~~~Living In This World of Magical Thinking & Maya~~~

 

   Conflict exists between various desires, not between light and darkness. There can never be struggle between light and darkness for where there is light, darkness is not, where there is truth the false is not. When the self divides itself into the higher and the lower, this very contradiction begets conflict, confusion, and antagonism. To be aware of what is and not escape into fanciful illusion is the beginning of understanding. We should be concerned with what is, the craving for self-expansion, and not try to transform it, for the transformer is still craving, which is the action of the self; the very awareness of what is brings about understanding. To be aware from moment to moment brings its own clarification. The desire for achievement and recognition prevents awakening; the sleeper dreams that he must awaken and struggles in his dream, but it is only a dream. The sleeper cannot awaken through dreams; he must cease sleeping. Thought itself must be aware of creating the structure of the self and its perpetuation. One who is earnest must discover for himself the truth about self-perpetuation.  Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ojai, California | Third Talk in The Oak Grove, 1946

   So the battle between good & evil is an illusion? That all comparisons of one with another have no merit whatsoever? That all desire for the self to expand it's horizons to envelope things as they actually are just an impossible dream? That all the drama thought creates has no meaning? That the fullness of life is there when you are not? What does this imply about our individuality? Our selves? Our personalities? Do they continue on into the next life? Or are they just parts we played in this current lifetime on Earth?

    Is there anything really to lose?

 

   Ramakrishna said he was just the dust on his servant's servant's shoes.

   The ego can't even take credit for the act of  abandonment.

   Robert Adams put it this way: The knower is the last to go.

   Is there nothing you can do?
 

   Or as Sri Ramana Maharshi put it: "I am" alone is; and not "I am so and so", or "I am such and such". When existence is absolute it is right; when it is particularised it is wrong. That is the whole truth.
 

   You just can't dream your way out of a dream.
  "There is no use in trying." Bob Dylan

   Does the ego have any value at all?

    I've lived most of my life in images & illusions & dreams. My childhood. My days as a religious fundamentalist. My time as uncle plaything to my brother's children. It's the...magical thinking...of the individual who believes in...the innocence...of the worlds that thought creates....weaving it's dreamworlds....over a lifetime...that last...like bubbles...only for for awhile.

    Eventually we all wake up. The fact that we do has no dependence upon the individual and his or her capacities, it's just that the dream is not reality, and that reality comes upon us all like the dawn. And when you see that you've been asleep? Dreaming? The creator of your own illusions? You also see everyone else is dreaming their own dreams.

    Why else would a world of maya exist except to dream?
    So creating a place where illusions can exist for awhile?
    But why do we dream?

   Is it that we could stay awake no longer?

   

~~~~~The Observer Is The Observed~~~~~

One image, as the observer, observes dozens of other images around himself and inside himself, and he says, 'I like this image, I'm going to keep it' or 'I don't like that image so I'll get rid of it', but the observer himself has been put together by the various images which have come into being through reaction to various other images. So we come to a point where we can say, 'The observer is also the image, only he has separated himself and observes.' This observer who has come into being through various other images thinks himself permanent and between himself and the images he has created there is a division, a time interval. This creates conflict between himself and the images he believes to be the cause of his troubles. So then he says, "I must get rid of this conflict", but the very desire to get rid of the conflict creates another image.
Awareness of all this, which is real meditation, has revealed that there is a central image put together by all the other images, and the central image, the observer, is the censor, the experiencer, the evaluator, the judge who wants to conquer or subjugate the other images or destroy them altogether. The other images are the result of judgements, opinions and conclusions by the observer, and the observer is the result of all the other images - therefore the observer is the observed. Commentaries On Living II, Chapter 50

Two women came down the path carrying firewood on their heads. One was old and the other quite young, and the burdens they carried looked rather heavy. Each had balanced on her head, protected by a roll of cloth, a long bundle of dried branches tied together with a green vine, and she held it in place with one hand. Their bodies swung freely as they came down the hill with a light, running gait. They had nothing on their feet, though the path was rough. The feet seemed to find their own way, for the women never looked down; they held their heads very straight, their eyes bloodshot and distant. They were very thin, their ribs showing, and the older woman's hair was matted and unwashed. The girl's hair must have been combed and oiled at one time, for there were still some clean, sparkling strands; but she too was exhausted, and there was a weariness about her. Not long ago she must have sung and played with other children but that was all over. Now, collecting wood among these hills was her life, and would be till she died, with a respite now and then with the coming of a child.
Down the path we all went. The small country town was several miles away, and there they would sell their burden for a pittance, only to begin again tomorrow. They were chatting, with long intervals of silence. Suddenly the younger one told her mother she was hungry, and the mother replied that they were born with hunger, lived with hunger, and died with hunger; that was their lot. It was the statement of a fact; in her voice there was no reproach, no anger, no hope. We continued down that stony path. There was no observer listening, pitying, and walking behind them. He was not part of them out of love and pity; he was them. They were not the strangers he had met up the hill, they were of him; his were the hands that held the bundles; and the sweat, the exhaustion the smell, the hunger, were not theirs, to be shared and sorrowed over. Time and space had ceased. There were no thoughts in our heads, too tired to think; and if we did think, it was to sell the wood, eat, rest, and begin again. The feet on the stony path never hurt, nor the sun overhead. There were only two of us going down that accustomed hill, past that well where we drank as usual, and on across the dry bed of a remembered stream.  Commentaries On Living, Chapter 44

The Desire To Be Aware Is The Only Activity Of The Sleeper, The Dreamer........

   Awareness is from moment to moment, it is not the cumulative effect of self-protective memories. Awareness is not determination nor is it the action of will. Awareness is the complete and unconditional surrender to what is, without rationalization, without the division of the observer and the observed. As awareness is non-accumulative, non-residual, it does not build up the self, positively or negatively. Awareness is ever in the present and so, non-identifying and non-repetitive; nor does it create habit.
   Be aware; there is a fundamental difference between being and becoming. To become aware you make effort and effort implies resistance and time, and leads to conflict. If you are aware in the moment there is no effort, no continuance of the self-protective intelligence. You are aware or you are not; the desire to be aware is only the activity of the sleeper, the dreamer. Awareness reveals the problem completely, fully, without denial or acceptance, justification or identification, and it is freedom which quickens understanding. Awareness is a unitary process of the observer and the observed.
   Krishnamurti Ojai, California | 4th Public Talk 1946

   Most of you are faced by some kind of crisis, with regard to money, or people, or love, or death; and when you are caught up in such a crisis you have to choose, to decide. How do you decide? Your decision springs from fear, want, sensation. So you are merely postponing; you are choosing what is convenient, what is pleasant, and therefore you are merely creating another shadow through which you have to pass. Only when you feel the absurdity of your present existence, feel it not just intellectually, but with your whole heart and mind - when you really feel the absurdity of this continual choice - then out of that awareness is born discernment. Then you do not choose: you act. It is easy to give examples, but I shall give none, for they are often confusing.
   So to me, awareness does not result from the struggle to be aware; it comes of its own accord when you are conscious with your whole being, when you realize the futility of choice. At present you choose between two things, two courses of action; you make a choice between this and that; one you understand, the other you do not. With the result of such choice, you hope to fill your life. You act according to your wants, your desires. Naturally, when that desire is fulfilled, action has come to an end. Then, since you are still lonely, you look for another action, another fulfillment. Each one of you is faced with a duality in action, a choice between doing this or that; but when you are aware of the futility of choice, when you are aware with your whole being, without effort, then you will truly discern.
   You can test this only when you are really in a crisis; you cannot test it intellectually, when sitting at your ease and imagining a mental conflict. You can learn its truth only when you are face to face with an insistent demand for choice, when you have to make a decision, when your whole being demands action. If in that moment you realize with your whole being, if in that moment you are aware of the futility of choice, then out of that comes the flower of intuition, the flower of discernment. Action born of that is infinite; then action is life itself. Then there is no division between action and actor; all is continuous. There is no temporary fulfillment which is soon over.
   Krishnamurti Alpino, Italy | 2nd Public Talk, 4th July, 1933

~~~~What's Our Problem?~~~~~~~

 "Relationship is our problem, and not the idea about relationship not at any one particular level but at all the levels of our existence."

 

 

    Jiddu Krishnamurti

~~~~~~~~A Sower Went Out To Sow~~~~~~~~

   There are only two disappointments in this life: the first is when you don't get what you want, and the second is when you do.

   How can I live a life of fulfillment, when the most important thing that exists in all of creation, the creator.....seems....abscent? Looking for life in the things of this world, in their pleasures, always trapped in the realm of beginnings and endings? Sex? Power? Position? Knowledge? Always seeking the timeless in the dreamworld of time? Lost in illusions? Wandering through impermanence? I explored what society, mankind, had to offer. Limited by my conditioning, I had not the eyes to see.

   When you try, and fail, it's like Dylan's lyrics in Love Minus Zero/No Limit: "There's no success like failure and failure's no success at all." Negation, it's the way I navigated through the illusions of this life, on my spiritual pilgrimage, and every path that I took in the end reached a dead end. Failure? Negation? Dead Ends?  What good could spring from such a meandering life?

   Questions. I started asking God questions. Not with my head, full of images, but with my broken heart, and these questions were the seeds that a sower went out to sow. Honest questions born within personal brokeness. Genuine questions, holding out no hope of becoming anything at all. Questions that abandoned all paths, even myself, and most of these questions were a simple one.....why?

   Seeds in fertile ground, watered by the spiritual rains, nurtured by timeless love, the answers to my questions were born in their due season. Never as I expected, always new, of their own accord, and nature. And what fruit was born of all this? Only, trust in the life that sustains me, like a little child, and thankfulness, for all that I have been given.

  It's an impermanent, and violent, dreamworld we live in. All stocked up with maya. Born into it, the darkness of the abstract image. the sterility of thought, we are blind to the timeless. Born into Plato's Cave, we enter a realm where God seems to play Hide and Seek, and we have not the ability to find our way out, or our way home.

  Cosmic Consciousness? Enlightenment? Spiritual Ambition? How can you say you've become somebody when in the end you're not there?  When you see that everything's alive? That you are That? That the knower, the seeker, was always an illusion, and that God was hiding in the place we never expected God to be....inside us all....inside of everything?

  A sower went out to sow, we all ask the same questions and the difference in our answers springs from their source, as the life that asks them, also answers them.

   Thou Art That. 

Frederic Remington, Friends or Foes? (The Scout), 1902--5

~~~Our Symbols Are Ourselves~~~

and you can't Take That with you ..........................

Kinfonet Quote of the Day: To worship another is to worship oneself; the image, the symbol, is a projection of oneself.

~~~~~~Becoming Somebody~~~~~~~

  The Horror~~~The Horror~~~~The Horror. Isn't it a damn shame that when you're young and have all that good energy you have to consider becoming somebody~~~measuring yourself with all the rest~~~psychically wrestling with all comparison and envy~~~anxiety and never knowing~~~exactly where you're headed~~~and where it's all gonna end~~~or~~~as Krishnamurti put it~~~in choice there is no freedom. So we follow the artists and listen to the music of our generation~~~and watch a lot of medias and TV~~~taking in society's cues~~~as to how one should be~~~becoming lost~~~in our own conditioning~~~trying to grow our psychic roots into the truth of what is~~~and longing for a world view~~~that is true and real and fulfilling. Psychological becoming is a bitch~~~it robs you of~~~just being~~~who you are~~~and besides that~~~it really doesn't exist~~~it's an illusion~~~Maya~~~just the measure of  insanity needed to make things seem what they are not~~~and isn't that~~~the nature of this world in which we live? We're all fragile human beings~~~all with a wide range of capacities~~~and if you make it to The Today Show and Willard Scott features your longevity on national TV~~~don't worry~~~he won't ask you if you became somebody~~~he'll just wanna know what it is that you do everyday~~~or~~~what is it that you still like to do. So~~~Be Who You Are~~~don't waste your energy on trying to become something different~~~life is for living~~~not accumulation~~~'cause you can't take anything at all~~with you. There is no such a thing as a comfortable life~~~and there is no psychological security~~~for~~~Impermanence~~~does not allow for such things to exist~~~in this world~~~of ours.

The Spiritual Pilgrimage Blog RIP August 1st 2010

There are many things that happen to us within this violent universe. Things we do to each other. Things we do to ourselves. Within the horribly twisted duality of all the lives that have been led some of us have had a Sophie's Choice to make~~~even responsible for the suffering and death of innocence~~~or someone you loved more than life itself. Sophie had to choose which of her two children would live or die. People driving cars have maimed and killed strangers and loved ones. Fathers have shot and killed their sons, and sons fathers~~~hunting in the woods. Too many military scenarios to mention. Oppenheimer and The Bomb and designers of all types of killing machines. And what do you do with that? Say I didn't? But our brother and sister human beings have been visited with every tragedy imaginable.

How does one put forth an ideal or fundamental belief system as the all encompassing truth? Deal with this messy universe by cleaning it all up with words and thought? Is it that they want to be right and then tell all the others what's right and wrong? No system of thought can embrace the wild duality of things as they exist in this world. There can be no path to truth~~~as Krishnamurti put it Truth is a Pathless Land. Truth is a living thing and only that life that is can embrace us~~~and it~~~all. This is something that thought can not contain. It just Is.

And why do we end up with such tragedy? Such heartache? One thing about this world~~~we pass through it. Have we been somewhere else before? Will death lead us to somewhere different? And where do you find such answers? Not in books~~~although many of the best sellers are such~~~paint by numbers spiritual books.

If there are any questions their answers lie inside of you. Here. In the moment.

One. All is one. Connected. Whole. Alive. Sacred. One.

25 Years Ago Today

Hitler Masturbating

It was 25 years to the day that I walked out of my management position with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware~~~never to be a corporate flunky again. Sure lost allot of money on that decision~~~and I can't say that my life outside of Corporate America is all what I thought it would be~~~but I turned my back and walked out the door. Management Teams~~~ugh~~~Hitler had a management team too and now the whole impact of all the corporate management teams of the world has destroyed the ecological balance of the planet~~~wiping out many human values and species alike~~~that had a place on this earth. Wiping out people's savings and investments and morgages and jobs and now The Gulf of Mexico. I'm glad that I washed my hands of it~~~but really~~~my life had no effect upon this descration of life. Such is the nature of Maya~~~impermanence~~~the illusions of this world.

The Way We Live Is Insane~ & this great TV Show documented it~~THE WIRE - 100 Greatest Quotes (spoilers)

Searching for The American Dream

Is there a Yellow Brick Road that true believers of The American Way can follow? To a Bright and Shining City set high upon a Hill? America? Merica? The Promised land? Or maybe that's just The Repressed Feminine walking hand in hand with All That We Lack? Courage, Brains, and a Heart. Wizard of Oz, or no, America lacks the courage to admit she was founded upon The Genocide of The American Indian and The Enslavement of Other Human Beings. America has brains, as we all know, but it is Thought that is destroying our planet. The Multi-National American Corporation has been granted super individual rights, as those of a human being within our society, and it is at The Doorstep of these Corporate Entities that the rape of indigenous cultures, the extinction of species, and the destruction of the environment lay. America has spawned a managerial class of these Psychopathic Groups of People bent on profit and having no human values whatsoever~~~except the craving for The More. Yeah, Dorthy you're skipping up The Yellow Brick Road, but good luck on finding a Shining City on That Hill. Remember Love Canal? The cigarette executives and their spiel? The S&L fiasco of The 80's? Enron? Coal Mine disasters? All the car company CEO's flying to DC in their separate jets to ask for bailouts? The health care reform Tea Partiers screamin' like Holy Bejesus? The Wall Street Smart Boys makin' bets that Americans would fail? Well? Is there a Moral to This Story? Yeah. America has No Morals. Just a bunch of laws, and Obama would impress me~~~as he cleans up All The Shit That Texas Dumb Fuck left behind~~~instead of shakin' his head at the health care smucks and the investment mechanical monkeys and the crazy assed fundamentalist republicans~~~if he could somehow someway get a Heart into that silly assed American Corporate Strawman. Barack~~~if you're really gonna set things right~~~you're gonna have to require Corporate America to adopt the values of the human beings they serve. Otherwise? There just gonna be more and more messes.

What Is The Essence of Cosmic Consciousness?

Is it when you are choicelessly aware of the consciousness that exists in everything living?

"Mere concentration makes thought narrow, limited and brittle, but concentration comes as a natural thing when there is an awareness of the ways of thought. This awareness does not come from the thinker who chooses and discards, who holds on to and rejects. This awareness is without choice and is both the outer and the inner; it is an interflow between the two, so the division between the outer and the inner comes to an end."

MEDITATIONS 1969, page 11

Jiddu Krishnamurti

My Back Pages

Joan Osborne and Jackson Browne

Open The Doors and See All The People

Log Community Meeting circa 1976

The Other Side of The Red Door

The two little guys in the center of this picture are David Nodar~~~on the left with the beard~~~and Steven B. Clark~~~on the right with the shiny head and glasses~~~they respectively were the overall leaders of The Lamb of God of Timonium, Maryland and The Word of God of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Both were, and I suppose that they still are~~~big believers in something that doesn't exist~~~Spiritual Authority~~~and it was their personal ambition that consumed many a spiritual pilgrim along the way~~~and led to many an untold Shakespearean Tragedy in the lives that their political powers touched. All that they built imploded and collapsed around them~~~although they both probably got out of it all with a pretty big hit from the money machine. So much for being the spiritual men of God they took themselves to be~~~they ended up looking like a couple of bumbling Spiritual Idiots. I wouldn't want to be around when death brings them face to face with reality~~~because it's probably gonna be pretty messy scene~~~but I would like to know the ending to the story that I was once part of as I got kicked out of The Lamb of God in the fall of 1978 when I was labeled a Son of Satan and a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing come to deceive and lead the flock astray during my last prayer meeting~~~and always wondered what the horror of the end of days of LOG was like. Damn~~~I missed The Ending.

The Lamb of God, Inc. 1972-1991 RIP

Saint Joe's Parish Hall

Texas, Maryland

Years later, reflecting on our experiences in The Cult, my friend Michael Miller put it to me this way~~~when you walked through That Door, the red one pictured above~~~it was like entering a different world. What happened to me when I joined LOG and that door figuratively closed behind me? Cutting me off from the outside world? Making that world my only world? LOG became my own personal and spiritual Plato's Cave. It's where I learned the ways of the world, the inadequacies of power, and personally it's as far from The Truth as I ever got in this lifetime. I passed Through The Looking Glass when I joined The Lamb of God Charismatic Christian Community~~~especially when I began to believe that a hundred or so twenty somethings had been singled out in a special way to do a special thing by God Himself~~~over the other six billion people on the planet. I believed that LOG had been anointed and set apart to do a new and special thing and that we knew something that everyone else didn't. We had to be better than all the rest because of this~~~our esoteric relationship with God~~~LOG was the best. Me? I was as crazy as a bat outta hell for even considering thinking such a thing~~~but after about a year or so of imbibing this mantra day after day I was sold on it. I believed. I bought the ticket~~~and took the ride.

Decisions Decisions Decisions

When you get to a fork in the road, take it.

Yogi Berra

This is how he gave directions to his house as he
lived on a looped road & either way got there :)

How Do I Get Where I'm Supposed To Go?

All paths lead to the same place,
so follow the path with heart.