Another tact-

Okay. Suppose a guy is selling his car to a stranger. Suppose the same guy is arguing politics or religion with another stranger on a street corner. Suppose the same guy is about to ask a woman (he knows) to be his wife. Suppose the same guy is later trying to discuss with the same woman a divorce. Or, what if the child of that man and woman is asking, “Daddy, is there a God?”

There are millions of scenarios out of life experiences we can shoot as part of a film. Or use to tell a joke. Or as a chapter in a novel. Or, in a song we hope will be a hit.

Think of a guy in the office of his shrink telling what he believes happened to cause him to make the appointment. Think about another guy on trial for a crime on the witness stand. Then consider an eye witness to the same crime on the stand. A judge and jury are listening to this testimony in order to make some decision that could spell trouble.

Imagine a legislative body in session considering a declaration of war against another branch of the human race. Consider yourself to be in the shoes of a Governor who is being asked to grant a stay of execution on the grounds of newly discovered evidence that could establish conclusively the innocence of the condemned party. Or, consider yourself as a corporate CEO whose company is being accused of having done lethal damage to the environment or some CEO trying to obtain rights to mine Indian lands established as sacred forever by a Treaty with the United States of America.

With just these in mind for now, let us remind everybody how life really takes place for all of us. As soon as that is firmly established in our minds eye we shall understand the rest.

What is going on for each of us, what we consider to be true, as persons alive, is taking place inside our minds, not outside of it. The outside is a projection only.

There's an argument going on inside each of us that is driving the action of every party who appears to be involved in any story taking place on the outside. The real relationship is between the voices inside each character rather than the argument taking place on the outside between rank strangers who find they have met in a strange land. In other words, what happens in the outside world is merely coincidental to the real conflict, which is internal. In yet other words, the people actually involved in the matter are mere images mentally stored by each person. Yet all communications media of all forms deny this is so. This all very complicated.

It is as if we are all willing to be crazy as bat shit rather than admit what we are thinking to anyone, not even our closest confidants, if we have any.

Are we hypnotized? You may ask.

Is it that to know everyone, including myself, is entirely not responsible for what is going to happen so terrifies me that I am driven to denial's door where I knock and a door opens into a room where I am taught that to survive I must insist that everyone is to be held to account as if he is in control of himself?

Or, perhaps, is it why I am so willing to follow that suggestion from an unknown hypnotist?

I want to explore this to a conclusion and propose a more adroit and sensitive tact. My proposal is we need to empty out and reload our minds for truth.

What have we become? And how did it happen? This is to be kept simple enough for human understanding. That really means it is to be honest enough to shoot straight and direct to the point so it hits us where we live and we can easily understand what is spoken or written. This is written to everybody, no exceptions. If you are alive it is for you it is put down here.

The simplest way to point out the dilemma is simply to remind everybody that we are in a world in which everybody knows himself only on the inside and yet knows everybody else only on the outside. We do not know how others see us but we know it is far from accurate and we do not know what others are thinking or feeling. We can know only a little about them. Now, we could admit this and proceed with life as it is or we could, as we have been doing, merely agree to deny that we do not know all we need to know to make sound decisions relating to others. As we define it, this would mean we cannot possibly have open and understandable and loving marriages nor anything close to justice in handling disputes that will arise. Our relationships with our children will be muddled, confused, and far from satisfactory in anybody's book. Relations between bosses and employees will always be concealed,

manipulated ones. Between nations there will be little hope for lasting peace anywhere. This is how it is.

It can be so much better you will not believe. The simplicity of it can be seen in a flash once what we have been doing in hope we will have the lives we desire is realized with clarity. We actually, all of us, the educated and the uneducated of us, we choose to put on blinders and deny we have way too little knowledge to possibly accomplish our goals of healthy, sane interpersonal relationships. We know not what it is like to be even one other person, but, do we let that stop us from marrying one of them? with a lifetime commitment? No. We insist that we, as individuals, will be the exception. Everybody else may fail, but not me. I shall accomplish the impossible although no one before me has ever done so yet!

Does that not sound like the talk of a god?

It may seem ironic but it is just that in you I am counting on. You have a feeling you are a lot more than you appear to others to be. The same is true for me, of course. You have not sensed that others you meet here really get you. Did you know that Bob Dylan, who was heralded in the media as the voice of his generation said he felt that same way, that nobody really saw him? Now, can you begin to feel that it really can be so much better for us than we have ever known?

What most of you may be thinking at this point is something like, boy, this writer had betta be holding all four aces if he is to pull off this trick. A better world? Not likely.

I promised simplicity and shall deliver it.

We begin today. We begin small. We proceed with care a step at a time and we arrive. That is a promise.

What I am relying upon is something you all know to be so. I mean you know it. And, because we know it, we can begin. Must begin.

It is this. Everyone has a yearning inside that is deep. That feeling is a wish to be fulfilled in this lifetime by the end of it. It amounts to this: At the last breath I want to know why I was born. I mean that I want it to make sense to me in a serene understanding as the fulfillment of my wish. Amen.

Now, one of the finest things about this experiment is that it takes only two to make its beginning happen. And, as others join us, there will always be enough to keep it rolling along its way. There will never be any requirement for membership beyond a simple wish to join. The door will always be open

to resign and to return later. Nobody can force another to join this experiment and nobody is entitled to

prevent anyone else from joining us ever. In fact, nobody else even knows who has joined and who has not. Cares only about his own commitment. And is jolly well calm about it.

This experiment is of the highest order. Einstein would surely agree. We shall carry our mutual understanding of the simple wish we have in common, internally, forward long enough and with enough real, earnest zeal flowing in its direction (available to power it if it happens to be where it has been told it will be found) remembering all the way we are beginning small, proceeding with care one step at a time, until we know we have arrived. It will be obvious when we do.

Are you with me?

3

Fragments of nothing much to begin with
preserved in museums
as imagination's marmalade... that shit?... pretense on parade?



O, wise wrist, ask fingertips, “turn a page”
Find me anew in man's forgotten language.
Drop the world of make believery
into foam at the shoreline of a rolling sea.



Longing to carve, discovered by a stone,
Sit with it 'til I know, alone,
a trapped angel, bruised, knotted up inside,
says to five fingers, “come alive!”



The moments of a life?
Can that be?
Dead fragments collected in time's non-existent casket?
Where does that put me?



The one moment of totality that mattered,
why, it did not scatter!
Who, having two eyes, failed to see?
Watery waves...a sandy beach... foam...a rolling sea...eternity? Not me?



'Twas dark, then suddenly,
light was everywhere, all around me!
'Twas dark, then suddenly,
light was everywhere, all around me!

HEART

The wise man said the answer you seek will always lie inside your own heart.  

Learn to be its closest relative, its servant.

The listeners rebuffed him asking, “Where is this heart you speak of, great 

master? I have no heart to my knowledge. Is it the organ in my chest that 

pumps blood you mean, ancient one? Is it some syrupy sweet sentimental 

notion that is so foolish it is childish thinking that makes wishes that a good 

fairy will save us all at the last minute?”

My master replied so simply to the questioner, “Where is the mind?”

Silence followed.

Then my master spoke again, “You all have a mind you know only too well. 

Where does it hang out?”

Heart is that in you that has always been with you since birth that longs for 

you to actually live your own life while you have that chance. Mind wants 

you to live the life others, and especially those who have hurt you and 

despised you and ignored you, those whose primary, constant chant to you all 

your life has been, “you are not good enough yet” want you to live that is not 

your life.

Heart, like mind, is always present. I tell you heart is with you at your lowest 

moments. Heart is with you in your stormiest hours. Heart is with you on a 

battlefield. Heart is with you at a brothel. Heart is with you in the gambling 

halls on Wall Street. Heart is with you in jail. Heart is with you in the sewers 

of the world. Heart is with you when you think there is no one who cares. 

Heart knows that the same people who praise you when you are up will 

abandon you when you fall. So long as you have a breath, Heart never 

abandons you. For some of us the Other Name for Heart's “The Hole”. That 

empty hole in the chest can't nothin' fill. Not booze, not money, not sex. 

Heart is present with one message, Know Thyself.

I met Townes Van Zandt and I met Prem Rawat. Like 'em both. It seems to 

me now that Townes meets people where they are not even trying to be nice 

or look good, kinda whupped, rather sorrowful; and Prem Rawat meets us 

when our teeth are brushed, nails clipped, pants pressed and we are wanting 

to straighten up and be something better than we seem to be ourselves. But 

both of them are one. Each points to the other. I am not here to tell you 

anything else.

Take A look

Once, following hard fought defeat, a coach was asked, "Why did you guys lose tonight?" 

And the coach was heard to admit, "There is a whole lot more to this game we play than anyone wants to admit".  

We have, for too long, been practicing self-deceit as nations in a win-lose game of competition and look where it has gotten us.

LIFE NEEDS US NOT WE NEED LIFE

It is a mistake to have ever followed the suggestion in the first place that life ought be organized, for, isn't it obvious enough that any efforts to organize such a mysterious and wonderful fact as life is going to be made by incompetent human beings who are its mere servants, and mere beginners at that? The primary hole in such a mad theory is the obvious-it is bottomed in the presumption that life is not well organized as we, the living, have received it! I am convinced by now that those who attempt its organization are those who have failed totally to accept it on its terms, meaning those of life. And are miserable. And, being miserable, want to coerce a crowd of other miserable ones to join them in a foolish scheme whereby they intend to run the show managing all the rest as objects.

I have seen the other side of it. Those who have accepted the terms as presented by the Giver of it are completely satisfied with life and will in no manner consider for a moment any fantasized theory to alter that relationship and will laugh at any plan presented them to outwit life. And the grandest fact of all is these I have met who are content with life, as it is, make wonderful companions who treat each other with respect, interact in peace, and honor each other as if they were meant to do so effortlessly. That is all I wanted to say.

Who Am I?

I am that instrument, finely tuned, which receives signals, turns 

those into a feeling, which feeling then creates something of 

beauty and use for all around me- a phenomenon I witness in 

awe. At my best as an instrument in service to my maker and 

one who registers awe at the experience of being just that.

                                                                        

                                                                         -Jon Harvey Smith,
for Charly

Gotta Eat and Live

(or, A Monetized Way of Life)

So, people gotta eat and live. Is that an excuse? What is it an excuse for? Is its meaning that we cannot expect to eat if we are honest and engaged in some noble work we love? How often has the story been repeated of the young person who confides in his parents his heart's desire to be an artist only to have his heart stomped upon and crushed into goo before his eyes? To be ridiculed as a childish goofball by someone he admires and loves? How does it feel? When done with special vigor is it not obvious the parent is imitating his own parent? And is it not his, the parent's, stored up pain that is being unloaded on the child?

So, people gotta eat and live. If asked, Do you believe in God? Would your answer be in the affirmative? It is for most people and yet few of them do any work that is satisfying to the soul. And nearly all would crush such romantic notions from their children's thinking instantly upon its discovery. Almost none would accept a plan by their offspring that did not include financial security. So, what is a God for? In my upbringing it was primarily offered as a source of forgiveness for the sins which derive from my low base nature. (Which God is given credit for creating in the first place) Seems, primarily, it is a useless thing held out to the neighbors as evidence I am to be trusted. (Since a scheme has been presented for forgiveness one need not seriously consider one's greed, meanness, cruelty, fear, anger, etc. However even a young child will surely wonder occasionally whether his sins are not being produced by the sins of his father. After all, the kid knows he is not, at heart, a base critter, but an enormously creative spirit.) And yet, nobody has met a banker who will lend you money because you are religious or will swear you know God. What is it the banker knows? Knows just how afraid you are of insecurity. The more you are, the more he will lend. Ironic. (So, fearful cowards gain most from a monetized way of life.)

Some people actually crave and adore insecurity for it brings them closer to their God. People gotta eat and live.

You Better Know You Cannot Escape It

Truth is what it is we are locked inside each others arms

if we let one brother fall we are down there with

them all

You better start to believe it

then you better buy into it

you don't have to like it

but you cannot escape it

we are locked inside each others arms

if we let one brother fall we are down there with

them all

you thought you could escape it

DOOR

1 For a long time there were people who depended on God's way.

Then came a strange people who depended on a store.

2 These blind people carried powerful rifles and other things of war

assembled in factories and sold by the store.

The blind ones could see not that the store owned them

and all they once were proud to stand for

were lost to them as beggars who with shrunken soul

knew not life nor what it is for but had weapons of war and the things in a store and a plan which they misrepresented as part of a method they called strategy along with a slogan tell them what you have to tell even if it be untruth and tell nothing more. And never feel inwardly bound by what you have told before. And, sadly, the people of God's way kept not their wits about them that would have warned them to stay away and not trade with these ones who belonged to a store.

3 And no one saw that the art of the blind was also without vision and that it was an art that said as much and it continues to this day to be that same way filled with sorrow and pain and regret and they sing it and dance it and write of it and make films around it and worship most strongly through the things from the store which by now does not have to be a material place staffed by people at all but an imaginary store reached by clicking and robots bring the things from the lifeless store to my door.

4 This is a heartless, sterile way to live I tell you. I yearn to return to the way it was before. My heart tells me to sit with the yearning and let it build to a roar and when it forces a shout leap up and roar! And look for a yet unfound door. And, by Golly, remember where to find what you never lost from the road of before and this time hold tight as a human to the treasure of the heart like your ancestors of forgotten lore written in a forgotten language, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.

Nobody Else Can Do It You For*

A hint: seek and read as if your life depends upon it Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

A Look

I have begun a book. It is entitled Look Homeward, Angel written by someone named Thomas Wolfe who died quite young, leaving some books behind for us. It has taken me a week to read the first 60 pages of the novel. I am no expert, just a human being alive enjoying this moment I write. I am a poor writer, I know that. The only thing I can say is that the subject I write about is great. In that sense and that sense only am I a great writer like someone who writes about horses might be called a horse writer.

I found Mr. Wolfe's amazing contribution to us in the library of a tiny school in a mountain village in the cloud forest of Costa Rica where I am a visitor. Having read so little of it you may wonder why I am already writing its praises. I just had to. I have a feeling I have little chance of finishing it but am eager to attempt that.

This unusual, to say the least, book is opening me to a more genuine understanding of what it means to be human, as we call it. It moved me already to speak out what I have felt. Should it be there is no time to waste is there no time to use? Moments are not subject to the drama of waste, having no consequences. Time, it is said, can be used or wasted. But, as yet, I have not found anyone who is living or has lived who can answer what it can be used for. Has it any legitimate purpose? Anyone who could, would certainly have an advantage over me.

The Wolfe book is telling me indirectly, as novels are written to do, that at the same time a family of people are experiencing all manner of trials and tribulations just as the consequences of birth, something else is happening to them that is of another nature entirely. It is apparent to all that life is worth living whenever the second thing I alluded to is apparent, and only then. The other experience, the one with consequences, seems to dominate us, even the ones of us believed to be more holy than the bulk of the population. This fact makes everyone wonder why they are even alive.

It is about time we are so concerned. A false clock is attempting to control us. It knows not of the moment. Now is a synonym for contentment, absolute, with no worry- for there are no consequences to it. Rivers flow, flowers bloom, trees give shade to all regardless of age or gender or name or credentials or criminal record. There is nothing to do but savor. This now thing happens to the family in the novel who are just riddled with flaws and unable to understand life at all. It seems to happen once in awhile but when it is happening there is no concept of time so it can raise the question,”Was that reality or is this reality? They all experience admiration for each other although they clearly should not whenever consequences are considered to be relevant. The very moment the world of consequences occurs to any of them they harm one of the others, every time, as if they have no choice. In short, these monsters are capable of greatness.

As I read the novel I find myself going along with the author's unstated (so far) belief these people are to be admired for their courage if nothing else. Much as one might have to admire, if only a little bit, someone who actually plays Russian Roulette with a pistol and a single bullet. It is heavy for me to write this down but somehow feels necessary. Am I admirable in such a way?

My own father are these people and I became him. (This I feel is a paragraph.)

I Am

I am a Buddhist but not distracted by the word Buddhist

without any oath, without robes, and without the teachings of the Buddha

and I am a Christian but not distracted by the word Christian

without any creed, without candles or crosses, and without the teachings of Christ

I am a Jew without distractions of any sort

I am a Hindu without distractions of any sort

I am a Muslim without distractions of any sort

I am as I am and as I am I can see the truth inborn same as anyone sees

and all truth is my religion without distractions of any sort

and that frees me in a certainty

truth needs no advocate

it's obvious to me

Truth stands so tall it cannot oversee

a cowardly, pushy truth is no truth to me

Let me tell you what I have been shown

If I attach myself to a word I must say, I shall believe, and allow no distraction!

But permitting no distraction is the greatest distraction of them all

It has been mentioned by religious people forever as the Last Distraction

But it is the First Distraction!

Who has forgotten all words?

Who has forgotten even silence?

I want to talk to that person