The Birth of them blues…

An educated man, by that is really meant a human who has attended and graduated, or nearly gardurated, from a school of higher learnin’ after High School. Sumpthin’ like all that there anyhow.

Such a person, by that time is so white-washed he must interpret everything he comes upon in the limited language of acquired knowledge, lectures and books, that maker of conceit, and deceit. He pretends to know about other languages…the language of music for example but cannot know them for his brain is too far conditioned white to ever come back to its original state of openness lest a miracle happen. So, when listening to music he or she is thinking in a language outside the realm of music. Such people are more interested in the birth date and national affiliation of the composer and how many pieces he composed and in what order than in the music. All trivial. By openness I include the languages of God, including the language of nature, the language of love, the language of decency, the animal language, the plant language, the language of sexuality, the language of art, the language of soul, the language of taste, the language of smell, the language of sound, the language of vision, all the languages of pain, the language of the dead and so many, many more. All of them are intuitive. True mathematics is intuitive.

So, this educated fool will  believe a Negro was drawn to the Blues as a method for raising himself out of poverty into the higher social status of better living. That one misses entirely the truth that the more natural human who is held down by the authorities by force will have to discover: Hey, I am not that one who suffers, I am something quite magnificent who can sing!And by that, discover he is already free! Discover the greatest truth: that freedom and fulfillment are completely independent of one’s circumstances. From there he can pity those who use violence to acquire and hold onto material wealth and fame which turn out always to be another form of slavery. A human being with such brilliant insight enters the world of creativity, leaving behind him or her the world of problems and problem solving as one truly free human being! A person who can do anything! If the educated fool had the eyes of a babe he could see it on the faces of the truly free. 

So let us be real. What the Black people created was freedom right in the face of the problem. Instead of trying to escape from the trouble some of them went into it. Met it. Were it. Made it Tru Belle. Creativity happened. It will happen every time! From the Far East came a teacher who told all who listened, Do not say “Fear has me!” Say, “I am Fear!” “ And by so doing end fear forever.  J. Krishnamurti. The broken Hallelujah was born tens of thousands of years ago. And it transformed Hell into Heaven in America for some folk. It works when all hope is gone.

See, the blues does not say, Heaven’s a-comin”. The Blues say, “Heaven is here!” Big difference. Try it for yourself. Find out.

 SOMETHING IMPORTANT

I wonder if I can write about something very complex and very important in a simple enough way to be understood in a flash of insight that will have a lasting effect. I’ll have a go.

There once, not so long ago, were vast herds of four legged beasts roaming the plains of America. Indians followed them and hunted them as a way of life. Indian and buffalo thrived. Along came European white man. In a short time of trying to kill every last buffalo the herds became very small and have not recovered. The Indians were herded themselves onto reservations. Many starved. The Indian children were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools meant to forcibly absorb the Indian population into the white man’s way of living. Much suffering was felt. I’ll stop there.

Now, based open the above, I want to examine into the question of how could this have been handled differently?

My point is that one group of humans upon observing the buffalo without inquiring passionately  “what has brought this great herd of animals about? What is behind it?” decided to try to annihilate them from the Earth and almost succeeded, but not quite. They made the same incomplete analysis with regard to the Indian population and tried to eliminate all of them without honoring their past. Is this humane?

The people back in Europe had been doing this sort of thing for thousands of years at least. Colonization and slavery practiced by these groups was disgustingly horrible in so many ways to study it would make anybody sick. Such ways culminated in a great war called WWII at the close of which two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan foretelling of a time when all life can be destroyed by a group having the knowhow to make and utilize such weapons. Very simply, what would anyone with a brain expect to be the future of a group who thought and behaved in the way described above? What would anyone with even a grain of intelligence predict? The way described is not only continuing to grow it is spreading all over the Earth very rapidly. How many are waiting for somebody else to tell them what is to be done? Nearly everybody? Do they sincerely hope to use the excuse, It wasn’t me?

I cannot change anyone but myself. What bullet fired has ever brought about a peaceable man? Can I change in such a manner that I am removed effectively from the fate awaiting those who do not? Can I live in peace on Earth with every other living thing? Upon observing life can I humbly ask: What power has brought this about? 

Finally, no matter what happens, will I decide to find out whether I can live peaceably for the time I have left? Is that important to me? How important is it? Humbly, I begin.

 MEDITATION 

There is a meditation that involves zero effort. There must be no intention on finding a reward. You will not discover anything you can take with you to use for your own ends. It will not make you a better this or that. A newborn infant does it. The brain finds itself to be completely quiet. Notice the brain has not been made to be quiet by any method. That would be only more conditioning of an already conditioned brain. It is quiet. No effort has been made of any kind. The quiet brain naturally apprehends infinite  space.  Infinite space is…well, you find that out. 

 Success is failure. So, there is no success. No failure. Amen.

The end is the beginning. So, there is no end. No beginning. Amen. 

Cease the practice of dividing what is indivisible and discover what you got.

All this is deep. Dig, dig, dig.

Being alive is a marvel!

Ask: Is it possible for my brain to be still? If you mean it, watch the question flower into an answer without your participation. Something besides the brain can communicate with it. Create, create, create. In this way is it done. There is a big difference between invention, which comes from past knowledge, and creation which is always new, original. Better by far to create yourself rather than to invent one. Better to create a life for the self you create to live, as well.

Being alive, one does not carve. Life is a marvel!

 THE END IS THE BEGINNING I AM LEARNING EVERY DAY; SO 

THERE IS NO END AND NO BEGINNING.

AMEN.

 I , a whooper swan, am alive. You are too. What does it mean?  What are we to do with life? Dance? Is a child crazy to talk to….himself? herself? To nothing visible? I mean to earnestly speak to that in a language he is absorbing at a rapid pace with no intention, with no purpose, with no rush but with an intense energy that comes from  he knows not where? Any of this sound familiar? Is it more likely that kid I mention is off the beam and needs direction from an adult or is it more likely the adult needs to watch the child and to learn about himself and inquire whether or not he or she is living a real life? You decide. Do not agree or disagree with me. Look into it if you feel an urge to find out. The kids know something most of us have forgotten. 

What that is just may be the most important thing to keep at the forefront of one’s daily awareness. The children come here with it intact and quite vibrantly showing. Do I need to give it a name? Of course I do not. On the contrary, if I name it theories begin to spring up all around it and soon the words become the thing for us and we lose it again. A god we invent to help us find it arises. We make rules and we build temples to the god(s) we invent. And give  our money. Great treasuries of wealth now run the show we once had as an exclusive stage. See how quickly we lose what we most need and proceed as broken beings with a thousand crutches completely inappropriate to the actual situation? Begging. 

We follow the gurus who are happy to take us on a wild goose chase they lead as experts. All the while we are fully provided for from an agency within us a child speaks with passionately and without any notion he or she needs an interpreter or that that which is listening wants a temple built to prove my worthiness.  In fact, that which actually made us makes it abundantly clear how truly worthy we are by giving us a breath as surely as one might who places a mouth on ours and blows air into our lungs. It tells us constantly how much we are loved. Make your home there and stay close with that. 

I can fly thousands of miles with my flock with a precision that outshines the finest instrument of man with no money under my wing. Do you doubt you are at least as worthy as one such as I? You and I are perfectly designed to be here!  The child is the best part of each of us. A poet, William Wordsworth, once wrote : The child is the father of the man. She is also the mother of the woman. 

This line goes mostly misunderstood to this day. Study it out for your self. It has nothing to do with thinking or character or personality or any of that adult shit. It goes way deeper than that and is far more real. An adult not guided by the wisdom of a babe is lost indeed!

A STORY

Here is what happened to me. A story. I tell it as it comes to me. I was born. I grew. I attended school. I got married. I got a job. In each of my jobs I learned a bit then wanted to do something else. This continued through about six jobs. In a couple of the jobs I was my own boss. I tired of me as a boss as easily as I tired of the others. I was 39 and very miserable by this time. My wife and I  had divorced after two children were born and the eldest was 5 years old and the youngest still a baby. Living as a divorced man with children and another job I burned the candle at both ends you might say as long as I could until I was really running on fumes, My life seemed to have no direction, like a sailor without a compass lost at sea might feel. I even considered suicide. 

One day I stood by a lake as this question formed inside me “If you are there, please help me.  Send to me a mentor. Somebody who can understand me.” It struck me as odd that I used the term “mentor” for it was alien to me and was a word from my ex-wife’s line of work. But it came to me at that very moment. The feeling was that I could really use a friend who was as crazy as me, or had been, as inept at life as I was. And at that moment I became aware of a man on a bicycle peddling toward me. That man stopped because he and I recognized each other from having attended the same workshops in the past for the purpose of quitting the habit of smoking cigarettes. Both of us had been smoke free for several years. We talked. Actually I am certain I did most of the babbling while my friend, named Buddy, listened. When he had heard enough he invited me to attend a meeting with him. I agreed without any description of the nature of the meeting we were to attend. I did not care so long as Buddy was going I wanted to go. The meeting turned out to be a group of drunks from Alcoholics Anonymous. 

I attended meetings for several months where I was overwhelmed with a large number of friends, mentors, who knew and understood me very well indeed. My time with them led me to investigate another world. The world within me is what I mean. To begin to understand me. I am pursuing that knowledge right up to this moment for very many years.

I want only to tell at this time that I became acquainted with a teacher who agreed to teach me how to meditate. He called what he teaches “The Knowledge of oneself” and said it was different from what most call “meditation”. There were some techniques. We were to pay attention to the fact we happen to be alive through the techniques is all I will say. I found it very difficult to do them for even a half hour. It was a struggle. I felt I was doing something wrong. Or there might be something wrong with me. Then the teacher offered to all his students a second chance to come to a review of the directions he gave and I attended. At this time what I heard him say that alters the whole affair for me was this: “These techniques I suggest are very simple. You were fully capable of doing them when you were an infant. No effort at all is required. If you are experiencing difficulty you are causing it.” From that moment until now I have experienced the meditation with ease and comfort. It began for me a lifelong friendship with something back of life that is immense. The fact of life. There is no effort at all to my spending time that way everyday. That concludes the story. It is just a story. There is no hidden meaning. If the subject interests you check it out for yourself.