Showing posts with label questioning society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label questioning society. Show all posts

Sunday, April 17, 2016

~~~~~~~Writing Eveyman~~~~~~~




This was my spot
536 Kathryn Street
Santa Fe, New Mexico
where in my 40s
I did most of my writing

my apartment was nicknamed
The Hovel
and on weekdays
surrounding my job
as Bellman at The Radisson
I wrote

on weekends I was Uncle Plaything
to my niece and nephew
sweet days 1993 to 1999
unraveling my consciousness
of things that once were

it is
what it was 

Friday, December 20, 2013

~~~Who Can Lead Us Out Of This Mess We're In?~~~

  
 
   Society is not changed by example. Society may reform itself, it may bring about certain changes through political or economic revolution, but only the religious man can create a fundamental transformation in society; and the religious man is not he who practices starvation as an example to impress society. The religious man is not concerned with society at all, because society is based on acquisitiveness, envy, greed, ambition, fear. That is, mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition. Whereas, the truly religious man is totally outside of society, because he is not ambitious, he has no envy, he is not following any ritual, dogma or belief; and it is only such a man who can fundamentally transform society, not the reformer. The man who sets out to be an example merely breeds conflict, strengthens fear, and brings about various forms of tyranny.
   It is very strange how we worship examples, idols. We don't want that which is pure, true in itself; we want interpreters, examples, masters, gurus, as a medium through which to attain something - which is all sheer nonsense, and is used to exploit people. If each one of us could think clearly from the very beginning, or re-educate ourselves to think clearly, then all these examples, masters, gurus, systems, would be absolutely unnecessary, which they are anyhow.
         
   Madras, India | 2nd Public Talk 15th January 1956

Sunday, November 3, 2013

~~~~~~~~~~~~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.

  

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Fish and Whistle - John Prine

Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Trust Thyself"

Alan Watts: A Conversation with Myself - Part 1

Aldous Huxley interviewed by Mike Wallace (1 of 3)

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

Jack Kerouac Interview by Ben Hecht Part 1 (Part 2 on YouTube)

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Personal Relationships are Seeds of Growth


Over a lifetime there are few relationships that change your life. People come and go and it's usually based on a shared enterprise. You share the same job or hobby or habit and together you seek that which you desire~~~or need. They begin on earth and end on earth~~~for that is where the seed is planted. My brother David and Ron McClinton~~~in the picture above~~~are two people that~~~when I hung out with them at The University of South Carolina in the early '70s~~~changed me forever. It's one thing to postulate a spiritual life through thought~~~and quite another to live it. In those days Ron and David had psychic abilities and powers that in no way were derived from the society I was conditioned and formed by~~~and the medium that helped transport us to the other shore was LSD~~~but it was more than that~~~more than just a drug. The seeds of relationship transported my awareness into another reality. I've met every flavor of religion on this planet and they didn't have the spiritual juice or power~~~just dead words. Living life with Ron and Dave in those days was the seed planted within me that grew over the last 40 years into the spiritual life I now lead~~~and no stories or evidence I could provide would convince the skeptic of the reality of all this. Put it this way~~~the difference between day and night is the difference between a person who has seen a UFO~~~and a person who believes in them. So where have your seeds been planted? The difference between an unconditional relationship and a conditional relationship is the difference between heaven and hell. Get it?