~~~~~~~~~~~~Camping Out~~~~~~~~~~~~

   My brother & I had psychic experiences, he the participant & I the observer, at the tail-end of the '60s, particularly during the year 1971; therefore, since the age of 21, I intuited that this world was only a derivitive one, and all of my personnas since, the psychological clothes we wear, were woven of my past spiritual experiences. The essence of all these was an adaptation of Hunter S Thompson's gonzo journalism & acid visions of society. My identity was seperate from my culture, and I tried on many sets of psychic clothing to wear, many lifetimes in one. Middle class suburbean TV Generation: High School to College. LSD Hippie Dropout. Fundamental Christianity reborn on a college campus and exorcised upon being kicked out of a cult. Healthcare Corporate Management Type. Taxi driver. Ski bum. Golf bum. Now? Old guy. you know, someone who has been many things.

   These days I just try to see things as they actually are, but thought is thought, and image only illusion. I guess it doesn't depress me, too much, the seemingly inate violence of this world, because all the clothed that I have worn are now in tatters. Isn't it sad when your favorites wear out? But this world is not all that there is it is, there are other ones, and I trust in the spirit like a little child to clothe me while I am still here. We're all just camping out here you know? One fine day we all will strike tent and head home.

 

 No grand plan here anymore. No flow charts. No Theory of Everything. Not even a 'teaching' like Jiddu Krishnamurti and Ekhart Tolle have each come up with, although, I enjoy meditating upon both of their 'teachings' I deal with all  of the evils and negativity this life dishes out by accepting it, as  duality is necessary to what's going on here. I used to try and blot it out with ideals & meaning & stuff like that, angry at the evils within this world, the darkness of our selves, reflected in society, as most of what I have written were words spit out in anger at the seeming injustice of  it all.
 

   Plato's Cave Metaphor is the great grand-daddy of all spiritual metaphors. DNA and sociological/racial conditioning trap each of us into the roles we play in this Shakespearean Drama we call being human Some get it good. Most not so good. Every twist & turn of  human lifes plots covered as mankind as a whole gets it everyway it can be gotten. Many mirrors in the prism. Many observers to the double-slit experiment, as we're all a bit skewed in our perceptions, to some degree or another.

 

   The Life Within Us All, that supports us and all of this, is Truth, not skewed in any way, and that is why I look at the evils within this world and don't hide from them anymore, or get angry. I just look in wonder. That could be me. What's that guy up to? I'm glad that death is an integral part of this life, not a bad thing, for death is like Life's Alarm Clock. When death comes it lets you know that you were always just camping out here anyway, and now it's time to head home.

 

   But now? While I'm here? I want to see things as they are, and that requires a death of sorts, while still living. No self. No observer. All of  the synchronicity you see in nature when you are not there, timeless, in the moment, clothed in an ever-expanding and ever-new wineskin. The choiceless awareness of the spiritual winds that are ever-moving through our lives. Having the eyes to see is not a constant reality in my life, for it comes, then it goes, always of it's own volition. very personal, but I have no control over it. Sometimes I'm out of the cave basking in the timeless sunlight. Sometimes I'm sitting in the darkness trying to figure out what those dancing and flickering shadows on the electronic cave wall are doing. Sometimes there. Sometimes not. Camping out, being human, doesn't seem to allow for all the comforts of home.

 

   Who knows? Is this personal relationship with our creator real? Or is all this personal stuff just an illusion of mine born of my christian days? It's one thing for sure that the timeless has a hard time establishing itself in time, that is, in human consciousness. The Life is everywhere, but mankind can't seem to bottle it. Abstract it? Yes. But grasp it? Hold onto it? Control it? Organize it so that it is always available through belief and religion? No. Thought, like all the psychological clothing that we wear, can not touch upon Life's reality, for thought is only a substitute, an abstraction, something that is not The Life. The Life? That is only there when we are not. Old wineskins can't hold new wine. What a strange and paradoxical world we live in where we must cease to be for The Life to flow.

 

   The Life touches and sustains all that there is, but where is it's source?

   Are we all just camping out here?

   Is this all just a dream?

 

   Why all the confusion?

   Why all the misery?

   Why all the old wineskins?

  "The ending is the beginning,
    and the begining is the first step,
    and the first step is the only step."
        Jiddu Krishnamurti

   It's a funny world when all the enlightened ones leave it,
   and the beginning,
   The Life,
    walks hand in hand,
   with death.

  

~~~Mystery Religion and Personal Religion~~~

   There isn't any adam and eve ashamed of their nakedness within the mystical feminine, these ladies, pictured above. It's a celebration of all of nature, this life, and there seems to be no personal religion and it's judgements clouding their consciousness, at all. It's like The Spearmint Rhino in Las Vegas, Nevada in the late single digit years of the beginning of  the 2000s, except the equation for bodily pleasure doesn't involve any Ben Franklins, a world we have created here in The Great American Spiritual Desert. In Las Vegas 'the savage heart of the american dream' it's most always an orgy 'controlled by money'. The painting above is a celebration of youth. Either way, it's this kind of personal freedom that personal religions have no desire to allow, as their Gods always seem to be dressed up in holy robes, or a business suit.

   Empires and religions walk hand in hand down the corridors of time as The King or The Caesar have a special audience, the preemminent relationship, with their God, or gods. Heirarchial control rests at the top of every totalitarian pyramid of power, be it held by a king, emperor, priest, or shepherd. Speaking for God and telling everyone what God wants them to do is every psychopaths wet dream. When religion gets personal, personal freedom vanishes. Brave New World. 1984. The former ecumenical christian community, Lamb of God, Incorporated. When you have that kind of power it's like an addictive drug, something you have to use, for when you really get down to it all of any society's behaviors can be controlled.

   Constantine and the cannonization of The Bible. Justinian I and the doctrinational elimination of reincarnation. Christianity lifted from obscurity by a dying Roman Empire and shaped in content by two Roman Caesars. Christianity is an extremely personal religion for it guarantees the salvation of your soul, he self, the little you. No longer do you have to fear death for your consciousness will be delivered into eternity by your own personal savior, Jesus, and through what he did you will be able to live forever, in Heaven, with God, and the other people he saved. That power a personal religion gives to the organization that represents God in this world is the deepest penetration and most controlling hook one person can have over another. Knowing God's Will for you creates two classes of people: those who know, and those who are told. An elite class, the master race spiritually speaking, and the common man who needs their help. Personal religions get really personal in their control of all that is personal, and that's why they're the best political religions ever invented. The Roman Empire and The United States of America, so what's the difference between these two? One sold religion 'over the counter', one 'under the counter' due to 'prohibition', but either way their personal religion was sold, it was toxic. The implosion of  Lamb of God personally illustrates just how personally violent personal leaders of personal religions can get, for it's just what happens when you try to establish, and manipulate, that which is sacred. The genocide of the Native American Peoples and the theft of their continent, the religious crusades and all their veiled conquests, The Final Solution of The 3rd Reich and mass extermination, the psychic slaughtering of all the sheep in Lamb of God, all of these holocausts, are examples of how personal religions go toxic. Doctrines that divide the whole, festering the belief that they are the best, that god is on their side, and they the chosen ones, and that all other non believers have no value whatsoever, such are the toxic mutations personal religion manifests, in mankind's consciousness.

   What in time is released into the timeless? What besides That Which Is can reside in both places? Is time just an illusion? What survives death? Mystery religion say that All Is One and the creator of all, That Which Is, is all around us and dancing within this temporary maya, this violent world, our earth, and all of it's seeming seperateness. Mystery religions tear at the veils of the illusions of thought, beg us leave the confines of Plato's Cave, awake from the dream, open our eyes, and see things as they actually are, timeless. The Life is within all of us, no one besides ourselves holds the key of our being alive, to all,  and to everything. Through the valley of the shadow of death, all this seemingly violent impermanence, space time, where everything comes and goes, is born and dies, has it's beginning, and then? The End. Mystery religion embraces the everchanging dance of maya, trusting the life, it is elways dying, always being reborn anew, in the moment; while personal religion, hangs on to what it's got, the illusion, for dear life.

   Mystery religion is molten, fluid, organic, alive and not fixated, while personal religion is set in doctrine, belief, and all the rigidity that the dead words of set cannons brings to consciousness. I've vacillated between these two religions all my life, from spiritualist hippie, to fundamental christian, and now, some kind of vedantist who really doesn't know a thing, but trusts the life that is within us all, like a little child, thankful for all that I have been given.

   Old wineskins can't hold new wine, and maybe next lifetime, I'll be frolicking in the springtime of our youth with those naked girls, having the freedom to be lost, and dance to the mystery. It sure wasn't in this lifetime, until I walked in the door of The Spearmint Rhino in the winter of 2005, and I was 55 years old.

  Life isn't death's opposite, birth is. Life is something altogether different and the only way to 'discover this' is, to live your life, not try to hold onto it, with thought and belief, for old wineskins can't hold new wine. Life is too expansive, alive, connected, whole, sacred, and one for that to happen. Life can not be held in a rigid vessel, for how could time ever contain, that which is timeless?

  Dead trees don't move with the wind.

  

A Christian's Lament

May 31st 1981

A CHRISTIAN'S LAMENT
A WAY OF SEEING LIFE IN THE LAMB OF GOD COMMUNITY

"For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven; in as much as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life"...

"The body of my son is broken." Ralph Martin, 1977 CCRCC

It seems to me that the preimminant question in Christiandom should be: is it God, or is it man, who is stretching canvas more and more tightly over the Church, in order to provide a secure covering and tent over her? As Christians, it is always our hope that we are following God and God alone: as David centered on God's presence in the Arc of The Covenant. But David did not build. Are we, as David would have, building prematurely?
To have a heart as the heart of God formed in David: broken, open, stretched before God, open to change--would keep us true to God and His ways. David saw things as God saw things. So much of David was in God, and so much of God was in David, that Jesus revealed to us: "I am the root and offspring of David". But David did not build.
Events and history can give us hints and a sense as to whether or not we have lifted our hands to expedite and anchor the movements of God. In the moment only God knows. But these tents and buildings become and remain as empty shells, as we insinuate our hands into God's work. Only God can judge our hearts as we build, forming them into such as David's. For any movement of God, it takes God to answer questions about them: have they crystalized, or are they vital? All I know is that God has entrusted His spirit to live and move and have His being in each Christian's life. He lives in us.
As a Christian, and as a person, it is my hope to communicate a part of my story to you. True and full communication would take something of the movement of the Spirit of God in the context of a personal dialogue: face to face, from the heart--in respect and love. I'm not saying I know the way. I haven't any corner on truth. I do percieve a gap in our ways of seeing, thus this writing. My intent is not to change your ways to my ways; rather, it is to affirm my Christian life, and the lives of my brothers and sisters, that are not joined to The Lamb of God. It is quite a different perspective. Here, then, is my story...

The sun was setting over 'Five Farms' and the evening was beginning to become pleasantly cool and envigorating for me. I've always loved the natural beauty of the old Jennifer Estate. And on this particular Sunday evening the dew on the fields pleasantly began to moisten my feet as I walked. Envigorating! My feet and flip-flops began to pick up, and be covered with, a proliferation of seeds and grasses. Winter to Spring, Death to Life--and alive again!
The beauty only which God could create, interweave, and sustain in this fallen world. Hope of the eternal! The setting sun, the birds of the air, the beauty of the moment: they all beckon me to thank God and enjoy the gift of this beauty and tranquility. And, even more than all these, to thank him for the person he has formed me to be. I wanted to do these things--to continue to rest in the peace within and without, but this was not why I had come to walk...
So many memories--so long ago. It seems that these days have been set aside to consider my past life and experiences in the Lamb of God. But the more I tried to remember, the further away my former life there seemed. How come? I mean, all the physical clues are here. I seem to need to go back and recapture something. Something I left back there when my life with God seemed shattered, and I couldn't find all the pieces...
Why can't I enter into remembering--and wondering why? I've had times when all the joys and sorrows of those days seemed to implode within my heart, and I could feel the texture of my life then. Nevr times this distant. Going back now seems impossible to me. How come? Seems a bit clearer now...I really can't go back. It's impossible. It's just that I'm not the same person I was when I was joined to the Lamb of God. In fact, to a great extent, I wasn't even a person then. And now I am.
Well, Daphne still remembers me anyway. Funny how she even seems to know how to say goodbye, just before you get in the car. At least something, besides the land, has continuity: is personal and somewhat the same. I used to wander and sleep in these fields with Daphne, and my own confusion, four years ago...
Knowing I'll never figure it all out, I sat on an old wall just behind the main house. Sitting down beats trying to tackle the impossible. Yeah, I remember the main house: center of importance and activity. Had some mistique or something. Well, I've been mentally and physically meandering for fifty minutes and nothing of what I thought would occur has come to be. My hour is shot. Just like God and his timing. In my life, I've come to expect such 'waste'.
I so wanted to touch the person I was then. I can remember becoming a Christian and my early days in the faith in South Carolina. Good memories, even treasures, of those brothers and sisters and my beginning with God. Why is there a shroud over my days in the Lamb of God? The days I thought would bring me into full body life and His Coming Kingdom...
Sometimes it seems such a waste to try to be with God. No use, just be--enjoy the moment. As I began to 'focus in', I started to 'get into' the hedges planted behind the main house. They seem to remind me of something else.Hedges, all in rows: rooted and intertwined together. They line up to subdivide and section off the backyard. They bring 'order' to the organic 'chaos' of life. The person who landscaped this area did so according to his own vision, judgement, and abilities. Through this particular pattern of hedges he was to give, to all that would enter his yard, what he saw necessary to himself. The hedges expressed his life and desires--were extended to others--but, constrained them to walk according to his vision.

Ought's, should do's, don't, if--then's. That's what these hedges are! The hedges line up pretty straight--and serve as external modifers, channels for movement. They sure serve a purpose. Trouble is what they do to people.
You see, I can envision the ...hedges subsuming the people that walk too closely to them. So often in an attempt to do the right thing, we try so very hard to do things right. The law brings death. The landscaper may even be unaware, as he begins to trim the hedges...
Headship/Submission/Authority: The garden tools needed to trim the hedges back so that continuity and order is formed by their branches. But not only are ways of doing things modified--people are. The people caught up in the hedges. Is it all just a matter of degree? You know, how far to trim the hedges back--or where to let them grow? Don't all the branches, the people, reach for the sun? Who has the right, or the eyes to see, when to cut off a person's autonomy, decision making, and right to have a direct personal relationship with God? Oh God, these are not just hedges being cut back--but people! They needed a covering. They needed to be clothed. If you see yourself naked and longing to be clothed, don't choose the hedge, There's no mercy in the shears. You'll be stunted.
Looking down into the hedge, I can also envision the roots. Roots of covenant and commitment. From these things, the same pattern continues. Dear God, what are these roots doing here? There's no branch coming up from them. Oh God, these people have been cut off completely! Severed at the root. Does the landscapper know what he has done?
I wonder what would happen if the owner showed up one day and said: "Oaks, not hedges. It's oaks I'm after." Will the landscapper be able to hear? What would he then tell the hedges: those cut and bruised, and those cut off? I sure wouldn't want to be in his shoes, the landscapper's, that is.
 

The cross of Christ Jesus Our Lord is the only instrument God has given to us to cut things at their root. But we've been using hedgeclippers. The cross calls for a loss to be suffered, in order that we may lay hold of the greater gain. The loss of the hedgerows would be a loss to the hands that enjoy trimming them, but God needs oaks.

In fact, I can imagine oaks having a better time of getting along with each other, than hedges. If the owner shows up, the landscappers won't have a chance. We'll all be on equal ground. The cross seems to cut us all at the root. No more will the Gospel be added onto, or subtracted from. No more will people be added onto, or subtracted from.
David was cut at the root and became a full orbed man of God. Many of the hedg...es that have been cut off have not experienced the cross, but have experienced hedgeclippers. They left not because they were not spiritual enough, but because they could not become less of a person than God intended them to be. It takes the cross, not hedgeclippers, to get into interior realities. The most special of these interior realities is to accept yourself--to love yourself. even though an imperfect sinner. That's the key to the Kingdom of God. Those landscappers have ripped some people right apart. Wonder what God thinks about that?
You know, the Lamb of God is the sanest, and most insane, place I've ever been. Living together and sharing God's life within us is wonderful. It cleans me out and makes me whole. In this sense, you are joined to me through Christ: you are my brothers and sisters. All Christians have this birthright, God working His life through us organically.
This is, I believe, your preeminent reality and life. I know, for I've shared my life with some of you and love you dearly. But, to some extent, our lives are shrouded from each others...
It seems as if there is an exoskeletal attachment to the Body of Christ in the Lamb of God. The landscappers who try to expedite and firm up the life within us. Providing submission-authority-covenant-commitment, headship tries to configure that life into a functioning body. Christ, our Head in Heaven, would be more than glad to organically work out His designs in us. Will what is mortal be swallowed up by life?
The reality of the Body of Christ, and the insanity of the 'landscappers', are juxtapositioned together. It's hard to see ehere one ends and the other begins. It takes God to 'run that thin white line'. Not to be able to see, to focus, to make distinction and sense; breeds insanity. People have attitudes towards the Lamb of God because they can't see this. Two distinct realities clash in their hearts, and they can't see. All they see are the dead bodies.

I wonder how God feels about all this?

~~~~~~~~FUNDYS ARE FUNNY~~~~~~~~~

  Fundys are funny~~~because they get things~~~so mixed up~~~for~~~when it comes to reality~~~the description is not the described~~~and~~~the word is not the thing~~~but they think when it comes to~~~The Bible~~~every word is perfect~~~of more value than the creation~~~itself. Now~~~you got to admit~~~that's very very funny!

   Constantine The Great had approximately 300 gospels~~~and who knows how many manuscripts and letters~~~to choose from~~~when he canonized the scriptures~~~all this happening 300 years after Jesus lived~~~and he did this as a roman emperor~~~while making Christianity the state religion. Justinian I~~~another roman emperor~~~tossed out reincarnation~~~500 years after Jesus and 200 years after Constantine~~~during The Council of Constantinople in 538 A.D.~~~making such a belief~~~christian anathema. One Lifetime? Many Lifetimes? One birth? Many births? Reincarnation wouldn't have been an issue~~~500 years after Jesus lived~~~if Christians weren't seeing it as a doctrine that complied with their faith~~~reincarnation being a part of their way of seeing~~~the way life is. Politics~~~is all that's left when spirituality is dead~~~and such control has no part in living the spiritual life. It's all about~~~Doing What You See The Father Doing~~~is it not?

   Right after The Mount of Transfiguration~~~when Jesus lit up and Peter wanted to pitch three tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah~~~and stay there forever~~~this conversation arose~~~"And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" And he answered and said. "Elijah is coming and will restore all things; but I say to you, that Elijah already came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." Then the disciples understood that He had spoken to them about John The Baptist." Matthew 17:10-13. Elisha and Elijah. Jesus and John The Baptist. Is this reincarnation? Well? If Jesus is The Good Shepherd~~~it may take more than one lifetime to save all the wandering members of his flock~~~and furthermore~~~I wouldn't count on roman emperors making the right spiritual decisions~~~when it comes to anything.

   These days~~Jesus has gone whacko political~~~with the likes of James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Bill Bright, Michele Bachmann~~~and too many others~~~both dead and alive~~~to mention~~~all guilty of~~~dressing him up in republican neo-conservative clothing~~~and wasn't this Jesus they're portraying~~~the guy who cleansed the temple and called the priests of his day  whitewashed sepulchres and their house of worship~~~just a den of thieves? Wasn't this Jesus the guy who hung out with whores and thieves? The guy who never owned anything~~~who never even owned a house? Well? Once religion goes political it's dead~~~just another mirage drifting above the arid floor of The Great American Spiritual Desert. Megachurches? Joel Osteen? Now who was it that said~~~You can Tell A Tree By It's Fruit~~~and~~~what you do for the least of these~~~you do for me?
   I'm afraid you'll find no answers here~~~you're going to have to find the answers yourself~~~and it's only God~~~who can show you what is true~~~and~~~what isn't. I remember when I was a novice christian asking about the billions of souls who through no fault of their own never heard the gospel~~~would they also be saved? Those who lived in different times~~~or~~~inaccessible cultures~~~or~~~died too young~~~what about them? Too bad~~~Jesus is the only way~~~leave it up to him~~~was the pat answer. I even wonder if the conservative republican Christians care about the innocents slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan? But damn~~~they sure are hard cases when it comes to abortion~~~no matter what the reason~~~and I wonder? Would they be so schizophrenic about the killing~~~if they saw that reincarnation was true?
   Fundys are funny~~~in the head~~~when they act as if this life~~~is what it's all about. Didn't Jesus say that whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it~~~but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it? How about a little more of that~~~my former~~~fundamental christian brothers and sisters~~~for once all this impermanence we dwell within is over~~~we will all be~~~AS ONE~~~together. Amen.  

~~~~~~The Spiritual Pilgrimage~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~Back From The Dead~~~~~~

Political Wackjobs: ~~~~~~~~~Just Desert~~~~~~~~~: " 'Why are you going there? It's just desert.' This is what the convenience store clerk told my brother~~~when he said~~~we wer..."

Iris Dement~~~~~~Let the Mystery Be