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.
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.
