I think: Therefor,

I am fucked!

That is all.

Being dominated by thought is the thought: You may go to Hell if you do not do what you should do.

And, so, acting by thought you make a choice between opposites.

And thought says: This is Hell! I have been here before in the past. I need a plan to get me out of here. I know. I’ll get a girlfriend. Another thought prevails and you act on it. 

And you wind up in Hell. And thought says : This is Hell. I have been here before in the past. And this cycle can continue for a lifetime. 

So, the question is

Can I live on some basis other than thought? Is there a pure observation of what is actually happening? One that does not rely upon the wordy translation by an idiot? 

Of course there is.

Do it.

Find Hell is not.

 CONSIDER THE TREES

Consider the trees in a forest. Many varieties are there not? Roots intertwined. Branches spreading like arms and fingers toward  the skyway….the Sun, the undisputed source of life and energy. So far, we have come to understand that the trees obey patterns that result in a harmony expressed as what we have named a forest. We accept it that these patterns have not been set by each individual tree itself operating individually and sparring with its neighbors for advantages nor by certain leader trees that stand out above the ordinary trees, each leader conceiving of a day when the tribe it leads will prevail over the other tribes of trees and monuments built to honor his memory as a great leader and generations of children made to memorize his name.  If we consider the entire make-up of the intelligence back of a forest and call it the brain it is the brain of the entire forest not the brain of any single tree or group of trees considered separately. It is a whole forest we see in operation before us and, by golly, we are so very dependent on that forest to a degree that cannot be overestimated. Our daily lives rest upon their existence. Think about it.  Search it out for yourself. When you understand life depends upon the sanctity of a forest ask yourself, “Is that not a world of love?”.

I read a quote from a famous musician who said we can either hate the ultimate power we call life or love it with all we have. It’s up to us. The trees of a forest have chosen the way of love. You have probably already done it but next will want to consider the dependence and interdependence of all the animals of a forest, large and small. Do not overlook the humans who have lived there. And get out your microscopes and examine into the invisible world inside of you and its wonder and love. Not with a motive to control it for your benefit or the benefit of your friends but to go “wow!” See for yourself, without a motive, how life has taken care for me…little ol’ me. Then decide to fully embrace it with all your heart, soul, and mind. In this way, your brain will transform itself.

 To those who have not the eyes to see how young I am I may appear to them to be old. I am so young in fact that I awaken every morning in a state of infancy. Each of my days is a new life to live. I know not what to expect so find myself empty of ideas. Back when I was older, I carried many ideas about where I came from, where I am going, how I am going to get there, and what happens after I die. It took a lot of luggage to hold all the stuff and wore me out. Now, I intuit, see, all those questions will be answered today before I sleep and I will awaken tomorrow to live again. Tomorrow, after all, comes only as today. That I can depend upon. Some days it seems my body is aging and wearing out. But other days it is as though my body is as vibrant as ever it has been. It is not the same as the body I had, say, seven years ago, but just as alert and adequate to my day. Eager and ready. 

 A time came…

When I suddenly found myself saying, “I want to know who I am more than I want the approval of another human being. Who am I really? That was my question and so strong was it there was no room for another question inside of me.

The other day I heard a talk on the subject of loyalty. The speaker came to say, as humans we should all be loyal to humanity. I shuddered at the term “should be”. It got me to thinking that I have been confronted with that term from the time other people had made me into a creature who could begin to comprehend their words…”should be”. By now,  I am deeply experienced in the way of trying to be what I should be. It began at home. Then there was the radio. Then there was television. And schools. A spouse. And bosses. And groups I said I belonged to. Exercises. Diets. Religions. Politics. Art. Music. Books. And I had failed many times to be what I should be. I began to notice more and more that, wait a minute, for every thought I have of what I should be there is the opposite thought. I have been brought slyly into a great war inside of me by all this confusion. And I call it “My Life”. I considered an attempt to end it. Then the thought came instead to risk it all and find out who I really am loyal to if anybody. Immediately the term “Loyalty” came to have new meaning. I wanted to know who I am loyal to naturally absent any effort to be loyal. I thought of my cat. She was a one-man kitty naturally. I had no doubt about that. My cat was not striving for approval at all. In fact, she was teaching me how it can be so for a living thing to just be. I was seeing it as a strong sort of stubbornness that I had to admire greatly, so foreign was it to me. I wondered whether I might have that kind of stubbornness in me when it clicked that my single question was coming from such a place.

And gradually I am aware more and more that the truth is that the moment a named virtue is cultivated it loses all sense of being virtuous for it loses the soul in its meaning which is what my cat had all along. She was what she was and asked not to be congratulated.

I want to add that a willingness to stop shopping for meaning is the same as turning a valve in me that floods me with just enough stubborn to be a real human being.

NOBODY has written this before.

 A Critic

A critic will always be hopelessly in the dark. Critics assume an attitude way off course. He tells what his conditioned brain says is the meaning of what he has seen according to that brain’s conditioning. In doing so, the critic distorts every fact he has seen. Doing this leads to a life spent in a false world that resembles not the real one at all. Such a life is disturbing and becomes gradually intolerable. By trying to change the conditioned brain one merely goes deeper into the madness. A confused mind will find only confusion. The way out is simple but extraordinarily difficult for an arrogant person to attempt. One must see clearly how the conditioned brain operates and seeing cease the practice. What remains is brilliance.

The JOKER & The THIEF

 T: Do you believe the Universe is infinite?

J: Yes.

T: There is no proof of it, is there?

J: No. No proof, but I believe it to be so.

T: Some say we are all equal.

J: There is no proof we are.

T: There is no proof we are not. 

J: That is a  dilemma. We must act first or someone else will. So, let’s make believe we are not all equal and draw up a set of rules to determine a ranking order of worth of our own design which favors our kind and enforce it.

T: Okay. But what if it turns out we are all equal?

J: We must not allow it to happen. Everybody cannot be allowed to run wild. That would be chaos. And we need order.

T: But, if we are all equal might wild be order and enforced order be chaos?

J: You mean, do you not, it might be that order was in the plan from the beginning? I suppose we will find out some day.

T: No way. People will not ever allow it to happen. I have a new feeling growing in me now that wild, not the word but the fact, just might be humility. And people fear humility more than anything.

J: Humility? That sounds like humanity. Could it be found to be our natural state?

T: Who among us is in tune with his natural state?

J: There must be some way out of here. 

 The So-Called Scientist

Let us reason together in order to see what is happening to us. I am not going to teach you anything. Listening to me is like talking to yourself. Together we learn.

The so-called scientist looks through her microscope. What she sees depends upon what she is looking for but she is unaware of the effect of that upon her work. She thinks what she sees is the way things are. She knows not that the observer is the observed. She knows not that what she sees is colored by her memory of what she has seen in the past. She believes she can cross the same river again today which she crossed yesterday. That the river is always flowing is not important to her because that would keep her from being a scientist in search of fixed knowledge which she is convinced brings control to life and destiny. She believes herself to be dedicated to bringing to all a better world. She is this way only because she thinks of herself as an intelligent scientist with a reputation for intelligence among others who think the same way. It is mere group think. She is concerned with her career. Blind to how her fixation is in the past she is arrogant. She will tell other colleagues the meaning of what she has found in a paper she will author and publish. It is folly to do that in a world in motion. Yesterday’s knowledge is dead. But she has been busy gathering a following of fools. In this manner she will be nominated to receive coveted awards and the false prestige they bring. This she believes to be practical and secure though it be nothing but illusion made by abstract thinking. A translator who is not there is busy telling her what the thing she sees means. Words. Then, the translator tells her, she can tell others what to do about it. Meanwhile, everybody alive knows everything is getting worse.

The lawyer is bound to the past in the same way as the scientist as is the physician and the psychiatrist and the minister and the businessman and the journalist and the artist and the writer and the guru and all the rest. They belong to schools of thought and are proud of it. Each school has its private language others do not understand. They argue among themselves and teach in their schools that this will lead to progress which is thought to bring excellence but which is merely cosmetic. The word”excellence” is not the thing. Trends, latest fashions, and celebrity abound in a society of idiots. And the emperor of it all is naked. Humanity is riding a train traveling faster and faster and deeper into a purgatory-like condition of its own making and none of it is real. All is illusion. Should we all laugh? At whom? It might be fun if the price were not so high in terms of violence against all who have stood in the way of self-made, arrogant, judgmental pretenders over the ages. It is a very complex and convoluted  history. They kill each other. They kill children, women, the elderly, the helpless, and the best. They are constantly sending children to school where they can be forced to learn the game and assimilate.  Two Riders approach.

The game we have been playing is unfortunately very attractive to us. Or maybe it is not unfortunate at all. Maybe there is a plan to actually get us hopelessly lost and before we find our way back home we have to admit we are lost completely and mean it. That happened to me and some others. How many will it happen to before we are too far gone already?

Thinking, as we are taught to do it, divides us. It divides us 

abstractly into a thousand nations, a thousand religions, a thousand philosophies all engaged in one form of war or another. Wars among named groups are inevitable. As individuals, it divides us from within in wars against ourselves. This is done by observing what is named to be a flaw and then creating an illusion of an ideal human being without that flaw. Then one now creates with thought a method to become that perfect human without the flaw. All the world as we know it now is caught madly in this way of living. Look around. 

There is quite another,  largely ignored, possibility. It is possible to look only at the flaw in ourselves or others without a judgment that it is a flaw or a virtue. Observe the condition as it is without words. Be practical for a change! The result astounds! It works! The flaw is not. It disintegrates. It never was. It was being created by the blind scientist who is ignorant of reality. On the outside the pure observation works the same miracle. We see suddenly the other as another human who actually wants the same thing I do when we observe them with a still mind, anchored in reality, even for a short while. That is all it takes. It happens. There is no going back to resentment and fear and hatred now. And we heal. Healed and made whole by the loving winds of reality. Mediation as practiced by aboriginal peoples all around the Earth for thousands of years taught me this. I trust it without a doubt.

All people, and that means all, want to work together with pride and joy. Excellence comes from one place and one place only…it comes from the soft, yielding hearts of human beings regardless of their present condition. There is a way home. Each one who turns to the heart assumes the attitude of humility heart when trusted brings and will have to produce excellence and excellence alone. Such a train, bound for glory, will inherit the Earth. I did not say accumulate money and property.  I said inherit the Earth. 

Welcome home.