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)
