Let’s Pretend 

So, let’s play pretend good society for people to live under. Want to?  Okay. So, let’s pretend the people will vote for candi-dates who want to pretend they are lawmakers for the rest of the people to be governed by. Okay? Well, these elected lawmakers are only going to be able to pretend to make good laws that will make an incorrupt society, that okay? So, we will pretend the laws the pretend lawmakers make are really good, fair, wise, and pretend such laws will serve an incorrupt society we all pretend we want. Any problem? See any? 

Okay. Now the pretend fair and good laws are going to disappoint us unless we pretend the laws are good ones all should obey willingly. Get it? Okay. But if we really wanted a good society we are gonna be disappointed when these pretend laws are enforced. Understand? Yeah. Okay. Unless we are willing to pretend the pretend laws ought to be enforced in spite of the evidence. Is that understood?  Some people may protest the unfairness so we need to be ready to be rough…violent. Get it? 

Whenever anyone, a parent, for example takes a position of

I know

You do not

I’ll help you

nobody will be helped. In fact, the very person addressed in this manner will be crippled. Don’t you see why? With good intentions we murder. We murder the minds of our children in their cribs. The only real help comes from: I do not know. Only then does the mind of the would-be helper empty. And only an empty mind is brilliant enough for the task. You try it. Find out. I dare you. A door will open for you that you knew not to be there. Your life will flower. Do you understand what that means? Come on. Find out. Do not go to the library or bookstore. Try it. It must be your understanding not a borrowed one. 

 "You two are going to have to work it out”

as a direction to take when a problem arises instead of immediately jumping to “control” feels to me like a way whereby a real, far-reaching solution is possible  where "control" brings the opposite-always more and more far reaching suffering. Systems are replete with this. Has anybody ever learned anything worthwhile from being controlled by an outside force? A criminal can be imprisoned and punished, even executed. But, the source of any good that will come to the prisoner or anyone else will have to be love and patience…and that has happened many times.

Patience and love. Many, if not all, aboriginal societies we know of had this approach as naturally as is drinking water when thirsty. People have not always tampered with what is not their business and is beyond their understanding. Order is never manufactured. It does not come from a mechanical process. Such processes lead to disorder. Matter disintegrates. Order is. It exists. The way to find it is to cease controlling. In that state one is so very, very wise. What will unfold for such people cannot be predicted from the dimension of controlling. Try it.

 HOW DO YOU SEE YOUR LIFE?

Let me tell you of a funny way of looking at your own life. A child is born. That child is ignorant and quite messed up. The child almost certainly will become more confused with time and become so much so that he or she will need help according to the thinking of the child as molded by its society. Recognizing the need, the child is teachable meat. Through a series of teachers the child will attempt to find what he has lacked all this time in order to be “normal”. Can you believe that any human being can see in that deranged way his own life? It is so. 

Another way to see one’s birth is as a wondrous event that brings forth a wholly unique being, never has there been nor will there ever again be such a being, who has the assignment from within itself to do something marvelous and has all that is necessary to do just that without ever asking anyone’s permission nor expecting any reward. Expectations are so limiting!

 What cripples the clarity of one’s own perception is a drug. Love is known only by people with clear eyes to see it. Love is not something that is possessed and then handed forth in pieces to someone’s special others like candy. It is not in any way connected to being a grandparent or a parent or a daughter or son or sibling or anyone interested in attaching to another for support and sustenance. That is all a game. Trickery. Addiction. Love is not ever going to be used for a selfish interest. Quite the contrary. Love has no motive. Like that wild nightingale it comes and goes of its own volition and sings purely when it wants to and not on command. Take it or leave it. Do not even attempt to meditate until you are first clear. Clear means no inner conflict whatsoever. 

What is being mentioned is that clarity of mind is the first priority in life. Make no mistake about it. Life is given to those who can appreciate it. When one looks closely one sees that people who are not so clear are insulting the very thing they most desire. With a crippled mind they seek to find happiness and wealth and purpose and even whether there is God, and, if so, what is God. With a crippled mind they intend to seek out the divine, if there is any, and to use it to become something great. Only those who end that will know they are great. 

Another way to say the same thing is that only free people can love. The freedom required is freedom from confusion and conflict of any kind. It is easy to listen to someone who claims to be a teacher tell you he knows and you do not. Only someone not ready to go the journey to its conclusion will follow another. This is your life. No one else can show you how to go. You want a formula, an explanation, a spelled-out doctrine, etc. All one who is not clear can do is to give a great deal of attention inwardly to that very situation. It will clear as you do. You are the watchman on the wall of existence. You are your teacher, guide, guru. So, to be a good one you need to be clear about it. It is up to each one of us. However, we can encourage and inspire each other by showing the way is within, but only by going. The word is not the thing.

ABOUT NOTHING 

Nothingness. What is that? Not a thing. What is a thing? A thing is a thought. A thought gives a name to the thing a thought has made. A number of things made in this manner are put together by thought into a set of thoughts and a system is made to be distinguished from other things. After some time a scientist is made by thought to study these systems and measure and compare thoughts which will cause the scientist to take pride in considering these contrived things in systems to be the observable world as it actually is when such is utter nonsense. And all this malarky will have been mostly brought about through pride as a manner of giving the scientist a profession to profess. Scientists, lawyers, doctors of medicine, teachers, preachers and priests, politicians, psychologists, philosophers, soldiers and their officers, artists, athletes, computer scientists, and all the rest have arisen in this manner and the list can go on forever. 

So, is nothingness what we most fear and loathe? But is it, after all, what was there before naming? Why do we fear it so? What do you know of nothingness, especially what do you know of how it feels to you? All of us had to have experienced nothingness at the beginning of our lives. Can we now? It is surely a great challenge to find out. Just one thought can blot out nothingness. 

It is like nothingness vanishes in the presence of thought. But that cannot be so, can it? That would have to mean the world created by man is more real than that that preceded it. I can understand as a fact that is not so. By that, I can at least meet up with nothingness if only for a moment before thoughts return. Meeting nothingness is the greatest feeling known by me. The question came: why can I not keep that feeling all day? The answer came: it is entirely up to you. Nothingness is always with me now even when things can be taken out in its presence for a useful purpose and then put away. A useful purpose for things is tying my shoes. When nothingness is my consciousness I have no urge to control a thing. Controlling is not. All is friendly. 

 A Worthy Effort

We share a universal consciousness with all of the rest of the people on Earth since the beginning of time whether we like it or not. When a young man out of law school in America I began to notice in a more serious way what is going on around me. I was beginning to feel a part of the world as a worker in its program. In a little while, I noticed I was feeling more and more depressed and frightened of the world. I began to sense things were wrong on a large scale and getting worse at a fast rate. I was putting it together with things I had  read and heard as I grew and forming a cynical attitude about everything as a whole. It was to grow and grow for many years. I left several jobs and a marriage folded up on me and my wife and children. This is a short version of what happened.

What I am seeing now is it was the beginning of a pattern of taking somewhat serious looks into matters of the world and wanting to know: is this world being directed purposefully by a gang, large or small, of evil criminals who are disguised as patriots and religious leaders and so on or is it really just running out of control with nobody actually in charge of anything? Today, I see finally the truth of it. It is all of us together making the world of humans what it is and has been at all times. It had a beginning, a cause, though, and so it can be ended. 

That is the news I want to spread to everyone. It began with the first one who submitted to service to a symbol rather than live in the actual truth of things as they are. This substitution was very dangerous and so dangerous was it that it has grown into what is happening worldwide now. A man killed his brother. When anyone makes the jump from truth to symbol it begins a corruption of human intelligence. Repeated, it makes the human mind, heart, and soul (one thing really) makes the psychological entity we are go lazy and weak. By now, we are awful dumb as compared to how humans are naturally. Few natural humans are living anymore as adults.  Nearly all free humans are young children who are being ignored and abused by adults. But it is so important to know that the cause is everybody who has joined a movement “to become” some symbolized product as part of some symbolized group; people everywhere are striving to become something he or she is not. And, that is practically everybody over the age of seven. 

It is so important to see that any effort to control even one human (oneself, for instance) is wasted effort and a very dangerous practice. It is all going to be symbolic, has to be. See? If I strive to control anything in the world about me or the inner world, in me, I set up an internal conflict. Who can win such a war? 

Such a war is a war between the controller and the controlled and both are who I am. And, always, symbolism has been the cause of all the suffering we have tried  to end by control, which, as we know, has never worked. Listen closely for any inquiry that begins in “how”. Immediately doubt its validity. It will be grounded in symbolism. Do not agree or disagree with me, find out for yourself. Never agree to serve words, theories, ideas, idols, flags, etc. Moving in that direction will increase the strength of the actual cause of suffering rather than lessening the suffering. We need desperately to end all this “becoming”. Simply ending it, we will be free. A free mind is to be seen in a very young child. It exists. Do not “become” like that child to influence the cessation of all controlling by humans of every region everywhere on Earth once you see it is another worthy effort. Rather, just look upon the controlling way of the world of which you are a part with all your attention and let that understanding burn away all efforts at becoming. By love you will see you have been inoculated with disillusion. 

 Peace Nations

Plains Indians in North America had both war chiefs and peace chiefs. The Peace chiefs were the more honored bunch. Well, I propose we look into the possibility of electing a Peace government since we are heavy with war governance. In keeping with solidarity, I suggest we encourage the women to play the major role in developing such a Peace Government. Both peace with other nations and peace among each other is required. Both governments should have equal funding and be of equal strength, of course. Perhaps it would be advisable, actually to make the Peace Government the priority since peace is preferred to war by all and has historically been ignored. 

I came of age in the sixties and was a young married husband in the time of Women’s Liberation in this country. At the time I was eager to surrender to the women without a struggle since I seemed to have nothing to lose and everything to gain by women being more active in life here. I certainly did not think it wise of women to take the position they wanted to do what men do in order to feel equal. That seemed very silly to me. Most of what men do, to me, was a waste of energy and divisive to the max. We struggle with each other and deceive one another and murder one another. I felt it best women stay out of such matters if possible. Men, as well. Actually these are the source of most suffering in the world for the last ten thousand years. 

I am not including these comments to be funny. I sincerely mean to tell that females have a nature of their own every bit as valuable as that of males and do not mean cleaning and scrubbing and cooking and child care and other such chores as that. No. I mean all those areas of human existence which would be categorized as peace concerns, meaning considerations which foster peace and harmony and cooperation and a sense of well-being and joy among all people. All of these and more are just as meaningful to women as men as are all aspects which prevent illness, mental and physical, prevent alienation of any from the group. The inclusion of everybody’s talents and drives on equal terms, with respect. You know what I mean. Compassion and love and softness and kindness and the willingness to serve. Humility. Patience. Creativity. Those things, for instance. Music. Dance. Color. Endurance. Dependability. Beauty. 

In summary, it is important for all humans to be fully included in the birth of a Peace Nation.