~~~How Do You See This Earth?~~~

Neil Moores................For comparison and in connection with this conversation; historically, one can distinguish four different world-views on reality:
1. Physical realism. Only the physical world exists, so it is observing itself.
2. Solipsism. Only the mind exists, so the physical world is like a dream created by the mind.
3. Dualism. The physical world exists, but is also observed by another higher world beyond it.
4. Virtual realism. The physical world is a construct generated by non-physical quantum processing.

 

 

David Grimm..........I think there is one more world view not mentioned above - pantheism, which is similar to the Vedanta philosophy.

 

 

We live where all that we see is impermanent......

how deep it goes

what it is connected to

the very nature of who we are is when analyzed by thought debatable....

and isn't that kinda funny?

that reality isn't self evident?

because it's the self that distorts reality....

like the double slit experiment?

 

knowing creates illusions

thought is the main ingredient of maya

reality is hidden from the created

 

we go to sleep

we wake up

 

in 1976 i went to sleep

and dreamed life as a fundamental christian

in Lamb of God

in 1978 i got kicked out

and that woke me up

 

from thought stilled by true belief the best drug of all

to uncertainty & anxiety knowing life is on a razor's edge

 

i go to sleep dreaming i'm one thing

then reality wakes me up saying no you're not

 

i've done this a few times

i guess i'm always trying to be comfortable

find an image & live behind it

make things easy

live by habit

sleepwalk

pave reality with the asphalt of thought

 

i came to California to caddie @ Pebble Beach

be in play to visit my mother & brother's family

but by death or life they've all flown the coup

the mother died

and The Old Folk's Home

an empty nest

 

it's time to wake up

again

 

impermanence

change

seeing life most differently

with each passing decade

 

death to life

old wineskins can't hold new wine

manna from heaven lasts only for today

 

we live in the moment

and when we die?

 

that would be the ever-new now

the timeless moment?

 

the awakening.....

from the dream of this lifetime

 

going to sleep

waking up

 

thought

death

 

illusions & maya

truth & reality

 

that's how i see this earth......

that seems to be the game of consciousness

we play here.

 

:)

 

 

~~~~~~~~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. 

~~~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.

  

~~~~~~~~~Flying Dreams~~~~~~~~~

   i've had two~~~flying dreams~~~that i can remember. one was half a lifetime ago when i was 31 years old~~~the other two nights ago. i've named the 1st dream~~~Takeoff~~~and the 2nd~~~Landing, but they might as well have been named~~~Birth and Death. the 1st dream came after escaping from the personal strictures of fundamental christianity~~~and finding my tenuous balance~~~in the spiritual world~~~once again. the dream consisted of finding myself floating above lush green fields scored by rows of trees and streams~~~much like springtime in baltimore county. 1st feelings of apprehension were replaced with a growing trust as i found breath controlled my altitude~~~for as i breathed in i gradually went up~~~and out~~~i gently descended. the dream ended when i landed on my feet near an old stone wall~~~and only slightly turned my ankle. it was a dream of empowerment.
   two nights ago~~~my brother david and i were in a convertible car that was bigger and more powerful than mine~~~and i was driving as dave rode shotgun. something bad was back there and after us and we were on the run~~~as i gunned the car down the pavement that became off road smooth rock~~~and then~~~we were launched into the late afternoon air...
  dave took off and went much higher than me~~~and i found myself wearing an old weightlifters back brace belt that arched my body into a foil shape~~~kinda like the foil shapes of the kites~~~that the guys that ride boards on the ocean with~~~and i was as one of those foil sails that pull them. below us was southwestern desert~~~with rocks and cacti~~~and dave descended as i arched my back and rose higher. he was wearing that gray flannel hat of his and a clint eastwood poncho as he hit shoulder 1st into cacti and a rock shelf~~~and at impact his legs came up so that i saw his tennis shoes. he hit slow enough that i knew he survived~~~and was probably cussin' up a storm'.
   he was 1500 feet or so below me and i knew that i could not get down near him as my foil shape kept me too high aloft~~~and i was being pushed westward by the wind. spotty fog began to cover the ground~~~and i could see the light was fading~~~and the fog thick~~~where i was heading. no way to tell what was below the fog~~~the lay of the land~~~or water. whatever it was~~~i was headed there~~~and then? i woke up.

~~~We're All Just Camping Out~~~

Kinfonet Quote of the Day: You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest.

~~~~~~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.

Will You Pass Through The Sun?

   When I was 21 my bother David told me something his friend Ron McClinton said to him: "If you don't make the same mistake that I made you might pass through the sun.". Years later~~~David realized what Ron's mistake was~~~he attempted to take his self along with him. Pass Through The Sun?  What a spiritual statement! Does this have to do with ending the cycle of reincarnation? Does it have to do with returning to the source of our consciousness~~~the source of all that is? Isn't the sun a one way street~~~with timeless light emitted from it's nuclear fires? Why can't you take your self with you~~~and where does one go if they pass through the sun? THIS IS ONE of the most captivating spiritual statements that I ever heard~~~between two of the most spiritually awake individuals~~~that I've ever known.

It Is~~~The Seeing Of Things As They Actually Are~~~That Changes You

~~~~~~~Like A Rolling Stone~~~~~~~

Jack Shephard RIP 5-23-2010 TV Show Lost

"There Is No Use In Tryin' " Bob Dylan

How Does The Timeless Enter Time?

That's a tough question. Aldous Huxley, pictured above, seems perplexed with such issues doesn't he? His book~~~The Perennial Philosophy~~~kinda deals with the subject. And then there's Stan Groff's book The Cosmic Game and Jiddu Krishnamurti's "process" and conscious dance with "The Other" throughout his lifetime. The timeless seems to come and go like the wind~~~Jesus's old analogy for the spirit. So where does the timeless come from? Does it surround us and support all that we are made of and all that we are? Thought is to blunt and backward an instrument to be aware of the spiritual~~~and thus most of us are blinded. But to those that would say none of this exists and are wrapped up in some materialist Darwinian kinda thing~~~my question is~~~where does this spiritual stuff come from and~~~why oh why~~~does it keep coming back? It must have some basis for it's existence somewhere~~~right? Find out for yourself. It's up to you.

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

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.

Hey Mike This Guy Has A Plan To Beat You

Yeah everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face.

Mike Tyson

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.

All In The Moment

It's All You Got

Truth is a Pathless Land

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot
approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed upon others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those that are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the truth, it cannot be stepped down or organized for you.

The Dissolution of The Order of The Star

Ommen, Holland

August 3, 1929

The Invasion of The Corporate Bodysnatchers

The Poet Charles Bukowski

Joining and allegiance. Power and control. Becoming and reward. Success and recognition. This is the ebb and flow of worldly life as played out within our human organizations. Give this and you'll get that. All within the well worn manufactured paths of production, for it's all about doing, not being. Groups are the temporal ground of this world into which our psychic roots grow. What I do is who I am, this is becomings illusory identity. Maya. Any group you join is fertile ground for thoughts illusions, spawning many a Plato's Cave and untold Shakespearean Tragedies, but society's fires seem to give us comfort and security from the darkness that surrounds us. So we accept the good with the bad, put on our masks, and go to work. We do our jobs. We don't want to die in the night.

So why do we live the corporate life? It's where the money is.

It's survival of the fittest. I got mine so you get yours. Survival is the core mission of every corporate endeavor and the basest of all values. Us or them. Kill or be killed. The impunity with which corporate multinationals have raped indigenous peoples, ethnic groups, individuals, towns, cities, states, the American middle class, third world countries, and even the earth itself over the last few centuries reveals the extent of their values. Values? They don't need no stinking values, for corporate social responsibility is pure fiction. Sure they fund a few charities with golf tournaments and such, but that's just sheep's clothing to hide the teeth of devouring wolves. Advertising's con game. The corporate world is responsible for The Sixth Great Extinction of Species, the one going on now, what they call Global Warming. Do you see them doing anything of significance about what they have done?

So there he is. Some guy in a three piece suit at the airport staring into his laptop, face aglow. He believed what they told him and so divided his world. He's put the blinders on and doesn't look up to see the people around him. Money and function determine his judgements and limit his vision. No one he loves is near. The flashing screen seems to be all that he is. Conditioned by the superficial, he's a hollow man. There just isn't much to him. Day by day, moment by moment, he walks the line. Conforms to the norms. Doesn't rock the boat. Never is free to ask himself the big questions. What a waste, committing psychological suicide for money.

Is it responsibility that drives him? Fear? Greed? Observing ambition is like watching a fat person attack a big plate of juicy spare ribs, all hot off the grill. It's not a pretty thing to watch. The plastic values, plywood dreams, and cardboard personalities are what modern society have produced. Our lives, and all the life around us, is diminished as the world is being destroyed by bureaucrats. No bang, just a whimper.

Bukowski used to look out of his window at his neighbors returning home from work, their faces so twisted by the horror that they looked worse than any ghoulish Halloween mask. Good old Bukowski, there wasn't a corporate bone in his body.