A New Way of Learning

I want to speak of something very important. I am going to try something new in order to do it…I am going to follow the lesson I want to describe to reveal the answer. It will be fun.

A few days ago there were written words describing how catching a ball is to enter a new dimension from the ordinary one that’s the common way we live. One must go beyond thought. One must not allow thinking to play a role in catching a ball or one will miss catching it. It happens fast. One begins to catch the ball before it even is thrown or struck by a bat. The motion of the throw is vital and one begins a movement associated with where that motion is going to send the ball totally outside of thought. One might say the doing and the learning are simultaneous. This is being written in that way. Learning and doing as one thing. This is a completely different way than we are trained to live our lives. What people normally do is think of an ideal they want to bring into actuality…maybe it is work related… then formulate a plan by thoughts to do that and then try to execute the plan. This is where we can waste a lot of energy…trying. People often say “ I try” after they are commended on a job well done. And this means there is going to be a continuous struggle for them to keep up the satisfactory accomplishment expected of them and by them. In this is the beginning of a way of life felt to require effort. The conclusion to be drawn is “life ain’t  easy”. This new way being followed as this is written is effortless…a flow…most pleasant. It feels like one gets even more energy from doing than one had before it. No trying. Are you interested in this? I am. 

 THE FLAME of DISCONTENT

It is as if a mission calls…burns. Urges forward. Having no outlet, intensifies.

The causes come. A career. A marriage. A religion to join, the more extreme the better. A political movement, the more extreme the more attractive. At some point these reveal they are not at all satisfying. All are seen to be surface and shallow and meaningless. All are monstrous creatures of selfish thinking with motives to keep all down in the hole that they are in. Now a completely meaningless life begins to nag and wants its chance. “Get what pleasures I can before it’s too late” calls. Hell is preferred to the Civilized Trickster. 

Death awaits. Just before death takes life away some current of clarity shocks at just the right moment and prayer, not some separate self, asks “help” from out the dying flame of discontent. It will develop that flame was alive all the while and its cry to not accept anything for a substitute satisfaction is the human being’s last resort and its highest intelligence and what has been found amounts to truest lover willing to die that all may live!

Another funny thing is that people never get enough of the things they want by acquisition of things but by losing it all…only then there is a chance to see how much is enough. Nobody ever found that out voluntarily, though. Too dumb, I guess. Too greedy. Blessed are the meek and poor in spirit.

                                                                       SCENIUS

I was introduced on the internet recently to a man I felt in minutes was an old and quite dear friend, Brian Enos. Known by many as a musical genius, Brian has written over 5000 pieces of music and much of it used in films as background. He has always done what he wanted to do which is far from doing nothing. Very busy human being. Very productive. In the course of his work and word spreading of his genius he has been invited to speak at art school to its students often. He has done so but is seldom invited back for he begins his talk with “I am here to persuade you not to get a job”. The teachers are made nervous as they believe their “job” is to steer students into a job. To earn a living is the goal. It is the need to earn a living that Brian sees as the obstacle to having the kind of society he would like very much to live in. I agree whole heartedly. 

What does it mean? 

Brian noticed in the art world one often hears the term “genius” and the presumption behind it that these individuals are the “great ones” responsible for the advances of mankind. He disagrees. Brian Enos and J whooper Swan have seen that in reality the advances that are accredited to an individual are really generated by a particularly energetic community the individual is immersed within at the right time.  Brian termed the phenomenon “scenius”.  It’s the scene, man. An important example would be Greenwich Village New York 1950’s and 60’s and Bob Dylan’s incredible burst of amazing songs. 

Listen to Dylan himself talk of the experience. “It just happened.” Friends around him speak of how Bob was just a very ordinary musician struggling in the folk music scene with the same songs and delivery as many others and not very interesting then suddenly he is a real interesting performer who seizes the attention of many and the rest is history…still unfolding by the way. Dylan talks of the experience at the time of just scribbling down songs while sitting on a subway or talking with friends at a restaurant or walking down the street…anywhere…just jotting down songs he picked up from listening to people around him. He was writing and then singing what others really wanted to say but could not. Scenius.

The concept of individual “geniuses” is a product of the pyramid design for governing a system followed by societies all over. A very great loss is the result. Scenius. For one thing, the pyramid form of organizing anything means the best people are the few at “THE TOP”.  Which is a false concept corrupt from the outset. That is not how life works. Every human being is a unique set of gifts and talents and carries a deep passion to express them. We are losing most of that energy and have been doing so for tens of thousands of years.

J Whooper Swan had a unique opportunity in the late 1980’s to associate himself among a group of people in Austin Texas amid an explosive need to change and do so now! Whooper had no credentials for what was to happen to him. Except one thing not on a usual resume. Whooper was an alcoholic who had had no drink for about 4 years. He had met and hung out with a group of drunks who had recovered from the affliction and something “rubbed off” in the nature of a brand new point of view and Whooper was inexplicably told by his supervisor to make up a job for himself for participation in the group. It was as if a door he never guessed could exist opened for only him. Have you heard of an authority figure instructing an underling to just make up a reason for being among us? It happened. It must have been like that for Dylan too. It happened.

It bubbled up from the community around us. This is apparent to Whooper. The way to be of service to the others was given me day to day and that bunch flourished for several years like no other!  The message to everybody was identical…we no longer have managers here, including the Speaker (Whooper) …all of us are servants and helpers to the whole community. People responded to it with intense devotion. That is who we are. I do not believe it, I know it. This fact feeds itself!

 

Societies and Dropping the Ball

Time and thought are one thing. They bring fear. Freedom is “no fear”. Recently, I resumed a life long love with throwing and catching a ball. Very quickly, it came right in my face that to catch a ball or in anyway intercept its progress takes place in some dimension way beyond thinking. It became so obvious that when I caught the ball thinking was entirely absent. That stunned me at first and kinda shook me up. It was so clear, though, and I remembered my childhood had borne that out. To catch a moving object is a total action.  Pure.  And simple. EITHER ONE CATCHES IT OR ONE DOES NOT. 

A relationship is exactly the same…beyond thinking and fear. Think about a relationship and you will muff the moment and appear a fool. Try to make it happen and you fail every time. Insight will show that every experience and the experiencer are the same thing as well. To separate the two in the mind is to introduce fear. Freedom is “no fear”.  LIFE IS RELATIONSHIP!  So, thought fucks up life. Relationship is total action. Pure. And simple. You already know this. 

There are many types of societies in the world made by man. There are nations, states, religious societies, societies of those devoted to causes, societies of common self-interest (lawyers, doctors, teachers, gangs, etc. ) We have become a species now that depends on these ambitious, selfish societies to mold and distribute the leaders who will direct the great mass of society on a path well- thought-out by the intellect of its membership. The mass of men and women are instructed to obey rules made by thinking in return for promises that they will be cared-for and their needs met. Such an approach is so corrupt throughout that it can lead and it has only led to a more and more mad chaos of dropped balls. Will we ever learn to be present?

 To Be,

 Or Not

Must watch out for human motivation as one might watch out for a poisonous snake. Human motivation is poison. It is poison to living things. Poisonous to plants and animals and children and the elderly. Poison it is to all fragile and weaker living things. People have actually motivated right over these “things” just mentioned like someone plowing a field before planting…as if they are just a nuisance anyway. Just as if they do not belong. Without asking “Who am I to determine that anything here has no value?” If anything exists that is reason enough to recognize its value in the eyes of the force that made it. We have all seen it. We have all done it. Writing this brings the bright and clear understanding that the whole planet is one amazing creature and as such is to be honored…honored I tell you…as one. The air we breathe and depend upon for life is treated as filth by people every minute of every day now. What have we done ? What have we become? Idiots? Robots?  Idiotic robots?

These are merely words…yet point to something deeper.  What is it? For lack of some way other than words at the moment let us call it…love. But let us forcefully remind ourselves it is not the word l-o-v-e that we are concerned with. Stop. If I tell you that your motivation is a bad poison I just might be thought to be saying mine is not even if I am motivated to say it. Does that make sense? I am motivated to make sense. Is that love? Or, a concern of love? Is love real? Can the answer be known? Bob Dylan made up a song which repeats the line. “You  Gotta Serve Somebody”. With that in mind it is possible to gain an insight.

Suddenly I see I am in jail. A different kind of jail. My own jail. My thoughts have me bound up and thinking put me here to live among other jailbirds. We all have motivations. In fact, that’s what this jail is… a place where motivations are all we do have. I want out! Another motive? Oh, Hell! Oh, dreary Hell!

This jail I am in is different. People here are of the opinion they are free. They are in jail but do not know it to be so. That’s important since a jailbreak depends on some change in the minds of the inmates. What is to bring that about is the question at hand. The change in mind brings immediate release without effort. It’s a different kind of jailbreak. 

Look what I have gotten myself into here by being motivated to write. It is a hell of my own making and only I can undo it. And there seems to be no way out of this mess. My motivations, even the motivation to try to be free, are always going to bring more conflict and I cannot be free of them. Can you? None of this don’t make no sense. That makes sense. 

An insight came. Motivation separates!  That is my enemy? Separation? So, can there be motivation that not only does not separate us but actually unites us? I see beauty. Not the concept. Actual beauty is present. It is a real sensation. The sensation has me enthralled! It is my last hope to escape jail in Hell. I grab onto it with all my strength. I am committed!  My only motivation is to follow that passion that beauty brought for me and trust the combination of the two knows the way to end separate motivation. Now passion, not motivated by me, is my king. I am filled. So simple. I need never be without this great new freedom. It is what I am. Truly, there is nothing to live up to and nothing or nobody to please. For the first time I am one with the whole Universe where nothing is not me.

Maybe the point never was that people of different colors learn to live together in peace. (By different colors it is intended to cover all possible differences of every kind.) Maybe the point was and always will be that just two people do it. Then, by jove, everybody else drops dead and the colors no longer make a difference. So far, the rest just keep killing that possibility of the two becoming one but the committed must try and put an end to trophies, relics, souvenirs, and memorabilia.

.

 SENSATION MINUS DESIRE

Sensations are life’s validation. My existence is affirmed in them. I see a magnificent tree. I hear a frog croak. I taste a cherry. I touch a fragile blossom. I feel sunshine on my face. I can feel a warmth coming to me while looking at the moon and stars at night. I am caressed by a friendly breeze. I perceive a flash of unlimited beauty from an unexpected glimpse at the exposed achilles tendon just above the slipper worn by a girl I may never see again that will haunt me for a long time. And on and on and on. As I live. 

What we call thinking is mechanical. As it becomes more developed in us as children it responds to sensations to create desires. This thing is subtle but important to spot. It is going to cause me many problems. In fact, “me” is a mechanical invention of thought jumping on sensation after sensation mechanically. Over time, it makes “me” think I live inside a mechanical life it has under its power. Now, if I were something mechanical who wanted a mechanical life I would be happy, maybe, but I was not happy with mine.  By the time I was thirty-nine I despised it.

This is being told you in the hope it might be of help should you get trapped inside a mechanical world. First, find out whether you actually are the maker of that mechanical world. If so, it will help you gain confidence that you, as its maker, can destroy it. There is and ever shall be another world entirely that is definitely not mechanical. To live here is to love. Passion rules here. The identity not made by thoughts runs free here. You will find out it is right where you stand on Earth. This life is a gift. There is no struggle in this one. There is an intelligence vastly greater than that intellect that is in charge of the mechanical world.

The question for you to answer is: Is it possible to prevent thoughts from interfering in sensation to produce desire? Check it and fly!

On your journey you will come to understand that the works of all the great “artists” and writers and philosophers are found in libraries and museums which are built to house the intelligence of the mechanical world and you will know this because you have found out that the ones who live in the non-mechanical world have no interest whatever in libraries or museums and never attempt to control a life, or even a moment of it. The mechanical world is forever caught in a crisis. It sees itself as something that is becoming better over time. It needs to praise itself. There is so much suffering there.

SELFLESSNESS ENCOUNTERED

In the present is freedom to participate within indivisible wholeness in total clarity and to act instantly or not at all. If requested to act with a motive to reply simply, “I prefer not to.” There are no secrets to conceal. There is nothing to live up to and no “other” to please.  What happens here and now are pure, loving surprises. And therein lies security worthy of the name. 

 THE PRICE of CIVILIZATION

There have been many prices to be paid for civilization as we know it. It ain’t worth any. But, you say, look around, all people have done it. Is it because the losses for organizing separate systems go so deep they cannot be measured? 

Through the practice of measuring, (science, as we know it) each worker is filled with so much limited learning he cannot begin even to appreciate what he has done to the marvelous thing he (a human) once was. Folks have been brainwashed to act only on the basis of measuring and comparing so all that is good, being immeasurable, is readily abandoned. We have sold the precious for trinkets of amusement. We sail on a Titanic of our own making daily. 

White men laughed at the Indians who sold Manhattan for beads but the Indians knew that nobody can own a piece of the mother earth. So, the way they see it they got a bunch of multi-colored beads by giving up nothing anybody should want in the first place. They got beads and the white man got the misery of living in a false, unequal hope. It is obvious that all earthlings, of every color, now are miserable. Miserable people want relief and behave like miserable people always do. Not simple enough to realize what they had and easily gave up for trinkets, they are easily hypnotized by every message that tells them somebody else is to blame for the fact they are miserable since what was promised them in churches and school rooms and in social media was happiness. These people believe themselves free if they can select which authority of humans will control and provide for them. Is that not crazy? It surely is not freedom.

Looking, one can see the greedy are very foolish. Whites can respond, “yeah, but look what we did to the Indians” just as if they are proud of it. Just as if they think they benefitted by it. If a man walks into a school or a church with a loaded automatic and shoots everybody in there does he gain? Looks like we are still at it all these years later. Names and religions and dialects change but it’s the same misery.

The key to understanding the fact of the situation today is that some expert measurer noticed that humans are beings who feel a desperate need for fulfillment and we express it in books, songs, and art as a giving of ourselves to something very great. We have experienced how good it feels when we experience freedom from selfish worries for even an hour or a day and wonder why not all the time? That yearning has been used to dominate the masses totally. It has only been necessary to convince us that an authority has constructed by using the latest measuring techniques the very best method possible for all people to give themselves over to an authority all can see is better than they are by its clothes, its land holdings, its harem of wives, its throne, its army, its flags, its theme songs, its history books, its organized religion and its ratings and all of us will be happily willing to serve. But the fact is all of it is superficial and reactionary so must invariably become a dull, boring, unfulfilled life for nearly all. It may sound hopeful at first to people desperate for a new life but it all was invented through human thinking and the drawing of conclusion after conclusion, piling them up until it can seem to be the best way to go: join this church. become a member of this political movement, qualify for this career path, marry this mate, sign a mortgage document for that home in that neighborhood, buy  a new car often, take a vacation, join Facebook. Take a picture of that! Exercise. Diet. Meditate. Protest. All of it mere superficiality. All only reactionary to a deep dissatisfaction with life as we are living it.

Everywhere you turn now people are letting you know they do not fit here. Homelessness abounds! Drug use is way out there. Youth suicide is highest ever. Crime is getting worse and worse. When the law abiding are asked what to do they reply, “we oughtta try to rehire some of the cops we fired because they were fueling the problem they had been hired to control”. Meaning, let’s try again what never worked before.

Short answer is: humans were all born to be free. Nothing less can substitute  and human life ought never be organized. What can be said in favor of a group of citizens of some organized part of humanity who actually elect to depend on a government and its currency and its illusory corporations and awesome weaponry to provide all their needs? Such people must believe they and their neighbors incapable of taking care of each other thinking that authority is stronger than love. Prefer it over love. See what is meant by brainwashing to the point we only value what we can measure? We build more prisons because it is easy to measure crime…but not at all easy to reduce it. Seek first love. Make it your priority. That is an absolute requirement for freedom. All else will be added to you. Seek first material wealth that can be measured and end up isolated, empty of heart, and lonely with the knowledge that nothing you did mattered. All of it for show.

What is found here in this discussion is not another plan to make a better government at all. That would really be insane. Rather than waste time and energy trying to fix a corrupt mental construct we have only to turn our total attention in the direction of love. All else will be added to us. Selfishness will disappear in the wind. Love and beauty, not products of thought and will, shall never let us down. Nature is not a product of thought. Thought as a master, being partial and limited, always produces disappointment and suffering. It never lets up on that. Destructiveness in all matters comes from a lack of love. It’s as simple as that.

Is scientific murder any less painful than that done from jealousy, envy or hate? Civilizations are banking on it being acceptable. Absolute insanity! Living by mind-fucks results in weapons of mass destruction, homelessness, disease, poverty, suicides, and a long, long list of other horrors. What is a mind-fuck? When a famous scientist studies enough to make from previous theories a new one that gives very impressive results, like gunpowder, for instance, the scientist will be praised for its positive effects but not held responsible for the negative ones, like deaths of many more people. Consider with me for a moment whether it could be shown that when the truth is the priority all else will be added and it will be good. Truth is, the Universe and all within it are truly one designed to  naturally act together for the welfare of the whole organism. Truth is, the Earth is a gigantic electric generator that produces vastly more power than the total population will ever need. Have any idea how many wars would have been avoided altogether were there no discrepancies in the power available to all people living on Earth at the time? 

That is but one of the many examples of what good is possible for us were we not entangled in separate systems competing for resources. A typical scientist, for example, is going to be found employed within a system subject to orders from authorities to keep his job and maintain a family and feel secure in hopes for future advancements in his career just as surely as does a poor man or woman who cleans sewers and floors and takes away garbage. A wise person  would never even consider trading freedom for money, but few are wise now. Nearly everybody from the professional criminal to the high priest of a major religion to the President of the United States is constantly saying to himself, “I have to do it”. You know exactly what is being said. What a dismal outlook there is for such animals as we. So I ask, is it not at least worth some serious effort on your part to investigate while you can into the possibility of a world where all have truth, not concepts, as the priority all day everyday? You have to decide. I cannot do it for you. 

 The word “experience” means to “go through to completion” and end a matter not to carry it forward with you. Real meditation begins when an experience is followed to its completion and ends some distortion so the mind is free of the experience. They don’t pile up and continuously distort one’s vision. Undistorted, the mind is able to observe itself clearly. This means what is going to come up is a brand new experience never before known.

In my own case I was taught a “method” for meditation that when followed repeatedly brought a certain peace I was not used to and I liked very much and was grateful for it. And yet, I was plagued by a thought that often within minutes after I ceased the practice I would explode at somebody or something and return to my ordinary behavior prior to ever even trying to meditate. Why do I lose it so easily? I had to wonder. Then a night came when I finished my practice at a gathering place of other meditators with the question and there came from my mind a direct, simple answer: “It has always been up to you.” I then asked myself, “well, tonight, I wonder if I can keep this peace for as long as it takes me to drive home”. When I arrived home having remained in my peaceful state the whole long ride I sat in my car a few moments in wonder at the peace and asked, “I wonder if I can keep this up until I get to bed and fall asleep”. My family was awake and there would likely be plenty of opportunity to lose what had been gained. It happened I did remain at peace until I fell asleep. Something brand new had arisen. Up to then I had begun every meditation practice with a distorted notion that the practice I was taught would give me peace in my life. The surprise was “It has always been free of circumstances.”! Real meditation begins at the point of natural, undistorted mindedness. A newborn has it!

It is not at all “spiritual elevation” or any of that nonsense. Enlightenment comes into consciousness when no image made by thought is present seeking it. It is silly and vulgar to spout out nonsense like “I pray for enlightenment for all sentient beings”. Duh.

 CHILDREN OF THE SMUG

Smugness. What is it? Dictionary meaning is “excessive pride in oneself or one’s achievements”. The source of it is insecurity. Is that a surprise? The source of insecurity is a limited and broken psychological state that makes a fella or gal imagine stupid things to escape the feeling. Inner conflict or fragmentation of the inner being weakens a human terribly. Such people are definitely affected by flattery and insults from others. Each of these flatteries or insults has been recorded permanently in the brains of these people as knowledge based on experience. A whole human being takes no thought of either flattery or insult. A wholistic life is secure. 

A close and sensitive knowledge of a tree brings instantly an understanding there is no such thing as a separate “tree” or a “not tree”. Touch one and give your complete attention to the sensation. You are the tree and the tree is you. Roots of the tree are your roots. A broken psychological state has been mended. A new human is awake suddenly. Smugness has vanished completely. The new human knows only a communion which has no opposite.

Once the writer met a young woman about to graduate from a major university with a 4 point average. We had several conversations over a few days. She told me she was troubled about what to do with her life after graduation. Without asking questions I told her “go sit under a tree nearby and ask the tree what to do and wait patiently for the tree to answer and tell me next time we meet what you learned from that tree”.  I was surprised she followed the directions and the next day she told me with great excitement “the tree told me to stop taking myself so seriously. I have felt much better since and I thank you . I believe I have learned more from you in a few conversations than I learned in the entire four years I spent in college”.

 WHAT MATTERS?

I can read and write and think. Do not speak to me of going back to a simpler time when we could neither read nor write. Once I got an education I could get a job and earn money to buy what will make me happy and make my family happy. Before that I was penniless and poor and had to do without. That was terrible.

Are you sure about that? Are you happy? Are families happy?

Really, I mean are you certain that you are better off knowing how to read and to write? Let us examine into it, shall we? A baby can neither read nor write and cannot get a job or money or buy anything. However, you cannot insult a baby or flatter a baby with words. On the other hand you can be flattered and insulted many times a day. Day after day for the rest of your life it can happen and you will file these insults and flatteries away as memories to relive them as your knowledge about yourself and as bricks with which you build what is called a self image and soon you become identified in your own mind by your self image. The effect is much like being locked up in a jail, is it not? It also plays out as a life you live where every day is the same and you repeat the same things and nothing you do matters. So, again, I ask are you sure you are better off than an uneducated child of nature? Such being has no self image at all. You have one and it torments you. You look in the mirror to see if your appearance is correct. What do you think is a correct appearance and where did you get that bit of knowledge? Is it true? Is it true at all? You obey it, though, do you not? Images. Images. You serve images. I am talking to myself now. 

The writer has spent time simply watching with total attention a tiny dung beetle as it rolls its ball of poop somewhere? Presumably, it is headed home with the ball which is as big as or bigger than the beetle. The beetle never ceases its journey no matter how difficult it becomes. Every few seconds its ball rolls off course and must be maneuvered back on track toward the destination. One thing matters to that beetle. Have you ever experienced being in such a state where only one thing mattered to you and you would not cease the effort required to pursue it for anybody or anything?

There is a book wherein a poet says there’s something that if  you do not have it nothing else matters; and if you do have it nothing else matters. That is a book I would recommend be read by anyone; however, it is obvious a baby would have no use for such a book since it already has that wisdom and lives by it all day every day…until it is taught to try to be something else. So, my point is only that we learn how to return to the wisdom we had as a newborn child and maintain it and have what if you do not have it nothing else matters and if you do have it nothing else matters. Freedom! Going back to a simpler time means that to me not regressing in technical know-how. It means escaping from a prison of my own making. It does mean we would definitely have the ability to use whatever technology we gain in a wise manner rather than as a fuel for self-tormenting images.  And that means a much better life for all humans everywhere.