What does it mean to live “between the points?” What are the points? Are they science and religion? Are they conservative and liberal? Are they men and women? Are they childhood and old age? Are they intellectual and physical? Are they quantum physics and cosmology? Are they Freud and Jung? Are they the sacred and the profane? Are they nature and nurture? Are they light beer and stout?

To live between the points is to understand the nature of the human mind—where it begins and where it ends. The very structure of time is inherent in the process of thought—the ticking away of the clock in the song “Time” on the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon is the sound of the mind in movement. See, the mind is a function of the universe—much like Kepler’s laws of motion which keep planets swinging in elliptical orbits around a common center of gravitational mass.

The paired opposites described in the first paragraph are all addressed in the philosophy of living “Between the Points,” but more importantly they are surpassed for the ultimate pair of opposites—life and death.

When I was nineteen years old, I was enrolled as a Pre-Pre Med student meaning that my grades weren’t good enough to get me in Pre-Med and my patience for analytical science bounced me at about Chemistry 102. But in my study of the many fields of science, I developed a genuine respect for the scientific method and for the science of cosmology in general.

Cosmology is the study of the universe on a grand scale. Quantum physics is a study of the universe on a very small scale. I began studying the nature of the universe at a time when Cosmology and Quantum Physics were merging into a single vision of how the universe physically operates. That vision is still being defined to this day but there was something I learned in a book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, that changed my life forever.

I learned about the nature of quantum singularities in space. Quantum singularities are events in space/time where the structure of the universe completely breaks down and the physics that operate everywhere else no longer function. The structure of the universe is space and time so time itself breaks down in these actual places out in the universe.

Well, what struck me about this was not the existence of singularities in outer space but it was the existence of singularities in inner-space and how they both were related to one another. See, I realized that time breaks down in the mind as well—in the form of memory. I can recall events that happened when I was three down to the sight, smell, texture, and even the emotions of vivid memories.

So, there is a point in outer space where time breaks down and there is a point in inner space where time breaks down. Beyond these points is the great unknown—death, birth, heaven, hell, whatever words you choose to use to describe it—the fact is that there is no direct human knowledge that can be quantified and proven through the scientific methodology that determined the edge of physical and mental existence.

So what is one to do with this insight? Well, it’s funny when I look back on these last ten years since I had this epiphany and it is almost as if some unseen hand were guiding me to the answers when I was able to ask the right questions. I’m sure it is the same for you if you were to examine it closely.

One day I found myself at a dead end fork in the road. There was no passion in my life. I had no interest in pursuing the college degree in my course of study. I quit school, got a job in a restaurant, and spent my days in the library chasing some kind of meaning for life. I came across a video series title Transformations of Myth through Time by Joseph Campbell. The answers to most of my questions lay within these twelve VHS tapes.

I came to understand that mankind had been dealing with this very same dilemma for thousands of years—ever since the first death was truly felt. One day, an ancient ancestor of man knew a friend, a wife, a child that was up and walking one day and then lay down and grew still, cold, and died. Something was gone that had just been there. It was at this point that the human spirit was born and it was at this point that art, philosophy, science, and even religion were born as well. These are all methodologies of attempting to discern the exact nature of what lies beyond the two points.

I also came to understand the nature of the metaphor. All words are symbols. The symbols T R E E are not great leafy carbon based life forms that take in Carbon Dioxide to produce oxygen. But we read the word TREE and immediately the letters conjure up an image in our minds. The problem with these symbols comes about when they are used to describe something that cannot be defined in terms of time and space, in other words when they are used to describe what is beyond the points.

Let us consider for a moment the supposed great conflict between science and religion.

Contrary to popular scholarly debate, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. In fact, religion and science both have a warm history of expressing reality and invoking passion in the human mind. Religion is ultimately concerned with spirituality, with touching the center of man and transforming him or her from the crawling animal to the human being who strives to attain the unknowable, who mourns for dead relatives with established rituals and seeks to relieve the suffering of fellow human beings with compassionate acts.

It is the purpose of the institution of science to give humanity a vision of what the Universe actually is from moment to moment. Science as an institution is constantly in flux; there are no ultimate truths, only hypotheses that must be constantly tested.

Religion is a constellation of metaphors aimed at relating what is beyond the points to the human mind and it is the purpose of religion to penetrate the science of the day and allow the ultimate unknowable truth to shine through its metaphors. But this means that religion must also constantly be in flux and open to change.

The problem comes about when religions begin proposing to their constituents that the metaphors they use to describe the unknown are indeed the actual point of worship. This is the point where money becomes king. This is the point where murder becomes communication and when wars over words escalate so intensely that they threaten the existence of every human being on the planet. But this is also the point of ultimate redemption which can only take place in the mind of the individual for there is no such thing as freedom in a group.

Religious institutions are generally not concerned with spiritual breakthrough of the individual to a realization of the unknown but rather these institutions are supremely concerned with the social integration of their followers under specific teachings and morals. And let us not forget that all religious institutions are ultimately concerned with acquiring money and political power—often at the expense of the very ones they were established to protect and guide toward the sacred light.

The great religious texts that form the foundation of all major religions were composed millennia ago under different scientific laws. The Ancients, with the exception of the Egyptian astronomer Eratosthenes, believed that the Earth was flat. The Ancient Hebrews had never heard of or met the Chinese and if they did, it was never written about. Science changes and so must religious metaphors also change. The truths that all religions offer, however, those common human themes of justice, righteous living, and spiritual emancipation, are anthropic and therefore common to all human beings at all times.

Let us return to our points. So there is a point in outer space where time breaks down and there is a point in inner space where time breaks down; between these points is where the phenomenal world rests. This is the realm of linear motion, of birth and death, of social interaction, scientific investigation, and the worshipping of ideas and dates of historical significance. This is the phenomenal world, broken into pairs of opposites that can be neatly divided and classified under specific categories according to the laws of logic and structure of human existence itself. This is the realm of comparison in which science, religion, and art ultimately guide the human animal to becoming a human being. These institutions accomplish this by guiding the individual to these outer and inner points and ultimately laying the challenge down to go beyond while leaving the temporal and phenomenal world of the individual and collective ego behind.

To live between the points is to live in the realm of death. To understand that no thought or concept can go beyond those two points is the beginning of intelligence and not the intelligence brought about through time and study, but an eternal intelligence that is only present when the mind is quiet--silent. This intelligence is vast, all encompassing and all-powerful. When one has reached this precipice you have come to the realm of the sacred in the heart and mind of man and defining this moment as the boundary between Heaven and the phenomenonal world.


Intelligent human beings, the humble among us, understand that what lies beyond the two points is unknowable to the mind of man which has been composed by knowledge of the in-between. The intelligent understand this limitation, what thought is capable of and what it is not, and put thought aside in areas of life where it is not applicable. The in-between will never relate to what is beyond the points and the true mystic and quiet observer of this fact will come to understand that the two points are really the same point—the alpha and the omega—the beginning and the end. It is the still point upon which the Buddha sat and struck illumination.

The reference that religious metaphors refer to is the still point and to know the still point is to understand the nature of death in the moment. Once the understanding of the complete cessation of psychological movement is understood, not as a theory but as clearly as one looks up to the night sky and recognizes the Moon, a glorious palace of pure energy rises from the wasteland to replenish what was once a weary spirit. This is the shining city on a hill that is the beacon of liberty for all of mankind to take part in because they are human mortals who share this spinning globe adrift in an elliptical orbit around an average yellow star in one of many long arms of gas and dust that orbit a massive galactic core set adrift in a sea of other galaxies all moping around the greatest point of gravity known to the mind.

But there is only one mind of man and inside the mind of the individual is a point of infinity just as there is in the farthest reaches of space, past the 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang barrier that our senses and our science cannot see beyond. There is an alpha and omega of liberty and it begins in the mind of the individual and ends at the farthest point the mind can stretch toward and conceive. The distance traveled between these two points is that of time and history and we bring this experience into the present moment to create the world we each live in. Each human mind is the totality of the Universe and the Universe itself exists distinctly in the mind of each individual. E Pluribus Unum.

This world is a collective product of all minds active in the present moment, each bringing their own experience to shape reality which ultimately shapes the reality of human society. What would the world be like with ten, twenty, a hundred individuals who were capable of grasping the still point and losing themselves at any moment? The answer is that the entire world would eventually be composed of artists; every politician, auto mechanic, lawyer, check out clerk, writer, singer, actor and painter would be capable of shedding their ego and stepping outside of time to bask in eternity. The sun fire is hot on the sandy beaches outside the river of time. The solar rays of eternity shine deep and warm as the vicissitudes of time evaporate from one's skin and the sand of creative energy hugs and sustains the artistic vision that has inspired mankind to crawl from the muck as slugs to become rulers of this insignificant yet beautiful planet. The energy is eternal; it is the individual who falls into darkness without it. There is only one truth, yet the sages speak of it with many names.

TAGS: Philosophy, Spirituality, Religion, Joseph Campbell, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Quantum Physics, Cosmology, Science, Singularity, Between the Points

When I graduated from college in the Spring of 2000, I hadn't been to see the dentist in over five years. And I still hadn't gone by the time I settled in with full time benefits at Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield in Cincinnati in the late Summer of said year.

Since cleanings and checkups were free with my insurance, I figured what the H? And I did the dumbest thing I possibly could--I opened the yellow pages and picked the first cool ad I found that was near to work and home.

The lucky dentistry practice was named Kingdom Family Dentistry and it was right around the corner from my work and on my way home at the time. I made my appointment for a Friday afternoon.

When I got there, nothing seemed out of the ordinary--it was a standalone ranch building that housed only the dentist office. The dentist was a beautiful black woman, mature but still classy. The office staff was nice enough.

I had to get x-rays with those insufferable frigging bitewings where the plastic cuts into your gums and you smile like a damned fool while high intensity power waves ripple through your gray matter.

As an aside, how safe does it make you feel when the hygenist goes around he frigging corner to push the button to avoid being hit with the rays herself.
I got into the chair and the hygenist started poking around and scraping inside my mouth. I always thought there should be a superhero who was hit by gamma rays and mutated in the dentist chair--perhaps The Molinator like in The Santa Clause 2. But I digress.

After the x-rays, the hygeinist starts poking around and scraping. She finds two cavities that she says the dentist will fill during that visit. So, she finishes with her cleaning and the dentist comes in and pokes and scrapes some more.

Then the drill came out and shit got crazy. Just after I was novacained up and before she put the drill in my mouth; she hit play on one of those little tv/vcro combos posted in the upper right hand corner of the office. I thought, this lady is going to watch soap operas while she drills my teeth.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

All of the sudden, this church shit starts up at full, surround sound volume. It was like being front row in a Billy Graham revival. And the worst thing was that the preacher was Rod fucking Parsley.

Those of you who have read this blog for years, know of my eternal and infernal disdain for this gruesome specimen of humanity and if you don't, feel free to catch up here.

Apparently, the word "Kingdom" in the practice name had more metaphyiscal applications than someone's last name (come to think of it, I've never heard of anyone with the last name of Kingdom so double dumb ass on me). And now I've got this crazy religious dentist lady drilling my teeth while Rod Parsley rages and sweats and ear splitting volume.

People, I'm telling you--I was in the fourth circle of Dante's hell (the fifth is reserved for Parsley himself and the sixth through eighth is for Haliburton and Enron execs whose sins have impelled God to evict the Devil back up to the slums of heaven, finally answering Tupac's immortal question of whether Heaven has a ghetto too).

Now, don't get me wrong--if you're a devoutly religious person and being esconced in the middle of quaint second through fourth century Middle Eastern metaphor and ritual get you through the day--more power to you.

If giving yourself over to the belief that you are inherently better than other human beings because of the direction that your thoughts flow as the electrical impulses spark and jump the gaps between neurons in your brain--I say, "A Salud!"

But don't fucking strap me down with a drill in my mouth and subject me to what would be construed as torture under the Geneva convention because I was too stupid to read the fine print in your yellow pages ad.

Needless to say, I did not schedule a follow up visit six months later. But, oddly enough--my teeth never felt cleaner. Go figure.

LINKS:

• Reverse_Vampyr has a health issue and needs your prayers and kind thoughts--help a brother out and wish him well
  

• WKRP is finally coming to DVD (with some substituted music, of course)
  

• Infidel753 left a comment with a blog link here the other day. Check his blog out here--very insightful and pithy commentary on social issues there. He's earned a probationary spot on the BWP blogroll (don't worry Infidel, I'm not as viscious as JD is with cutting his blogroll--he cleans house frequently!)

"Kill or be killed!"

That is the underlying mantra of human society today and it is being hummed in the boweled troughs of scale as well as at the high pitches where angels supposedly sing.

The mantra today is to distrust your neighbor and if he comes after you, you're supposed to say, "Fuck you and die, you bastard." Like you're Steven Segal in Hard to Kill, the entire War on Terror is based on the premise that a nebulous mass of sickened individuals are hell bent on killing each and every one of us at any time and place.

Is this any way to live?

This insanity has even pervaded business which is supposed to be providing the highest quality goods and services to the most people for the fairest market wage. But now it's too often, "Fuck you and die--let me step over your worthless corpse on the way up my ladder of corporate success."

This is no way for us to live as a species seeking to make it another hundred years on this warm wet rock hurling thousands of miles per hour through a space so cold and lonely it defies imagination.

Relationships are what make us human but so few of us ever stop to consider the mechanics of relationship and how important they are, not only to our happiness, but to our ultimate survival as individuals and as a biological species still finding its niche in a constantly changing and harsh environment.

So, let's take a moment to consider how relationships work and we must first begin with the way the mind works. The mind is an organ, like any other in our bodies. There is a reality which occurs in the moment and our bodies have five primary sense organs which gather raw information and relay it to the mind.

The mind receives this information from the five senses, processes it into mental images and then reacts to those images. If you hurt me, I store that image and it becomes part of your image in my mind. Likewise, if you flatter me, that also becomes part of your image in my mind. And this reaction based on fear and pleasure is what we call relationships.

But what the mind considers reality (the point at which it receives information from the five senses) is actually a step removed from reality. In other words, by the time the mind receives that information, reality in the moment has already changed and the mind is working with outdated material. And our sense of self is composed of these outdated mental images based upon false reality.

The mind is a warehouse of mental imagery from which we draw conclusions about the past and present and project the future. We have mental images of every person we come into contact with as well as how relationships between objects work in time and space. The scientific method is based upon observation, postulation, testing and theorizing about the certitude of causality in the relationships between objects in time and space and it's the same with mathematics.

Science works. Math works. They both serve a definite purpose and have allowed our species to construct the social niceties which have brought us down from the trees and let us build concrete jungles of glass and steel with weapons that can decimate all life on the planet in a string of nanoseconds.

But is there a point where the false reality of the mind actually becomes a danger and a detriment to our safety and future survival as individuals and as a species?

We keep images in our heads, not only of ourselves but also of the other people in our lives. These images are also based upon a false reality but even worse than that; they aggregate through a cataract filter of emotion which snowballs together until it becomes so obese with time and sappiness that the difference between the reality of that person and the image we have in our heads of them is as wide as the difference between Santa Clause and the parents who actually put the presents under the tree for their children.

It's a lie agreed upon and it is killing us like a gunshot to the heart.

If I have an image of you and that image is based upon my seeking pleasure from you and avoiding pain and you have the same type of image about me then we have no relationship. The only relationship is between two images which are based upon false realities and distorted by loaded emotional baggage.

So what happens when you see this as a fact? You recognize that it is unhealthy to allow dead images to drive your actions toward others in this life and you want to stop it because you realize that if you don't, terrible things will continue to happen in your life and in the lives of those around you.

You will continue abusing the ones you care most about and hating those who abuse you as will everyone else in the world. Seeing this fact is like the addict seeing the heroin taking their life after the needle has been injected and the plunger is halfway down the vial.

How do we stop?

How do we cease reacting towards others based on dead images? We recognize the true severity of the problem and the dire consequences for us all should we fail to act in some way? But what are we do?

The answer to that questions is a topic for another How to Think post. Stay tuned...

The human mind is a funny thing--it works in metaphors. Metaphors are conceptual images that reference observable and unobservable phenomenon in the natural world and the metaphysical realm of human thought.

Normally, metaphors are very handy tools in the arsenal of human evolution. For example, in science--I can scratch the symbols: T-R-E-E onto a sheet of paper and immediately my mind conjures up an image of a large, green leafy thick stick growing out of the ground high into the sky. I can understand that the process of photosynthesis applies to this green life form and I can subdivide and classify the various species of this life form into several distinct categories which can be compared and contrasted.

But all of this, the image of the tree, the theory of photosynthesis and all the scientific classifications are all metaphors. They are all symbols. These particular symbols have reference to phenomena which can be observed in the natural world.

But what happens when a metaphor is referring to something which doesn't exist in the natural world, something which can't be observed?

What happens when we scratch the letters: G-O-D?

See, God is a metaphor which is supposed to point past itself into absolute transcendence of thought and experience. The very concept itself is supposed to bring a peaceful quiet to the mind, a death in the waking moment.

When the mind is not in movement, does the self exist? The mind is the storehouse of experience which is the byproduct of thought. When thought, which composes the content of the mind, is not in movement; the self ceases to exist and something entirely new comes about.

But what happens with most minds is that they encounter that word G-O-D and get stuck with it. Maybe it's because those minds are foolish enough to believe that they have substance like the tree and can be knocked on and make a sound. But they aren't. Our egos have no weight in the phenomenal world and the inability of the mind to reach silence when meditating upon the transcendence of the metaphor of God is a prime example.

Instead the mind sublimates itself in books, hymns, arcane rituals and pitiful projections of a savior who will deliver the soul into an immortal afterlife.

Doesn't it all seem so childish sometimes?

Why can't we sit with a fact? Why must we try to change it. Prod it. Poke it. Manipulate it until it looks like we want it to, sounds like we want it to? Until it whispers at us to drive those planes into the buildings or drop those bombs from three thousand miles away with the bravery of being out of range?

What happens to a mind which is emptied of its content of experience in the moment? That mind would be dead by all common definitions but in terms of spiritual awareness--this mind has come electrically alive in a way which is impossible to communicate in words.

When you can see beyond the metaphor and lose the shell of yourself as the observer becomes the observed, you will be approaching the sacred heart of what the metaphor G-O-D is referring us toward.

A sign can only point the way--it is up to each one of us to take the first and only step to absolute freedom.

TAGS:
How to Think Philosophy Metaphors God Krishnamurti Joseph Campbell Joshua Minton

Oligarchy: a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.

Sometimes I'm late at catching the small shit in life. It took me fourteen years of listening to the Dire Straights song "Money for Nothing" to realize that Sting was singing backup vocals with Mark Knopfler. But sometimes I catch things quick like when I knew right away that Don Henley was singing backing vocals on the Roger Waters song "Watching TV" about the Tiannamen Square Massacre.

But you would have to be a cosmic idiot not to know that America is run by the few at the expense of the many. And I'm not talking class warfare here but rather how the decisions about national policy are made and what influences them. See, this country was born in a fury of local politics but its likely to die a sad death in a fever of displaced nationalism where a small group of individuals with access to the wealth and people resources of the world are making short term decisions that benefit no one at the long-term expense of everyone alive and those yet to be born.

The Bush administration has been rather successful at running elections pitting certain demographics against others but this will not work as a long term strategy for solidifying a party base. Take me for example. I was a huge Bush supporter in 2000 on through 9/11 and even up to the re-election in 2004. But something happened last year. It was like a switch was thrown and every other word out of his mouth became a rotted turd steaming in the sun without meaning. But I still believe that he was the right man at the right time for the job, if that makes sense.

But times change and so do jobs.

Being President must be like wearing Sauron's ring--a position so corrupting that it warps the very fabric of your existence until you become a wraith of humanity, moving your mouth only to hear the scraping of nails down a chalkboard when you talk.

But on the other hand, one has to ask the "Progressives" of the world exactly what they would do were they to miraculously wrestle power away from the Oligarchy. How would you distribute the workload? Because the fact of material existence in human society is that we live in a world of scarce resources and these resources must be allocated to support an overall style of living.

As humans, we each have different standards of living and different visions of happiness and if rumor holds true, we are each endowed from birth with the inherent right to pursue our visions of happiness provided we do not infringe upon the life or property of other citizens to achieve it (and what success is worth all that, finally)?

The hard truth is that we cannot defeat an Oligarchy when we live in an oligarchical paradigm of existence--just like you can't defeat a theocracy when you live in a theocratic paradigm of existence. It's like drowning in an ocean and wishing you were on land--that kind of revolution has no meaning and is the playground of fools and zealots.

The only way to beat a merciless God is to eradicate it from the minds of those who cling to the fear of its graven mental image.

So if you want to beat the dragon, you have to take away his cave, all his treasure and everything he's ever known to be reality--everything that is worth defending. Not only will this break his will to control the world, it will break his will to even fit into the new world he is put into.

So, how does one go about changing a paradigm? Well, here is the rub--the only paradigm we each control is the one we live according to--the one inside our own heads.

Krishnamurti was fond of saying that we are the world and the world is in us. Reality is a hell of a flimsy thing--a long series of lies we all agree to overlook. There are gaping pot holes in the fabric of our everyday existence and what we tell ourselves is a smooth silk sheet which runs from birth to death is actually cut up skivvies with doo doo brown stains that we've assembled into a pattern like the ancient Greeks gazing at the stars after a nice mug of lysergic mead.

The trick to altering the paradigm in our head is to find one of these potholes and fixate on it until we fall into the rabbit hole and lose everything in order to gain more than we can possibly imagine. When enough people understand this, when a critical mass of the empty of head but full of spirit is reached, then you will see the dragon put outside the cave and the reign of the Oligarchy broken.

The only revolution worth showing up for is the one that begins and ends in each of our minds because that's the only one that is real.

And once again, the revolution will not be televised.

LINKS:

• Concentration Camps for American Citizens?
  

• Call Dwight Schrute's Dunder Mifflin Paper Company Voicemail at 1-800-984-DMPC (3672)

• Endgadget does the awesome new High Definition Tivo Series 3 (Only the infernally stupid will pay $1,000 though)

One of my favorite things in life is rediscovering a great book. When I sink my teeth into new ideas that are actually reinforced ideas I was introduced to years before, my mind whirs in a way that it doesn't under any other stimuli. Take, for example, the magnificent chapter in Carl Sagan's book Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium titled "The Rules of the Game" where Sagan talks about Game Theory as a basis for world politics.

He asks the valid question of who is thinking twenty years down the line. Despite my recent ranting on the subject of war and how it truly is an act of the human animal and not the human being; there is a time and place where war is absolutely necessary which then means that our animal natures are absolutely necessary to our ultimate survival. But shouldn't there be a point where long-term execution overtakes the myopic gesture?

And by long-term strategy, I mean a world of real peace where human beings compete in the realm of ideas and in marshaling the best within their minds and hearts and applying that greatness to the limited resources of the Earth and the other moons, planets, asteroids and chemical matter of our solar system to truly bring the highest standard of living to every future human being. Isn't that the noblest goal we can aspire to achieve as a species?

I have to be honest, I don't like to talk in terms of plurality when I talk about humanity. I believe that culture is an abstraction from the measure of true freedom which only lies in the mind of the individual human being. The mind is the storehouse of memory and memory is the very substance of our identities; it is the essence of our greatness and at the same time the very genesis of our separation from one another. Memory is the medium by which we operate as independent entities in time and space and when memory ends and the mind is totally silent and quiet in the moment, something very special happens.

What happens to a mind that is no longer operating through time? Time is the movement of memory. When the mind is in motion, it is creating time, like human lungs create Carbon Dioxide upon exhale; and this time smear is always of the past never the present moment. Five senses deliver information from the present moment to the mind and the mind interprets that information and produces an image which is delivered after the moment has passed and the image dictates reality. Our reality is always based on the past, never the present moment. All of our science, all of our ideals, all of our self images are all of the past and can never relate directly to the present moment. This is a fact. Don't take my word for it. See it yourself. Sit with it and the truth will wash over you like an Alabama rain storm.

So what happens to a brain that has seen this fact that it is always of the past and can never be related to the present moment?

What are you supposed to do with a fact? You can deny it but that is just the mind in movement again, creating the time smear. The attempt to deny is a denial of the fact itself and cannot lead one to truth.

Eventually, the mind which is serious, the mind which yearns for freedom and sees this fact, sits with it, accepts it; that mind becomes very quiet, still, stops moving in the moment, stops producing images in a futile attempt to capture the reality of the present moment. And when that mind stops moving altogether in the moment an enormous transformation takes place, something outside of time; time is the mind in motion and the mind has seen the fact that it is useless to attempt to define reality in the present moment because it is always of the past and this mind is now standing still in reverence of that fact and is therefore fully engaged in the present moment without past reference or projection into an idealistic future (which is still of the past--are you following me here?).

That transformation is what all the religions promise but none have ever delivered upon. This is because they are moving in the realm of time which is always of the past. Religions are constellations of metaphoric images and quaint rituals which are supposed to lead one beyond the words, beyond the ideas, beyond the images (graven or mental), to the promised land of peace and absolute freedom. But how many religions say, "Our metaphors and rituals are the best and anyone who doesn't agree is damned to hell (another image) and take this sword in your gut, this musket blast in your chest, this stake to burn on, this cannon fire, this airplane in your building or this smart bomb for your troubles, you dirty heathen"?

Finding this still point is the essence of proper meditation and is the core message that Jiddu Krishnamurti taught about his whole life. He spoke of an absolute freedom beyond time and the constructs of man which populate time and in which the human mind and spirit is bogged down into like a quagmire of divinity.

Inside that still point lies the future of mankind and the human race. Inside that nexus of the swirling moment, always in motion and which never capitulates or bends to the feeble will of man in his attempts to saddle it and ride, lies the hope of future generations of our ancestors who are screaming to us from the very genetic code bursting from our cells, saying, "Please become stewards of this world and each other because we want to live. We Want To Live. WE WANT TO LIVE!"

ASSIGNMENT:
Which of the "rules" in the picture above do you think we are currently using to fight the War on Terror? Which of them is more likely to produce the outcome of establishing a peaceful world? Are they the same rule? If not, why not? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail to let me know what you think.

LINKS:

• Jiddu Krishnamurti
  
• Carl Sagan

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TAGS:
Meditation, Freedom, Peace, War, Carl Sagan, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti

I remember the Native American Women Studies class I took my senior year of college, taught by Linda Pertusati at Bowling Green State University who was actually present at the Wounded Knee incident in February, 1972 when the FBI busted in and shot up two AIM protesters, one of them a Vietnam veteran. Linda was most definitely not a Bush supporter but then again neither was I at the time.

And I remember there was this dude in the class, a smart handsome dude, who had just signed up to go officer in the Marine Corps and during one of the discussions, I jumped up on my firebrand soapbox and said something to the effect, "I don't know why all these protesters waste their time blaming politicians for war; it's the soldier who makes the choice to go to war that's to blame for the fighting."

It was an incendiary remark and brought a firestorm of debate where even the lefties in the class were defending the soldier as being just a pawn victim in the political game of global politics. But the handsome dude remained mostly quiet through the whole discussion, he kept something to himself. I still wonder to this day why he held back.

I'm sure he's seen his share of deserts these seven years since that class.

This incident should give you an idea of how radically my core values and political viewpoint has changed these past seven years. But I am still fiercely independent and I believe that the individual human being is the only effective measure of freedom and that anyone who speaks about freedom like it was a collective condition is a lying god damn asshole who is either looking for your vote, your money, or your blood.

And I can understand the rage that many people feel in the world today. I imagine it's the same rage that our ancient ancestors felt after running up a tree to escape a vicious mountain lion or the rage that Bill Clinton felt when he had to justify himself and deny a blowjob, something most Presidents before him probably considered a fringe benefit of the title.

But I could never express my understanding like Bukowski, a true master of the common man's poetry, did in his poem "The Difficulty of Breathing:"

I can
almost understand
why
people
leap
from
bridges.

I even
understand
in part those
people who
arm themselves
and
slaughter their
friends and innocent
strangers.

I am
not exactly
in sympathy
with them
and I decry
their reckless behavior
but I can
understand
the
ultimate
undeniable
persistent
force of
their misery.

the horrific violent
failure
of any one
of us
to live properly
says to me that
we are all equally
guilty
for every human
crime.
there are
no
innocents.

and if there is
no
hell,
those who coldly
judge these
unfortunates
will
create
one for us
all.

That last stanza hit me like a kick in the balls when I first read it. Isn't that what has happened to the mind of man-aren't we living in a mental and emotional hell as a species? Sure, there are pits of happiness. I love my wife and my children and my family and friends and I'm even fond of a few of my co-workers. But if I'm being honest with you; once I go beyond that circle of influence, where inside resides the people whose lives I effect and who in turn affect me, I see very little but statistics, complaints, and abstractions. Can I be honest with you and tell you that I'm pretty sure the notion that some Middle Easterner gets to call themselves free while living under the tyranny of Western corporate apartheid neither adds to or detracts from my own vision of freedom for myself?

Can I be honest that way? Or do you want me to tell you that everything my country is doing is right? Or wrong? What would make you feel better?

Maybe if I said that church is the answer? Pick a church, it makes no difference to me--they're all the same. Some kill with the notion of kindness and brotherly love and corporate slavery while others kill with old fashioned, stone your enemy, kill his wife and children and wash your weapons in the sea mentality. For my money, at least the latter is honest about it because it's all killing in the name of an idea which is lunacy to me because each of us are composed of ideas and notions. Every single one of us is a bundle of half-interpreted sensory stimuli which are somehow composited into a mental entity we foolishly fortify and project into some eternal being which lasts beyond the electrical sparks jumping neural gaps that produce the very memories we revere and worship like golden idols tossed into a burning bush and then turn around and murder by the millions through alcohol, cigarettes, and various drugs of escape.

No, I'm sorry--I can't say that churches or dusty old books are the answer either. Nor can I say that armed rebellion of any type will solve any problems. Or terrorism, armed or mental--that won't do anything but exacerbate the problems we have and the common enemy we all face.

I said something else in that Native American Women's Studies class, something even less popular than the blame the soldier not the war remark. I said that if American Indians (or whatever they want to be called nowadays) truly want to be free then they must release their attachment to their cultural identity and I took it three steps further and said the same thing applies to all minorities and to all majorities for that matter. Until human beings let go of the things they believe define them, true freedom will forever elude their grasp.

We are engaged in a vicious war on the other side of the world and there is no easy solution because human beings at war are nothing more than animals, no matter how complicated and flowery the language they use to describe their tactics or their goals of engagement. And when we descend to the level of animals, we can still achieve much noble greatness but it remains the greatness of animals, beings concerned primarily with health, wealth, protecting progeny and securing victory over the enemy (pick an enemy, it's always "us and them" and they are always the monster).

America has tried to commit suicide several times in our brief but fiery history. We barely held together as a country in the 1800 election, only the second we ever had. Andrew Jackson initiated a campaign against Native Americans that subsequent Presidents continued and which would make Hitler salivate over in terms of efficiency and efficacy in removing and liquidating the culture of an indigenous population. These are indisputable facts but they make me love my country no less. In fact, I don't believe you can truly love something until you see the monsters hidden behind its eyes.

The Civil War forever destroyed America and continues to affect everything about us to this day--it is, in my opinion, the most important war ever fought by man against man. I believe this because for a brief moment, the human animal almost raised itself in war to the level of the human being.

But America lived on.

And on--through World Wars, through a sitting President being assassinated in a time of subtle intelligence war over which loomed nuclear annihilation. On through an ideological war which became vastly unpopular under the influence of a pervasive media which eventually came under the thumb of corporations who conglomerated into producing a cultural hegemony of half-thinking half-wits who elect Presidents like they elect the cutest singers on reality television shows.

But we have never had a revolution that began and ended solely in the mind of the individual. We've never had a wave of true freedom sweep through the little universes that exist inside each of us. Freedom knows freedom and reaches out to embrace regardless of skin color, dialect, or the pontifical preference of deitous middlemen.

A revolution that begins and ends in the mind of the individual is the only solution to the War on Terror and the only hope for saving us from the hell that those who coldly judge the unfortunates among us will surely create for us all.

RELATED LINKS:

• Charles Bukowski
  
• The Wounded Knee Incident

UNRELATED LINKS:

Read JD's posts (Part 1 and Part 2) about the time he went on a beer run in Arkansas and ended up on the front page of the newspaper as an attendant in the front row of a Klan rally (oops!). He has the quote of the day:

That is one of the first times I got the lesson. Sometimes, it’s better to just go on and step in the shit instead of throwing your back out to keep from it.

TAGS:
War, Wounded Knee, Charles Bukowski, Freedom

I just finished watching the documentary Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki, which focuses on the relationship of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned the US about in his farewell speech as President of the United States. The experts in the movie contend that this corporate system of influence includes four primary entities:

1. The Military

2. The corporations who supply the military with hardware (Boeing, Raytheon, and of course--Halliburton among others)

3. Congress

4. The Washington Think Tanks like The Project for a New American Century

Let's consider the parting words of Eisenhower, shall we:





Now, the documentary contends that Congress, the military, and the corporations which provide the hardware for war are each junkies caught up in love with a drug they cannot quit, whereas the Think Tanks are the very danger which Eisenhower was warning us against in his farewell speech--groups of individuals making policy who are not elected nor are they affected by the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of the citizenry. We, the People, have allowed a golem to come into being which is driving the world right into the toilet while the already wealthy become even more wealthy at the expense of our future and our individual freedom.

At one point, one of the Iraqi citizens who gets interviewed (and claims to have had family members killed from one of the first "smart" missiles missing its target and falling on their house) says, "America will not last long because it is not acting the way a great nation acts."

We are a war-society, despite all belief to the contrary. I wouldn't say that our culture is as outright blood thirsty as the ancient Spartans but we're not far off either. America has averaged an armed conflict with other nations something like every twelve years or so since our country was born. But it has only been since World War II when the machinery of war became the most profitable industry on the face of the earth.

The movie claims that the United States spends more on defense (22% of our gross expenses) than all other countries combined. Now, let's be honest; when we say we're spending money on Defense, it's not like we're building bomb shelters and arming and training young men 14 and older to handle firearms in case some blood thirsty enemy invades their community. No, when we say "defense," what we mean is the machinery to make war on other nations and the payoff after we've made war is in the access to their resources and the opportunity to sell them a bunch of plastic toys and nutritionless food that they really don't need in the first place and which will eventually rot their souls and bodies the way we've allowed ours to become rotten here in America.

Sorry to be so cynical but isn't that what it all comes down to? Isn't that the American dream today? Isn't that what the success of our billionaires is built on? Is this how a great nation acts when it claims to be the steward of all that is righteous and right about the world and our species?

Does freedom truly come with a blood red price tag that involves shooting another man in the head who doesn't have the same accent or bloodline we do?

I have seen glimpses of absolute freedom in my life and each time they were accompanied by death--the death of my ego, the absence of the observer, and each time a warm and pure energy flowed into the moment and filled every snapping nerve with a calm and roaring creative energy which is the source of all life and all things good in the world. I have had moments of death in life that were filled with whatever is beyond that razor metaphor that so many kill each other over and I did not have to pick up a weapon and splatter brains all over the desert sand to allow that type of absolute freedom to wash over my mortal soul (if only for a second).

But this type of freedom is worthless to the man in the suit in the corporate boardroom or the shadowy halls of Congress or the man in the dress blues in the first six rows during a Presidential address to the nation; nor is it worth a thing to the eggheads in the think tanks who work hard to draw lines of death and division on the maps of the world which we must all then walk around like invisible mine fields hanging in the air.

This type of freedom is absolutely free except for the payment of death in the moment.

This type of freedom cannot be killed for but it must be died for. Go ask Jesus. Go ask Buddha. Go ask Hallaj. Go ask Giordano Bruno. Go ask the Dali Lama.

This type of freedom is life itself in the sparking moment and moves the soul through instinct like a deep water fish through coral.

This type of freedom cannot be found in books, ancient relics, or arcane rituals. It cannot be called from the sky, divined from the air, or reeled from the sea of sorrow we know as the collective mind of humanity. It cannot be pulled into time and space because its presence dictates their absence.

This type of freedom is the beginning of intelligence and no man who ever claims to be the leader of nations should be without it.

This type of the freedom is the beginning of healing and the nexus of understanding and when the smallest seed of this type of freedom is present in the heart of the individual, the universe is set right and saved and so it is that the world becomes saved in tandem.

This type of freedom is the only thing that matters in this life and in this death and if we are not struggling to bring it into existence in the waking moment, then we are each living the lie of devils whispering in our ears and dangling golden trinkets before our eyes. This type of freedom can only be won inside each of our minds.

The final battle is always fought with ideas and emotions; the stakes are always for our immortal souls and the bet is always all-in.

LINKS:

• Why We Fight
  
• The Project for the New American Century

Buy Why We Fight Here and Support the Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers Blog

TAGS:
Freedom, America, Spirituality, Why We Fight, Eugene Jarecki