Never Take Yourself Too Seriously: Laughter, Music, Poetry, and the Tools of Acceptance

IN RE the Christ Meme: Part of the reason I post such things isn't that I am callous to Christ, that I am against anyone or anything, but rather to NOT allow myself to take MYSELF and what "I" think too seriously. What I think and believe is not the point of life.

Being peaceful NO MATTER WHAT I THINK OR ANYONE ELSE THINKS is what I am after. If I am annoyed, it's no one else's fault. I'm annoyed because I am ANNOYABLE. "THEY" are not my problem.

The atheist philosopher Sartre said, "Hell is other people." I concur only so far as "other" is in the sentence. Hell is "other" people. The world seems addicted to judgment; I try to consciously release that judgment from my own life and subscribe to the LIVE AND LET LIVE principle.

Here are examples of "other": other politics, other religions, other races, other genders, other opinions, other programs, other ancestries, people whining about whatever I am not whining about (other whiners), hating the haters, and 'other-others' ad-nauseam.

It seems to be the most secure prison in the world, is the one we justify and construct for ourselves.

Every ripple of change, pain, pang, joy, and surrender elude logical preconditions, stripping our souls, leaving us only with a choice to LOVE or bask in the illusion of 'otherness'.

Poetry, music, and humor cleanse 'me-ness' and rejoins sacred connection as experiences merge effortlessly into We. We upsidedown is a metaphorical Me.

All are One, Storms and the Eyes of the storms thereof. are part of the Great Whole (Holy). If the Eye is full of Acceptance, the whole body is, too. Our storms all look different from the outside, but the inside is the same. Until then, just laugh.

Most people probably don't have the slightest clue how big and compassionate someone's heart has to be to hang up the blamethrowers of life. I'm no scholar of any variety, but the Christ as I understand Him, died because He LOVED. Even at the end, what did He say? "Forgive them, they know not what they do." Three days later, he resurrected.

Ancient Greece made its greatest strides when they were free to do both good and bad things. My greatest single regret I see coming from Ancient Greece is how they made the human psyche divided against itself. They over-focused on the mind and left the heart out of balance with the mind. One manifestation of this illness came from the idea that "Feelings are not facts." Truth is, the mind and the heart are One. The mind is the thinking part of the heart, and the heart is the feeling part of the mind.

Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge and pointed out that his leaps of higher ideas came suddenly, intuitively.

The 'dictionary' of Einstein's life exploded like a bomb in a printing press office, and the letters of the dictionary flew everywhere BUT came back together in a beautiful order.

After all, the dictionary and the Bible both contain the same words, albeit in a different order. The EGO exists as an illusion in the mind. The heart is not so deluded, and that's why the battlefield is in the mind and not the heart.

The Divine Feminine

The mind is supposed to protect the heart, for once the heart goes, our destiny goes. A poisoned heart is a most tragic state of affairs, with forgiveness and peace defying all explanation and knowledge rushes in to save the day (if we surrender to the Holy Spirit).

Sentio Ergo Sum Cogito, by The Incomplete Skeptic.

Let's start the Church of the Impetuous Paradox where we "spend" time inspecting the history of forever & chronologize eternity. LOL!

Truth without paradox is dead.

No disrespect intended, but both the delegates of 'Pseudo cum laude' Cogito Ergo Sum entourage and René Descartes belonged in a Thinker's Anonymous meeting. Descartes glorified thinking and abandoned himself (and relegated others) to the systematized, outside-in approach to life. But real sunshine comes from the inside-out.

Sentio ergo sum cogito. I Feel (the heart), therefore, I Think (the mind) I Am. For me, the mind is the thinking part of the heart, and the heart is the feeling part of the mind. Mind and heart are ONE. The Greeks did so much to revolutionize culture abroad and I celebrate this, but they also made schizophrenics of generations for thousands of years by focusing on mind and marginalizing heart.

Thoughts are the substance of mind, as hope is the substance of things unseen, and UNSEEN like Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is the wiping off the dust from the Mirror that is Humanity's God or Higher Power.

Original Mind & Original Heart are One. Have you ever heard the saying, be ye as little children, for such is the Kingdom of God? THAT! I've also read that “Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.” e.e. cummings

I'm in charge of what I say, you're in charge of what you hear. The same applies to the written word. The Alpha and the Omega/the snake eating itself, as above so below/on earth as it is in Heaven all bear common or ancient ancestry. Sit back and dwell on that silently for a while.

I draw an ironic smile when I hear someone say that 'feelings are not facts' because I believe that Love (a feeling) is the Greatest Fact ever experienced. Drawing abstract consciousness from the original mind is like unsheathing the flaming sword protecting Eden's Tree of Life, and is akin to a solution feasting like vampires on problems. "Live in the solution" sounds good to the EGO, but is the paradigm of self-slavery to the extreme. Goethe related that the most secure prison is the one we don't know we are in.

One of my life-changing, favorite poems.

War is the greatest paradigm of forced cooperation, yet comprehension is not a Peacekeeper requirement of cooperation. Respect is. Forcing solutions and imposing harmony is a maladaptive dire sickness plaguing us, leading to a societal psychosis that even music might not cure. Music and poetry, prayer and acts of compassionate discourse have helped save my life through the years. Let's bring that back into focus again.

The great philosopher Rodney King nailed it (and no, I’m NOT being sarcastic), but cruel satirical headlines attended his echoes in some circles, but I'll repeat his unconditional grace here because true freedom lives in the Questions of Life and not so much in the answers: "Can't we all just get along?"

As ‘The Picard’ would say: “ENGAGE” and as someone near and dear to my heart said some 2,000 years ago, “Love one another.

If anyone even reads this whole blog post, I'll be fucking shocked. I barely could stand to do so myself. LOL! Peace Out & Groovy. Have fun. No excuses.

Dark Night Musings

The following barely scratches the surface of those years described.

Hundreds of breakthroughs, mostly unnoticeable, littered my path to distract me toward lessons deeper than life itself. Dozens of breakthroughs, all unique and seemingly independent, left me to wonder if this was/is the one! Then more and more and deeper and darker, the lights become useless, and the rays of darkness with immense, mysterious beauty engulfed my entire comprehension. Every brand of the holy-water tear was tasted and tested, recognized, and labeled like Adam un-naming animals and plants. Who would have guessed that tears are spiritual with various tastes for each brand of grief? Only trust and choice remained as I floated downward in the dark river of death.

Dark River

Death

'Now' was darkness as day and daylight could no longer require of its captive slave mud and straw, for the sacred rains dissolved all meaninglessness of this illusory world. The hibernation lasted until the oceans dried up, but the living waters served up spiritual oxygen.

Some years ago, I was traveling the Dark Night of the Soul. Had you ever made this journey yourself, the above-stated 'Musings" would be second-nature and ironically indescribable with logical vocabulary, a sacred space where poetry alone eclipses the sun of reason, giving birth to the Rumi's and Hafiz beyond life & death.

What started my journey was twofold: first, divorce from my narcissistic ex opened the door, and second, a later relationship with a practicing alcoholic herself kept that same door wedged open, ultimately herself ultimately being found dead by her daughter—cause of death: drinking.

A book that had been recommended by a public speaker (and friend) from Hazelden who presented his Story at “The Recovery Church” in St. Paul, Minnesota. Immediately following his speech, I drove to The Mecca of All Bookstores (Barnes & Noble) looking for the recommended book he mentioned, titled "Addiction & Grace," written by Gerald May.

I found it on a bottom shelf, but next to it stood another book that enchanted my soul with moonlit trees barely discernable on its’ cover, titled "The Dark Night of the Soul, penned by the same author. The "Spirit in my Chest" verified I was to have this book, so I carried it and the other book to the clerk and made my purchase. One might easily read the book “The Dark Night of the Soul” in a day, but it took me three & one-half years to read, not because I was a slow reader, but because I was LIVING and experiencing every word I read. That last year lapsed before I had reason to believe I had come through to the other side, returning to marginally 'normal' living; proverbially, I returned 'in' the world but no longer 'of' the world. It reminds me of prison, in a way. Prison was my monastery, of sorts, but monastery or not, no one comes out the way they went in.

Making the mystical journey is not strongly suggested for the strong, for the strong will collapse and perhaps fail at the Herculean Vulnerability required to pass this test. Age and the Dark Night of the Soul are not for sissies...just like poetry. As Poe pointed out, if poetry has not torn your soul asunder, you've not written any yet.

Thank you for feeling these words.

Plug for a Paring Knife

Where the expressions of science met the guardians of elegant sufficiency

I sat beside my Grandfather the day he died of a heart attack.  He was seated on our living room couch, sharpening a pencil with a whittling knife.  He did not make a sound when he passed; he just stopped moving.  Our yellow parakeet had somehow escaped its cage and was wildly flying around the living room, chirping fearfully, quite alarmed.  I felt a strong presence of spirit in the air and sensed it was Grandpa.  I was five years old and didn’t understand death yet. 

Grandpa had always treated me with loving kindness, encouraged me by spending time with me, and he taught me how to whittle wood.  Sadly, shortly after he passed, I broke the jackknife he gifted me.  I ‘made do’ with a paring knife from the kitchen drawer.  I industriously keep my eye open for interesting pieces of wood to whittle, and no matter where I went, I faithfully carried that paring knife in the back pocket of my “britches” as my Grandpa used to say. 

One day, my brother and I went over to a friend’s house to play, but nobody was home.  We amused ourselves on their backyard tire swing, played on monkey bars, slides, etc. 

An idea from school captured my curiosity and had been percolating in my little brain.  Whenever I learned something new or fascinating, I would always pass that lesson on to my little brother.  Having learned about electricity from a teacher, I decided to show him what I learned.  The teacher had earnestly cautioned us that water and metal are conductors of electricity, and assured us that wood in not a conductor of electricity.  To provide evidence to my little brother that an electric current cannot travel through wood, we walked over to a 220-Volt socket to conduct my first Show & Tell speech. 

Since my paring knife had a wooden handle covering the metal, I believed I could safely insert it into the socket.  I pulled open the gray metal safety guard from the socket and drew the paring knife from my back pocket. I told my brother to watch me, as I began explaining the laws of electricity. 

I boldly went where no bright boy had gone before, and confidently plugged my knife into the socket.  My lecture ended as I experienced 220-volts of electricity coursing through my body.

Suddenly, I became terrifyingly aware my lesson went awry.  My young mind hadn’t considered that metal rivets held the wooden handle of the knife together, and I was touching them.  The powerful current flowed through me, holding my entire body frozen in place. 

My brother must have sensed something was wrong, (maybe because for once because I was not talking).  He said, “Are you alright?  Are you alright?”  Unable to move my lips due to electricity coursing through my body, I strained out the words, “I ant oove!  I ant oove!”  (‘I can’t move, I can’t move’).  With trembling voice, he asked, “Do you want me to pull you away?”

I quickly responded, “Oh! Oh!  Own ush e! Own ush e!"  (that is, ‘No!  No!  Don’t touch me!  Don’t touch me’!)  I remembered the teacher warning us about the dangers of touching an electrocuted person is that they are victim to a bigger jolt than the electrocuted person.

At this desperate point, I thought a silent, frantic prayer for help, thinking, “God, help me.”  Just then, I felt two large, strong hands pressing down firmly on my shoulders.  Those hands yanked me backward away from the plug, freeing me from my electrical prison!  

Stunned, I turned around to see who helped me.  Only my wide-eyed brother was there.  While I knew my brother could not have been the one that saved me, I was befuddled by what happened.  I gave my brother a stern parental look and firmly demanded, “Did you touch me?”  With quivering fear in his voice, he said, “No.”

Perhaps the two strong hands on my shoulders belonged to my guardian angel.  Maybe it was my grandfather. 

In later years, I once sensed that my grandfather was helping me.  I was on the way to the hospital for a biopsy and was afraid I would die.  I read that a small number of people die from the biopsy needle piercing a vein, and the patient dies.  On the way to the hospital, I was praying hard for comfort and protection.  I then heard a gentle male voice say in my ear, “You’ll be OK.” 

The voice possessed a peaceful love that poured through my soul.  And the voice seemed familiar, somehow.  I wondered at the time if it was my grandpa.  Maybe he is an angel?

Today, I view this early experience as evidence that God has a purpose for my life.  At the very least, it was an answer to prayer.  Through the years, I have had supernatural experiences that have saved my life.  While I cannot say for a certainty what precise design appears scripted for my life, it seems I had been protected me from harm.  To me, it is today less important that God shields me from harm in this world.  As one of God's faithful servants said in the Bible, “Yea, though he slays me, yet will I love Him.”  Selah!

Psalm 91:11 “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”  KJV

Chapter 1

Plug for a Paring Knife

Are You Offendable?

 When you say to yourself and others that it is not possible for humans to forgive, it sounds really interesting. I'm betting you're right, but I don't 100% know what you mean by it yet. This is not the same as doubt, by the way. Can you explain what you mean, please?

OK, sure, I’ll give it a shot.

For me, forgiveness is unnecessary if one is not offended in the first place, as being 'offended' signals to me that one is 'offendable,' which admission is recognition is a higher state of responsibility. Letting Go and Letting God is a reconciliation or ‘acceptance’ of life on life’s terms.

On a second front, if one has turned their will and life over to the care of God, why should offenses and forgiveness exist? As with most if not all humans, 100% forgiveness existing 100% of the time seems impossible. For example, I keep saying the Serenity Prayer, but sublime 'forgetting' has its merit, so maybe saying the Senility Prayer leads to serenity, too? LOL!

But 'impossible' is God's favorite word, for it becomes a playground of nutritive soil, AKA 'powerless' and getting out of one's own way so Creator God can have full reign returns us to our original state of innocence. Sorry about all this God Talk stuff, but I can say that forgiveness of the most difficult events that happened in my life transpired through prayer and God sending love in the place of pain. I wrote about the experience in my book, in the chapter about forgiving my abuser. I no longer let the words ‘my’ and ‘abuser’ remain as points of pain. Since my life is no longer my own, how does ‘my abuser’ hold sway over my consciousness

There is One who has ALL power, that one is God…may you find Her now.

Sentio Ergo Sum Cogito, by The Incomplete Skeptic, Timothy G Cameron

Let's start the Church of the Impetuous Paradox where we "spend" time inspecting the history of forever & chronologize eternity. LOL!

Truth without paradox is dead.

No disrespect intended, but both the delegates of 'Pseudo cum laude' Cogito Ergo Sum entourage and René Descartes belonged in a Thinker's Anonymous meeting. Descartes glorified thinking and abandoned himself (and relegated others) to the systematized, outside-in approach to life. But real sunshine comes from the inside-out.

Sentio ergo sum cogito.  I Feel (the heart), therefore, I Think (the mind) I Am. For me, the mind is the thinking part of the heart, and the heart is the feeling part of the mind. Mind and heart are ONE. The Greeks did so much to revolutionize culture abroad and I celebrate this, but they also made schizophrenics of generations for thousands of years by focusing on mind and marginalizing heart.

Thoughts are the substance of mind, as hope is the substance of things unseen, and UNSEEN like Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is the wiping off the dust from the Mirror that is Humanity's God or Higher Power.

Original Mind & Original Heart are One. Have you ever heard the saying, be ye as little children, for such is the Kingdom of God? THAT! I've also read that “Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.” e.e. cummings

I'm in charge of what I say, you're in charge of what you hear. The same applies to the written word. The Alpha and the Omega/the snake eating itself, as above so below/on earth as it is in Heaven all bear common or ancient ancestry. Sit back and dwell on that silently for a while.

I draw an ironic smile when I hear someone say that 'feelings are not facts' because I believe that Love (a feeling) is the Greatest Fact ever experienced. Drawing abstract consciousness from the original mind is like unsheathing the flaming sword protecting Eden's Tree of Life, and is akin to a solution feasting like vampires on problems. "Live in the solution" sounds good to the EGO, but is the paradigm of self-slavery to the extreme. Goethe related that the most secure prison is the one we don't know we are in.

War is the greatest paradigm of forced cooperation, yet comprehension is not a Peacekeeper requirement of cooperation. Respect is. Forcing solutions and imposing harmony is a maladaptive dire sickness plaguing us, leading to a societal psychosis that even music might not cure. Music and poetry, prayer and acts of compassionate discourse have helped save my life through the years. Let's bring that back into focus again.

The great philosopher Rodney King nailed it, but cruel satirical headlines attended his echoes, but I'll repeat his unconditional grace here because true freedom lives in the Questions of Life and not so much in the answers: "Can't we all just get along?"

As ‘The Picard’ would say: “ENGAGE” and as someone near and dear to my heart said some 2,000 years ago, “Love one another.”

Monkey Mind: Diving into Difficulties 'Trust First'

At worst, all difficulties represent a quest to learn selfless-control. Intuitively decoding what to let go of is 1) an art realized within the current form & framework known as our lives, but deeply ingrained attitudes of our past lives (everything from a second ago is a past life) declares HOW we place emphasis on seemingly non-linear, spiritual values.

This is a quest-tion (Elevated Quest) to learn to see life from other people's points of view and to become adept in the 2) art of communication. When it comes to not being distracted from our own agendas, we tend to view questions as nothing less than a tendency to restless and irritable distractability. Develop contemplative focus, and then witness your ability to communicate your ideas in ways that help many people in your sphere of influence. Don’t be Beverly surprised when your peeps act like purring kittens; they will echo resoundingly as heartbeats of gratitude in your energetic Learning Curve. At worst, consider the distractions of life as a meaningful tour through God's Cosmic Kitchen. Nothing is anyone's fault.

As we turn up the heat on the proverbial frog or ‘Culture of Blame’, consider how one of the frog’s prized children, formerly known as metaphorical Global Warning "It's Your Fault" are actually knowingly acting as Insurance Incubators (follow the money); all the while, the Blamologists ripen on their tree. Seems crazy, but the addiction to anger burns rhyme and reason alike.

This bend in the road appears arbitrary, but remember that Emily Dickenson said to “dwell in possibility.’ I was reading Carlos Castenada's books long before my drug tests would have all come back dirty (in my formative years) and I'm still digesting life on life's terms from Don Juan’s lessons (I’m still drug-free after a 19-year break from "normal"). Coincidently, I think it was the Eagle's lead singer who said he only got drunk once...for 19 years.

Learn to enjoy your words as they agitate ideas as a Namaste washing machine runs by monkeys. If the load is making noise because the garments are out of balance, don’t through the clothes away and don’t attack the machine. You're part of the Universal Conspiracy to Love. Slow down, open the lid, rearrange the load, close the lid, and enjoy. Although many are called to the machine, few say yes. Accept the saying that ‘normal’ is a setting on a dryer.

Steps 3, 4 & 5 Governs Facing Fears

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Søren Kierkegaard

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” David Foster Wallace

"Always do what you are afraid to do." Ralph Waldo Emerson

The 'Big Book' helped birth my freedom and reads that ‘we are driven by a hundred forms of fear.’ That it is “An evil corroding thread.” This is not necessarily phobias but is rather the FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real) that is driven by our egoic/apparent (or real) instinctual 'needs.'

When we act out of fear, it is commonly due to one of our three basic needs being threatened. When we probe wounds, the places that are infected, we are likely to feel pain, but we are suggested to be 'fearless and thorough' (entirely willing) from the very start.

To begin breaking the addiction to the judgment of others and of self-loathing, we move into the 4th Step Higher Powered by the 3rd Step. The 5th Step removes the puss that aggravates the infection. The infection dies in the light of love. So open the infection, clean it out, then take up your bed and walk. Don't quit before the miracle happens. Removing the obstacles to the love of others as yourself; it helps bring into true focus what WE mean. 'We' are God, you and me.

OK, you know me, here come the G-Words. God & Grace.

“Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.” Soren Kierkegaard

Unconditional Grace is our duty, but we have to say YES because it's not foisted on us because of our Free Agency. God delves deeper into the human heart than the knife of unforgiveness can fathom. Without an offense, forgiveness is impossible, and forgiveness is a requirement of love. Forgiveness runs deeper than the offense which requires its presence. It's like the seed of love is at the tips of the knife that stabs us. IT MIGHT TAKE A WHILE, SOMETIMES A LONG WHILE TO HEAL, but as the saying goes, it ain't easy, but it's worth it.

In God's Economy, nothing is wasted. IMPOSSIBLE is God's favorite word and is why being ‘powerless returns us to a state of original innocence and we thus get our true power back.

Daily Reprieve of Surrender

1) I ask (pray) God to direct my thinking, then I am free to think. It's a daily task for me. My happiness is not essential to doing God's Will, just as comprehension is not a prerequisite to cooperation, but it does bring me peace or at least enough peace to be grateful.

Then, 2), I look to do God's Will in loving others as I love myself.

3) With a deep breathGod in God enters and a deep breath out, negatives are exhaled.

4) Thank God for everything and

5) Trust God, intuitively knowing or believing that it is impossible to be off of one's spiritual path once it's surrendered.

As the saying goes, IMPOSSIBLE is God's favorite word. We have “a daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition.’ Christ is the Master Builder.

Every day that I get up, I am in the practice of thanking God for another day of living, no matter how I might feel or think things are looking down. I recall Zig Ziglar said, When life looks down, try the Up look.”

The Bravery of Humility Frees the Killer from Himself & Separation Consciousness

Some things I wrote years ago that are related to yesterday’s Blogpost.

The Bravery of Humility Frees the Killer from Himself

Thus held they funeral for Hector tamer of horses, for the father of fifty sons kissed the hand of the killer, begging favor of proper burial. This ‘is’ how the enraged killer finally finds respite from losing his dear BFF Pat who dressed in masks for battle posed as the killer, but who was slain by Prince Hector. The head of the snake was severed that fateful day, leaving its undigested tail to writhe unceremoniously in the sand. But, in the way of all things absurd, resentment resurrects the despaired wound, thus re-held to reconnect head & tail, and the war, 2,500 years later? Love re-dies on the Plains of Hesitation. Had Thetis not tried to make the killer immortal by dipping him in the River Styx without holding his heal free to the open air, the resistance to repentance would have died a grateful, beautifully regurgitated death. “All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothing; everything is born of unreason." Glycon. And that’s why Baptism by Fire is a battle between water & fire gods. People die every day unnoticed by most as no more than a pesky pothole, forgotten in the comfort of Silentarian Summers.

This I wrote 5 years ago:

Separation Consciousness is an illness. We are One, as silly as that sounds to so many people. If I am loving, then I love. Seeing people FROM love is it...hugs are not illegal, but it's amazing how trust seems to be relegated to those who "earn" it. What a bunch of BS. "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me". Sometimes a sincere hug or smile might save someone's life. Never give up coming from love. Never forget who you are. I love you. Pass it on.

Gravitas of Anonymity or is it just the Anesthesia of Alzheimer's

People seem to have such a deep misunderstanding about what it means to have peace which surpasses all understanding. EGO would rather supplant peace with either logic, the masked but lifeless airs of Saturnian science whose cynical contempt of faith (pretentious or self-aggrandizing attitudes of sneering ‘sensibilities’), or caress control mechanisms both physiological and psychological.

I am NOT against science, but turning it into a worshipful master with the practitioners as mini-gods is futile. When science and faith speak a common dialect, the world is a beautiful light for all to walk the paths of.

Trust with a capital-T doesn’t require comprehension to swim in the placid or stormy seas of cooperation. Peace is not necessarily a pacifist road. Peace and trust require a deep sense of balance to dance on tempests, the willingness to either be fearless or at least face one’s fears with unfathomable daring (which I did in prison), and to kiss one’s love without cognizant desire or a sense of jealousy nor anticipation of reward. No easy task sometimes.

Philosophers and Poets birth their Janus dreams after making love to the eternal Phoenix of their own destructions. Chaos Theory strings us along until we find Order, which in turn implodes into a black hole of overthinking which eventually creates another Big Bang and off we go again, searching for Atlantis.

The Phoenix is forever rising but logic seeks to define its anchor, like Zeus punishing Prometheus while rejoicing with some fava beans and a nice chianti as the eagle of dogma devours his liver. Facing one’s peace ‘always’ in moving momentous mountains of NOW which demands more audacity than facing one’s fears. 

“Meek: Power under control’, humility, requires great peace and acceptance and not fearing one’s OWN power. God teaches the martial arts, but the artist knows not from whence his plan manifests, just as the kisser knows not what syntax transcends gratitude.

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.” Camus

Now I’ve written this blog in the same formula of writing poetry. I don’t know if I’m comin’ or goin’, and I’m OK with Anonymity.

One of my very favorite Messengers.

https://youtu.be/w53EmDa9hAg

the new old kiss (poem)

got a ghost i call my sin
in my skin
bend
in
the ray of darkness
hanging on the night
full of walking on firewater,
until like winds
we dodge the raids of 'what ifs'
radius, and
win

Skating on the skin of frozen rivers,

we live to die another day,

another way,

until our hearts open wider

than the jaws of death can gape.

Reactionarians: Response Ability in Communication

Depending on what we are paying attention to, there are many opportunities to experience substantial duress, yet we don’t have to attend every fight we find ourselves invited. Maintaining a rational sense of composure in the face of emotionally charged ideas, often masking themselves as substantial ‘reasons’ to lose one’s composure, is ever a challenge.  

Becoming the very problem we are seeking to ameliorate arises from an over-focus, AKA, Solution-addiction. Ironically, solutions require problems to solve; when the issue fades, the answer does, too.

Let’s take a temporary detour from my argument. Solutions are like forgiveness. For example, a solution (forgiveness) needs a problem (offense), and are both vampires in the relationship. It’s part and parcel of the Blame Game, and if you’ve read my past Blogs, you might remember that I suggest we hang up the Blamethrower. If we are not offendable, then there’s nothing to forgive.  

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend” - Albert Camus

Let’s push the envelope here. If there is no judgment, there’s no judge or jury. If there’s no offense, the court closes. The predators and prosecutors (sometimes one and the same) all go home. Is it a panacea to imagine such a world, one where we have no courts? I believe in natural law & order. Our conscience is our judge. The United States Constitution does not give rights but instead describes inalienable rights that we already have. Government is there to uphold organic, natural law. But frequently, if not always, humans digress when they start passing laws to protect the rules that are already in place. As Tacitus said, “The more the laws, the more corrupt the government.” The comparisons I’m drawing here are an exercise in serving the BEST (God is in control…Let Go, Let God) but does not serve what’s ‘good’ (dictatorial human thinking). The Best is the enemy of the good (in the ‘good’s mind’ perspective or opinion), but not vice-versa.  

““There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.”

There is only One righteous Judge, which makes me wonder why, if God allows a thing, could the existing dirty-deed (thing) be part of a Sacred Contract? Could the end-product of joy rise higher than the depth of pain? Doesn’t the dormant seed of forgiveness find its home at the very tip of the knife that painfully plunges into the soil of our soul? 

Okay, this perspective is a hard pill to swallow, maybe, and my last Blog Post might bear testimony to as much, but I only lost one subscriber to my List. I knew it was controversial but posted it anyway. Maybe it’s because I’m risking testing people’s sense of self-examination, and I overstep my boundaries in so doing; I hope it’s OK because that’s what risk does. Yet risk is always present when we ask real questions, and the evolution of questioning disproves the so-called virtue of our admission that we know the answers in any absolute way. The facts, answers or solutions, knowledge, whatever you want to call it, leads to killing questions. Knowledge destroys faith, similarly. If someone believes in God but says they KNOW God is real, they’ve just assassinated belief or faith itself. Knowledge is a safe anchor that tethers one dogmatically to ‘their truth.’ Sure, the truth will set you free, but when it’s made into a law, and we beat each other over the head with it, we have lost our way.

““Folks, it’s time to evolve. That’s why we’re troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything’s failing? It’s because, um – they’re no longer relevant. We’re supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?”
― Bill Hicks”

Here’s my risky proposition: I killed Little Timmy. It was wrong and always will be, right? But what if viewing Timmy and myself in Sacred Relationship or Sacred Contract changes all that?  WHAT IF  Timmy and I had/have a Sacred Contract? If we do, is there anything for Timmy and me to aggrieve or forgive? Yes, it took me years to love and forgive myself for my actions that dreadful day, but we are supposed to Love God with all our heart, mind, and soul. If we do that, how is there any room for hatred or a lack of forgiveness? If we have turned our will and our life over to the care of God, our problems belong to God and not to ourselves, yes?  

If your eye is filled with light, your body is too.

The follow-up to this purity of heart (to will one thing, love) is that with this kind of Love, we are free to love others as we love ourselves (yes, love ourselves, too). With love as our focus (God is Love), we begin to peacefully accept the things we can’t change and acquire Higher Wisdom to know what things we can’t and cannot change. To me, “Serenity” is a Gift. That’s why we ask for it in the Serenity Prayer.  Prayer is part of our Spiritual Vision Board or the Intent of our Earthly Vision Board.  

I know of many great examples of people who loved those who were hurting them. It seems more challenging to handle when someone we love is hurting us. By starting or continuing to be loving, they didn’t justify the hurtfulness inflicted upon them and label their love as a sure sign of weakness. Instead, they realized they needed to be fully human, accepting both what they ‘need’ to forgive and that getting angry and feeling unforgiving is…human. But someone famously said, ‘Let he who is without fault, throw the first rock. But seething our emotional lives in that anger is a sometimes necessary part of forgiveness, but the longer we stew in the juices of resentment, the more likely we are to start becoming what we hate (hating the haters).

“Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.”
― Shannon L. Alder

Reputation destruction, innuendo, and gossip are the passive-aggressive themes of modern-day rock throwing. They are the justifications of a Cold Was mentality and is more common among white-collar combatants than blue-collar (blue collar is a bit more physically assaultive). The dark masculine resorts to violence more often than the dark feminine does, and generally, the dark feminine tends toward reputation destruction and the passive-aggressive arts. I bring this up for one central point. It’s to illustrate what I argued earlier in this write: ‘depending on what we are paying attention to, there are a great many opportunities to experience substantial duress.’  

Did you read the preceding statement with a peaceful mind and think about healing aggressive and passive-aggressive people? The opportunity to hear seemingly divisive ideas positively will heal many an insomniac night of tossing and turning. I don’t think our culture is rife with security or tyranny, but rather a mixture of the two. Nature or Natural “Law” is neither catastrophizing nor benevolent but can be construed as both. I think Nature should be studied but not controlled, and the same applies to the law. Keeping the peace is fine, but enforcement of the law, not so much.  

When someone says a thing that is hard to hear, listen twice as hard.

Success through provocation ain’t my shtick. What propels me most to victory in a debate is to say little or nothing to provoke enforcement of my ideas. Being stress-resistant doesn’t mean there’s no stress, but rather one doesn’t cave to stress and make rash decisions. With a few notable exceptions, most of my life mistakes were impulsive or made in a hurry.  

If one is not familiar with one’s detractors’ full argument, one is ill-suited for debate. While I don’t subscribe to the ‘If you don’t have something good to say, don’t say anything’ rule, I do believe it is a useful idea. Say what you mean, m what you say, but don’t say it mean’ is a common reiteration I fall back on, as is to ‘be the more loving one’ with unloving people (they make it easy…lol). Noticing the weakness in others but looking for their strengths takes practice to habituate. Repetition is the mother of all learning.  

Consider the possibilities as to why a person is saying what they are saying.

The study of reactions and the people that study them. Reactionarians. There is no such word, and that’s OK with me. It’s none of my business to legislate what others think of me, or vice-versa. It’s none of my business to legislate what I think of or feel about myself, and it’s none of my business to legislate what God (if there is one) thinks of you or me.  

I'm Back

I had one heck of a time of it over the last couple of years. I didn’t even brush my teeth while sick and my teeth are in horrible shape as a result, but that’s life. Shingles, then cancer, then dealing with my ‘New Normal.” I brushed my teeth three days in a row now. As strange as that sounds, it’s true. I was really ‘stuck’ on finding how I might adapt to all this. Sure, I trusted God and all that good stuff, had tools on my belt for survival, but I need to raise my behavior to a higher level and now feel I can. Wish me luck but for sure say some prayers.

Here’s some photographs, JPEGS, and concepts that help describe my life.

I made a short video about Saturday’s upcoming ZOOM meeting on dignified rules of debate.

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/DlAfK1WS6SO4KRGzQNEaDCIi_ekpW0yTrK6OCsFAESiqap6gIClyyrsI_Tv26w.2zf5SbRc_8cFBEzI

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