HERE GOES

So, here goes. If I am simple and I cannot plan that, to be simple, it happens or it does not, but if it happens I will hear someone insult me or feel someone is ignoring me or recognize a look of disapproval or an absence of any attention at all and instead of being upset about it I respond with “what can this person actually do to me, hurt my ego?” Immediately I know that to hurt my ego is no loss but a gain. I am thankful for that benefit I might otherwise have hurt over. When hurt there is no telling what response will follow. Then I know, by golly, this feels so nice and I remember I have at times suffered pain in this circumstance and here I am happy as a peacock. Following that will be some deep rejoicing for the simple fact I am just me and I have nothing to lose. When in this place I am creative and being creative is not anything I can plan to be and anything is possible for me. I want to share this. There are two of me, both present. Which is going to be the priority? I cannot plan on a result with any effect so…what is it I learn about freedom here? I see a bit of something in me that wants freedom but on my terms and know that is not freedom at all. I want to share this. What is that about?

Seems to me life is not about "what do I get" but "what do I have to give".

 A Book Inside 

Do you read books? Do you know there is a different sort of book inside you? Do you know inside you is the whole history of humanity from its beginning right up to this moment? Not the history of kings and queens and wars and dates but the entire record of life as it has actually been experienced by all of us is recorded in each of us. There are more links in your brain than there are atoms in the observable Universe!

Can you read the book of life in you? Do you? Are you in touch and current? If not, your own life is lopsided. Any life lopsided is not at all reliable, is it? 

The education system today is about memorization and  is lopsided. So, we can either stumble along as best we can or, sensing a great responsibility to do so, we can make it a real priority to learn to read the book of real life inside us and benefit from a wholistic education. Anyone is free to turn from the lopsided world at any moment to let the sunshine in. 

Education as practiced is exclusively geared to the preparation of a child in a way to become a participant in a competitive game of earning a livelihood as an employer or an employee in some career field. It is deliberately lopsided in this way. Educated people will actually participate in the system and gladly receive compensation for doing so knowing it is lopsided. That requires them to be lopsided human beings everyday they live. It cannot be viewed as anything but a dishonest betrayal to all that is beautiful about being human. It must create suffering in all who do it for what is missing, the sunshine, is what in a child is psychologically sensitive to beauty, love, kindness, generosity, tenderness, tolerance, and all which arises from the truth the child is inseparable from the whole of humanity for all time. It is written inside each one as a hunger and thirst.

Humans are suffering all around the earth. You and I are inseparable from that suffering. Reading the book inside with clarity can bring understanding and liberty. It is so important. Too long we have depended on others to read the book for us. Nobody who has read the book will read it for another. That is a law. It is written. Find what your work is and do not let anything dissuade you from it.

 THE ART OF LEARNING

Real learning, let’s call it the “Art” of learning, is like a river always flowing, never memorizing, never static. There is a big difference between memorizing and learning. In learning one is never stuck. Never bored. One is always original. Today’s point of view is new and precisely in point. One might say real learning as opposed to memorizing is keeping pace with the real challenges of a life. For sure, one need never again say, 

”Well, that didn’t work so let’s do it again only try harder.” 

Or, “It’s time for another war, boys!”

Or, “I quit.”

 LOVE SOMEONE

The solving of any grievance leads to another grievance. What is it you and all others…all others…are sorrowful about? 

What is the nature of your sorrow?

 Yesterday I overheard a woman tell her companions “Now, don’t get me wrong, I do want just one producing oil well in my backyard. Then I’d be secure.”

Is it that you cannot have some status you so much desire? Is it status you are after or is it really that you need to be loved and accepted as you are?

Do you see a difference? Can that be the same for every human on Earth? Is it simply obvious to you that it is so? Is that the big picture you see? If it is, take a chance. Love someone. 

 FURTHER COMMENT ON WHICH POWER 

Lust is not passion. They are entirely different. A passionate commitment can come into play in the smallest of matters or the largest. I know a man who agreed to occupy a house at an agreed rental not after having been sold a bill of goods concerning his selfish interest in shelter but by listening to a fellow who owned the house talk about the whole picture of housing for all people on Earth. The tenant joined the dialog eagerly and became passionately committed to the house and the ground upon which it stood as if it were his very own. That man loves his home, the landlord and his family, and his neighbors. And that landlord and that tenant are all the time doing favors for the other out of love. Why cannot all human interactions be of the same nature as that? Nothing is preventing it but fear. And the fear is caused by a separation that is not even there. Rather than more policeman and more defense spending we, all people of Earth, need to put an end to  the nonexistent separation. 

It comes but alone not by agreement, oaths or swearing and handshaking or by protesting. It’s an inside job not a display of false pride meant to bolster a reputation as a caring, righteous  person. Bob Dylan has been criticized from the beginning for not joining protests in the streets which always carry the odor of "look at me be better than the bad guys I am against" which only strengthens  the false ideas of separation and keeps the misery we actually oppose firmly in place. What is being suggested here is that the cause of war is division among humans and it can be ended by ending the cause and will never be ended through what divides. This means we are all responsible for the mess. A living change, not words, that is required.

Consider this everybody! If I see misbehavior in any other it is caused by the system of thoughts in my own conditioned brain and by thoughts and words from my own mouth. Otherwise, I would see only a suffering human, like me, as me, who needs my love. We are in the soup together.

A final note. Instead of telling myself, "I should have..." why not admit, simply, "I could have..."

THE FOUNDATION WAS LAID FROM THE BEGINNING

Everybody carries inside the same wish. It can frighten. This kind of wish is perhaps the beginning of prayer and the only real prayer a body will make. It goes: Please let me be real again if only for one day. 

Such a prayer is real in the sense that it has no reward or punishment in it. Real in the sense it is not anything stored in the brain as memory. It is actually present but denied. It longs to be free as it was on the day we were born. To be that thing for which I cannot for the life of me find a mentor. Nobody will understand it. I fear I must be careful so as not to expose how odd I am. For either I am odd or all have forgotten, but me. 

Music came from that place. Another part of me wonders, “Why do we sing?  How silly! A waste of time and energy. If you have something to say, say it!” And yet, every generation finds its own music. And the one before always says, “That’s not music!”

See how music is a kind of war? The part of us that does not sing has a nervous response that is determined to organize music, categorize, control, define and explain it. To decide what is good and proper music and when and how and where it is to be performed. To cage in us what cannot be caged! And sell tickets! Billy the Kid was one of us who came close to being fully free if only for a short legendary time. 

Billy carried this gnawing ache just as far as he was able, as will we all. It led him into a fight to avenge the murder of the only family he had left in the world, a certain Mister Tunstall who admired Billy. He killed. He was promised by the government a full pardon. The promise was not kept. Instead, he was tried and convicted of murdering one of the men who killed Mister Tunstall.  And he was sentenced to be hanged until dead. Knowing he was wrongfully convicted, he killed again to escape his hanging. Billy the Kid found himself at the end of another kind of rope. His prayer to be real answered, Billy vanished. As do we all. Where do we go? Sing it!

How does it feel? Do not be too quick with your answer to that. Historians are left chasing someone who is free and does not want to be found. (page 10, A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw). Did Billy know? If so, when did he know that he was about to vanish?

We all have been sold a complete illusion of how things are eventually going to work out. It is never going to happen. People are not going to improve. Nations and all other sects of people are not going to improve. Families are not going to improve either. Countless numbers of these groups have come and gone and no improvement is seen. 

Languages and clothes and diets and forms of entertainment and all our other habits is all that changes. Habits are mechanical. Lifeless. Not human. Everyone knows we remain divided inside our groups and our behavior remains shamefully unchanged. We do not need to list all the shortcomings of man. Of that we are all so aware. We are at each other’s throat!

It is not appropriate or necessary, at this point, to discuss all the different ways humans have developed their group belief in an after-life where things will be better for them.  For it is possible to discover the source of all the troubles we suffer on Earth and end them here now. I point to the ability to vanish. It is about facing the other kind of death. We see the illusionist and it is us. Each of us, having begun it, can end our illusion. Expose it. And find the illusion we end has been the source of our complaints. Every human can satisfy him or herself simply by recognizing the illusionist and thereby vanishing as the illusion. Ultimately, we see that every complaint has pushed us to the vanishing point. And that the act of vanishing as an illusion is actually a reappearance as the real human being. Like awakening from hypnosis, it is most satisfying. Like becoming a child.

Finally, let me address any inane complaint that what I am encouraging us to do is to return to living in caves and carrying clubs, etc. That is not remotely appropriate to this discussion. We need not look back to previous habits of our ancestors to aid us in a decision to become real now! Such is a subterfuge made out of fear of being a real human being. In freedom lies always uncertainty as to what exact note the real musician will now play. And that gives it life! And gives to life its appeal. I point to an all-win situation.

The great piano teacher tells the would-be player “do not imitate, be yourself”. The best coach says the same. So also say all the best artists. All who hear feel a fright expressed as,  

“I cannot. I must be perfect.”  Ask yourself, “Why is it I so fear to be me?” And, “Why on Earth do I call it imperfect?” Has someone hypnotized me?  If I succeed in my plan to avoid being me altogether can I really say I even have lived? Who was born in the first place? Not some bundle of images surely.

I could tell you now what happened after the Kid vanished, whether Pat Garrett shot him, whether he skipped out of New Mexico and what all he did and explain him but will not do any of that. The Billy who got into the mess vanished into reality and does not wish to be found by people who are hypnotized and seek a plan to follow. What good would it do?

I want now to boldly say-

Not one of you can ever be made to reject another unless you are first made to reject a part of yourself!  Be real. (Look into the story of the White Swan with this in mind) 

 WHICH POWER?

There is a certain power in two people who meet and one is trying to convince the other he has something to offer which will benefit the selfish interest of the other. The other hears his words and agrees or disagrees. When they agree a contract is accomplished. That is a form of power. It is business power. There is another form however. It is a power which comes when one party offers the other nothing but speaks for doing what is right to do in consideration of the whole picture, like a Bob Dylan song, for example. When agreement is the result, this second power is vastly more powerful than the former. Why is that so? It is because the parties together have brought the agreement into being. In the first agreement the two remained separated throughout and remain so after the agreement is accomplished…separated. Neither party will support the agreement wholeheartedly. Like every peace treaty ever made is so quickly abandoned. However, in the second example both will support what they have done together, will be now united as one, and that commitment is unbelievably strong, strong to the point of death! Some element called passion has been forged as a part of their friendship. Passion is an essential ingredient in human life. Without it, the mind grows dull, mechanical, repetitive, and in such boredom will consider all manner of unhealthy ways to feel better; such as, killing anyone who does not think in the same way, wear the correct clothing, has a different color skin, practices a different religion, follows a different political philosophy, has more money and property or threatens to take away some of mine, etc. etc. etc.

So, which power is it to be?

MEETING WITH AN ORIGINAL MAN

This morning I listened to an original man speak by way of film and video from many years ago. He asked those present with him then rather than being sponges who absorb and take things in from one they admire to listen from an originality in them to the original tones from the speaker. This reminded me immediately of our talks.

I thought of our consideration of what it must be like to play in Bob Dylan’s band, for instance. Those who have seem to find it a “Difficult” experience. I recalled the woman who said when she first listened to you speak she hated you and wished you to be paralyzed but later she noticed how you had grown and changed and she liked you and you told her, “Hey, Lady, it was not I who changed!” So, it made me feel a calm and clarity that to play in the band of an original requires the new player to change by retaining the original in himself and that accounts for the pain of difficulty. But more important to me than that even was the glimpse into what great opportunity is taking place to be in the company of someone who offers you nothing. 

Someone demands you keep hold of the original in yourself and not be a sponge or leave his or her company. Is that love? Or the Greatest Love? Jesus always before this most recent experience had baffled me by telling his 12 disciples 

“You will do greater works than me.”

Is it a brand new way of life? Is it jazz? Is it Moby-Dick? 

 We all need to understand this, each one in our own way. You do not live “my life”. No, Sir, or Madam. You and I live our part inside of this life, the one, as it is happening. Play our role. Whether you be Buddha, Genghis Kahn, Adolph Hitler, Albert Schweitzer, Alexander the Great or John Doe or Mary Jones. No one is more important than Anyone else. Not ever has it been so. Bob Dylan told the press, “It just happened like anything happens. I did not strive for it.” He meant it and nobody listened. Perhaps not even Bob himself. Jesus would have said the same. In fact, said he, “Why call me, Master? None is good but God.” The sooner one gets it the sooner one finds meaning and passion…compassion. Same. The thing is known as humility. Melting into humanity understand living. That is the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. 

We do not love somebody. When we feel love we feel it for everybody at once for there is but one love. One life, one love, one lesson to learn. Remain in this knowing. This writing is neither elusive nor cryptic, the writer is actually living what is happening. Cease your hiding.  Come forth boldly as you are.