Human Authority 

As a human being I wonder why it is that I am told there is a loving Higher Power that made the Universe and all that is in it who loves me as Its child and I need to believe that in order to find Paradise or a State of Enlightenment which I do not have but will have after I die and yet all the while I notice that the people who so believe have been living here for thousands and thousands of years and still they hate each other and compete for trophies of all kinds and kill each other and  live in families embroiled in constant conflict with each other inside their very homes. And whenever I question the story of a loving All-Powerful Authority who chose not to make me something fully capable of living in harmony with all Its Universe I am given nothing but “well, that’s just the way it is and we are to accept that without questions.” They say I must surrender my will to what an authority who is also human will tell me he knows that I must do to find how to be saved from myself or something like that which makes no sense to me simply because that means Higher Power not human prefers some people over the rest and that is not anywhere near to being love in the book of my heart.

As I struggled through life in a cock-eyed world in the state I have described I became more and more discontent doing what I did not want to do and failing to do what I wanted and so weary of being thataway. Those who I mentioned who are believers kept on quoting from books and saying that if I would only join them I could have my brain straightened out so as to think as they do and still I saw how they treated everybody and refused, in my own way, to join. Once I found what booze does to me I got drunk as often as I could afford to let myself get away with it and that got to be greater each year until  

I found myself in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. 

There the group of former drunks welcomed me and said they had a program that would relieve me of my addiction to alcohol. Rather quickly I came to want what some of these people seemed to have I call peace of mind. By then I was desperate enough to try the program. I joined. 

Having been told I needed a sponsor to assist me with the “program”,  while attending the meetings I began to look for someone among the group who struck me as being my “leader”. And a truly unexpected happening intervened for which I am forever grateful.

A man came to a meeting where I was in attendance and spoke up early introducing himself as a traveler or pilgrim looking for a new home and telling the group that Austin, where we were, was on his list of places he should go. The man added that he was quite sick with a high fever and could not explain why he was in attendance at the meeting and not in his bed treating his illness but continued for about a half hour speaking about his recovery from a helpless, dark state in alcoholism. Said he had been sober for years.

As I listened to the pilgrim I became more and more drawn to his story and was sorry when he ceased his talk. I wanted more. However when the meeting concluded that day I did what I was accustomed to do and that was to beat a quick path to my car and speed away before anyone could corner me and talk to me for that would bring into my brain the suggested need for a sponsor if I were to have success in my effort to recover from my own helpless state. 

When I arrived at my car to flee what did I see but that pilgrim leaning himself against the driver’s door blocking my entry? We two introduced ourselves and I began to share all I had experienced since my first AA meeting. I kept repeating “I need to find a sponsor”. After listening to me for sometime the pilgrim spoke softly this way to me: 

“Look, I am not going to tell you that you need a sponsor nor am I going to tell you not to get one. That is up to you entirely. But, I am going to suggest that before you ask someone else to be your sponsor in following the program of recovery outlined in the book follow these people around and watch carefully to learn all you can about how they actually live outside of the meetings for who you ask to be your teacher about the art of living could cost you your life some day.”

Completely relieved from the urgency to have a sponsor or “authority figure” in life brought me peace. I can even say it was a clear answer to my life long struggle with the concocted belief that “God” would make a world where people were not absolutely responsible for their lives and made me glad I  had not not abandoned my own very vital concern while up against all the pressure to cave in to one of the organized religions and I knew for the first time clearly that religion for real should never be organized. AA is just that- unorganized. So, I took my own journey to recovery questioning every belief in my path as I go. That means becoming fully responsible for a spark of life in all its many aspects. What more can be said? Words, as servants, can serve life well but as a master they are the worst.

I have not had a drink in thirty years and more important by far I have had a life of unparalleled beauty for which my gratitude is too great for any words. For me, each day of life is brand new meant to be lived with all my attention for what it happens to bring as the present in the precious knowledge that the future and the past are contained therein. That alone assures my future if I have one. Once a human knows who (s)he is truly (and who (s)he is not) it is clear what death is and that it is nothing to fear. It is only the illusion of a separate self taught me by the world of conflict,  separation, and violence who has fear of dying for it will certainly not go to Heaven or anywhere else it does not belong. What a silly idea!  A self-absorbed being without existence at all who is bound to be disruptive in Heaven? Ridiculous! . And it’s a good thing for Heaven. That goofball has no anchor so is filled with fear and has to be concerned first with itself. And deep down it knows that death is the end of it for certain. 

Selfishness and self-centeredness, that is the root of man’s troubles. One need not grieve the passing of such as that. The truth is that we are all of us the consciousness of one great humanity, indivisible,  which its Source can love and welcome home. It amounts to life acknowledging and embracing itself and happens daily.

The most important thing is yet to come though. Each of us is our own guru, our own authority when it comes to living. Life is within us. The writer does not want your agreement, does not seek it and even discourages it. Do not believe me. If anything moves you here or ever you must move on your own journey within to discover the truth of your situation and become clear about the actual trouble so it vanishes from the mind. Humans are equipped to do that. A human is not equipped to behave as an authority over any other. You can find out clearly why that is from courage that resides inside you. Now is the time for you to expand exponentially in love’s way. 

 YOU ARE YOUR OWN GURU

You can observe you have a conditioned mind that is always chattering. The false guru outside says you must make your mind become quiet in order to enjoy peace. That is just not possible. The observer is the observed. Who is to do it? The mind that thinks and chatters? The chattering mind is clever. 

The mind that chatters will play along by even assuming a correct posture so as to recite mantras or concentrate on a pretty object that is peaceful or your breathing or pray if you wish for boons all of it to give you a brief break from its chaotic behavior but soon after it will return and as strong as ever. This is the clever mind’s way to keep an eye on you and continue to control you. The guru will make a lot of money. It will amount to a self-mesmerizing folly.

The true message is that you must find a silence within that is not the absence of sound and a stillness there that is not the absence of motion. Such a place is unknown to the thinking mind. When it is found you will discover you have entered a gap in the traffic jam of your brain where you may have peace under every condition and then the mind in awe itself will settle down by itself. In a moment there will have been asked: who is meditating? And the answer will totally throw the would-be meditator out the window. And the answer to the question “How can I keep this?” that follows will be “It is entirely up to you.”

You will find when freed from all the effort required by one bottled up in the traffic of a misused brain you have available an enormous surplus of energy now and a much deeper intelligence is present. In gladness all will have been well worth the mercifully small effort required. And the effort to do this will have been a joy.

 

As I See It

I really don’t know whether anybody will get a thing out of whatever I have to say, but that being said, I’ll go on and try. It’s like this I write is off the main grid or something. It is not mere verbal sentences.

Everybody has got to be careful when they listen to anybody. Because the words that come will not be said by anything that is real.They will be said, instead, by an image the guy speaking them has invented to live in a cock-eyed world. 

Time and the thoughts that belong to it were introduced in human existence when people first decided it would be better to be different than we are. Language enabled the attempt to make up a method to try that out. That requires time. It is a mechanical process. Inwardly, there is no time. See the impossible contradiction? It has made an awful mess but people are too far gone now to even begin to see we are doing it. 

I mean to say that we are actually on many different paths each of which was originated to improve humans. Time is necessary to carry on. Now many ways are being invented to get us back to where we started. None of them work. Using a method based on time and thought to get back to the place we started from only takes us farther away. This is so because an image that began using time and words as a basis of living is being relied upon to free us from all images while only images are in need of freedom. Those Images are the mess. For any human to be free the images and all their museums must go. Images created the concept of death as the opposite of life and fear it.

Look at how strongly we are wedded to a story form. It must have a beginning, middle, and end. There is no story unless it ends and unless we know it will end we cry “Foul!” And yet life is a constant motion. Everybody has got to be careful when they listen to anybody. Taking great care is all we can do. At some point by simply taking great care the truth within us will act to restore itself. Enjoy the beauty! It is here now.

 

 

A Life Based Entirely On The Future Is 

Misery for All

Maybe you and I wish to understand what has happened to us already and why it has happened before we launch yet another program to bring a future we desire to ourselves and our friends and relations? I am speaking about the way families live and have lived here on this planet for untold thousands of years. I am speaking not of one nation but of all humanity. Humans are suffering now as you read this all over the world. We are all in the same boat.

What causes this? Desire? I want something I do not have or I want to keep something I think I must have and may lose? Why think that way at all? 

A good friend once said to me seated together in a relaxed feeling of well-being at a delightful party, “I want both”. She meant that she wanted inwardly to be a contented, free person who enjoys good, healthy relationships with other contented people who love one another and she wanted to be very rich outwardly. Since that night we have seen very little of each other and my friend has accumulated great wealth which includes a larger and larger house and a swimming pool and numerous vehicles and servants and so on and on. She has also become an active member of an organized religion and has taken the matter so far she is one of its official decorated leaders who conducts rituals and voices its doctrines. Has my friend created a Utopia? I can say with confidence “No” for it is impossible to create a Utopia based upon a desire for some outcome in the future and that has been demonstrated over and over in all parts of the earth by all societies put together by humans since the beginning of time. All nations that have come about have tried it and all are trying it today and nothing about us has changed. And this even includes every attempt by only two people to live together in peace in what is practiced universally as a marriage.

All humans today must look once and for all and see clearly what we speak of when we speak of the future. The answer is simple and anyone can see it but only if one is able to stop denying the fact. The fact is the future does not exist, never has existed, and never will exist inwardly where we all experience our lives. By relying on it for our happiness psychologically we are fools for to choose not to open our presents today which exists as a fact in favor of what is mere abstract thought is to assure that one will never be happy inwardly today. What fools! Today is perpetual. Tomorrow is never.  Happiness for a human has been forsaken to ashes. If a forest of trees were to be able to live thinking of ways to become something other than what it is there would remain not a tree. Few will disagree with the saying “we have lost our humanity”.

One should recognize that all who live to become something else tomorrow or next year are driven to compete against others by selfish thoughts which build into greed and violence and hatred and all manner of suffering. Each bunch seeks to better itself at the expense of some other group. Conflict, not peace abides. It is a fact.

To top it off, one says we must fight this next war. It will end all wars. After all the deaths and suffering we will be happy. So, we kill each other. There is a celebration only of the cessation of the horror and madness and suffering the war has caused then we prepare for the next war. This brand of insanity is spread through and perceived in every sector of every society. It must end if we are to be true humans.

Immigrants have always thought when we go to another country we will find plenty and live well. This cannot be. The same people with the same policy of giving up today for tomorrow cannot help but to recreate another miserable, unlivable society in place after place. All societies are headed in the same direction using up their water supply, using up the air clean enough to breathe, using up their food supply creating more disease.

The obvious way to a happy future is to live fully as human beings today. The first step is to be clear what a human being is actually then live committed to that fact each moment. Watch like a hawk for the appearance of the slightest suggestion to return to base the practice of living on some future goal. Remain thereby true disciples! That and only that is real human discipline.

Nobody wanted a light bulb!  Far more fulfilling is it for a human to sit ‘neath the glow of the Moon and the twinkling of stars holding the hand of another real human than to plan a trip up there. In truth, the Moon may come to you if you really love Her. And , if so, the trip could be both effortless and beyond time and distance once you know yourself.

I know a fella who when he first saw Orion in the night sky was struck by a feeling of pure love beyond any he had known before and although many years have passed the feeling remains as great every time he looks on the constellation. No time. No distance. Love omnipresent. At heart, so is the human being.

 FREEDOM FROM THE SELF

If you look closely you will see you have been serving and you are serving still the dull, gray stupidity of human beings lost in the tightly planted woods of their conditioned brains with no way out while believing themselves to be intelligent and free. Aha! Then you will know.  

And you will take an entirely new kind of action altogether never before open to you. Because we must take this step alone it is ours and that makes all the difference. I know nothing if I let someone else know it for me. I am still ignorantly believing in another. The record is abundantly clear: that has not changed humanity for tens of thousands of years or longer. When the step is taken the self has gone bye-bye. Love and freedom are present. 

 THE FIRST KILLING 

Let’s say it is at the dawn of human people on Earth however or whenever it happened. A man and woman have a child, a son.  They have daughters. Later they have another son. One of the sons thinks his brother is preferred above him. He tells no one but the level of hatred for his brother festers and grows large until one day he lays a trap and murders his own brother.

Those humans still living are in anguish over this tragedy. One asks “What shall we do when a human murders?”

One replies, “ We shall take the killer and kill him as a punishment for his evil deed and as a warning to prevent such a terrible thing  happening again.” 

Two or three agree. But one speaks out “No. That is not wise. We should not ask: “Now that this horrible thing has occurred what do we do to this one who did the killing”. The right question to ask is what truly can be the cause of one of us killing another? We should trace back to see how it came to this awful action on the part of one of us against another of us and make a correction within ourselves that might actually prevent the recurrence of such tragic occurrences in the future. The way you propose will leave the tribe  failing to address what may grow into more of the same. Don’t you see? In truth, were we to kill the one who murdered we are endorsing that act…the act of slaying…as a valid response to feelings of loss that will be so recorded in all our minds and the killing is bound to go on and on. You see, do you not, what must follow when the real wound goes undressed?

The one who had spoken first gave this retort, “I am an individual! We are all individuals. I wish you would deal with us as individuals.”

The one who had said “no” to the idea of killing the murderer spoke again, saying, “The word ‘individual’, of which you show so much pride, means ‘not divisible’. In pride you say ‘I stand alone!’. In truth you know not what you do to yourself and those you care about when you act on the belief “I stand alone!” and isolate yourself behind a wall of your own making. You will soon live in a cold, cold world without love.

In such a world people play a game where a few gather riches and the many starve. They called it “trade” in the beginning. The few with some of their riches purchase politicians to make it illegal to steal their loot. Some of the many without will try to rob the rich. In the attempts people will be killed. All Hell breaks loose. Society has gone mad. In fear and rage people demand something be done. So, people who attempted to rob the rich are arrested, tried, and executed. Nobody looks into the “game”. You know the rest of that story. You live by it.

People crossed oceans to find “gold”. They planted flags and claimed the land. As the new rulers they demanded the natives to spit out the gold or die. How did the world become so corrupt? It had become so before the ships sailed after the gold lying in another place. A little child could tell you. All one has to do is to recall with clarity how you were treated after your arrival here at birth and, if you can stand to be so honest, see the corrupt society for what it is and you will want no more to do with it. Truth is simple yet it is so, so difficult to admit one’s own part in it. But it happens to be so that until you do you will remain blind to the way to make a meaningful change. One has to cease pointing the finger and put one’s own house in order. You think the fire is “out there” but it is “in here”. 

 LIFE AND DEATH

Now, what we got here for livin’ is life. You might reply to the writer, I’m not stupid, I know it’s life! Well, I say, you do and you don’t. Life, for one thing is not bound by time, is not one straight horizontal line. Naw, Sir! You tryin’ to force it to be that is the source of your fear of death and  a lot o’ troubles. And you tryin’ to make death be the end of that horizontal is causin’ a whole lot more. Life and death move together as one thing by a timeless movement. A mouthful. The past and the future are in the now. Life and death are both tremendously vital. In fact, to die while remaining in a living organism is what it is all about. That requires an understanding of death. Death is the ending and the beginning. The most vital thing around the tragic death of a young person is the realization we must not let it be in vain. DYING, THEN, IS LIVING!