Who is this Gate Keeper who stands at the door of my conscious awareness and speaks before me and for me while I listen to it and wonder how often do I speak for myself? Am I nobody? Drunk? Too dumb? Inept? Weak? Incapable? Why did I stand for this rudeness ever even for one moment? I bet this impostor is a coward if I would only speak up. I am going to do it. I am going to find out who is running this life we seem to share. Me or...what's-it? The one with a name who sees imperfection in everything and everybody. You know, the one who changes his mind to fit each new situation, constantly revising his identity, the liar.

People think the world should change. People seem to imagine that the world will change by some movement that grows over time into a large force by virtue of its numbers and wins over the whole of humanity by its sway. The movement, we think, will probably begin in the mind of some genius, a scholar. We support higher education in the hope one will be found in that arena. There is little if any evidence that schools ever produce change. On the contrary, they seem to manufacture sameness.

When the world does change, it may come instantaneously through the changing of a single human being in a change so profound it changes everybody else at once. Actually, it will almost certainly come that way because, as every one knows, a system cannot change from the inside. Anything resembling change from within a manmade system has to be just more of the same system. Systems thought up are not alive and do not evolve. Life evolves. Join it.

The world ought to change, the swan thought.

A righteous human being does not exist except in 

the dictionary. Einstein was hard at work for

something that was paying him in paper money to 

find out what the Universe is made of and he 

forgot to look at the world he thought he lived in 

to see whether it has any substance first. That was 

not wise of him. From inside a trip that is itself 

contrived one can find little, or nothing, to be true. 

Another way 

to say it, everything is true in a contrived balloon 

where funny gas is breathed. Alice, remember 

her? The looking glass? Remember? Nothing 

makes any sense anymore when you agree to 

surrender clarity to join an outfit. Outfits, all of 

them, exist not at all. Dreamed up. The dreamer 

runs the show. Whoever pays the piper calls the 

tune. If someone gets fools to accept paper money, 

well, who can blame him for trying? Certainly not 

the fools he dupes.

You can't do that!

Why not?

It's against the law.

Where is this law?

In a library.

I cannot do this I want to do because it is written 

that I cannot in a book?

Of course, every educated person knows that.

There is a book here that tells me what I can and 

cannot do and every educated person knows what 

the book says?

Well, no, few know actually, the lawyers, maybe, 

some of them anyway, might know...some...but 

they look it up...after...you get charged with a 

crime and tell you what it is going to cost in paper 

money to get you set free on a pass. It's a sort of 

game, you see. Oh, my...the world ought to 

change.

U'd Think Me Crazy

Life's most respected individuals are instruments of evil for the simple reason that life, as we define it, is evil. The Druids of ancient times coined the word e-v-i-l and deliberately made it to be l-i-v-e spelled backward. They saw that life, as we know it, is backward from its true nature, which is…

good, of course.

Characters who act natural are good. And, as such, are a problem for the respected leaders at all levels of organized society. You know this and yet do nothing to change it, not even for yourselves. That is so because you know only the one life taught you by the instruments of evil. You have become an instrument yourself. Only a pawn in a game are you. Even those thought to be the most powerful of men and women are mere pawns.

In the game everybody wants money, a job, and a mortgaged home, as a minimum. From there it gets into more and more absurd layers of never ending desires. Druids lived in trees and worked magic. That is real life. You think me crazy? I thought so. I am crazy like a fox. Have you considered seriously the question of whether you, as great as you believe yourself to be, might really be an institutionalized human being and, as such, have lost your humanity? Have you examined the life you live carefully? The suggestion here made is that each one ask: can I live the way I live and preserve my soul? What have I gained if I lose that? Another way to ask is: do I imagine that my soul is going to settle for part of me? Has it left already?

I was once called telephonically by a monk who asked me whether he should abandon his post in his Church to go back home to protect his inheritance from a father who was squandering it. I am no clergyman but even I knew the answer to that one.

Answer: abandon both the post in a church that means so little to him as to consider abandoning it for money and abandon his inheritance to sail on bravely to be his own person. In other words, cease living as the institutionalized patient of an evil mental ward. Live!

After watching Bob Dylan in concert in the 60's a professional 

musician said, He articulated what the rest of us wanted to say, but 

couldn't say. It was not necessary for him to be a definitive person, 

he was possessed. What does it mean to be possessed? Is it to be 

possessed by pure reality itself and thereby to be free of all 

definitions? I say it is.

Is it necessary for you or me to be definitive? Definitions are like 

clothing for the mind. Underneath, naked, are we possessed by 

reality, like Bob? I say we are. How many are left undefined? These 

are the real human beings, the undefined ones among us. Only they 

have anything real to say and if they speak it is our duty to listen to 

them.

I say that the chief characteristic of a very young person that 

separates the youth from adults is the absence of definitions in the 

child. Honesty. Integrity. Nobility. Humility. All of this is undefined 

original stuff. It is the stuff of a naked mind. None of it can be 

taught.  It is definitions that are taught and they are false. For what 

is a definition but a lie? To even think of yourself as an adult is to 

lie. 

To even think of yourself as a parent is a lie. To even think of 

yourself as carrying a career tag is a lie. To even think of yourself 

as American or British or Russian or Japanese is a lie. To even 

think of yourself as Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or Muslim or 

Jewish is a lie.

ANY 'OL RAINCLOUD

If I see a bird in flight, and imagine it to be free, what is it about me that is being shown that I might see if I but had the eyes to see? Bob Dylan asked when a boy, “Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?” (Ballad in Plain D)

I want to see like that.

What person sees something else as “free”?

Someone who is searching for it?

Who searches for freedom?

Is it a free person or a slave who searches for it?

Come on, you know.

Ask yourself this:

If I work a job that does not resound with the chimes of my soul and see a man with a better job who looks happy to me what all does it tell you about me? Are you following along?

Ask, then, this question of yourself:

If you have a wife or husband that disapproves of you and you see a couple who look like they are in love and happy about it, what does it tell about you? About the quality of your vision? Needs a correction, I think?

I have been trying to tell of something that cannot be grasped; so, why have I bothered you with that at all? Do you wonder even? Or, do you know already?

Who grasps for something but the one who does not have what it is he/she wants?

If I am not happy, and know it, and someone tells me of a guru who is happy and I search for the guru who is happy in the hope he will tell me how to be happy what am I showing myself?

It occurs to me, and thus I am moved to write this down, that any search means I believe my own Creator to be inept or foolish.

There is only one thing I would wish for another: that, that person not miss the grand obvious.

Like the hole in a donut; there is a dark hole of the soul that is alien to one's thought patterns. What are our thought patterns except dreaded concern for some respectable way of life to bring us success and hoped-for joy?

The saddest cry comes from down in the belly all day and all night from a place we dread falling into. The “Falling -In Place” is where a lost person is found, but, by none other...

I once sat on a rock in the desert mountains and prayed to be free. My own voice asked, “Are you not free?

My own voice, I tell you!

On Love

Love has oppressed me. Love has forced me away. Love has hidden itself from me. Love has denied itself to me. Love has refused my touch. Love has made a fool of me. But love saved my life, and for no reason I can think of, and when I did not want to go on living, gave life back to me and showed me I can enjoy one. Then left. So, why do I keep dropping everything to chase after her? Oh, I see, my, love is a mirror!

We came from the wilderness ourselves as wild as all the rest of it. And our presence today makes it clear we were clever and adept. Something of the wilderness, a fragment perhaps, remains inside us. One never ceases entirely to be wild even in slippers in front of a tv screen. All fear is false.

My love has always kept her promise.

“Never, she said, "tell anyone what I tell you now, but, I will never be true. There. Now you have it. I am made that way. You will have to be true to me if you like. In fact, that is why I am pretty. I cannot be true so I am pretty. I am here so you have something to be true about. You may write me poetry. All fear is false.

When I say I am never going to be true,” she said, “I mean that my nature is loyalty itself so being true is without form and void. Everybody is true to something. I am. It is no big deal. Be selective is all. Never mind. And all fear is false.”

Love is void. Formless and void. And real. A real tyrant. Love is God.

Love has oppressed me. Love has forced me away. Love has hidden itself from me. Love has denied itself to me. Love has refused my touch. Love has made a fool of me. But love saved my life, and for no reason I can think of, and when I did not want to go on living, gave life back to me and showed me I can enjoy one. Then left. So, why do I keep dropping everything to chase after her? Oh, I see, my, love is a mirror!