James Crystal |
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Check out this detailed column in today's WSJ It confirms my intuition about China trying to buy UNOCAL. May more people in the know, like its author, come out of the woodwork to wake us up! The clearest cut-to-the-chase point he made, I believe, was to ask whether China would allow an American company to purchase a Chinese asset. Actually, let your mind fly all the way. The Chinese 'company' in the hunt for an American free-market company is really the Chinese COMMUNIST 'government'. So, what if the US government tried to buy THAT 'company' qua 'government' entity? Obviously, there's no way they'd let that take place. Hugh Hewitt has an exceptionally good blog about Bush's speech, today. I sent him the following email. "A fundamentally feckless party cannot be allowed near the controls of national security, and a fundamentally deceptive MSM will not be trusted to tell us that that party has the answers." says Hugh Hewitt, today. This immediately brought to mind one of the most famous movie lines from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madres", which morphed into--- "Answers? We don't need no stinking answers!" Or, how about--- "Answers? We don't need no THINKING answers!" Just as in the movie, the MSM and their compatriots are outlaws, bandits of the first-worst order, who, if they get their way, will bring about the destruction of America and all freedom across the world, eventually. They are way beyond 'feckless'. They are a dagger pointed at freedom's HEART. That's why I call them out, for what they truly are--Destroyers = Shiva = the Devil. Chaos in action!
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
"The China Bet Is Off", by Amity Shlaes and "Chinese Dragon Awakens", by Bill Gertz, are just the latest China stories and analyses to remind us of the real deal, especially with the two big 'friendly' offers by the Red Chinese dictators for Maytag and Unocal. What with the big worry about a trade war with that country, especially concerning the Yuan, it all combines to make one wonder---what's Really going on? Where did the commies get the money to do all their nefarious deeds? In my simplistic mind, the whole dollar-Yuan conundrum reduces to this: China has no minimum wage, and the hard working peons under the control of their Nomenklatura have no power. I wonder what the tax rate is, as well. And, don't forget Bill Clinton's buddy, who sold, on the cheap, missile technology---the guy from Loral. Permeating the entire ongoing World War between the US and China is the bottom line fact that the guys pulling the strings in that benighted land of the Dragon are bound by NO LAWS. In short, "Might is Right", so another simple realization that should penetrate ANY consideration of the political situation, stems from the Machiavellian hierarchical structure that is the communist party. Always ask, "Who can stop the top dogs from doing ANYTHING?" What I wanted to emphasize in this regard is that they will STEAL, easily, over time, our best products, including military stuff. My guess is that the tyrannical Red Chinese communist party is at once unaware of supreme hubris---as the world's most populous 'nation' with a long history, being a 'patriotic' Chinaman is the first job qualification---and hyper sensitive to how their Russian brethren blew it in 1991. Hence, they are in a race against time, paradoxically, even as the old trait about their famous Oriental 'patience' also colors the plot. BTW, can you imagine any internal revolt that could come close to bringing about the ouster of the guys controlling a 'million man' army? After all, in the Cold War China didn't bankrupt itself by trying to take over the world like the USSR did. Thus, they are nowhere near as ripe as the latter was, when Yeltsin turned against the rotten KGB 'extras' in that bad movie. I'd take Tiannamin Square as a 'patient' reality test pattern, which proved "You ain't seen nothing yet" imprinted itself in the peons minds---that is, there's no way the commies can stop stepping on the people's neck, and it would be easy to do more stomping, if necessary. Let's end on a downer. Rumsfeld said we'd be in Iraq for twelve years. Oh, gadzooks! Well, the Crusades have been going on for centuries, so--- And the current crop of radical Muslims are thoroughly brainwashed, which means there'll be no peace for generations. The best we can hope for is low-level terror. Compare the Red Chinese Nomenklatura to the Islamo-Fascist Nomenklatura. It's going on sixty years since the former took power, so they've had a couple or three generations to perfect their craft. Make no mistake about the absolute divide between the USA and other civilized democracies and our barbaric totalitarian enemies. The World War never stops. That's the 'play' in and of and AS Consciousness. Oh joy.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Once more into the breach! While looking in my little "Quotation Dictionary", I came upon this gem by Poe---"I have great faith in fools--- self confidence my friends call it". Well! Well, here and now we are, about half way through the first year of Bush's last term, and Social Security reform seems to be dead, for now. I seem to remember writing that he should push hard for tax reforms instead of social Security reform. Nah nah nah nah nah---I told you so. Not so fast, Crystal! Who could have predicted the further meltdown of the Demos? Hell, just use the trend as your friend wrt morals, and it sure does seem obvious, at least in retrospect. Simply have great faith in fools, and you can't go wrong. While Bush did deign to jump into the Social Security breach to valiantly try to save America, the leftists have been shown to be too big for their breeches. Until I just looked up the word, 'breeches', I forgot that they were pants that barely go past the knees. This causes me to further project the nudification of leftists, by extrapolating the ongoing shrinkage of their clothing. Soon enough they will be exposed as having no BALLS! "She wears short shorts" from the "Purple People Eating etc" classic rock and roll song will go to the limit, as blubber flops out and leftists end up as blubbering babies, ONLY. God, I love what Karl Rove did! Finally, someone opened that can of worms that's so needed! Isn't it a beautiful exposure of the vile picture that is leftists? Back to the Social Security reform game----without a doubt the desperate MSM will try their hardest to spread the Big Lie propaganda that Bush failed to pass any meaningful legislation to save that system. However, the absolute fact is it's only apparently true that the leftists succeeded in stopping him. By their obstructive behavior it is leftists who have TOTALLYfailed! Of course, I'm coming from the individual freedom point of view, but I bet you on the margin, over time more and more voters will come to the same realization. And when they start to turn from blaming Bush and excusing leftists to blaming leftists and PRAISING Bush, why---hello awakening. In short, despite the last worst-best efforts by the dying leftists and their enablers in the MSM, who actually believe that Bush is fatally wounded, this will probably be a low point for him, a short term mid-election 'problem'. When the 2006 elections come around, there's a good chance for another case of gains for freedom and for pushing the leftists even further to the fringe. Ask yourself, "Would you rather have the recent results of the left or the right?" Here's a prediction. Look for the rehabilitation of the "Primal Scream" book and movement. In fact, right now you can easily see that leftist have been pushed into such a tight corner with no escape that this is what they are, essentially, exhibiting.
I just received some excerpts from a new book by Adi Da Samraj, "Hridaya Rosary". The word, "Hridaya", means "Heart". The word, "ajna", refers to the "Third eye" in the upper brow. The first part is a talk given to devotees, and it is followed by a poem that builds on this. Enjoy! Oh, yes. He capitalizes words in the middle of sentences for a specific reason. He means to distinguish the CW, or exoteric, meaning, from the True, or esoteric meaning. So, for example, take the word "realize". When not capitalized, the normal meaning is correct. But, when written as "Realize", it points to the Absolute-to-Infinity meaning. Also, when He writes "Me", it is most definitely NOT in egoic terms, but it stands for the Only-One-Who-Is, the One without an other. I recommend printing this out and cherishing it often, by reading it aloud, especially. Here is the website. "My Garden Is the Space from Underground to Infinity From Part Six of Hridaya Rosary (Four Thorns Of Heart-Instruction) by Adi Da Samraj I. AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The Garden in My "Hridaya Rosary" is not the "paradise" of exoteric religion. It is a metaphor (or part of a gathering of metaphors) which describes, in esoteric terms, the Nature of Reality and the Process of Divine Self-Realization. And, apart from profoundest sadhana, that portion of the Garden you know while alive is all underground, in the domain of the roots. That which is in the Garden (standing upwards, toward What Is Beyond itself) extends beyond the Garden, beyond the sky, beyond the heavens (or any heaven) — indeed, beyond any form, any limitation, any extension at all. Beyond "beyond". And, yet, everything is coincident with That. Everything is coincident with Me, Pervaded and Surrounded by Me. That is the proper asana in My Rose Garden. And there is a Garden dog, which must be washed, and which must transcend its unruliness, its un-Mastered state. When the Garden dog heart-recognizes Me (the Divine Master of the Garden), it becomes Mine. Then the Garden dog ceases to run around the Garden chaotically — periodically dipping its tail end in the reflecting pool! Its purification, and its rightening altogether, occurs through the right asana of constant devotional surrender to Me, all the four principal faculties given to Me — such that the Garden dog (or the gross body-mind of My devotee) becomes voluntarily (and altogether responsively) conformed to Me, rightly, truly, fully, and fully devotionally recognizing Me, and rightly, truly, fully, and fully devotionally responding to Me. Therefore, the Garden dog is washed by heart-Communion with Me — Mastered through devotional recognition-response to Me, and (Thus) by allowing itself to be conformed to Me by obedience to My Avataric Divine Heart-Word. My Garden dog (or true devotee) is not running around in My Garden, ignoring Me. It is not straining itself, it is not trying to clean itself, it is not self-concerned. It is always turned to Me. It is washed by Me. Therefore, the gross body-mind of My seeing devotee is part of the Great Melting — in which everything is Spiritually "Brightened", and gone beyond itself, in Me. II. AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: There is no separateness or relatedness or "difference" inherent in Reality Itself. There is nothing of that at all, except in presumption — in self-contraction. In Reality Itself, there is no separation, no relatedness, no "difference". This must be Realized, by entering into the Presence and the Pattern of Reality Itself — such that all aspects of conditional reality cease to be contracted upon themselves, and the Nature of Reality Itself is Realized. For this to be the case, that which presumes separateness (and, as a consequence, relatedness, "difference", and so forth) must devotionally recognize Me and become coincident with Me. When all the faculties, or modes of conditional pattern (gross, subtle, and causal), cease to be turned in on themselves, they become (more and more) like an Up-turned blossom — utterly self-surrendered and self-forgotten, more and more "Brightly" Infused (at last, to the degree of Most Perfect Divine En-Light-enment) by Me, in (more and more profoundly ego-transcending) heart-Communion with Me (in and As My Avatarically-Born bodily human Divine Form and Person). The Garden of My "Hridaya Rosary", the Rose Garden of the Heart, is the Event of this Great Matter, this Great Process. The metaphor of gardens, of roses, and so forth, can be found in religious traditions, poetic traditions, all kinds of traditions and modes of human representation — but you must understand the unique and specific nature of My use of these metaphors. DEVOTEE: Beloved, one thing that seems unique about Your use of the metaphor is that the thorns have such a specific meaning — in that they are inextricably related to the rose itself, as in the case of actual roses. AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Four faculties, four thorns, four parts of My "Hridaya Rosary". When the crown of the head is upward-given to Me (in "Samraj Asana"), it ceases to be the seat of ego-possession. As I have Told you in My "Hridaya Rosary", the Spiritual Yoga of seeing Me requires that the crown of the head be open to Me — surrendered up and opened down, such that fear is transcended, such that you are continuous with What is Above the head. That openness is a thorn, at the crown. The crown of the head is part of the structure of lower subtle lights — but My Light Is Beyond the crown, Beyond the gross domain, Beyond the transition between the gross and the subtle domains, Beyond the subtle domain, even Beyond the limitations imposed by the causal knot (in the heart on the right side). III. AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The Tree in My "Hridaya Rosary" is a Rose Tree. It is not merely that this Rose is growing on a slender little thread of stem, such as you might buy at your local florist. It is a Tree, suggesting that there is mass to this Trunk of the Rose. The Tree extends upwards to Infinity. It has all of time and space above, and all of Above (Itself), in which to get stretched to slender. No matter how wide it is at the base, by the time it gets up to Infinity, it is extremely thin. In the space from the ground to Infinity, any width is thin. All widths are thin in My Rose Garden. DEVOTEE: Beloved, You Speak of trees as beings — in fact, as superior beings. AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, that is one way of looking at it. The tree is a kind of progenitor of all other forms. All modes of plant life, including great trees, are the organic and structural precursors (or precedents) for all other life-forms on Earth. All that springs as seed from plants and trees becomes (in the evolution, or developmental demonstration, of life-forms) more and more mobile — eventually, in their mobility, developing many different kinds of structures, under various kinds of conditions. Nevertheless, all earthly life-forms spring from the tree, and they are always in the mode of the tree, and (centrally, fundamentally) they always have the same structure as the tree. The Tree of which I Speak in My "Hridaya Rosary" is mostly Above the head, Above the realm of gross visibility. Only the Root-Ball (or the brain) and the Mandrake (or the spinal root and gross body) are below ground. By means of this descriptive metaphor, I am making reference to a pattern (or structure) that really (conditionally) exists. It is not a metaphor for nothing, or for something merely imagined. It is a communicative metaphor I am using to move you to notice the total conditional structure (or gross, subtle, and causal pattern) that, in the gross self-contracted disposition, you do not notice, or even presume to exist. The strategic seeking-effort to Realize "everything" (of right life and Real Happiness) by focusing on (and egoically manipulating) the "tail end of the dog" (or the gross personality) is a disposition that can arise only when there is the absence of awareness of what is "above ground" (so to speak). Thus, necessarily, the human culture of scientific materialism, or of gross-mindedness in any form, is (really) a sub-human culture — or a program for human existence that is based on the denial of What is above ground, and (thus) on the absence of awareness of the totality of the structure within which the human being appears. There is no authentic human life without the functional inclusion of the awareness of What is above ground." "Third Thorn: The Process Associated With The Four-Part Exercise (Right, True, and Full) Of Responsively ego-Transcending Devotion To Me From Part Four of Hridaya Rosary (Four Thorns Of Heart-Instruction) by Adi Da Samraj I Wash the Garden dog From head to tail. How else? But seekers think the Other Way Round. I Wash the Garden dog From head to tail, but I Eat it all At Once! Therefore, Come, Running, here and now, to Me— Not for a bone, or a bite and run, but for the Eternal Love of Me. Recognize Me By Shape and Voice. Come Running to Me By Name. Come Running to My Call to Life, With heart-Love of Me on Fire. Take Refuge In My Bath and Balm, and Melt to Complete Contentment Under My Gentling Hand and Darling Foot. Listen to Me. Hear Me. See Me. Accept My "Bright" Gift of Love, of Bliss, of Pleasure, of Happiness, and Not Less. Until My Outshining "Brightness" Opens the Eyes In My Room, you are the body, attention, heart, and breath. Give these In Me, From your side of the Fence, and I, From My Side, Will Always Call and Greet you, Heart to heart, Until the Gate Flies Open, and, With Heart-Tears that Melt the Running-Ground, all "difference" Washed By Wideness Alone, We Speak and Love, Forever, In My Imperishable Domain. My "Bright" Sun Rises From the Heart-Root, and Stands, Forever Uneclipsed, Above the Garden Tree, Above and Beyond the Pentagrammic Star. My Bliss-Touch, My Bliss-Sound, and My Bliss-Light Originate Above the Skies of worlds, Above the Sky of mind, Beyond the Reach of body-mind. Above the Underground that is the usual human habitation, Above the Mandrake, Above the Three hearts, Above the Root-Ball, Above the Crown of lower light, Above the Garden and the Tree, Above the worlds above, I Am, "Bright", Still, and Silent, There. I Am, The "Midnight Sun", "Bright", Above, Higher Than dreaming Goes, Higher Than the Tree-Sky Rises. Fire of Heart-Love Flows From My Right Side To Make your "I"-heart Melt In Me, There— Deeper Than sleep Falls, Deeper Than self-contraction Twists. Fire of your heart-Love, Kneel Into Me. Fire of your heart-Love, Feel Me Above, Melting you down In Me. Melt down In My Deep Light, Tasting Delicious Quiet That Oozes down the Spire of you-Centered-In-Me, With every thing and part and place Becoming and Become an Alchemical Fuse, Transmutating Into Love-Bliss as you Fragrantly Melt. Let this Melting Go to Ground. Let the Star Melt. Let the Tree Melt. Let the top of the head Melt. Let the ajna door Melt. Let the long throat Melt. Let the heart Melt Deep, In Love-Communion With Me, Filling the Infinite Heart-Sphere With My Love-Bliss-Presence, Melting you down, Melting the solar plexus, Melting the navel, Melting all the belly-knot, Melting the sex organs, Melting the entire and Unbroken bodily base, Until the you of head-to-toe Is Un-knotted, Only Open and Filling Full, Like a vowel Pierced By a Bolt of consonants, and Ringing With the beginningless and endless Love-Bliss-Pleasure of My Radiant Spiritual "Brightness", ego-"I" entirely Surrendered, Forgotten In a Spontaneous Ease, and all self-contraction Yielded In the Feel of Me, With all separateness, all relatedness, and all "difference" Danced Upon and Shattered To an Unspeakably Singing State By My Crashing-Down, Utterly Allowed, Allowing Only the Directly-By-Me Revealed (and Only-Me-Revealing) Love-Bliss-Feeling of Self-Existing and Self-Radiant "Bright" Being-Fullness In and As body, "Bright" Being-Fullness In and As body, heart, head, and the Always Me-Feeling (Receiving, and Releasing, and Melting) breath."
Friday, June 24, 2005
This is from Hugh Hewitt, on Wednesday, by a Yoni, who's in the Israeli military--- "It was Sun Tzu who said it so clearly when it come to the issue of victory or defeat. "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."" The entire email is worth reading. Oh, how appropriate this insight is! In a real sense, given the first split into a one verses all that is not one---you know, a self and an other, or, rather, myriad others--- the very essence of reality is FEAR, since to be a one as a little self, the bag of bones and ego, must face death. Hence, at the deepest level, all ones must realize, whether consciously or not, that the rest of the universe can always ruin their day, can instantly squash them, like I do the tiny bugs who crawl on my kitchen ledge in warm weather. And, remember what Plato said---"Know thyself!" Also, who was that movie character---Dirty Harry?---who said, "A man's got to know his limits"? Yesterday's painful exchange provoked by Ted Kennedy with Don Rumsfeld stands out as a wonderful example of this need for 'knowing' both the 'inner self' and the 'outer non-self', or yourself and the enemy. In the inquisitor chair you had a person with no real knowledge of either, with the power to exhibit this. In Rumsfeld, you had someone famous for his logical deconstruction about knowing what you know, knowing what you don't know, and being aware that there are things you don't know, period, which are ever in need of discovery. Paul Johnson recently expounded words to the effect that those who are anti-semitic are ignorantly propounding their own demise, or at least they believe something that hurts them in varying ways. All this leads me to want to further expose the growing transparency of the extreme 'knowing' differences between leftists and rightists. What do you know? Do you know what I mean? I know, I know. Let's focus on the GWOT, as the do-or-die proxy for all the bright-line distinctions twixt the political poles. I'd say the simplest fact is that the left hasn't a clue about the enemy, Islamo-fascism. Either that, or if they do know the specifics, such as Sharia law, then they exhibit that hoary American trait, Isolationism. Thus, maybe they read about honor killings or see Jihadists beheading someone, but they 'know' or believe that living in America, they are safe, so fuggedaboutit. Then, when it comes to knowing themselves, leftists are perfect exemplars of people who "know so much that isn't true". Actually, in a real way, at their suicidal pointless core, they make absolute sense, since their whole thrust of Being is about not Being----they are Shiva = the Devil = the Destroyer, in action. Yes. Dan Henninger had a piece, today, about this. I misread as 'infantile' the word 'infant', and instantly knew it was totally applicable to leftists. He wrote about the 'infant democracy of Iraq', but I leapt across the noospheric chasm to the 'infantile condition of leftists'. Maybe leftists don't want to die, merely. It's possible that a better description of them is as babies, or at least defined as wannabe dependents---hey, one way to be your own God is to have some 'other' take care of you: ah, for those carefree days of childhood, when all you did all day was play, play, play, especially in a glorious summer! What about the right wing? When it comes to this set of people, in America especially, I'd say that the most awake do know the enemy. Even in this case, though, as with all of life-through-time, it's always about knowing new truths and discovering what you believe you know, which turns up to be false, and throwing that away. Hence, as my own personal journey shows, as I follow that injunction when it comes to learning about Islam, for instance, part of the growing process is almost too painful to endure. Hmmm? As exceptionally limited physical bodies, we can't look directly at the sun for more than a few seconds, or we go blind. When one discards this physical body, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us, the first offering to be chosen or not is essentially the same deal. And, only the most enlightened is able to maintain a 'presence' in the pure Light, while the rest of us go through stepped-down stages, depending on our own Realized stage on death, until we choose to be reborn at the perfect staged level to assist our Enlightenment. So, when it comes to 'eating' and 'digesting' all the daily bad news about depravities done by Muslims, it takes a tough 'mind' to come to 'know' the truth. This might explain, also, why leftists are so ignorant---they are not tough minded! As for knowing themselves, I'd say rightists are much more in congruence with their truth. When one says they have principles, and then they (mostly) live them, that's a some a spicy 'knowing' meet BALLS! Thus, when we take into account the latest political soufflé cooked for us all by Karl Rove, we can enjoy the 'meal' as a most tasty noospheric dish. Finally, probably one of the major things that prodded me to write all this were the letters to the editor of americanspectator.com, from a couple of days ago, from crazed and crazy extreme leftists screaming about George Neumayr's appearance on the Lehrer News Hour. I highly recommend taking a quarter hour to wade through them! They helped me see the true nature of the left 'beast', and how Howard Dean is the perfect ignoramus to lead them! So, on the physical battlefields, as well as the noospheric one, if Sun Tzu is correct, the upcoming donnybrooks should result in very interesting climaxing outcomes! Probably the best poll result, of late, showing only 20% of extreme leftists believe America is torturing terrorists, is a precursor of a snap back to congruent 'knowing' by a wide majority of Americans, and eventually all humans. What I do I mean? Sooner or later the utter stupidity of people like Kennedy and his 'quagmire' con job will cross paths with the real KNOWN truth of Iraq, and honey, it shall be quite an eruption in the political dimension. Yes, now I write that, a fine way to grok the Sun Tzu erudite 'knowing' saying is to use the Earth's crust as analogous to the political tug of war between the left and the right, and civilization and barbarism. Just as tectonic plates shift and build up pressure, leading to tsunami waves and eruptions, with well-defined fault lines, the same thing is true wrt human minds and bodies. That is, for each individual, life is like the Earth crust, and the same is true for whatever group of humans, all the way up to the ultimate split between freedom lovers and their exact opponents.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The human world wags on. Or is it that the delusional tail wags the noospheric body, so that the desired crisis can no longer be avoided? Can enlightened man bite the 'dog' that's been passing as news for so long? A little---no, a LOT!--perspective music is essential to maintaining sanity. Writing for my SELF, of course---it's seemed beyond the pale riding Red socks of old, lately, for me, since every 'new' story involving humans, even the first rate tenth rate types like Durbin, just seems like more of the same old same old, but too hard to believe or care about, anymore. Then, a little reading about the old American leftists who wanted Stalin to beat us, such as Dalton Trumbo, makes it obvious that, indeed, reincarnation IS always with us. What led to this sacrifice at the keyboard? The eternal war is between Inherent and Apparent. That's Transparent, and we must Apprehend this subject, in all its many playful acts. I think we can inspect the unfolding crisis using these concepts, indeed, these corrective and correlative 'lens'. What's Apparent is lower than what's Inherent, IMO. It-All flows from the dance of Shiva and Shakti, or as the Madhyamika so eloquently puts it, there is the Absolute Radiant Divine Nature, which is Always Inherent, of which the Apparent Relative is made. Why, if any one merely took the time to wonder about very Transparency, such as the mundane act of seeing through invisible air or windows, let alone the way sound waves penetrate Apparently solid objects, I believe the whole foolish knotted-up Appearance would only be Inherent! Comprehend, don't come pretend! It-All only SEEMS to depend on the bends! Yes, you must always stick together with Inhere--it's In Here! From birth most 'normally' confused people are like a deep-sea diver coming up for air too fast, getting the CW bends! This 'kills' them to the Inherent divine nature of Nature, including themselves, even bodily. Of course, this leads to all kinds of attempts to ameliorate the constricted Feeling of Being, from food to drugs to sex to work, et al. Want a relevant currently flowing event? Take the Apparent election in Iran, and do it over with the Inherent 'knife', cut away ALL the Transparent opaqueness made to Appear as what the mad mullahs threw up for all to Un-see. (Speaking of mad---let me stick up, or in, a wild thought that came from watching a PBS program with Sibelius' violin concerto: it'd been quite a while since I'd enjoyed such a TV display, so from who knows where (my dirty old man mind?) I wondered about the sonorous bliss and climaxes. Wouldn't it be something if the violin player got hard erections at the appropriate times, thereby bodily expressing ecstasy in tune with the music? The simple Inherent statement?) Classical music ROCKS! As it rolls along. Here, In, is another Transparent way to understand the battle between Inherent and Apparent. The brilliant Martin Luther King saying---"Free at last", itself represents a kind of 'coming' in ecstasy, since it's so blissful to stop feeling pain, the pain of slavery. But, Inherently, a la Sartre and Existentialism, why not always come from, and AS, "Free at first!" Ah, what an Apparent difficult test it is to be---to choose to be---a human, in these crucial do-or-die times? Inherently!
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Here's my letter to the Durbin who's on his way to the dustbin of history, along with all his leftist fiends, er, friends--- "Your recent self-exposure at once damns you and is wonderful for us all. Now the truth is out. You smug leftists are so over-full of hubris that you can't help but play the losing 'Hitler' card. The very fact that you did proves that YOU are way beyond simply blaming America first, but you are de facto an enemy combatant. It was bad enough that some spies were able to aid the USSR while in the CIA. Now we have you and your ilk in broad daylight doing the same for the Islamo-Fascists, and worse. How can you look yourself in a mirror, or even show your face in public? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, but we all know you leftists have no shame. It's always all about you, and the free country, America, be damned. What a sucker you are! A real man would resign in hasty embarrassment, if not commit hara-kiri. To prove that you are not just a traitor, but stupid, you will try to follow the Clinton way. That's oh so good, because sooner or later more and more people will be unable to be fooled by people like you, and there'll be a time when you left wing fringe characters will be merely fodder for disdainful laughter, AND out of power."
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Every year, there are certain days that seem to replay the same themes, over and over again. Think of the 365 specific days using a Bell Curve to rank them in terms of their vast noospheric importance. Of course, the official holidays are the 'geniuses'. But, don't forget to factor in all the religious days, and especially so many secular 'holidays', such as the Super Bowl. Then, there are those special months, such as March Madness for college basketball addicts, 'er', fans. So, here and NOW we are, on a 'let-down' day, as summer starts to offer TV reruns, and most lazy, hazy, crazy days will be very non-special. Let's see. June 14th, a Tuesday? I just looked at the calendar, and whoa! Today IS a special day---it's Flag Day! Why, it turns out that the 'mediocre' yesterday, June 13th, was Shavuot! According to my dictionary, that's [[ < Heb (chag-ha) Shavuot, (the Feast of) Weeks < shavua, week < sheva, seven; akin to IE* septm, seven ]] a Jewish holiday, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, orig. celebrating the spring harvest, now chiefly commemorating the revelation of the Law at Mount Sinai: celebrated on the 6th and 7th days of Sivan" What do you know? You learn something new everyday. Oh, btw, one of the data points in this scheme, oh what a screaming 'risky scheme', is that for each individual there are always very special days, such as family birthdays, the day you might have been drafted, left the army, etc. The reason I'm diving into this cyclic nonsense is as a reaction to the current high tide of political-economic concern by powerful pundits about the middle class. The alert and experienced Luskin squad of righties has called out using statistics to slice and dice as LIARS, the Krugman squad of lefties. That is, the only way lefties can seem to plausibly argue against a rising economic tide is to play the class warfare card, as the good-bad Marxists they are. Well, there are certainly a plethora of 'cuts' one can make to try to explain causes for the measured-in-dollars effects, over the last fifty years, say. The money illusion continues to sell. However, allow me to take 'slice and dice' to four dimensions. Think of a typical American's normal life span, from birth to death. The argument du jour revolves about the monetary 'value' of each person, essentially over his or her adult working, and retired, life. Why not use what Seth told the channeling Jane Roberts, that to completely understand someone, you'd have to know their death day, in vital---oh, wait, un-vital---addition. Thus, using quintiles, say you were to live for 80 years. Thus, measure the quality of life, not dollars earned or net equity, over sixteen-year spans. No doubt, even using quintiles or quartiles is absolutely arbitrary---but useful. It's back to the most obvious insight for humanity, which permeates all previous time---the fight between 'this-world' secular materialists and 'other-world' wannabe Transcendental Realizers. This fight can also be understood to shoot through each individual's quintiles. In hoary short, people always choose between Wealth and Health, in essence. IMHO, health is wealth, but wealth is not necessarily health. Yes, for most people, just as smoking is not good for the real you, say it with preacher James, "Wealth is not (necessarily) good for you; and 'you' are a child." All this doesn't even take into the account of previous lives, the movement between lives, and future lives chosen. Staying somewhat within the common one-life-span dimension, though, here's the big deal: I'd rather be a robust, virile guy thoroughly healthy as a 'poor' member of a low quintile than a shriveled old fart with wealth coming out my ears as my health was shot to hell. Whatever became of 'moderation in all things'? It's all okay; there are no victims. How many of the dollar-rich need their monetary power to pay for bodily breakdowns? A Tony Snow chooses to destroy his colon; a Larry Kudlow is getting a new hip, both of them YOUNG men, relatively! The resident American from India, who writes a witty column every week or two in the WSJ (Tinku V?), had a swell one last Friday about the exceeding superiority of kids of his type to win spelling bees. As an India-phile, particularly wrt Buddhism and Hinduism, it was edifying to get to his conclusion----the culture held in highest esteem the winners in the race to become Guru. Such people WORKED 24/7 to gain verbal knowledge as a required accoutrement! Reading dictionaries for FUN! Finally, in contrast we have Africa, whose cultures have chosen to stay very physical, and, wysiwyg.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Life is a holding pattern. That idea, 'life is a holding pattern", is itself a holding pattern. Let's play with this "holding pattern". Physics long ago penetrated the secret of the universe, which is that It-All merely IS mass-energy, which is merely itself AS Light. My favorite holding pattern is the hard-to-understand-to-the-bones electromagnetic spectrum of Light. Yes, in our scientifically dumbed down CW, the mass of heavy brothers can only see light as the ROY G BIV visible waving lengths that impinge on their eyeballs. However, what you hear, touch, smell, feel and even think are all simply other forms of patterns of light that hold your attention. Another certain aspect of the universe as a holding pattern of light is that of entropy. A useful guide to the universal insight that always takes this into account is the Realization that you are always already dead, not just 'going' to die in the putative future---which is perhaps the ultimate illusory holding pattern. On this basis, playing the odds can be fun, since there's nothing to lose. Every held pattern always contains a core of total Truth. For me, taking seriously the holding pattern known as astrology, when I found out Bob Dylan was born three days and a year before I was, and thus a fellow Gemini, it was easy to understand why his holding pattern songs had plucked my correlative holding pattern, before I found out about our similarities. Thus, one of his early songs became a major key, a la symphonies---"When you ain't got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose". Another way of expressing this is "Be in the world, but not of it." This all relates quite nicely with the way humans have decided how to make and keep and destroy order. To the things, themselves! Proving, yet again, that It-All, AS Light, prevails--- or is that un-veils?--- in all kinds of physical forms that come from ideas: therefore is It-All called, sometimes, Mind. Oui, we are patterns of mass-energy crawling around and on and AS God's Mind. It's as if there existed some moveable feasting entity in our own brain---hey, there's no 'as if'! Science knows that blood cells DO run on their holding pattern runways there. Thus, a stock market is the holding pattern, ne plus ultra, on which all other holding patterns can be seen as based. Every thing is a thinking man's 'stock', and the pattern having to do with all things, considered real, that comes directly from a physical first principle, is to not only hold, but to buy and sell---that is itself another kind of holding pattern. We're back to the faux future, with 1.) Brahma = Yahweh = Creator, 2.) Vishnu = Jesus = Sustainer, 3.) Shiva = Devil = Destroyer. Salesmen try to convince other people to buy their pattern; and we're all salesmen, using whatever powerful stocks we control. Others, who move thingly stocks from creator to consumer = destroyer, may be a buyer who helps build up the requisite inventory, where things are held in their pattern, for a while. Seemingly so, with seams to the right of us, seams to the left of us. Reality can be understood as It-All holding court, as we all play at being judges as the apparently unique holding pattern that we are. Do you see the playful Yin/Yang = Ground/Background = Motion/Rest that 'holding pattern' not only points to, but IS? To 'hold' is big and bold in its deadly rest, or apparent non-motion, even while it quivers like a speeding fan bullet, as an infinitely fast 'pattern'. Or is it vice versa? A profound understanding of the nature of Reality as a Field that just IS can break the screaming seeming CW held pattern; to wit that all entities are born, live for a while, and finally die. Thus can the apparent paradox of 'action at a distance' dance be pierced. I am at the center of the physical universe! Not only that holding pattern truth, but I am also at the infinite 'edge' of it, as well as every space-time in between! But, of course, this "I" is not absolutely different and unique in this Big Bang holding pattern understanding. All this is true for any entity, including thoughtful humans. Just as science appears to know that the universe is expanding, which means space is stretching and each star is at the center of the universe, the same 'stocky' thing is true for we wee people, we sixteen billion cells of mass-energy who scurry our holding patterns across earth and in her sky and under her waters and ground. Hold these self-evident patterns at 'your' essential heart, and mind your understandable piss and vinegar salad days and nights! I hold your hands, thusly!
Saturday, June 11, 2005
This article by Arthur Waldron clears up the North Korea conundrum, it seems to me, as well as all future countries who become nuclear powers. Read the whole thing and weep. Apparently, the average North Korean weighs half of the average South Korean, and is eight inches shorter! "If any state can be called totalitarian, it is North Korea. Becker gives a chilling account of how Kim Il Sung created and Kim Jong Il has maintained a regime of terror, indoctrination, and leader-worship that is without parallel since the deaths of Stalin and Mao and is today the envy of other East Asian despots. Reportedly, China’s president Hu Jintao told a party meeting that although China was an economic success, North Korea was the model for politics and ideology. North Korea is the model, and has shown us the stages that we may soon be going through in the case of other countries: fear as a nuclear program is discovered; greater fear as it is found to be more advanced than anticipated; tough words from world leaders, combined with empty threats; playing for time and trips down diplomatic blind alleys; recognition of the lack of diplomatic or military options; successful nuclearization nevertheless—and then the maddening dilemma of what to do with the world’s next nuclear power. Now that Pyongyang has released the movie, we may expect many remakes, or attempted remakes. Unless we somehow close down the studios beforehand—and North Korea suggests how nearly impossible that is to do—the fundamental plot will remain the same, even as the casts speak different languages." Here's another blockbuster, Early Warning: Nuclear Terrorism. As if we didn't have enough to worry about! Maybe a realistic hope is that the almost inevitable next use of a nuclear bomb won't be an EMP, at least, and at best it won't kill too many people. The mind boggles as lightweight politicians wobble. Just think! The appeasers-in-chief that make up the leaders on the left, from Howard Dean on down, verses the party on the right, which is composed of elected morons, from Bush on down. Yes, it's the "on down" phrase that's regnant. They are choosing to take freedom, as the established USA, on down the path to either slavery and/or annihilation. Sorry to be so realistically depressing, lately, but what's a soul to do, given all the insanity and inanity we're hit with every day? We long ago ceased to be a nation of laws and order. Just as North Korea is the model for how to go nuclear and how to control the populace, America is the role model for how a "Republic" can be lost, as it rolls on down the hill to perdition. The simplest either-or that proves this is the way the current elite powers in DC play with the illegal immigration issue. When it comes to enforcing the law, led by Bush, it's a wink and a nod---what is it about illegal that they don't get? Here's the real nub of the matter. It's a Privilege to live in America! The people who sneak in, ILLEGALLY, are CRIMINALS! Here's an easy way to understand the situation----pretend the world did not have weapons of mass destruction? Hey, go back in time to before the Civil War. Even then it was ILLEGAL for people to break the law and enter this country. I'm all for legal immigration, btw, and in fact I wish those elected officials who've failed to do their own legal duty and keep illegal people out for a hundred years, say, would have made a system that assisted the legal immigration of even more people than we have now, both illegally and legally. But, now, with the existence of WMD and crazy Islamo-Fascists, to not totally crack down on the borders is beneath banal and inane---it's blind ignorance, unto annihilation. Yup, even a born again CW Christian like GWB proves to be, at the heart, an member in BAD standing of the amoral asshole club. What with the way time wraps around us, in every Now, exemplified by the apparent revelation of Deep Throat that forced us to revisit Nixon and Watergate and all that they brought down on our heads, a simple perusal of the presidents we've had since then tells all---at least for those of us who've paid---and I do mean PAID---attention. I recently subbed for an American History class for eighth graders, and as usual, the classroom had official portraits or photos of all the presidents lining the wall, in order from Washington to GWB. I took the time to look at them, one by one, and what do you know? There was a major distinction starting with Reagan. He was the first one to have even a hint of a smile on his face! All the others, since him, also had at least a bit of 'happiness' shining, although Carter was goofy and Clinton was smirk-like. My point? When it comes to politics contrasted to economics, it seems like they are almost the mirror image of each other. So, while economic man has been able to go two steps forward and one step backward, in essence, leading to the present high level of material wealth, ever since the Father of our nation, Washington, as far as keeping our Republic, or politics, it's been two steps backward followed by one step forward. Reagan was a good step for mankind forward, but he hardly made a dent in the irrevocable backward sliding political dimension in America. His fatally flawed choice of papa Bush as a veep predictably led to the four steps backward Clinton! And, just imagine, as bad as that eight year slide was, America was only barely able to elect a weak GWB! Notice this---at least Reagan was tough enough and full enough of firm convictions to veto a lot of bills. You could say he was the "Just say no" president. And the current fruit that fell near to the pere Bush tree, why the best thing you could say is he's the "Never say no" president.
Friday, June 10, 2005
After getting my daily dose of 'news' by reading some of my stellar friend's output, today, the simplicity of It-All sank in so deeply that I've had a "Slick Willie" epiphany. When Clinton entered my consciousness as an important person, in 1992, my bullshit detector immediately knew him, totally, for what he is---a lying asshole, who'd be the disaster for the USA and the world. Therefore, loving good company, I realized it would be necessary for my own health to always turn him off when he appeared on TV. Why, even his drawn picture that was printed in the WSJ was eschewed, soon enough to be followed by his wife's. Just so, now I've had my month-long break from too much intense 'following-the-news', much the same thing has happened wrt all those powerful people on the wrong side of history. It's hard to believe, but I've gotten even more polarized by all that's happened---been chosen by powerful Forces = people! As Don Luskin noted, writing about Greenspan's latest public offering, the Fed chief, HIMSELF, is a major force in the marketplace of ideas AND economics. Hence, it struck me that the "adversarial" press, epitomized by the MSM, but including all the lesser powers on the left, is hubris run amok. I know I've swam in these waters, before, many times. But, the unfolding of more and more exposed extremity by such crazies as Dr. Dean seems to have brought me to the most extreme conclusion. For example, yesterday I decided to watch the last twenty minutes of Brit Hume's Fox News Channel show, which I used to never miss. It'd been about a month since I'd seen it. I realized that every time Hume introduces his three fellow commentators, I either cringe when the predictable old-timer lefties are named or thrill about the right-wingers. So, hearing the names of Jeff Birnbaum and Mara Liasson started me on the "Clinton" epiphany road, while hearing Fred Barnes' name was enough to 'force' me to give the game one more try. Sure enough, though, after Barnes gave his opinion and the two lefties opened their started their mealy mouths, I had to turn them off. Knowing the hard and true history of America, spiced by seeing yet again some of the movie, "The Patriot", with Mel Gibson, last night, it's a dangerous thing. It's funny. The theme of my high school's graduating class was "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing". How does 'knowing' too much or too little bring about dangerous events? Those who know too little, basically, in political and economic terms are true 'know nothings'. What they assume to 'know' is a Procrustean bed that ties them to suicidal actions. That is, what that author about 'what's wrong with people in Kansas' said is correct, except he was writing about the wrong crowd---leftists always DO vote against their best interests: they don't want to be freed from the liberal plantation. Those who know the complete and true history are in danger because such knowledge must hurt. After all, actual history is essentially about the hellish foibles chosen by humans since forever. And, this knowing also provokes feelings of powerlessness. Let me get to my main point for today. Continuing in my "Great Divide" mood, not only are there many "Hitler's" in control of various countries, but the whole kit and caboodle of people on the left are at least enablers of such wannabe 'gods', but some of the elites are frontline soldiers in the noospheric 'army'. Remember where the word 'fascist' came from---it brings to my mind columns, since it resembles phalanges, or fingers. Combine this knowledge with that old enemy within, the fifth column. Yes, at their black heart, whether consciously or not, those powerful people in the MSM and other leftist redoubts are absolutely on the wrong side in the black and white war we are now fighting. We should count our noospheric blessings that the Howard Dean phenomenon continues to flower. The entire world is engaged in a righteous war between those who want to live and those who want to die. And, those on the left want to die, and take the whole vast mass of humans with them. In short, they are clinically INSANE. What a paradox. Each human is a manifestation of It-All, say a particular expression of the big bang. So, at their core of no thing-ness, the feeling of Being hums along, allowing each of us to appear sane in a crazy world, apparently. So, my attention on the death-bringing powers on the left has forced me to conclude the above. Yes, Clinton is the perfect poster boy for their hubris! Recall that lawyer joke from yesteryear---"How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They BELIEVE the world revolves around them." In long, all 'Clinton types' on the left believe that they are God, and all the rest of the universe is not. Ergo their unremitting attempts to either kill or enslave others. Can you say "hubris taken to the infinite power"? Actually, this cannot be done, but the attempt can be made, and THIS is Absolute insanity. Writing all the above brought me the word, 'absurd', and this word hooked into the Seventh Stage book, "The Liberator", by Da Free John, from 1982. Check out this--- "The body-mind is what you call 'I'. Consciousness as the body-mind is Narcissus, the separate and separative ego (or self-contraction), identical to experience. In the state of identification with the body-mind, consciousness is a subject suffering from the absurd presumption that it is identical to its own object." Page 60 That's some subject to object about!
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
I just read Michael Ledeen's latest cutting edge cri de Coeur. His piece caps off my recent intake of all the oh-so-depressing news, as I catch up after working a lot and taking a vacation from so much reading. Somehow, the overarching concept of a Great Divide filled my mind. Is it just me who's feeling the growing extreme tension, or is it true that a breaking point is right around the corner? When Bush made his pivotal "You're either with us or against us" speech, thereby essentially declaring war on the panoply of evil dictators and other assorted wannabe tyrants, a most divisive moment came and went. Now, as Ledeen laments, the president has been less than robust in decisive actions, ever since 9-11. Even so, that line in the sand IS still there. Moreover, the Great Divide in America's populace is also astounding. I can more easily see how wars begin, simply by noticing how outrageous the putative dialogues between the elites on the right and left have gotten. Here's the analogy. The salient example, which is the perfect model for all times and places, is the way the PLO deals with the moderates who just want to get along with Israel--- they torture and kill them! Know what this means, wrt Congress, especially "The World's Greatest Deliberative Body", the US Senate? There ain't NO deliberating going on, anymore! YES, just as the most radical Islamo-fascists leaders would wipe out every non believer, if they could, so would the top pit bulls, like Dean, reach political nirvana if all the hated Republicans were to be politically destroyed, gone the way of the Whigs, so they could rule with an iron fist like their idols, the Red Chinese Nomenklatura. Think about it. The Great Divide in the noosphere, the lack of communication, is so gross that everybody is talking and nobody is listening. That is, another form of the line in the sand is between freedom-lovers like David Horowitz (who is trying to tell the truth about his opponents, knaves like that Churchill con man and fools who vote Democratic.) and the wannabe enslavers on the far left. Permeating all this, disturbingly, is what could be called The Big Sleep. Fuggedabout any Vast Left, or Right, Wing Conspiracy. The true "Vast" expanse of people to be concerned about is the 99 44/100 % purely out of touch who ignore the gathering storm of war clouds. They just want to live their lives, with their heads in their own deluded clouds, while the apparent stillness all around them has fooled them into a dangerous complacency. Here's the crux of the matter---history is repeating itself, albeit THIS time with the possibility for even more terrible consequences. That is, "Hitler" didn't just die, but "he" has been able to be cloned, essentially---pick a country that's not free, and there you will find "him". And, just as the real Adolph, step by grabbing step, moved into the Rhineland after giving his chosen enemies the finger by rearming, and taking Austria, the Sudetenland, etc, the same thing is happening right under our noses, today. The Great powers, and even the not so great---think Venezuela under Chavez---are presently arming up and forming alliances just like before World War I. This is where a Great Awakening must be chosen, so that the Big Sleep will be kaput. When I thought of the Great Divide, a probably ridiculous math analogy arose. Take the Big Sleep case first. Maybe the simplest 'fraction' is as follows---let the numerator be the number of people who are not asleep and the denominator the number of those who are asleep. Thus, these days, with the top number being very, very minute and the bottom one quite huge, you can see how dire the situation is. What's needed is someway of shaking the sleepers out of their willful delusions and confusions, and we all know the only way that can happen---a crisis. Hey, this Big Sleep of 2005 may be the greatest BUBBLE yet! Another way to express this Big Sleep Great Divide could be to use the Power people have along with the number of them, and form a rate. No, better yet is to use the previous 'fraction' but multiply top and bottom numbers by the Real POWER each group has. So, over time, despite being small in number, the elite awakened ones could get more and more power while the sleepers get relatively less. Oh, yes, you could have two different 'fractions', one for the people in already-free countries, and the other for the opposite. Obviously, it's those un-free places that are the lit fuse. In fact, you could even say that the divisive 'fraction' in those places is 'flipped out', essentially insane, since it leads to annihilation, thusly---with most people now on top, with little power (think of the poor peons under the commies in Vietnam), being undermined by the tiny Nomenklatura elites from below, well, you know what happens when you divide by a smaller and smaller number. Think of it this way---the powerful elite is on their way to using that power in dastardly selfish ways, so an explosion to infinity that blasts away is likely: unless? Of course, there are many other ways to set up this very human---humane verses inhumane--'fraction'. No matter how you slice and dice It-All, though, the essential defining truth is that there appears to exist a Great Divide. Hey, 'appearing' needs division, by definition. 'Lines in the sand' ALWAYS surround us--- indeed, we are permeated by 'them'. Maybe THIS understanding is all the proof any 'one' would need to not only believe in String Theory, but BE the appearing plucked 'string' of the Radiant Transcendental electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the invisible unknown. Keep all this in mind, and out of your mind and into your no-mind, whatever some crazed powerful men may choose to do, in the future. Remember, what comes, goes. The fragile Cosmic Egg is available only in Cracked 'cartons'! Call reality a Godly cartoon, with 'God' Being the One before any divisive split 'breaks the yolk'. That's the True meaning of "Yoga". Yoked to the Ground-Background AS One!
Monday, June 06, 2005
The Starbuck's-led growth in coffee consumption continues to awe, amaze and anger me. But, it profoundly saddens me the most, because there's no doubt---the sun might go out--in me that such an addiction guarantees a future full of avoidable bodily breakdowns. I know, I know. I've ranted all about this many times before. Let me express some profound sorrow, which I felt when subbing for some fifth graders, a while back, when some of them started school with their morning jolt of it. As I wound down this year, a lot of kids in middle school were already addicted. And, I can't forget a high school class---its teacher also ran the school store, and when I subbed, it didn't open. One hurting student exhibited withdrawal symptoms when told she couldn't get her shot, RIGHT NOW! What brought me to bother getting into this, now? One of the many coffee stands in my city is named "The Human Bean". As I drove past it the other morning when a long line of cars awaited their eye-opening drug, as a wild-eyed guy who's made many meals from the Real Human BEAN, Soy bean, the disparity between It-All provided yet one more slap upside my consciousness. You didn't really think Orwell was passé, eh? Nay. How much more extreme can human events become before some snapping takes place? Me, I can't help but marvel at It-All, keep my mouth shut when among fools, and use my personal power to choose against the prevailing ill wind, when it comes to diet. On probably my last day subbing, as I was going to sign out, a teacher stopped me in the hall and asked me to go to her cooking class and try some of the Standard American Diet (SAD) some students had created. I 'got to' beg off, by telling her I was on a very strict vegetarian diet. Is it okay to be thus righteous, and act according to such bodily right, ergo? Hey, choosing to act in Any way is a form of judgment. In short, as we make our way through life, despite the needed public law and order systems that keep chaos at bay, each single human entity is a process in action, and each instant, whatever level of understanding and growth, exhibits judgment. It's not that there's an exterior being answering the call of "Here comes the judge". We are each, qua a play of Being, always and ever a judge. We are each our own supreme court, and the whole world's our decisive realm. For example, all my life has been a 'live for today' type, which meant I thought making a plan and working by it was a sham, since it would not be living in the spontaneous Now. That was, and is, my Choice! As the saying goes, 'choosing not to choose is a choice'. Maybe we're back to Consciousness, expressed with Rights AND Responsibility. Whether one is aware of making ANY judgment, every outcome was chosen, even so. There could never be a victim---that's the Responsible freeing attitude. The smaller the gap between self-pity and acceptance of the seemingly unpalatable fate that you are always choosing, the better. As for me, right NOW, I am choosing to cook some SOY burgers in canola oil, and smother them in brewers yeast!
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Here's a thought. If we're lucky and wise enough, maybe America will at least continue to get richer at the same rate as since the Reagan Revolution, or faster, as the high tech 'baby', the Information Revolution, grows up. Combine this with the not only festering, but the worsening state of public schools, from Kindergarten all the way through the piled-higher-and-deeper Ph D level. Ever since Dewey screwed American education and the time when the election of senators changed, there's been a great leveling of America. Nietzsche would NOT be proud, since the path has been towards more and more mediocre people gaining more and more power, at the expense of the truly outstanding cohort. Throw in the u-turn in 1913, the start of an income tax, as well. Hence, one of the great basic battles between individual rights and group rights can be seen as intensifying to a climax, IMHO. The always-relevant word is Choice. The title of Dick Morris's latest book about slick willie, "Because He Could", was running through my mind as background noise, as I cooked this morning. Of course, this distills down to another most basic word, Power. After managing to ask 'the people', aided by the monkey wrench Perot, he gained the Power of the presidency, which meant he did NOT have to ask anybody for permission to do a lot of stuff---he had the Power. Here's my main point. If the human race doesn't blow itself up or choose to experience a depression, perhaps the richest winners can win the school Choice war. That is, yes, the battle for hearts and minds will continue, as the side that wants school vouchers, charter schools, competition against the public school monopoly, et al, nibbles away at the edges over time. However, it could be that an epiphany will occur in more and more people who can afford to drop out of the socialistic system, and they will choose home schooling or private schools. Wishful thinking? Well, maybe the most important gap will be between the upper twenty percent and the rest of the population, as split up in wealth and/or yearly income terms. Hey, even the rich want to do their best 'for the children', so hopefully, vieleicht when more and more of the population gets richer, in real terms, more and more of them will choose to use their power by simply, family by family, voting for School Choice for their kids by flipping off the failing public school system. Can't get a massive change because the public school monopoly is too strongly entrenched? Why am I picturing piglets ceasing to suckle their mother's tit, because she'd a dead goner, all dried up, no longer flowing with milk? Indeed, take it all the way. The mother pig is not just unable to succor her babies, but as a corpse, she is still able to emit the logical dead poison into any who are so foolish to keep sucking! Yes. Public education at once sucks into its killer craw people who are powerless and/or confused and unconsciously-seeking-suicidal education, but it also shoots out a deadly miasma of stupidity! I think of the death of communism in the USSR as the way to understand the schooling situation in America. Andrew Carnegie also comes to mind---why, even the old library in my small town was created by his Power = money! Keep an "At the margin" attitude, so that when more and more people have a growing pile of discretionary money, they start choosing to divert more and more of it into the most vital investments, their kids.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
What's the big story, today? I sit down to enjoy myself as I compose my latest blog. Trust me, I am almost bereft of a topic, but if history is any guide, something will come up. Perhaps a Yin/Yang dialogue between the concepts of Hard and Soft will do. I start by retelling the results of an experiment done to test some salient characteristics of leaders. A college gathered some random men and did the following---one by one, they had to eat something that tasted terrible, and try to keep a straight face as they told the group that it tasted great. As you can imagine, the bell curve ruled, with some of them totally unable to keep from gagging, a few able to completely fake it and a whole range in between. Then, they told the group that they were to pretend they were lost hiking in the wilderness in winter, and they were to choose a winner. I forget if they did this before the other test. In any case, they guy who was best able to lie was usually chosen as leader. Call him a Hard man. Can't you just picture Clinton swallowing the bad taste of Monica Lewinsky as he lied about having sex with her? Oh, by the way, the same experiment done with women was completely inconclusive. I wonder if Larry Summers would dare even bring up this experiment in public when any women were around, or even any girlie men of the Alan Alda type. What about Soft? I hardly know where to begin. Or, is it that I am too soft, and thus fearful of appearing to be a fool by relaying some far out stories. Ah, what the heaven, in this dream play of the Beloved we call human reality that lives a Hard-Soft life atop Earth, some things need to be communicated. Let those with open minds sample the next tale. My spiritual master's first human spiritual Teacher was an American, Rudi, who taught Kundalini Yoga. Rudi made a special effort to strongly shake Franklin Jones' (my Guru's name at that time, September 1964) hand on meeting him, and when he left. Here's what he wrote in his autobiography, "The Knee Of Listening", 1972--- "Then I became aware of a very strange sensation. A current of very strong energy was rising up my arm from my right hand, the hand Rudi had made it so much a point to shake when I arrived and as I left. As I became aware of this energy, it quickly passed into the rest of the body and filled me with a profound and thrilling fullness. My heart seemed to strain in a vibrant joy, and my head felt swollen, as if my mind were contained in an aura that extended around my skull several inches. As I walked, I began to run. I felt on fire with a joyous energy, and I had become incredibly light!" (my bolds and italics) Pages 40-41 So? Rudi put Franklin to Hard work, as soon as he became his student, refinishing furniture. The first job was to get very physical, which reduced his weight from 230 to 170 pounds, and to get him into great shape. Thus did Hard and Soft mingle in the requisite dance. The reason I went off on this background un-cover up is that when Rudi died in a small plane crash, it is said that he was able to absorb so much energy that his fellow passengers survived. While Rudi was a Hard spiritual Teacher he was at once Soft enough to make a difference. Probably what set me off on this Hard-Soft riff was a recent listening to Da reading some of his poetry. In one of them he says, "I become afraid of my own softness". All this impels me to, AGAIN, retell the following---when I was in the community, circa 1976, he was given the whole Rolf massage treatment. The masseuse was stunned and amazed, because Bubba Free John (His chosen name, then) has NO blocks. His entire body was unblocked, so you could say he was Soft. Think on a human life's stretch from the Softest of the Soft, the merging of a wet egg and a moist swimming sperm. Let's just say humans arrive with a Soft 'landing' in the womb, and escape that protected Soft zone with a Hard slap on the butt. Even such an arrival doesn't preclude a lot of Soft headedness, Soft bones, etc. You can see how growing up to become a functioning adult is almost all about getting Hard and burying a lot of the Soft under layers of protective 'scars'. I contend that the ruling elite Hardheaded adults on Earth, now, as well as the bulk of the other people with less power, relatively, can be easily understood to be preprogrammed to instantly dismiss anything that remotely threatens their CW Hardiness. Did you really think that the days of knights in Hard shining armor were over? What else is going on, except a different form of the fight between different Hard tribes, that was called the Crusades? It's not Hard to understand, is it? In fact, let's simply say that It-All is Soft to take, easy in the uptake in Consciousness, AS Consciousness. Use this lens, Soft-Hard, to Really SEE and totally take down, like a wrestler pinning his opponent, whenever various Hard men take the spotlight, whenever they dare to impinge on your Consciousness! Merely to name a Howard Dean or a Sid Blumenthal should be enough to validate this demand. So many on the Left---in my view, all of them---are clinically mad, as their closed-minded suicidal behavior proves, daily, 24/7. Personally, the idiom, 'there's nothing new under the sun', has been growing wide and deep application, lately, as I try to Softly absorb all the relevant current events. How many more stories do I need to read about Israel's fight to survive the Eternal Return of recycled anti-Semites who live to destroy all 'less-than-pigs', Jews? It's like you learn that one plus one is two, when a child, and every day you have to suffer the same boring lesson. Here's a Soft Hard, oh boy, story. A teacher I subbed for last week was the prototypical coach whose classes were composed of Forrest Gumps. The first class was the worst, and it had an aide, a woman about my age. The last 30 minutes of our 90-minute block we went to the math lab so they could use computers, individually. So, there was nothing for us to do, except make sure they were working. As I always do when I have free time, I went on the net to read my pals. From out of the Hard Red state-of-this-lady came a barrage of personal stuff! Unasked, she started unloading on me. Mind, I'm a happily well-adjusted eccentric loner. I suspect that despite a Hard public appearance---a Marine haircut, for example---I exude an empathetic demeanor, so whenever people get a chance to be near me for a while, they sense my Softness, and feel safe and secure enough to do what this lady did. I'm sure that I've kept the flame of "Be childlike, not childish" a la Einstein's admonishment, burning, which is why it's always been easy for me to 'handle' school children. However, one thing the aide told me was noteworthy. She admitted that she, and her husband, are, themselves, turning into people-eschewing hermits, albeit with treks into nature as well as staying home alone. Wanna bet that a lot of people, especially in the Hard divided Red-Blue state of America, are in the same condition? There's a lot to discard in Sartre's output, but his "Hell is other people" has a lot going for it! Continuing the Hard-Soft, or is that the Soft-Hard, Tao, at the profoundest level, say for those humans un-bound and determined to mine the highest stage of life, the Seventh, wherein the illusion of self-other is pierced, and never lost, "Otherness" IS hell! All the Hardy brothers, the warriors in arms, all the utterly dazed and confused tribes who want to completely wipe out of existence their hated 'other' enemies---like the radical Islamo-fascists---are choosing to apply Sartre's insight too physically. Here, again, we have proof of complete clinical insanity. The true way to get rid of ANY other is to breakthrough all the Hard CW assumptions, which are so locked into our bound bodies, these days. Ah, an ancient-to-me insight that shaped my whole life, gained when I was an awakening-to-the-world-and-religion adolescent, just snuck up and smacked my awareness---before I became conscious of the fact that we all choose our reality, I became an agnostic by reasoning as follows: if I had been born in China, I would have believed in the religion of my Chinese parents, and the same deal if it was India, or Iran, or, et al. Hence, not only is it absurd to believe any specific religion, over against all the 'others', but it's defiant ignorance, in the worst divisive way, always bound to lead to fights to the death between such Hard headed monstrous tribes as we see in boundless supply, toady. The way to 'kill' any 'other' is to Transcend the apparent split in Consciousness. Now, here's where absurdity can lead to bliss! The use of words always misses the God-only point, but let me try this---remember the quote from Franklin Jones about the ecstatic energy flowing through 'His' body? Every instant of Being is essentially the Last ---the Latest---Temptation of "Christ", no matter what religion you may seem to be leaning on, or is that toward? In short, one of the worst cases of being conned by language is to rely on the word and concept it points to, Belief. One of Da's most brilliant Transcendental insights needs to be conveyed. The vast swath of mere believers in ANY religion and its God and Eschatology are equivalent to schoolboys and schoolgirls who can 'believe' in Einstein's famous equation, E = M x C (squared). Talk about doubling down on confusion! If one wants to find someone who truly 'believes' in all-things-Einstein, it is necessary to find guys like Stephen Hawking. And, in their case, it's not just that they 'believe', it's that they understand and have Realized the subject. It's even beyond 'knowing', do you un-know what I mean? I suppose, I presume, I choose, I must end this Soft-Hard flow of mere words, myself. Let this end not be too Hard for any 'you' to take, and for 'me' to give---UP. Oh, wait, for heaven's sake---I need to complete my thoughts about the scary Temptation of 'Christ' train, before it leaves my mindful station, my own space-time appearance. Just as stopping at mere 'belief' is a confused tragedy, so is any seeking for the most blissful bodily 'feeling'. Remember, 'This too shall pass' rules the realm of "To be or not to be"! Stretch this 'limousine' liberally, by reaching Transcendental Understanding, so that even 'knowing' and 'thought' are thrown away, even as they can be fruitfully used. "Here today, gone tomorrow" can thus be demolished in every standing in, in each apparently different instant, by living each Now in sheer wonder that there Absolutely can never BE any such 'things' as 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow'. Hey, let's Really horse around, by closing with the complimentary Understanding that despite appearances, the spatial deception can also be ever seen through---there can never, Absolutely, BE any such 'thing' as a 'here' that's different from a 'there'. Misplaced concreteness only seems to build homeostatic edifices. Be THUS Transcendentally Edified!
Friday, June 03, 2005
I haven't yet delivered my letter, which I posted in the last blog. Further Freed thought has caused me to insert the following--- "While I'm at it, another execrable failure by YOU people, who set district policy, has to do with all those new high tech gadgets. I'm daydreaming about my own school days, trying to weather the righteous NO! that would have destroyed the ability to bring miniature record players into class, let alone be heard. Perhaps the most salient sign that subbing, indeed ALL attempts at real TEACHING, was a mugs game, came when the 'system' gave up and let the inmates---the immature students---bring electronic machines to school. What kind of educator even allows a student to 'quietly' spend valuable class time hearing 'music' and such on a CD, instead of sitting up straight, focusing on the teacher, and learning the lesson? A REAL school would ban all high tech things (instead of guys like me): and there's even more---they would have a high principle: to wit, ANY student who came to school with less than five, say, pencils, and a ton of paper, as well as the requisite books, would face the direst of consequences. Alcoholics have the twelve-step program---a REAL school would exhibit tough love by maxxing out at three, I'd say. Oh, I like this analogy. By the sin of omission---failing to keep the kid 'off the street where cars could, and WILL, 'kill' them, in terms of becoming truly educated---public schools, and those who control them, are essentially creating educational 'alcoholics'."
Here is the latest, and probably the last, installment of my ramblings about substitute teaching. This author has endured a bunch of 'ugly' experiences, as this school year winds down. After a dearth of jobs, most of the year, April brought a fair number of them, and May a whole lot of them. Like a sculptor chiseling away at a block of stone, so much---too much---intense and ongoing interaction with kids seems to have brought me to a decisive point. In short, the bad and ugly aspects of subbing have overwhelmed the good ones. I follow these words with a letter that responds to one I got from a district informing me that I have been banned from a specific middle school. It is made up of specific charges that paint me as an execrable sub, so I couldn't help but rebut them. Enjoy. The names have been changed to cover my ass. "Thanks for your letter of May 21, 2005. What an amazing document! This Vietnam veteran, c'est moi, certainly exhibited bad judgment in telling the Heimlich maneuver punning joke. I humbly apologize. I'm actually quite surprised you only decided to ban me from Marx Middle School. Allow me to provide some additional information. The 'office staff', the morbidly obese M, who says I "was not pleased when I asked him to work for F. Y. instead of B. S. on Monday May 16" is wrong. I merely asked her why I was suddenly switched. Maybe she felt put down when I, a lowly sub, told her I had a Masters in math, and it was illogical to change from subbing B. S.'s math classes to special education classes. As I've thought about it, the last few days since receiving your lawyerly and overly meticulous account of my dastardly deeds, here's what likely happened--- Enough time had passed since parents had complained about my inappropriate joke, so that the wheels of injustice--- verdict, then trial--- were already well greased and in their groove leading to my being banned, when the universe conspired, via the sub finder system's computer bringing me back to the scene of my 'crime' so soon after I 'did it', that my executioners were not going to allow me to sub for another 'regular' class. So, they found F. U.'s classes, and, voila---the sting was on! As for the 'teaching staff' stuff claiming I "did not interact with students at all"---excuse me for being pertinent, but my explicit instructions from the two professional, experienced, and highly qualified teachers aides (who had a maximum of, what, ten or twelve students at a time) were to read the announcements and leave the teaching to them. Period. If you think I was happy to not interact and teach, you could NOT be more wrong. By the way, I actually did interact with some students, maybe ten times over both days. So, fire me for THAT, since I couldn't stop myself from doing so, against my instructions. It is quite true I didn't interact much, or very well, with the aides, but I think I was professional about it. Here's another relevant factoid---within a few minutes, one aide turned on some music. After a couple of hours, since it was the kind of 'music' that I, personally, hate, like a prisoner being tortured, I broke, and begged her to turn it off. We all do have different tastes in music, don't we? I doubt she would have been able to stand a full day hearing my preferences, say symphonies of Shostokovich, etc. I did try to fill my time by reading my myriad sources of information on the Internet, and at the end of the day I relaxed, playing Free Cell. What was wrong with that? Maybe I'm ruining it for the next sub at Marx Middle School, but wrt the charge that I didn't use the prep periods looking for work---at that school, nobody ever told me to do this, so when subbing for the rambunctious middle school kids there, I always used that time to recuperate so I'd be better able to do my real job, TEACH, for the next class. So, yes, I am guilty as charged, as concerns using my prep period. Finally, let me suggest that you do a lot of soul searching and investigating of your own higher-level administrative policies. Over only the last few years I've subbed in XYZ (an area full of the best kids I've been privileged to serve), due to out-of-control cultural events, many students have changed their dress code act and their verbal act. What a shock it would be for my mother and father to see girls from the age of twelve---TWELVE!--- allowed to parade around all day with their cleavage in full view, as well as showing their belly button! In my 'banned' opinion, you ought to fire the powers that be who allow such pornographic behavior! Then there's the way swearing has become un-self-consciously natural. Somehow, especially in high school, the situation has gotten totally out of control. Allow me to furnish a horrifying example. I subbed for five days for S. U.'s seventh grade math classes. In one of them (I think it was first period on the fourth day) I fell prey to the temptation to share my amusing joke. Now, there was this 'punk' girl I'd been warned about who was in a later class. On Wednesday, I believe, from out of the blue, she went on a dirty talking rampage, trying to embarrass me, I suppose, and look smart or precocious. She blurted out, for all to hear, "What's an orgasm?" She quickly followed that up with the thrust, "Why can't we say the word, 'fuck', out loud?", thereby saying it out loud. After I succeeded in stifling her, a little bit, on the way out of class, she exclaimed, "Where do babies come from? Why, from making love, of course!", or words to that effect. The next day she continued saying similar things. Therefore, as an explanation, surely NOT an excuse, you might understand how I could go with the currently growing more and more immoral trends among public school children, and tell an inappropriate joke. My guess is that the parents who complained were a minority, and I wish they were a vast RIGHT wing majority, who, themselves, clamped down on their own kids, never allowing them to expose grown up body parts or to swear in public. At last, this zinger---unless and until enough people wake up and school choice becomes a reality, the immoral trend is our 'friend', my fellow Americans, so I'd admonish you all to get ready for ever more rowdy pornographic behavior. When it comes to the most precious 'children', every generation gets the education they deserve, just like they get the government they deserve. Well, in America, where is the Teddy Roosevelt who can take on and destroy the public school monopoly? Think about it. Since parents acquiesce, supinely, to the rigid rule demanding they send their child to the school the 'system' of its choice---right now, I'm imagining being at Hardly Breathing Middle School, in the office, looking at the precisely defined boundaries dividing all this city's schools--- why don't we do the same thing wrt food or autos? If you live closest to S., too bad, you can't CHOOSE the lower cost W.! Do you want to buy your next car in ABC? Too bad! You live outside that 'district'! Are you married? Did you CHOOSE your spouse? Well, if getting married were like the public school monopoly, the 'system' would have precluded that option, and as your 'parent', IT would have TOLD you who to hitch up with. Are you starting to understand how the schooling system equates with abolished slavery? After this heart felt 'brain dump', I hereby fire myself from substitute teaching for your district. Have a nice day. Cordially,"
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