CONFESSION 

We worship thinking. We are afraid is why. We want to feel safe. So, by thinking we invent a god. The God we invent we think to be invincible we think made us and we think therefore loves us and will take care of us. We get sick or our child is sick or our lover is sick. Why did God we invented and named God with a capital G not save us? Our enemies tell they have God, too. Can we keep them from having a god? Kill em all? Does my god hate my enemies? He must be no larger than me. Oh, my God! Thinking is rational for building a proper tepee but not for inventing a God. That is a rank insult to what God there be.

Maybe it is not so important to name God and pray to it, arrange and re-arrange characteristics, as it is to know whether we have any way, as we are made, to actually be safe? Someone said “Know Thyself”. Suppose with me for a moment  that from the perspective of an actual God to pray using a name we invent for selfish protection for me and mine is such a pathetic demonstration  of no faith, zero faith, love must go deaf. Love, in whose shadow is real safety, is interested in our stepping forth on a journey for a limited lifetime in search of shelter to discover what love is all about by helping each other on our way.

Here is a confession. It is pathetic. I am a Texas Tech Red Raider fanatic. I want badly for my team, in all its endeavors, to defeat other schools in games of competition.  I spend time and money in pursuit of such nonsense. So far, my team only wins about half the games. I also know that should they win them all some year and be crowned national champions, the teams will be expected to repeat that every year for many years to come. A  goal  is always, always always going to disappoint. The reward for doing a good job is to be loaded with heavier and heavier loads until you break. For what? To prove what? What kind of a god is behind that silliness? 

There is reason by my confession to label myself a big fool who is wasting his life, valuable time he could spend in loving ways. It is vain to believe people love each other. Love, when found, shelters and inspires people. Make something beautiful.  Beauty comes not from a person. Ask any artist. It comes from unknown regions all of us are here to discover. All are artists. Ask yourself. I say to you, now, I want to busy myself in that direction for as long as I have left to live.

 

Let’s Be Honest About It

We are messed up. Humans live lives here that are confused, out of control, and scary. It is so tangled up it defies analysis. Opinions fall all over the place and putting them together is worse than leaving them alone. All our relationships are injured, broken and incomplete. We are struggling to make some kind of sense from nonsense. Every decision made that way makes things worse. My life is a bunch of irritating noise. I wish I could walk away from it. What can anybody do? Face the fact. You and I can do nothing about it. It is like admitting I did nothing to make the world so who am I to change it? Hey, who am I? I have been trying to change things all my life. Could that be the real problem? Can I change? 

Why bother to ask anybody how?  Who would answer? All we can do is ask the question of nobody, let it go, expect no answer. Do not answer it yourself. Do not even say I believe the answer will be X. See whether the question answers itself. I just got my answer. 

 PROBLEMS

One man asks, Is it possible to live so that one’s brain, itself, has no problems?

A woman says, it can be so when one is centered in the heart or Tao.

A third one  says, I agree, if my brain clears itself of problems it can then solve whatever problem arises quickly and effectively, that is to say, no new problem is created by that solution from a clear mind. 

All three in peaceful and humble accord join hands and laugh together in great joy.

A listener chimes in: I always wanted to know what is leadership, truly. Now I see. Only a clear minded and humble child-like king is going to bring about peace. A smart aleck will fail and fail and fail and people will build monuments of his likeness and write poems and songs and books to praise the fool as great because he always was solving problems which created more and more and more of them and they admired him or her for it.

Now, when anyone asks “Can my brain be free of problems” who is expected to provide an answer? Up to now it probably has been the conditioned brain that is not free.  What kind of answer can such a brain come up with? The kind that creates more problems?

This could be a fresh new moment. “Ever hear it said, The answer to a question lies inside the question?” Have you? Nobody answered. A butterfly appears.

 THE BIND WE ARE IN

I want to speak of the bind we are in. It matters.

We depend upon courts to decide conflicts among citizens of a fictitious system we call a nation. As if that is not bad enough, we seat a judge on an elevated platform higher than everybody else in the room. We are to address him in a way that reminds us he is thought somehow to be above us in stature. The way the average lawyer or legislator expresses this strange scene is to say “I respect the office, not the man or woman who holds it”. So, we are to agree to respect a mere image above that we give a living human being. It can be seen by a child that by doing that we are giving utmost respect to that beneath us, a fictitious being we created, rather than simply admit all humans are equal and so a system of judging is unacceptable as contrary to truth. It is exactly the same as if we agreed on making Santa Claus our final authority. And stuck his figure on a high platform and bowed to it. An office of government has no reality. Why must we continue such nonsense. Recently, there was reported to the whole world a revolution in Egypt that lasted awhile and it was seriously suggested for the first time that perhaps people in Egypt needed no government at all. Ultimately, another government was invented and installed but it is worth reminding ourselves that the time draws nearer when some nation is going to decide it needs no imaginary government as the people living there are found to be completely competent to live together in an orderly fashion that far exceeds that any government ever installed has ever known. It shall come to be. For some reason, and for a long time, we have chosen to pretend we know not of the untapped power in a simple but complete grant of respect to any living human. 

I knew a man whose older brother was an alcoholic. He had been taught that the elder brother in a family is to be consulted on any problem. Sam told me that for many years whenever trouble arose in his immediate family he searched until he found his drunken older brother, sobered him up, and asked him as the elder for his instruction with regard to the problem at hand. Then, Sam confided, “never once did I fail to do what my brother suggested and never once did I regret that I had done so”. I have since personally seen so many people, when given trust and respect, rise to heights of excellence previously unknown to them. It is in us all.

And the best news of all I ever received is that for anybody who chooses to be that way it is, was, and will be simply a matter of finding the king inside one’s heart and accepting naturally full responsibility for one’s own life. That is done by answering the question: Who are you? You will surely find yourself in a new dimension where there is no conflict, confusion, or doubt.

 Jaxon Smith awakened in that state. He had been here before but that had no significance to him for one chief aspect of the state he found himself in is that it carries forward no meaning at all and absolutely no expectations present themselves. It just means nothing. Jaxon has no purpose. And that is all the purpose anyone needs to create something new. It seems that in this realm the absence of meaning gives the meaningness to it all. Clarity is present when meaning is not. Jaxon is nobody’s boy. And Jaxon feels no need to proselytize. So, I will stop here.

Jaxon saw immediately a new way to shave his face. It was quite easily done, enjoyable, and quite effective, giving more freedom to design his facial hair as he pleased for this day only. He dressed very quickly. Now Jaxon is struck to add that the absence of meaning is the absence of language and that is the absence of thought. Thought to Jaxon now is limited to the mundane. Is in its proper place at last. To locate his razor for example. So Jaxon may be the only person on Earth, or anywhere, who is not completely the result of his thoughts. Such might be the ending of thought as the master of life. It is thrilling! 

Jaxon’s brain is thrilled! A state of newness moment to moment is not just a theory. It is clear thought did not bring him to this state of life in a whole new unknown realm. Thought cannot enter this portal. The disappearance of proselyting is simply the certainty for Jaxon he is never alone. Or, rather, alone is not a  feeling of loneliness but a state of wholeness…all one…completion. No sorrow.

 Jail bird Song

I am a jailbird and you are one too.

I am a pauper. My cell’s tiny, stinks, has bars, no curtains, no indoor pot. From my dirty window I cannot see the stars-

yours has been sprayed, polished and is costly but, like Hamlet, its wiring’s all wrong and that brings me to the reason I would not rather live on Mars.

Some bird told me a secret I simply tell to you.

Tho’ we be alive and breathin’ there is nothing we can do.

Since we put our ownselves in prison we can walk. Lockups are mental incapacity. We don’t admit it but it’s true.  

It’s not funny. I’m not teasin’.

Burn yer dollars! Un-license lawyers!

Give away some stuff and there will always be enough!

Mention to your brain it has permission to cease thinking for an hour. Let it go. Let it go quiet.  Let it go quiet and still. Out of unprecedented rapture, it will find itself linked with all atoms of the entire Universe to perceive what is without has totally sprung from what’s within. The observed is the observer. Thinking, a limited tool, will be used for the mundane. A free life will begin!

Before you know it, the one who was a jailbird will fly by opening its present. 

 MY PART

A Friend wrote a song telling the answers are blowin’ in the wind and I thought for a long time he meant for me to search for the answers, but, no, no, no, he means for me to listen to the wind. That is my part. I began listenin’. Things began to change in my world as I listened. I have no answers. I AM TO LISTEN. I am the world when I listen. As I listen the whole world changes. Listen.