For once will you say what you really mean, not what sounds best or what's most well received? It can take a lot of mental power to really step back and examine what's happening, in the long run. Outside of the every day. We're too used to thinking one day at a time, allowing each day to crossfade into the next, repeating our habits over and over again, good ones and bad ones. Can we really change? Can we, really??? Not just pretend? Not just acting the part of the reformed? Can I change my perspective, knock it out of its normal operation, and into one that it needs to be? Or does it have to happen to me, or does it have to happen on its own? Will we ever be more than a mass of breathing, hungry bodies, where only some care about its fellow beings and strives to organize our world into an "equitable" and "sensible" society, while the rest follow their self-serving interests? Will we, as a whole, ever want more than our own personal sense of safety and security, our own basic human needs met? Will we ever as whole care about the bigger picture? At what point are we being "selfish" and at what point are we not respecting our selves and our own personal well-being? Will we ever stop our self destructive habits? Is it hopeless to strive for a dream that will never become real? And there's no escape. We have no choice. Being born is a fact, not an intention. We are forced to live in this world of breathing, growing, consuming hungry bodies, anxious and mostly alone, struggling to make sense of world that can't fully be made sense of, all the while driven with an underlying urge to reproduce ourselves whether it's best for the rest of us or not, in a world where it's taboo to discourage our right to reproduce whether we have the means to support the aftermath or not. A world where what's important is the aggregate of our communal desires, beliefs, fears, and dreams. Is it hopeless to believe in a world where we aren't barely getting by, barely escaping true chaos, despite how hard we try to believe that we are in control, that "everything is okay", that we know what's going to happen tomorrow and next year. WE DONT KNOW. All we can do is do our best, with what we're given, because we don't have a choice. For some, the best is to reach for the bottle. For others it's to reach for the medical kit. Or whatever vice it may be. But no one is truly right, no one is truly wrong. It just is. It's a world of static, peppered with moments that inspire us to believe it all means something.
Sometimes I want to melt out of my body, to not be a body any more, to shrink to the size of a tiny atom, to be only that, free from the thorns and prickles that ensnare us and our fragile, impressionable and manipulatable minds. Or to expand wide as everything, to dissolve into the abyss and become everything and nothing at once. Maybe not forever, just for a while.
Maybe I need to narrow my scope a little. In this entire weird existence I have lived out, the moments I have enjoyed the most is when I forget myself and am fully engrossed in the moment, whatever it is, it takes me out of my cerebral state. I don't have to put order to chaos. Maybe I need to embrace the chaos. It's not the end of the world. Not yet.
Knock it down to loss of inspiration. The sheer excitement of a sound that was inventing itself before my very eyes, that was inspiration. Now it's gone. I have searched all over for it, in the past and the present, and nothing sticks. It's disappointing and depressing. I have taught myself the ability and the skill to make sound, music of my choosing, and now no ideas come. Nothing that hasn't been done before or is worth doing that anyone will care to listen to. It's all about feeling. Feeling is what starts an idea and keeps it going.
Maybe I just don't know what I want. I know what I don't want, and that's a lot. What I want, and what I've always wanted, is some thread woven through dubstep music, something that caught me and led me through that entire odyssey. That thread is gone from dubstep now, but it exists still, in places small and far, in unexpected corners and spaces yet to be defined. It's hard to explain, but it's the mental space it takes me to. Out of this world. This stupid, selfish, anxious and crowded world. Even here I can't escape the feeling. It's unnerving. No I won't come to your stupid event, no I don't care who you're opening for, and no I won't DJ for free. Everything you're hoping for I have already seen. It leads nowhere but back where you started, eventually.
This feeling I felt then was at the root. The bass was essential. The lowest root frequencies. Ones you can't hear, you can only feel. Back then it wasn't about danceability, it was about feeling it. When you're feeling it you nod your head. Before it became all about crowd reaction. When it was meditation on bass weight. True meditation. Communal musical meditation. People came together for that, to share a few drinks or a spliff, to lose themselves on a weekend, to escape the mundane everyday repetitive tasks of our lives, for what? To maintain this collective sense of security, as if we're all not in massive "debt" to our forefathers who didn't have the foresight, and couldn't have had, to plan accordingly for the world getting overpopulated and too big to take care of itself to the standard we've all come to expect. To make money. To take your money and buy something that serves your needs, or your wants. Who wouldn't want to escape that?
I have to believe that this still exists somewhere, this idea in my head that I've experienced in real life, the pinnacle experience, that has come to pass a number of times, but not nearly enough times. Of course not in the same form and shape, but with the same essence. It lives in techno too, in a way. The root thump of four. The consistent, persistent, relentless signifier of constant creation. The march of time. What these bring to the experiencer is a withdrawal from their mind and into the shared space of the moment, the sounds of those around you, the pure vibrations passing through you, penetrating your preconceptions like a knife and showing you true reality. Movement.
In a world where we typically have to work 5 days out of the week to maintain the basic needs of a human lifestyle, this doesn't leave much time to pursue other activities. Free time is paramount and not to be wasted. Wasted on checking your endless e-mail account, updating and upgrading your fucking software, watching the latest episode of whatever the fuck, downloading massive amounts of music that you "NEED TO HEAR", updating your stupid fucking queue of entertainment, staying "up to date" with the news and the stock market, or the endless news feed of your friend's activities who just want you to know what stupid shit they've been up to or what's pissing them off or to ask for your donations to their stupid cause. All distractions. Distractions abound, they are plentiful and they are unquenchable. They are not the true moment. They accomplish nothing. What do we have to show for simply being entertained? Passing the time?
So what if I'm not peaceful all the time, I don't have to be. So what if I don't have something positive or inspiring to say every time I write something. You don't have to do or say anything. What people expect is what they expect, not what it has to be. Disappoint them if you have to. You don't live your life for them, and they don't live their life for you. You live your life for you. Anyone who says otherwise is deluded or pretending or trying to manipulate you. With all this chaos and things to be worried about, there is no "good stopping point". The only way to escape it is to fucking stop. Right now. Stop the world. Stop listening to the demand and desires and needs of everyone else and maybe you'll hear something out of this world. Your tea cup can't be poured with something new if it's already full of old garbage. The only way is to stop, shake it out, brush it off, and open your ears, open your mind. The nice thing about the universe is that it's unstoppable and endless, constantly recreating itself into new forms. No two are the same. There is always novelty to be found, somewhere.
What do we want more than to be listened to, really listened to? And to feel part of something that's going somewhere new? Even if you aren't, really, to feel that you are, and that you're sharing the ride with others. To have something to say, to say it, to be heard, and to know that what you said is taken to heart, that it might inspire someone else, or take them out of their own head, if only for a moment, to somewhere they can't take themselves. Sometimes we have to push each other in the direction we need to go. We can't pull or push ourselves into a place that we aren't, we haven't the momentum or the footing to push or pull from.
It seems hard to escape the world of products, of already filtered ideas, ones pre packaged for consumption, movies vetted by the top execs, conversation building blocks and small talk that are tried and true, or prepared laughter to shrug off discomfort or awkwardness. It's hard to find raw creation. Creations that haven't been filtered according to a tastemaker, a producer, or a test audience, pre-evaluated and confirmed to offer some entertainment value or import to the receiver, and if it doesn't, there must be something wrong with YOU. When raw unfiltered ideas are not prevalent, it's easy to forget that they exist. That every song you hear on the radio is just how good that artist is, that they just busted that out easily, like it wasn't hand picked out of a batch of 20 or so mediocre tracks and then enhanced and remixed and mastered and plastic wrapped for the general public to enjoy. That the masterpieces we see in museums are just that artist's life, and that's just how next level they are and how masterful they are. We don't see the countless failed attempts at art, when they doubted themselves or just weren't in the right mood. All we see these days are the finished products, the best of the best, and we come to believe in a barrier between us and the artist, like they are some alien inhuman saint sent from above to grace the masses with its presence on earth, to impart its gifts of beauty and wonder to us. As if they didn't scrap piece after piece until they finally happened upon something worth sharing. We come to believe that art is easy for some, and if you're not as "gifted" as they are, you shouldn't bother trying. How wrong that is. But we still believe it.
True beauty and art, no matter the form, is the result of persistence, inspiration, time & place, and a little good fortune. Nothing more, nothing less.
If 99% of it ends up as crap, never being used or shared with anyone, at worst, is it still worth the effort for that 1% of transcendent beauty? It's up to the artist to decide. Don't try at all, and you make 0%. Try, roll the dice, the more you keep trying, and the chance rises in the favor of ending up with something exceptional. There are no short cuts. You have to be okay with making crap most of the time. And you'll be pleasantly surprised when it's not. The reason the artist does what they do is not to make exceptional art, but simply because they have something to say, something to show, and each one is a flawed yet uniquely perfect attempt at accomplishing the task. Do so with conviction and feeling, and your results will multiply. Stop fixing everything to make it nice and neat, let ideas disperse and come alive in their own chaotic way. There is no clean and convenient way to be a true artist. Have fun, follow your excitement and bliss, and time will melt away. Catch on to a passing moment and follow it, enjoy the ride. That's the only way. And until you get that through your head, you'll keep treading water. Discipline and ritual.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Saturday, June 8, 2013
On Detachment
"Negative experiences will repeat for as long as they remain useful to you. Well then you have to say what does useful mean? If something pisses you off, then you're getting use out of it because it's creating an emotional reaction. So, if you can learn to have this ballet dance of karma, where experiences move through you without getting stuck to you, and you bless, and release, and forgive, and accept, and love, then more and more, those experiences won't repeat anymore because you're not going to get any value out of them. They won't have a catalytic value for you. So the focus that you hold in your life determines how your reality turns out."
- David Wilcock
- David Wilcock
Monday, June 3, 2013
Jnana Yoga
From The World's Religions, Huston Smith, 1991
"As for life's third limitation, its restricted being, to profitably consider this we have first to ask how the boundary of the self is to be defined. Not, certainly, by the amount of physical space our bodies occupy, the amount of water we displace in the bathtub. It makes more sense to gauge our being by the size of our spirits, the range of reality with which they identify. A man who identifies with his family, finding his joys in theirs, would have that much reality; a woman who could identify with humankind would be that much greater. By this criterion people who could identify with being as a whole would be unlimited. Yet this seems hardly right, for they would still die. The object of their concerns would continue, but they themselves would be gone.
"We need, therefore, to approach this question of being not only spatially, so to speak, but also in terms of time. Our everyday experience provides a wedge for doing so. Strictly speaking, every moment of our lives is a dying; the I of that moment dies, never to be reborn. Yet despite the fact that in this sense my life consists of nothing but funerals, I do not conceive of myself as dying each moment, for I do not equate myself with my individual moments. I endure through them - experiencing them, without being identical with any of them in its singularity. Hinduism carries this notion a step further. It posits an extensive self that lives successive lives in the way a single life lives successive moments.
"A child's heart is broken by misfortunes we consider trivial. It identifies completely with each incident, being unable to see it against the backdrop of a whole, variable lifetime. A lot of living is required before the child can withdraw its self-identification from the individual moment and approach, thereby, adulthood. Compared with children we are mature, but compared with saints we are children. No more capable of seeing our total selves in perspective than a three-year-old who has dropped its ice cream cone, our attention is fixated on our present life span. If we could mature completely we would see that lifespan in a larger setting, one that is, actually, unending.
"This is the basic point in the Hindu estimate of the human condition. We have seen that psychology has accustomed us to the fact that there is more to ourselves than we suspect. Like the eighteenth century European view of the earth, our minds have their own darkest Africas, their unmapped Borneos, their Amazonian basins. Their bulk continues to await exploration. Hinduism sees the mind's hidden continents as stretching to infinity. Infinite in being, infinite in awareness, there is nothing beyond them that remains unknown. Infinite in joy, too, for there is nothing alien to them to mar their beatitude.
"What the realization of our total being is like can no more be described than can a sunset to one born blind; it must be experienced. The biographies of those who have made the discovery provide us with clues, however. These people are wiser; they have more strength and joy. They seem freer, not in the sense that they go around breaking the laws of nature, but in the sense that they seem not to find the natural order confining. They seem serene, even radiant. Natural peacemakers, their love flows outward, alike to all. Contact with them strengthens and purifies.
"All of us dwell on the brink of the infinite ocean of life's creative power. We carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted and cannot be destroyed. But it is hidden deep, which is what makes life a problem. The infinite is down in the darkest, profoundest vault of our being, in the forgotten well-house, the deep cistern. What if we could bring it to light and draw from it unceasingly?
Hinduism sets out four practices (yoga) serving as paths leading to this state, and each individual is best fit to their own combination of them. The first is called jnana yoga.
"Jnana yoga, intended for [those] who have a strong reflective bent, is the path to oneness with the Godhead through knowledge. Such knowledge... has nothing to do with factual information; it is not encyclopedic. It is, rather, an intuitive discernment that transforms, turning the knower eventually into [one's knowledge itself]. Thinking is important for such people. They live in their heads a lot because ideas have for them an almost palpable vitality; they dance and sing for them. And if such thinkers are parodied as philosophers who walk around with their heads in the clouds, it is because they sense Plato's Sun shining above those clouds. Thoughts have consequences for such people; their minds animate their lives. Not many people are convinced by Socrates' claim that 'to know the good is to do it,' but in his own case he may have been reporting a straightforward fact. For people thus given to knowing, Hinduism proposes a series of demonstrations that are designed to convince the thinker that she possesses more than her finite self. The rationale is straightforward. Once the jnana yogi grasps this point, her sense of self will shift to a deeper level.
"...Science tells me that there is nothing in my body that was there seven years ago, and my mind & personality have undergone comparable changes. Yet, throughout their manifold revisions, I have remained in some way the same person, the person who believed now this, now that; who once was young and is now old. What is this something in my makeup, more constant than body or mind, that has endured the changes? Seriously pondered, this question can disentangle one's Self from one's lesser identifications.
"Our word 'personality' comes from the Latin persona, which originally referred to the mask an actor donned as he stepped onto the stage to play his role, the mask (per) through which he sounded (sonare) his part. The mask registered the role, while behind it the actor remained hidden and anonymous, aloof from the emotions he enacted. This, say the Hindus, is perfect; for roles are precisely what our personalities are, the ones into which we have been cast for the moment in this greatest of all 'tragi-comedies', the drama of life itself in which we are simultaneously co-authors and actors. As a good actress gives her best to her part, we too should play ours to the hilt. Where we go wrong is in mistaking our presently assigned part for what we truly are. We fall under the spell of our lines, unable to remember previous roles we have played and blind to the prospect of future ones. The task of the yogi is to correct this false identification. Turning her awareness inward, she must pierce the innumerable layers of her personality until, having cut through them all, she reaches the anonymous, joyfully unconcerned actress who stands beneath.
"Neither agent nor patient, her approach to what happens is, 'I am the Witness.' She watches her unsubstantial history with as much detachment as she lets her hair blow in the wind... even so the yogi watches what transpires in his house of protoplasm... Life's events are simply allowed to proceed. Seated in the dentist's chair, Sybil notes, "Poor Sybil. It will soon be over." But she must play fair and adopt the same posture when fortune visits her and she would like nothing more than to bask in the praise she is receiving [for this too will come to pass].
"Thinking of oneself in the third person does two things simultaneously. It drives a wedge between one's self-identification and one's surface self, and at the same time forces this self-identification to a deeper level until at last, through a knowledge identical with being, one becomes in full what one always was at heart. 'That thou art, other than Whom there is no other seer, hearer, thinker, or agent.'
"The yoga of knowledge [Jnana] is said to be the shortest path to divine realization. It is also the steepest. Requiring as it does a rare combination of rationality and spirituality, it is for a select few."
"As for life's third limitation, its restricted being, to profitably consider this we have first to ask how the boundary of the self is to be defined. Not, certainly, by the amount of physical space our bodies occupy, the amount of water we displace in the bathtub. It makes more sense to gauge our being by the size of our spirits, the range of reality with which they identify. A man who identifies with his family, finding his joys in theirs, would have that much reality; a woman who could identify with humankind would be that much greater. By this criterion people who could identify with being as a whole would be unlimited. Yet this seems hardly right, for they would still die. The object of their concerns would continue, but they themselves would be gone.
"We need, therefore, to approach this question of being not only spatially, so to speak, but also in terms of time. Our everyday experience provides a wedge for doing so. Strictly speaking, every moment of our lives is a dying; the I of that moment dies, never to be reborn. Yet despite the fact that in this sense my life consists of nothing but funerals, I do not conceive of myself as dying each moment, for I do not equate myself with my individual moments. I endure through them - experiencing them, without being identical with any of them in its singularity. Hinduism carries this notion a step further. It posits an extensive self that lives successive lives in the way a single life lives successive moments.
"A child's heart is broken by misfortunes we consider trivial. It identifies completely with each incident, being unable to see it against the backdrop of a whole, variable lifetime. A lot of living is required before the child can withdraw its self-identification from the individual moment and approach, thereby, adulthood. Compared with children we are mature, but compared with saints we are children. No more capable of seeing our total selves in perspective than a three-year-old who has dropped its ice cream cone, our attention is fixated on our present life span. If we could mature completely we would see that lifespan in a larger setting, one that is, actually, unending.
"This is the basic point in the Hindu estimate of the human condition. We have seen that psychology has accustomed us to the fact that there is more to ourselves than we suspect. Like the eighteenth century European view of the earth, our minds have their own darkest Africas, their unmapped Borneos, their Amazonian basins. Their bulk continues to await exploration. Hinduism sees the mind's hidden continents as stretching to infinity. Infinite in being, infinite in awareness, there is nothing beyond them that remains unknown. Infinite in joy, too, for there is nothing alien to them to mar their beatitude.
"What the realization of our total being is like can no more be described than can a sunset to one born blind; it must be experienced. The biographies of those who have made the discovery provide us with clues, however. These people are wiser; they have more strength and joy. They seem freer, not in the sense that they go around breaking the laws of nature, but in the sense that they seem not to find the natural order confining. They seem serene, even radiant. Natural peacemakers, their love flows outward, alike to all. Contact with them strengthens and purifies.
"All of us dwell on the brink of the infinite ocean of life's creative power. We carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted and cannot be destroyed. But it is hidden deep, which is what makes life a problem. The infinite is down in the darkest, profoundest vault of our being, in the forgotten well-house, the deep cistern. What if we could bring it to light and draw from it unceasingly?
Hinduism sets out four practices (yoga) serving as paths leading to this state, and each individual is best fit to their own combination of them. The first is called jnana yoga.
"Jnana yoga, intended for [those] who have a strong reflective bent, is the path to oneness with the Godhead through knowledge. Such knowledge... has nothing to do with factual information; it is not encyclopedic. It is, rather, an intuitive discernment that transforms, turning the knower eventually into [one's knowledge itself]. Thinking is important for such people. They live in their heads a lot because ideas have for them an almost palpable vitality; they dance and sing for them. And if such thinkers are parodied as philosophers who walk around with their heads in the clouds, it is because they sense Plato's Sun shining above those clouds. Thoughts have consequences for such people; their minds animate their lives. Not many people are convinced by Socrates' claim that 'to know the good is to do it,' but in his own case he may have been reporting a straightforward fact. For people thus given to knowing, Hinduism proposes a series of demonstrations that are designed to convince the thinker that she possesses more than her finite self. The rationale is straightforward. Once the jnana yogi grasps this point, her sense of self will shift to a deeper level.
"...Science tells me that there is nothing in my body that was there seven years ago, and my mind & personality have undergone comparable changes. Yet, throughout their manifold revisions, I have remained in some way the same person, the person who believed now this, now that; who once was young and is now old. What is this something in my makeup, more constant than body or mind, that has endured the changes? Seriously pondered, this question can disentangle one's Self from one's lesser identifications.
"Our word 'personality' comes from the Latin persona, which originally referred to the mask an actor donned as he stepped onto the stage to play his role, the mask (per) through which he sounded (sonare) his part. The mask registered the role, while behind it the actor remained hidden and anonymous, aloof from the emotions he enacted. This, say the Hindus, is perfect; for roles are precisely what our personalities are, the ones into which we have been cast for the moment in this greatest of all 'tragi-comedies', the drama of life itself in which we are simultaneously co-authors and actors. As a good actress gives her best to her part, we too should play ours to the hilt. Where we go wrong is in mistaking our presently assigned part for what we truly are. We fall under the spell of our lines, unable to remember previous roles we have played and blind to the prospect of future ones. The task of the yogi is to correct this false identification. Turning her awareness inward, she must pierce the innumerable layers of her personality until, having cut through them all, she reaches the anonymous, joyfully unconcerned actress who stands beneath.
"Neither agent nor patient, her approach to what happens is, 'I am the Witness.' She watches her unsubstantial history with as much detachment as she lets her hair blow in the wind... even so the yogi watches what transpires in his house of protoplasm... Life's events are simply allowed to proceed. Seated in the dentist's chair, Sybil notes, "Poor Sybil. It will soon be over." But she must play fair and adopt the same posture when fortune visits her and she would like nothing more than to bask in the praise she is receiving [for this too will come to pass].
"Thinking of oneself in the third person does two things simultaneously. It drives a wedge between one's self-identification and one's surface self, and at the same time forces this self-identification to a deeper level until at last, through a knowledge identical with being, one becomes in full what one always was at heart. 'That thou art, other than Whom there is no other seer, hearer, thinker, or agent.'
"The yoga of knowledge [Jnana] is said to be the shortest path to divine realization. It is also the steepest. Requiring as it does a rare combination of rationality and spirituality, it is for a select few."
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Convergence
From The World's Religions, Huston Smith, 1991
"We hear that East and West are meeting, but it is an understatement. They are being flung at one another, hurled with the force of atoms, the speed of jets, the restlessness of minds impatient to learn the ways of others. When historians look back on our century, they may remember it most, not for space travel or the release of nuclear energy, but as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously.
"The change that this new situation requires of us all - we who have been suddenly catapulted from town and country onto a world stage - is staggering. Twenty-five hundred years ago it took an exceptional man like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make those words our own. We have come to the point in history when anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is only half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be born.
"To borrow an image from Nietzsche, we have all been summoned to become Cosmic Dancers who do not rest heavily on a single spot but lightly turn and leap from one position to another. As World Citizen, the Cosmic Dancer will be an authentic child of its parent culture, while closely related to all. The dancer's roots in family and community will be deep, but in those depths they will strike the water table of a common humanity. For is the dancer not also human? If only she might see what has interested others, might it not interest her as well? It is an exciting prospect. The softening of divisions will induce borrowings that sometimes produce hybrids, but for the most part simply enrich species and sustain their vigor.
"The motives that impel us toward world understanding are varied, [but] ...The final reason for understanding one another is intrinsic - to enjoy the wider angle the vision affords... Without two eyes - binocular vision, there is no awareness of space's third dimension. Until sight converges from more than one angle, the world looks as flat as a postcard. The rewards of having two eyes are practical... But the final reward is the deepened view of the world itself - the panoramas that unroll before us, the vistas that extend from our feet.
"But the greatest gains need no tally. To glimpse what belonging means to the Japanese; to sense with a Burmese grandmother what passes in life and what endures; to understand how Hindus can regard their personalities as masks that overlay the Infinite within; to crack the paradox of a Zen monk who assures you that everything is holy but scrupulously refrains from certain acts - to swing such things into view is to add dimensions to the glance of spirit. It is to have another world to live in. The only thing that is good without qualification is not (as Kant argued) the good will, for a will can mean well in cramped quarters. The only thing that is unqualifiedly good is extended vision, the enlargement of one's understanding of the ultimate nature of things.
-Huston Smith
"We hear that East and West are meeting, but it is an understatement. They are being flung at one another, hurled with the force of atoms, the speed of jets, the restlessness of minds impatient to learn the ways of others. When historians look back on our century, they may remember it most, not for space travel or the release of nuclear energy, but as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously.
"The change that this new situation requires of us all - we who have been suddenly catapulted from town and country onto a world stage - is staggering. Twenty-five hundred years ago it took an exceptional man like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make those words our own. We have come to the point in history when anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is only half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be born.
"To borrow an image from Nietzsche, we have all been summoned to become Cosmic Dancers who do not rest heavily on a single spot but lightly turn and leap from one position to another. As World Citizen, the Cosmic Dancer will be an authentic child of its parent culture, while closely related to all. The dancer's roots in family and community will be deep, but in those depths they will strike the water table of a common humanity. For is the dancer not also human? If only she might see what has interested others, might it not interest her as well? It is an exciting prospect. The softening of divisions will induce borrowings that sometimes produce hybrids, but for the most part simply enrich species and sustain their vigor.
"The motives that impel us toward world understanding are varied, [but] ...The final reason for understanding one another is intrinsic - to enjoy the wider angle the vision affords... Without two eyes - binocular vision, there is no awareness of space's third dimension. Until sight converges from more than one angle, the world looks as flat as a postcard. The rewards of having two eyes are practical... But the final reward is the deepened view of the world itself - the panoramas that unroll before us, the vistas that extend from our feet.
"But the greatest gains need no tally. To glimpse what belonging means to the Japanese; to sense with a Burmese grandmother what passes in life and what endures; to understand how Hindus can regard their personalities as masks that overlay the Infinite within; to crack the paradox of a Zen monk who assures you that everything is holy but scrupulously refrains from certain acts - to swing such things into view is to add dimensions to the glance of spirit. It is to have another world to live in. The only thing that is good without qualification is not (as Kant argued) the good will, for a will can mean well in cramped quarters. The only thing that is unqualifiedly good is extended vision, the enlargement of one's understanding of the ultimate nature of things.
-Huston Smith
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Everything Cycles
From "Planning Ahead Can Make a Difference in the End" by AARON FREEMAN (via NPR)
"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
"And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
"And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
"And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.
-Aaron Freeman (more here)
"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
"And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
"And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
"And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.
-Aaron Freeman (more here)
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
The Seven Secret Sayings of God
From Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, Alan Watts, 1973
1. Before the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, God said I AM THAT. And it is so.
2. Also, being in eternity which is neither linear nor sequential, where all is nowever, God said, YOU MUST DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE. And it was drawn.
3. But it was no dreary straight line or flat wall, for God then said, HAVE A BALL. And there was a ball, in the image whereof all stars and planets came to be formed.
4. Thereupon God said, THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERYTHING. And there are: the inside and the outside, the dense and the spacious, the right and the wrong, the left and the taken, for, as it is written, One shall be taken, and the other left.
5. And God said, IT MUST BE IN TIME. And thereafter it was, is, and will be, for as it is written again, 'As it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, through all ages of ages. Amen.'
6. And forthwith God said, SPACE IT OUT. Whereupon it came to pass that, beside this and that and now and then, there is also here and there.
7. And God beheld how firm a foundation this was and said unto himself, GET LOST. And there you are.
1. Before the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, God said I AM THAT. And it is so.
2. Also, being in eternity which is neither linear nor sequential, where all is nowever, God said, YOU MUST DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE. And it was drawn.
3. But it was no dreary straight line or flat wall, for God then said, HAVE A BALL. And there was a ball, in the image whereof all stars and planets came to be formed.
4. Thereupon God said, THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERYTHING. And there are: the inside and the outside, the dense and the spacious, the right and the wrong, the left and the taken, for, as it is written, One shall be taken, and the other left.
5. And God said, IT MUST BE IN TIME. And thereafter it was, is, and will be, for as it is written again, 'As it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, through all ages of ages. Amen.'
6. And forthwith God said, SPACE IT OUT. Whereupon it came to pass that, beside this and that and now and then, there is also here and there.
7. And God beheld how firm a foundation this was and said unto himself, GET LOST. And there you are.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Two Years, Two Steps
A knock at the door, and you must answer its call. Ignore it and it knocks again, stronger this time. Compelled, you open the door just a crack and take a peek, the brilliant light immerses all it can. It is our choice how we open the door, but nevertheless we must. Metaphor or not, this is the truth. Gowiththeflow. Think not, act only. This world is built in circles and so are we. Open yourself to it, and it opens to you. After all, it's all you. You are the perceiver and the receiver, the process of observing and absorbing is the nature of existence. We don't have to know everything to be everything; we are bits of conscious and unconscious. Sub-conscious and self-conscious, for better or worse. Open yourself to it, and it opens to you. This is a meditation. Call it a mantra. Call it what you want.
Strangers in a strange land, we find ourselves here. In a world you didn't create or ask for, a product of the wheels of time grinding on with remorseless relent, consistent intent. Catch your breath now, speak while you can, before the big sleep, the bigger dream, and the next rise from our deep slumber, spinning around the wheel, throwing up images against the blank canvas, the dancers playing their parts, spirits clad in veils, donning translucent masks from time to time, step to step. All in balance, all in rhythm, always. Never skipping a beat, churned from the great furnace's heat. Embraced by none, embraced by all, these are the multitudinous and complex, the large and the small, the many and the numbered. Wisdom springs from virtuous action, and this is what we all know how to do best, despite our best efforts to act the part we suppose we're meant to play: calm, cool and collect, but fuck the Oxford comma. In our blip along the line, a hiccup in time, the wise who embrace movement and dance unabashedly show their color and sound, for better or worse, speaking to the Now, from the heart, from the source, the bottomless lake, the underground river that flows, round and about back unto itself, never repeating. When we tap in and draw from it, it is never exhausted, as the water always finds its way back to the source, one way or another, sooner or later. We all have our time in the sun, and our time of sleep. Wake each day in knowledge of this and you will find the bliss we all seek, the truth that it is our freedom to play the cards we are dealt, to play our hand, or draw another card from the mysterious deck. Turn the page and you're there. On razor's edge Brahman sits, ever and always. On the line between existence and re-cycling, we are the survivors. Nothing is wasted, everything is perfectly imperfect, and just exactly on time. Here and now we are arriving, cell by cell, moment by moment, revolution by revolution, spinning and expanding unto infinitum. Each day we rise and arrive, each moment we taste and touch, observing and absorbing Our many creations with our own eyes: this is our Experience.
These days I try to channel the essence of the Student striving in service of the world. Make an offering, advises the Oracle. In this time, offerings are not judged by their content or merit, each is valued equally just as it is, an offering, forged in the kiln of time and effort in pure intention. Actions and creations are offerings in the spirit of service to the world. My offerings are expressions of a time and space made through my own perception, a moment in time, a breath in and a breath out, not lingering for too long in any one spot so as not to lose the rhythm and momentum of creation. Let me worry about the quantity, and let the quality emerge on its own.
And so, from this mindset it is easy to see how we have collectively created the world of ten thousand things, the macrocosm of proliferation everywhere we look, different things to experience, each unique in their own moment of time and space, a flicker in the expanse we inhabit now.
It was two years ago that I left New York City. It's taken me this long to feel I can make some small assertion about what this move has all been about, yet at the same time I am certain I have only begun to realize its meaning, to experience its manifestation. I do know that the longer I am here, the more certain I am that it is the right place to be. Often we don't notice changes because they creep and evolve under the surface, below everyday perception, but in a moment of reflection it couldn't be more apparent. Acting from the heart, we always bring ourselves exactly where we should be, our "home". It is said that home is where the heart is. Just as much so, I say heart is where the home is. Home is not a place, but a feeling. If we can find it, we can live there forever, wherever, whenever. In this way the entire world is our Home, paths to and from unfolding in the moment, guided by the compass of our heart, our gut. "Follow your bliss"...
Over the last year I've spent most of my free time building and developing what I like to call my Temple. It is made of neurons and binary bits, a personalized and highly streamlined physio-musical interface between my Self and the vibrations of sound. Much like the universe, this temple is always a work in progress, with a clear and driven direction. My Temple's goal is to develop one thing: the power to turn ideas into reality. With ever-increasing speed and abundance, the result is a mutual enhancing and arising of more ideas, and more results. The Process itself enhances the clarity of its conception and expression, a symbiosis of metamorphosis and mitosis, with the ultimate, fleeting utopia of equally qualitative and quantitative growth. By releasing our grasp from the results of action, free of judgement and second-guessing, the Creator is bound by nothing, truly free and unhindered by the fruits of one's labors just enough to see an idea through to completion and move on, swiftly escaping the entanglement of the human ego's prickly snares.
This Temple, to me, allows energy to move from Source to mind, mind to fingertips, fingertips to technology, technology to sound, sound to ears, ears to neurons, neurons to Source, and back again. A custom-tailored interface empowering and facilitating the birth of offerings to the world and recycled back into the River, one way or another, for better or worse, for now and for ever.
The tarot card of The Tower tells me that anything built on an unstable foundation is doomed to topple before its potential is fully realized. All towers must fall, as must all universes collapse, but as we know, the one we find as our Home is only one: that in which we find ourselves. I wish to live in a strong and tenacious Tower, so I intend to build my foundation the best way I know how.
Look at any ancient civilization's cities and I do not doubt you will find a Temple at its center, its core, its most cherished, protected, and essential structure. As such, I have spent the past year training my mind, streamlining my workflow, and nurturing the conduit of the human body.
In this way, as I have begun to see the fruits of my labors only in the last month, I have learned to take greater joy in the process of creation itself; not discounting, but far outweighing the joy gleaned from a single fruit, a fruit I formerly may have clung to and sucked dry, in hopes of finding endless bliss in its inherently limited supply.
These days, I try to look at creations as merely offerings; I care not whether they travel any further than the comfortable space of my studio. I see myself planting seeds and pouring into them the time, care and energy needed to blossom into whatever they may become. These batches, when ripe, are dutifully released from the nest to meet their fate, however the world sees fit. I hope the best for them, but am unshaken by the outcome, allowing the sheer excitement of the future seeds' mysterious potential to reach far beyond my own imagination.
Finding bliss in the process, and likewise relying on one's creative power, rather than the creations themselves, the artist finds sustainability. In vain, trying to build a concrete stairway from one's prized, yet static results, one finds only stagnation, as if a lily pad would support one's weight forever. Instead, the Creator flits by tip-toe from one to the next, finding lightness in motion, his swiftness and speed empowered by his ability to cast new steps, temporary Homes, in any and all directions, revealing unexplored pathways to undiscovered realms.
If 2011 was about rebirth, the casting off of my "New York DJ" veil and starting back from the heart; then 2012 was about development, examining notions and conceptions that no longer serve me and laying them to rest, if only for now, emptying my cup of the old so it can be filled with the new, finding out what (and who) really matters, holding them (and her) close, nurturing them, and allowing them space to flourish, forming a strong base to build on. 2013 must be about, as Hexagram 47 says, "being tested in the fire of life, the Universal force that endlessly shapes and alters you until you come to realize who you are in relationship to the rest of the Universe and learn to act accordingly."
Whatever happens next is up to me, to my ability to let go and act with pure intention, to not look back, but firmly forward, regardless of the results. We don't know what's in the Ocean until we dive in head first. This ain't no "wade in and test the water" business. This is pure, unadulterated action, from the Center. With every Inhale, comes an Exhale. Catching momentum and moving in step with the Rhythm, surely and steadily, fearlessly, for better or worse, never skipping a beat, never losing sight of what truly matters: Now, creating our own worlds, every day. Let us Play.
With the beginning in rear-view, the uncertain path ahead with no end in sight, in each time-space moment, WE are steps along the WAY...
Strangers in a strange land, we find ourselves here. In a world you didn't create or ask for, a product of the wheels of time grinding on with remorseless relent, consistent intent. Catch your breath now, speak while you can, before the big sleep, the bigger dream, and the next rise from our deep slumber, spinning around the wheel, throwing up images against the blank canvas, the dancers playing their parts, spirits clad in veils, donning translucent masks from time to time, step to step. All in balance, all in rhythm, always. Never skipping a beat, churned from the great furnace's heat. Embraced by none, embraced by all, these are the multitudinous and complex, the large and the small, the many and the numbered. Wisdom springs from virtuous action, and this is what we all know how to do best, despite our best efforts to act the part we suppose we're meant to play: calm, cool and collect, but fuck the Oxford comma. In our blip along the line, a hiccup in time, the wise who embrace movement and dance unabashedly show their color and sound, for better or worse, speaking to the Now, from the heart, from the source, the bottomless lake, the underground river that flows, round and about back unto itself, never repeating. When we tap in and draw from it, it is never exhausted, as the water always finds its way back to the source, one way or another, sooner or later. We all have our time in the sun, and our time of sleep. Wake each day in knowledge of this and you will find the bliss we all seek, the truth that it is our freedom to play the cards we are dealt, to play our hand, or draw another card from the mysterious deck. Turn the page and you're there. On razor's edge Brahman sits, ever and always. On the line between existence and re-cycling, we are the survivors. Nothing is wasted, everything is perfectly imperfect, and just exactly on time. Here and now we are arriving, cell by cell, moment by moment, revolution by revolution, spinning and expanding unto infinitum. Each day we rise and arrive, each moment we taste and touch, observing and absorbing Our many creations with our own eyes: this is our Experience.
These days I try to channel the essence of the Student striving in service of the world. Make an offering, advises the Oracle. In this time, offerings are not judged by their content or merit, each is valued equally just as it is, an offering, forged in the kiln of time and effort in pure intention. Actions and creations are offerings in the spirit of service to the world. My offerings are expressions of a time and space made through my own perception, a moment in time, a breath in and a breath out, not lingering for too long in any one spot so as not to lose the rhythm and momentum of creation. Let me worry about the quantity, and let the quality emerge on its own.
And so, from this mindset it is easy to see how we have collectively created the world of ten thousand things, the macrocosm of proliferation everywhere we look, different things to experience, each unique in their own moment of time and space, a flicker in the expanse we inhabit now.
It was two years ago that I left New York City. It's taken me this long to feel I can make some small assertion about what this move has all been about, yet at the same time I am certain I have only begun to realize its meaning, to experience its manifestation. I do know that the longer I am here, the more certain I am that it is the right place to be. Often we don't notice changes because they creep and evolve under the surface, below everyday perception, but in a moment of reflection it couldn't be more apparent. Acting from the heart, we always bring ourselves exactly where we should be, our "home". It is said that home is where the heart is. Just as much so, I say heart is where the home is. Home is not a place, but a feeling. If we can find it, we can live there forever, wherever, whenever. In this way the entire world is our Home, paths to and from unfolding in the moment, guided by the compass of our heart, our gut. "Follow your bliss"...
Over the last year I've spent most of my free time building and developing what I like to call my Temple. It is made of neurons and binary bits, a personalized and highly streamlined physio-musical interface between my Self and the vibrations of sound. Much like the universe, this temple is always a work in progress, with a clear and driven direction. My Temple's goal is to develop one thing: the power to turn ideas into reality. With ever-increasing speed and abundance, the result is a mutual enhancing and arising of more ideas, and more results. The Process itself enhances the clarity of its conception and expression, a symbiosis of metamorphosis and mitosis, with the ultimate, fleeting utopia of equally qualitative and quantitative growth. By releasing our grasp from the results of action, free of judgement and second-guessing, the Creator is bound by nothing, truly free and unhindered by the fruits of one's labors just enough to see an idea through to completion and move on, swiftly escaping the entanglement of the human ego's prickly snares.
This Temple, to me, allows energy to move from Source to mind, mind to fingertips, fingertips to technology, technology to sound, sound to ears, ears to neurons, neurons to Source, and back again. A custom-tailored interface empowering and facilitating the birth of offerings to the world and recycled back into the River, one way or another, for better or worse, for now and for ever.
The tarot card of The Tower tells me that anything built on an unstable foundation is doomed to topple before its potential is fully realized. All towers must fall, as must all universes collapse, but as we know, the one we find as our Home is only one: that in which we find ourselves. I wish to live in a strong and tenacious Tower, so I intend to build my foundation the best way I know how.Look at any ancient civilization's cities and I do not doubt you will find a Temple at its center, its core, its most cherished, protected, and essential structure. As such, I have spent the past year training my mind, streamlining my workflow, and nurturing the conduit of the human body.
In this way, as I have begun to see the fruits of my labors only in the last month, I have learned to take greater joy in the process of creation itself; not discounting, but far outweighing the joy gleaned from a single fruit, a fruit I formerly may have clung to and sucked dry, in hopes of finding endless bliss in its inherently limited supply.
These days, I try to look at creations as merely offerings; I care not whether they travel any further than the comfortable space of my studio. I see myself planting seeds and pouring into them the time, care and energy needed to blossom into whatever they may become. These batches, when ripe, are dutifully released from the nest to meet their fate, however the world sees fit. I hope the best for them, but am unshaken by the outcome, allowing the sheer excitement of the future seeds' mysterious potential to reach far beyond my own imagination.
Finding bliss in the process, and likewise relying on one's creative power, rather than the creations themselves, the artist finds sustainability. In vain, trying to build a concrete stairway from one's prized, yet static results, one finds only stagnation, as if a lily pad would support one's weight forever. Instead, the Creator flits by tip-toe from one to the next, finding lightness in motion, his swiftness and speed empowered by his ability to cast new steps, temporary Homes, in any and all directions, revealing unexplored pathways to undiscovered realms.
If 2011 was about rebirth, the casting off of my "New York DJ" veil and starting back from the heart; then 2012 was about development, examining notions and conceptions that no longer serve me and laying them to rest, if only for now, emptying my cup of the old so it can be filled with the new, finding out what (and who) really matters, holding them (and her) close, nurturing them, and allowing them space to flourish, forming a strong base to build on. 2013 must be about, as Hexagram 47 says, "being tested in the fire of life, the Universal force that endlessly shapes and alters you until you come to realize who you are in relationship to the rest of the Universe and learn to act accordingly."
Whatever happens next is up to me, to my ability to let go and act with pure intention, to not look back, but firmly forward, regardless of the results. We don't know what's in the Ocean until we dive in head first. This ain't no "wade in and test the water" business. This is pure, unadulterated action, from the Center. With every Inhale, comes an Exhale. Catching momentum and moving in step with the Rhythm, surely and steadily, fearlessly, for better or worse, never skipping a beat, never losing sight of what truly matters: Now, creating our own worlds, every day. Let us Play.
With the beginning in rear-view, the uncertain path ahead with no end in sight, in each time-space moment, WE are steps along the WAY...
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