We serve symbols.

We ignore facts at our own peril. 

Vital is it we change and soon. 

Fact: Every human being on Earth is very, very, very valuable.  

Almost all humans on Earth are overlooked for many and various reasons all stemming from ignorance. That ignorance stems from serving symbols.

Inside the limits of any game of symbols there will, of course, be winners who excel far beyond the masses. These people are symbolized as celebrities (winners) and all the rest are encouraged to imitate the winners in the tiny, almost minuscule chance they might themselves or their children become winners. The major games are called civilizations or nations and their subparts. Such arrangements pale in the face of a world where facts are superior to symbols.

In such a world lighted by truth everybody has plenty and enjoys life abundantly.There are no leaders in such a happy world, only trusted servants. And here, my friends is the very best news: 

This world can be occupied by anyone who chooses to live there now by simply making a commitment to oneself to cease to serve symbols.

And the symbol-servers will never suspect you have taken such action for to them there is no such place as Utopia on Earth. The moment two of us make the shift we will be drawn to each other and will recognize each other as one of the once misfit now fellow travelers on the road of happy destiny as a lightening strike of fact makes the rain fall at last. 

And how many of the wisest must say there is no greater beauty in life than the lost, forgotten, rejected, hated and despised redeemed and given new life before it is true?

 You imagine you are doing what is right for the country or your family or your buddies in the corps, a hoax concocted to make humans turn themselves into railroad passengers or some such shit. 

                                                                    Key To Freedom

Recently, I was told by a friend, “Ownership of private property is the key to freedom”.  I was stunned. And I responded quite forcefully, “I do not agree with you!”

Let us look at a simple flower, a lily of the field, if you will, in a new way. Ask, does the lily search for ways to provide its needs by studying alternatives, choosing one, and working with all its might to be successful as a flower? Or rather does the flower understand itself well enough already it must act as that flower and receive, as a result, a flower’s needs as they arise? When it is told here that a flower understands itself it is a matter of expressing a state of unification within the flower that makes it behave as a flower is brilliantly designed to function. Finding that state inside yourself, a human, is true meditation. 

In the present state of society there is no such way for a baby human to do as the flower and simply be what it is. The baby is going to have dumped into its brain a formula created by other humans and that formula requires the child to grow up to be someone who has tried to become something it is not naturally in order to be labeled in some manner or other “A model citizen”. The system we all know involves a striving to obtain money to buy what one needs as a human being, which requires one to go to “expert” humans to find out a list of those requirements on the grounds that a child does not know what it needs in the way a flower is endowed by the same creator of all the living. By now do you sense the corruption in all this malarky? 

Who will benefit when the child gives itself over to society’s formula? What can become of a child who follows this path? You know. You are that child. 

Children, at different points along the path assigned to them, will suffer a sense of loss.  Asking others, it will be told that everybody is in the same boat and “get used to it”. Adjust. Seek a counselor, a guru, a priest, or. some other professional “expert” if you need help adjusting to “the real world”. Do you sense another sign of corruption? You should.  You are that child. And this world is not “real”. It is in no way healthy to adjust oneself to life in a corrupt society. 

At this point in my conversation with my friend who told me ownership of private property is the key to freedom my friend told me any other reading is a seeking of a “Utopia” which is not real and not available to humans. I know better and am counting on you to know better too. Humans are not abandoned to an unnatural system involving loneliness, separation, conflict, envy, deceit, hatred, wars, and all the rest of it, any more than are flowers.

The key to freedom happens to be to seek first the natural human within, be that, and all else will be added to you by that which feeds flowers. And corruption, for you, will cease to be as if by magic. 

 Choice is a mental operation that divides a human inside. A human being out of touch with its nature resorts to making choices. It brings conflict and suffering. Being human is being absent of choice and, so, absent of conflict and suffering and the result is right living. Be you.

 

 

 Love Song

Pass the kindness cup.

Let all, in secret, drink it up.

There is an action which comes from an intelligence not my own but from that Great Intelligence we all share.

Now pass the kindness cup.

Let all, in secret, drink it up.

 A philosopher of some influence once said, “I think therefore I am.” He became a Lord. I serve my Lord, the Thinker. 

What I see is this: I thought. I thought some more. Then thought created a thinker. Thinking took more and more of my attention. Thinking then became my almost all. Finally I was the thinker thought thought up and recorded as my self on my brain and now exist in that tiny, isolated way. So limited. So confused. So frightened. So depressed. Now I do not exist at all outside my thoughts. I see this. Beyond thinking I see Thought brings pleasure but always accompanied by its companion Pain. The source of my pleasure is the source of my pain. Let me out, please! My thoughts have killed me. Almost. Some not thought which sees thought in action has written this using thought as a tool. I have hope. Thought and hope. These two. There is no going back. I am outside the walls. I am home.

 

 We are caught in a world which we believe to be “the way things are” wherein one is to work hard over time to become something acceptable and admired by others and so rewarded in many ways. This is supposed to bring happiness, but it is very rare to find a happy person here. 

It might be better to first use all your strength and concentration to find out what you might be  without becoming something else. And whether the problems the world complains about improve over time in gradual steps or whether in truth the method of gradual improvement in increments over time actually brings us the problems we suffer. In that way, are we actually foolishly utilizing the cause of our misery to free us from the misery? I once heard a talk by a very intelligent scientist on the subject of the environmental disaster facing our world. It was interesting to listen to him but what was almost shocking was at the close when the great man was asked, “What must we do to save our world, Sir?” And the man answered, “Nothing”. He then stated the obvious. “All our damage to our home planet has been caused by a process of trying to manage and control it and that system will never bring anything except more misery. The method of striving to make the Earth behave in a way we imagine we are benefitted is the problem, not the solution. 

Is there a learning in action that is radically different from the education system of gradual improvement over time we are the demonstrable results of as we exist today? Have we tried a new way? Have we striven seriously with dedicated passion to find out what our Planet would be without our efforts to manage it?

The greatest teaching I ever received was from a gentle man who listened at length concerning the dilemma I was in at the time and then quietly remarked to me, “Jonathon, you remind me of a man desperately trying to manage his own life”. 

I want to point out one more thing. The system we employ to arrest, try, and punish people who misbehave depends upon our firm commitment to the theory a person can and ought to be managed over time to become a worthy person who will be law abiding. Who really believes that? That alone is the justification for the practice of crime and punishment. Is it sound? Or, could it actually be the very source of crime itself? If it is, boy, oh boy, are we on the wrong channel. Channel of the dumb. Plow men dig my earth.  None of them along the line know what any of it is worth. Bob Dylan. “All Along The Watchtower”.

What if rather than becoming offended by the wrongdoing of another we follow instruction from a poem of love which suggests we utilize the offending behavior as a fact to inform us that we need to change not the offender who is our brother or sister and one whose conduct in all ways points to us all. After all is said and done is the underbelly of a society ever less the thing than all the rest? And can we not look directly at a fact without a word defining it? Just look. Could it be that in the radically different approach suggested by a poet many will be spared the pain which caused the offending behavior?   If it is so, boy, would we be on the right channel. Channel of the bright! Then might happiness begin to blossom the world over and we would take care not to trample all those flowers ever again.

 BETTER I SHOULD BE KILLED OR DISCHARGED FOR WHAT I AM THAN PROMOTED FOR WHAT I AM NOT. WHAT CAN BE WORSE THAN TO BE PLACED IN A POSITION OF AUTHORITY FALSELY? AND HAS ANYONE, HONESTLY NOW, EVER BEEN PROMOTED RIGHTFULLY? A BRILLIANT MAN ONCE TAUGHT THAT THE WORST THING A BUSINESS OR OFFICE OF ANY KIND CAN DO IS TO BASE PAY ON MERIT. SUCH A PRACTICE BREEDS COMPETITION AMONG THE GROUP, THE CONCEALMENT OF INFORMATION FROM ONE’S COMPETITORS, FEAR, DECEIT, HATRED, AND ALL THE REST OF THE CORRUPTION ALL GROUPS SUFFER. IS PROMOTION EVER EVEN REMOTELY CONNECTED TO SOMEONE’S WORTH? ASK YOURSELF THIS: CAN ANY MAN JUDGE ANOTHER? IS PROMOTION ANYTHING BUT A CORRUPT GAME? IF I PROMOTE YOU MAYBE I WILL BE PROMOTED. IS THAT ALL? NOT MUCH OF A RECOMMENDATION FOR THE USE OF SUCH TACTICS, IS IT? LISTEN. WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA, AND IT IS ONLY AN IDEA, THAT WE SHOULD STRIVE TO PLACE THE BETTER PLAYERS TOGETHER SO AS TO CREATE A SUPER TEAM? OF WHAT POSSIBLE GOOD IS A SUPERIOR TEAM? EXAMINE WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE WHOLE SOCIETY. A LOT OF BORED DULLARDS, RIGHT? OBSERVERS. UNFULFILLED DREAMERS WHO BUY TICKETS AND STAND IN LINES AND A FEW VERY LONELY CELEBRITIES NO LONGER ABLE TO DO SIMPLE THINGS LIKE RIDE A BIKE THROUGH A PARK ON A LOVELY SPRING DAY WITH SOMEONE YOU LOVE. FOREVER BEING SPIED UPON AND HARASSED. FOR WHAT? WHEN I WAS A BOY WE MET AT A PARK ON A SATURDAY MORNING, CHOSE SIDES, AND PLAYED UNTIL WE WERE FORCED TO STOP. EVERYBODY PLAYED. WHEN I LEFT THE FIELD OF PLAY I FELT DEEPLY GOOD BY KNOWING I HAD PLAYED MY BEST AND LEARNED A NEW TRICK OR TWO. NEXT WEEK THE TEAMS WOULD BE ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT AND NO KID GAVE A DAMN. LOOK. I WAS BLESSED ONCE TO BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO ALLOW PEOPLE IN A GROUP OF 400 ADULTS WHO WERE COWORKERS IN AN ENTERPRISE TO EXPRESS WITHOUT FEAR OF PUNISHMENT WHAT THEY WANTED THEY DID NOT HAVE. IT HAPPENED MANY TIMES THE FIRST YEAR. NOT ONCE DID ANY EMPLOYEE ASK FOR ANY TYPE OF PERSONAL PROMOTION OR FAVOR OR PRIVILEGE. ALL ASKED FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO DO THEIR WORK BETTER. THEY REALLY WANTED MORE INFORMATION SHARING AND MORE FREEDOM TO DO THE JOB THEY WERE ASSIGNED IN EXCELLENT FASHION. AND IT NEVER FAILED THAT THEIR BOSSES WERE ASTOUNDED AND CHANGED THEIR ATTITUDES COMPLETELY. WE ALL KNOW THIS TO BE SO WE HAVE JUST FORGOTTEN. AND AS SOON AS I LEFT THAT PLACE THEY ALL BEGAN TO FORGET AGAIN. MUST IT REMAIN SO? ABSOLUTELY NOT!