliver a punch. Do you expect more of yourself than that? Less? There can be a sort of a teacher, if one must have one, who tells only that you should study yourself to know yourself. That teacher, if a teacher it is, never tells you who you are and never administers a test to check up on you. How could he? You are a surprise even to you. Either you want to know yourself or you do not. Seems to me all schools are based on fear. The fear that makes schools happen is the fear that I am not enough (and my child is not enough). Bob Dylan never attended class at the university where he enrolled, saying, I did not have time. I want my grandchildren to be like that. Sadly, teachers at universities, having no clue who they are, cannot deliver the punch they came to deliver so have taken jobs at universities that promise to support them in their glum passivity. For the most part they study people who delivered a punch on time and make students memorize their names. I know that because they give tests which they grade to check up on others who have enrolled to seek the same fate. They want to determine whether any impostors have escaped detection. I also know their students build bombs for war machines and ovens for mass extermination author publications to support political genocide fill penitentiaries and nut houses foment litigation fill prescriptions for drugs otherwise illegal and build games like Wall Street and games to addict children or sell insurance and real estate or edit poetry. Glum passivity born of caustic, scathing criticism of the dreams of children is the main disease. The only cure to know thyself.

From the outset, was it ever going to work?

I was told some kings sat on thrones in Europe in 1492 where kings and queens had ruled for a very long time under a false claim of divine right claiming that God Almighty had given them power over others not to be questioned on penalty of death. There the whole property thing had begun upon a proclamation the land all belonged to the sovereign and he or she parceled it out to select favorites on a promise they would use it to amass a lot of wealth and pay taxes to the sovereign. These land owners were then falsely made by the sovereign to be royalty also ruling in specified locations under the king or queen's authority with titles to be passed on to their heirs. Or, something like that. Whatever exactly happened it was pure bullshit and everybody with a human brain knew that.

Europe became Hell for millions of its citizens who wanted out to make a new start. You know living as a serf to a bunch of megalomaniacs is no fun. It is madness. So, someone had the idea first to send these undesirables on boats across the sea if a boat could float far enough to find land and work it.

Then some of the royal gentry realized an opportunity presented itself for them to go along in first class accommodations as bosses to actually own the land that was to be found in the name of the sovereign and keep the same basic system going in the New World, which they called it. Actually, there was nothing New about it. At the beginning the white skinned Europeans thought they had found India and so called the natives of the land they came upon to be Indians. Whatever they called the people of the New World they treated them poorly indeed. Torture, murder, and rape were common. Gold was what they hoped to find first and take as their own. Much blood was spilled. It was evil.

What is hard to explain is how somebody thought to be in charge told the other Europeans that they (the bosses) had the authority to parcel out land in this so-called New World to them that would be rightfully theirs to hold for a lifetime and pass on to heirs after death. There was probably some mumbo-jumbo to the effect God wants it to be so. It involved murder to bring it about. Knowing just this much is it not easy to understand all the wars these Europeans have engaged in throughout the centuries and all the misery they have suffered? And how the squabbles are never ending? And how they threaten now to terminate the human race?

From the outset, was it ever going to work? Being convinced, are you ready to do your small part to restore sanity to the scene? I cannot think for you. You are going to have to decide, in light of what has gone before, what is required of me to accomplish that. This is no place for excuses nor for imitation of others. Something real.

One parent says to its child: You have failed to live up to the taught as proper code of behavior designed to lead you down a straight path of righteousness and you have dishonored my name. Shame on you. You were taught better.

Another says: You have failed to live up to the taught as proper code of behavior designed to lead you down a straight path of righteousness; and, so, I must confess to you, did I fail. Remember, I told you that I had found a way to live on after that failure? Well, it is what I have to offer anyone in your shoes. There is a resource in your soul that you can contact in your hour of misery and ask in your own words for help. I suggest you try that; for in so doing, I came eventually to see my downfall as a singular benefit. It may be so for you. I love you and always will. The paths of righteousness lead invariably to Hell on Earth.

Most will say with force that they know the difference between right and wrong behavior and not one of them know truth. Beauty is truth, truth beauty, as the poet wrote. And it is all we need to know.

How'd ya like to make $250,000? Do you know any red blooded American boy who would turn that down?

Suppose what you are asked to do is a little bit shady? A good deal shady? Down right felonious? Who in the employ of a corporation of a size large enough to influence legislation is not confronted with such challenges? Is it not the expected? When does a young person find it out? First year? Even before that?

Who are we kidding? We all live off the crimes. Even the small businesses are taking chances of being caught for wrongdoing to make larger profits. It is so tempting and so contagious. What else can be expected in a society that worships wealth measured in dollar earnings? Universities cheat at football to make big dough. Universities! Elementary schools cheat the system every day. Doctors cheat patients constantly. Lawyers cheat clients. Priests cheat families. The manager cheats the artist. The fan cheats the musician. And spouses? Parents? Kids? Fact is, you would have to look very closely with a powerful microscope or a blood hound to find anyone not cheating his way to the top and one of the most outrageous myths told and retold in the public media is that before law and order was brought into the picture in a wholesale way and made to be present constantly the place was filled with crime. Then it becomes easy to convince the public that we must have ever increasing police protection. It is seemingly apparent to everyone that wild, free people are horrible people. And yet, all the evidence points to the opposite. Controlled, manipulated conforming populations are wicked beyond belief. Living wild things actually get along in a naturally balanced way with little, if any, malice present. Wealthy members of the elite corps of citizens who want to believe they got that way by hard work and honest toil (and not by cheating) go to sleep at night in expensive mansions knowing that many children in their communities are starving to death unable to sleep from the pain of hunger. Some will perish in the night not because there is no food available, but because it is not available to them.

It is not the intention here to leave an impression that the poorer members of a cash driven society are victims. They are more accurately viewed as the losers in a contest of questionable virtue. In this setting it is the intention to suggest to the losers a new way of living.

The popular message is that when the lights go out on society's fun bubble of greed all of us will eat each other raw. It is at least as likely we will all finally love one another again. I would say the odds lie heavily on the side of peace. What is known, and has been so for thousands and thousands of years by some, is that if any man or woman chooses to step free of the game being played and give reality a chance to show what it can do for someone, anyone willing to accept it, wealth beyond one's wildest dreams. What is promised is a way of life that is passionately felt, and fully realized in a fulfillment at the core of one's being. That, and only that, satisfies the human heart. The other choice is to remain in a rigged game like Las Vegas with its flashy lights knowing that even if you win the prestigious award society praises you will know it is given out by liars with dirty hands which will cancel any hint of your deserving any glory. Lest you try, you will never know the purity that is felt and so known by a completely anonymous person who has given all that he has to save another.