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.