Straightening A Mess

I have been grateful that some who know better speak at length concerning

the possibility of a sudden and profound change of direction that

happens inside a person that lasts for the rest of life in spite of the

fact that this subject cannot be reached in words, much less explained

by them. I have a feeling it is love makes them do it.

And, as I try to follow along with such teachers and to answer the questions

presented by them for myself something happens which is my own, unaided.

I find it integral. And yet, it had to be shared with another or I would have missed it

and, correspondingly, it had to be done by me to matter to me.

This is how I feel about it.

Some wonder, why does God allow the awful things that happen to good people?

Recently, I overheard a woman walking her dog on a leash scold the pup saying, “You're not to sniff things like that!”

Earlier I had observed a mother with young children dining outdoors screaming, “Get away you birds, shoo, get away from our food! This is our food!” as she rushed her children indoors.

Then, it was to my dismay I heard a middle aged couple tell their teenaged son, “Young man, we are here on this vacation and we are going to enjoy it!”

It seems the problem actually is not the fault of God after all.  

Rumi told that it is in profound ignorance a bunny curls up

at the feet of a lion and sleeps. I feel that way today, like the

bunny must feel.

My great friend profound ignorance has brought me so far.

Had to.

There is an ignorance that defies all knowledge, I dare say.

That ignorance is bliss.

It is almost knowing there is nothing to understand.

Can nothing be understood?

If so, is there nothing that cannot be understood?

Such thought leans on infinity's watchtower.

There is a story I want to tell it well.

I saw a flower growing, it was a tiny sprig,

I reached forth my hand which began to work

on behalf of the flower

so brave was that flower

to even show up in that dry wasteland as a sprig,

now, my hands work joyously

in a garden

as hands that belong to

the source of all flowers of courage

Now you have heard my story I warn you. Do not let your mind turn you down a dark hallway presuming I should take the credit for this garden or you will remain in the dark until you turn around and carefully retrace your steps to where you made that turn. There you will find me. I am the humility in human being whose meekness has inherited Earth. Did you know such wisdom resides in meekness? Once I was in the exact spot to allow a tiny flower to hit me sideways. As I recall it now, I was there as if by accident, but, an accident that seemed to know me better than I know me. In fact, I would say that accident somehow introduced me to myself as I know me to be. I am.

What Separates Us?

Chapter 1

One thing about humans is keeping us apart. It has us thinking we are impotent in the face of those who would divide and dominate us.

A strange tendency, which follows shortly initial incarceration inside a social institution, (a family for instance, a clan, a city, a nation, a school, a ball team, a job, any gang really) is to become a voluntary self jailer who maintains his assigned station as if it were his very own dream. Yet, it is not. We need an alternative way of looking at things.

Oddly, the hook keeping us apart is the strong wish to be a part of something grand. On the surface that seems absurd. The bait we bite on keeps us dreaming of a tomorrow that will never come. Is it a paradox? Maybe. Depends on what that term means to you. What is certain is we seek something we have. When you are in that fix, having already what you desire, but not recognizing that fact, you are at a complete loss to know what to do except to keep looking for it, only harder. Strive! Strive! And since you have it, you will never find it by seeking it and no matter how well intentioned your search nor how desperately one searches life, for you, becomes futile. You know this.

Chapter 2

It happens unseen. It is practically impossible to detect and correct. People become radical slaves to football teams, for example, upon moving a family to a new city where they become devout fans of the one named for the City and buy all the merchandise that the corporate franchise will sell to them that they might feel justified. So clever is the process it is never even mentioned. It appears to be taken for granted. Everybody does it, so the story goes.

I watched a movie in which a family of daughters is being placed with respectable bachelors into marriages they want not to be in as wives who are expected to bear children for a lifetime of service. All the while, in the background, WWII arises, flares, and as it does so, extinguishes the lives of many of the men. In the film nobody winds up happy. And, no one sees that marriages and wars are related. The film suggests to me that one cannot have a war unless one first invents the institution of marriage. With that, someone has a family to protect. Against whom? Others with families to protect? Preposterous! Yet, it is so. Warring populations send children off with bombs and guns to annihilate families in need of protection from them.

Marriage is the name for a certain type of purchase of both parties to it. In fact, all attempts to manufacture a feeling of belonging are always going to be as a practical matter a sellout on both sides. Selling one's integrity is never a good idea. But, what we need is not a program to change or repair systems as we know them into something better. We need an alternative way of looking at the world. Wise men point to a fountain not made by the hands of men, a fountain that those already fastened to social fountains made by men do not see.

People have adopted lifetime careers for themselves from a prepared list handed them like assignments handed to the inmates of a work camp. Once at work, people quickly require of themselves a duty to report on a schedule not their own and to do work they do not like and to do it in ways they are told they are supposed to do it that seem to them corrupted, tainted, dishonest. They buy things advertised to them as appropriate at prices that keep them tied to their posts like helpless, frightened prisoners. Again someone points to the other fountain from which blessings flow freely.

Musicians in a band ride on buses to gigs booked on a schedule prepared by agents who sell tickets expecting band members to show up on time and perform on cue. These same kids never once cleaned their room at home. How quickly they change just to please others who are using them to grow rich themselves with little concern for whether it kills the performers. (Note: These same musicians blame others for the evils of the world in songs they sing on stages all around the world. How strange.)

I heard a world class actress with many awards to her credit tell that she felt her one advantage was that she did not choose her work but it came to her sort of sideways, day after day, year after year. Opportunities appeared which she accepted. She likened it to the common experience of forgetting a name then trying directly to recall it with no success and then giving that approach up to allow the name to quickly and easily appear sideways. That is the fountain! It is not about religion. It is not spiritual. It is practical as dirt is for planting seeds. It is simple truth that the fountain is here.






We do not need advice or counsel or teachers or leaders so much as we need an alternative way of looking at what is actually happening in the world we actually live in. Certainly, we are in need of no bag of beliefs.

Chapter 3

Christ: Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law'.

And, a man's foes will be those of his own household. Matthew 10:34-36

A sword of truth cuts souls free from foolishness and the hypnotic desire for what is just out of reach. Peace is already here. Like a small dove of peace in constant flight you are nobody else. The Kingdom is in your hands. It has always been so.

And when the fact of death stretches forth its hand to where I stand

viewing the last remains of my dearest friend

a captive of love meets a stranger-

and then- myself- and in that meeting- I saw a forsaken man chained in a dungeon

Weird music playing all around our heads that it might strangle wicked demons and free all our friends is bringing an alternative way of looking at the world.

All hate is a misplaced champion of love; and there is naught to defeat; no storm to rise above. No one has taken life; life, it has taken you; all faith is a knowing within, it's true!
Revenge is a two-faced warrior, disgraced; all has been lost in a bloody foot race; but nothing's replaced. It's true!

When hate is restored to the palaces of love
on the back of a fugitive, wing-ed turtle dove
souls come together
where all we thought lost lasts forever.

Dignity, astride a gentle donkey, forfeits the race;
and so shuns every crown tethered athletes chase.

Oh, I am about to gain all from the deep rigors of pain; with the faith of the laboring mother who strains...and,
who, holding a stillborn trophy, her primary memory hard rain,
knows a love that remains as a death not in vain as she feels in a secret which blows through her ear; this one, gone before it began, came as a mirr'r.

What's all this talk

in religious or spiritual language? I do not trust lingo that presumes in advance I agree it has meaning.

Its direction seems always to be pointing out that I should be more than I am. I suspect it is the language of people who are sure of themselves and who want something. If the only purpose of it is to lure minds into a nonexistent world of imagination and belief I am not interested. I have been there. I consider myself fortunate, blessed even, to have escaped such nonsense with my life. Perhaps the allure of all that language to a human being is a promise someday things will change and I will understand. But if it cannot deliver the goods, what then? It has been spoken and written for a very long time without those hoped for results materializing. For many the promise is all about a life after death. What about now? I am alive. I yearn. Somebody said, life has no purpose, make one up. That makes no sense. Purpose by definition, cannot be falsified. Has anybody here seen dignity? Bob?

I choose one term out of the bag of words with either no meaning or 1000 meanings, take your pick. The same. The word I choose is soul. I will look for mine. When I find it, I will say, Oh, there you are. And caress it and in that caress give myself to it where I find it and be done with all else that is not it.

I look for what in me is restless, discontent. What I find I will console and make content, or die in the attempt. I seek something or someone who has been rejected, left out, abandoned. I need some realization not some pacifier. It is not in the word soul I will find it. I seek to know me as I am where I am in the situation I find myself to be doing what I am doing with my chance called life. I want the truth of it.

In that yearning I sense what is stirring me to seek it. It is not too late. Nor is it too soon.

The Gift of a Restless Soul, the wanderer


Everybody, everybody has a restless soul 
How do I know?
My soul. 

It says, I was restless until you found me where I was and for the first time did not expect me to go where you wanted me to go and I appreciated that more than words can tell. And, in that deep and silent appreciation, lies my contentment. And our nobility.

This is not a one shot deal, though, a soul 
can be counted on to grow restless
as life unfolds. It is the nature
and you will be vexed
until you remember 
again and again
what is to be done.

The heartfelt singer (he may not even know one right chord) sings only for one reason

to find some place (where that feels like home)

-where his heart beats as it should-

where both lungs breathe as they should

where both feet stand where they should

is betting the farm on the last hope to be found in a voice that comes round
just before one leaves town and it told him the profound is not to be found
on stages the world round but at the silent defeat of a small naked clown
that's a deafening applause sounds have no power to magnify or compound 

and it comes from the place where the sky meets the ground
which opens as a home for the Sun going down,
a splendid reminder, be me, as I am

Everybody, everybody lives inside a perfect body-

how do I know?

I have hated mine so often and have abused it very badly and still

when I am wholly one within it as I am at this sweet moment who I am now knows

all about doubt free dancing in a sea of all-consuming presence and the outline of my skin shell swells as a band of light dances around its perim

eter into an an ever-broadening awareness

a thousand light years into the heavens brandished ever more outward and waving in a musical extravaganza that takes me with it on its mission soaring forth a once forsaken now a passenger of some secret capsule sent to God

courtesy rocket fuel engendered by a spotlighted brave and oh, so fragile human singer and a song

where I remain for half a moment seeming to last forever spellbound in the Presence while an unseen kindness fills my lungs with sparklers

(hush) from within this magic body

Everybody, everybody lives inside a perfect body

how do I know?

When I let go-

and when will I choose to remain inside this knowledge as one would who walks always a starry pathway across all strata of being in perfection glorified, yielding, weightless, flawless, and unburdened?

What can force one who has seen the Face to return to the imperfect body of the burdened fellow? I hear a voice saying, it's up to you now.

Everybody, everybody lives inside a perfect body,

and we know It!

The Nature Of What Is Happening

Frequently is heard, Why does God permit such atrocities?

Such thought arises is in a complete misunderstanding of what is happening. Something we had has been forgotten. We forget. Human beings forget. How? We become fascinated with what we are told we do not have but ought to have. Really, then, it is not so much a forgetting of truth as it is a foolish remembrance of what is not happening. In discomfort and confusion you are surely going to overlook what you have.

When you have forgotten the meanings behind the different clouds speaking in a language you once understood in the skyway you are hopelessly lost. You will not prepare for what is coming. God is speaking, we are ignorant and thus no longer listening. That is what is happening.

Someone blames God. Someone thinks God is cursing us and proposes to make sacrificial offerings to appease an angry Creator. But someone looks to the sky and foretells, Tomorrow is going to be a good day for fishing. (The Old Man and The Sea, a movie based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway.)

We might concern ourselves mutually with the question, Can I learn to remember? Regain what I had? Clouds remain. Interested? If something stirred in you, pay attention. Next day, remember. Pay attention. Keep it up. You will be aided from countless resources you did not know were available.

If others are as lonely as we are wouldn't it be ignorant to remain
apart?

The Joy Of Letting Be

A population becomes divided, thinking muddled through argument, and it progresses to be a more and more divisive force until lines are drawn by faulty thinking. A line has been drawn between those who say we are what we are, dammit, and must do the best we can to remain with heads above the water line; these times being harsh; and tho' we hope for better ones and all the rest the strong will always prevail so we have to rid the world of troublemakers so as to save the ones worth saving and leave the weaker behind and the God we serve is the One who's on our side; and those who proclaim we must change and shoulder the duty to care for the lost and weakest among us and make this a better world for all to equally share and play fair and dare to stretch forth a hand of mercy to prove we care so God will be there to light our way and bless us each day so the rich are to be made to loose their hold on the wealth and pour forth enough of what rightly belongs to everyone or stand before the bar of judgment and be punished.

All of it amounts to a muddy bucket of disputation, Should we do this or should we do that? Wars are made of that.

Watching a movie based on a play by a distinguished playwright there was portrayed before my eyes and ears a struggle between the wealthy War Lord and the Salvation Army. At the end, the disputants decided to join forces seeing there was good and bad on both sides. I had little hope this gesture was genuine or going to resolve anything really but at least it had a morsel of truth behind it...everybody's lost. Yet, a congress of fools is only that. Not going to change a tat.

Wisdom. What is it? Seeing that when the body sleeps all is folded into one, a journey is begun that can be the beginning of a winding back home to the start and by doing nothing discovering. One discovers we have what was never lost. It works for the individual and it works for any who see it to be so. Suddenly, one has real appreciation as if for the first time. Simply realizing it, one prefers it to pride. In this way of life there are no leaders, only trusted servants. All relationship is seen to be that between equals. Nobody need busy himself in the building of civilizations of masses of people just like him. That job was done at the beginning by some Governor who insists upon remaining anonymous but who knows us well. The only task is an unlearning and a letting be. I do not want you to take my word for it. No. I think not for someone else. There is no charge for this. Find out yourself. That which causes each rose to bloom I see in you.

If others are as lonely as we are, wouldn't it be ignorant to remain apart from them?

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After the Fall

it just might be

that when both Adam and Eve began to pout

after The Great One cursed them then said,

“Well, those two certainly did not pan out”

that God thought since they'll stone ya when you try anything 

new He'd make another thing or two.

He called it Porcupine, adding, It is good. And. That'll do.

And added, They will surely regret trying anything out of line 

with Porcupine.

Pleased, 

God forgot all about people we just escaped His Mind

And in that way, we betrayed holy spirit and we forsook 

the divine

The Hive Of Man

Any hive of bees is proof the way is here and it is now. Twas no solemn oath made me as I am. And none such nonsense can add a twiddle to my stature nor my worth. Furthermore, my true calling is beyond the grasp of any but a god. I am human. Oaths are insults to dignity. Today is no dress rehearsal. Now is my only moment!

Was anyone made to be a Jew? Was anyone made to be a Comanche? In both cases the position taken is you cannot afford to be who you are. I say, I cannot afford not to. Were you not truly made to be what is nameless and free? Can any betrayal be more serious? Are you not by the very betrayal destined to be enslaved? You and I have to serve somebody. Think. DO THOSE YOU HAVE DECIDED TO TRUST TO BRING YOU HAPPINESS HAVE IN THEIR HANDS ANY HAPPINESS TO BRING? Not one single ounce! They are not to blame. They have not what you need. In fact, they need it too. What is obviously demanded is a world where all nations are called by one name.

When a people are willing to stand as they are, naked and separate, anonymous, humble, absent guile, and tell the truth a discovery that is shocking is to be made. We are one, not on the outside, but within. As made, we are one. All of us, one. No exclusion. All people are my own people.

The Poetry of Simple Release

by Jon Harvey Smith

There have been seen so many who, trapped inside illusion and suffering, come to realize the suffering of many poses an opportunity to accumulate material wealth upon which grand illusion rests for its support. They offer to help change things for the better in exchange for money (security as they see it) to gain an advantage. They are helpers, they say. So, they work out some talent that will pull the wool over the eyes of a sizable number of social contacts to fool a sufficient number into believing they have answers who are just as lost as everybody else. They make a living off deceit. They know it and do their best to deny it. I tell this as one who practiced it. Other helpers similarly situated assist them and they, in turn, assist those, calling them colleagues. It only turns out to show that no real change is going to be possible from listening to anything that clings to the rules of a system that has created mass suffering and so the suffering grows to the extent more and more people believe they are insufficient and need to change into something else, something more. Such malarky opposes living reality itself and is more of the same failed swill that caused the sickness in the first place. Envy abounds. Greed festers. Competition gets nasty.

There are offshoots we know about. Organized crime. Conspiracy theories. Fanatical groups call for extinction of all who are disbelievers. Assassinations, torture, acts of terrifying violence, and wars grow out of this murky mire of ignorance for which humans alone are responsible. If any other branch of nature is having problems today it is the direct result of human failing human. It is so very important, though, not to go blind to the truth that it is all tied to the acts of men and women of goodwill who are wearing the robes of respectability who began the fall into illusion and drive its downward progress.

The most damnable aspect of this mess we call society is that it prepares a fertile ground to plant nonliving seeds that grow into a type of artificial forest of strong, dead trees impossible to see around or over or under which act as proof positive to most that to be human is to be just one of the lost sheep shearing others because the well-intentioned shearers have no choice. We are after all only human is the too well-worn excuse. It is actually, by now, somewhat disgusting to everybody involved. That is why it is time to call it by name.

God needs human beings like God needs nails driven into Its hands and feet.

Personally, I do not trust a story about a perfect God who makes people who arrive in need of a book and a teacher with credentials and membership in a group who build temples of bricks or stone. It makes more sense to me to figure the teachers, the books, and the temples have driven innocent children mad enough to require institutionalization in places where they can be dressed, fed, and watched lest they harm themselves or others.

Release is for the living. It is found by seizing the one opportunity one has never before tried. It is found by daring. Daringly let go of all but what one had at the beginning of life for one sees that acquisition is illusory. This means one learns what one truly wants. But to find what one wants has always depended upon first knowing who you are. One artist* had the nerve to tell that a poem is forever nontransferable, cannot be bought or sold. Remains forever a part of the one who wrote it.


That is the heart of it. The term poetry stands for all forms of artistic expression of every nature, known and unknown. Once that be firmly established, I say, simply, one has to write one's own poem or stay eternally damned.

                                                                 
*Tennessee Williams, who put his poetry into plays that continue to wrack the souls of men. 

STUPID CLOUD #3

History, that joke everybody invites into their minds,

like taking medicine to keep us sick, to promote

the cloudiness there, was last seen for the hoax

it is shortly after two back-to-back world wars

destroyed forever our faith in each other and

we in the USA forgot that all the Giants before

had fucked things so badly we could not bear to

look at what had been done in the names of our

flags and the USA obediently took its turn as

lords of destiny for all mankind.

Hey, you have to remain convinced of a cloud of stupidity

to suffer this world's countless laughable images. Nations

are imaginary. All of them, not just the other guy's. Yours!

There is no cloud where your information is stored. You think

that way simply because you believe yourself to be unworthy

of freedom. Undeserving of real strength. You are your only

hope for an escape from the programmed nuthouse.

One nut at a time.

I heard an intelligent man speak recently of what it means to be.

an American. He is capable. Has lots of money. He is a boss.

Yet he chooses to speak of clouds that do not exist. What it means to be

an American? Only someone who is willing to falsify a presentation

to others will talk in such a manner.

Nobody is American. The ones who call themselves that have the least

right of all to the name.

We are all of us simply individuals. We are what the wind says we are.

Listen. Ask, instead, what does it mean to be alive? Fail in this and

remain in the nuthouse. A place anything can happen.

Many inside the circle of nuts have promised to straighten out the circle

of idiots from inside it. They write greed driven memos and books and

hold seminars and lead retreats and give sermons and speeches while they

live off the war.

What the Hell good is that?

How, pray tell, can a greedy man teach another greedy man

to stop being greedy?

Okay, the country song goes,

“I'll be at peace when they lay me down”

But, listen, should you fail to find the peace

you wish for before death, how you gonna find

it as a skeleton?

I mean, if you cannot find it with a living brain

tied to a living heart...and a lantern...and both

hands...well, what have you to complain about?

STUPID CLOUD #2

We tell ourselves we like not having a choice

that we do what we do because we have to,

everybody does. We insist upon it!

We know as children we learned to deny what we truly want

in order to avoid the pain of not getting it. Remember?

We pay pros to convince us we can do no better.

We repeat it to ourselves in mantras of song

Greed gremlins who lick their chops

rub their hands together

laugh their asses off

They see us play along

We dance on cue to a tune played by a non-existent

piper, then

we pay somebody else to get

our kicks for us.

We serve an unseen master

give it names but have no idea how close it is, the bastard

its allure seems irresistible

we listen, charmed, as if...

Who are we?

That mirage told us in secret we had to stand by while

they stole something we didn't need and covered it up.

We went along.

And we have been going along since at a quickened pace.

We are the rabble that watches. But

who are we really?

We are like a lost bunch.

With a map to paradise that we believe to be the true one

who want to go there

but who do not know where we are

so for us the map

is useless

So, instead of going to the trouble of finding out where on that map

we are we just pick any road and follow it and forget the destination.

We know as children we learned to deny what we truly want

in order to avoid the pain of not getting it. Remember?

Once Upon The Stupid Cloud

Who are we, Cloudy Minds?

Is that really who you are?

Existence seen by us if at all through a glass darkly?

It is as if You and I are being hypnotized.

Continually are we being kept under a form

of hypnosis we call our greed which we think

makes us human. In actual practice it has made

us inhumane.

We are made to think we have to vote for the candidates

of Mister Greed's choice. We do not. We have a choice

of our own to make. More about that later.