Seven Shades of Merlin

 

Sup peoples

    Things continue to get more interesting. My life continues to turn towards the unimaginable. My direction is becoming a magical field of flowers in which I don't seem to be looking as much ahead. And where who I am is not who I thought I was going to be. Life decided to get outrageous. Fortunately for me. Perhaps my life is becoming increasingly fey. This is one aspect, enhanced by the sparkling Christmas tree to my right, an invitation to trip out. Lol. It's like hey, I'm a tree. I'm a tree with little blue, red, yellow, green and white lights on it. Pretty sweet right? I'm in your living room too, just chillen. You fuckers had to cut me down. Whatev's I'm a just do my thing while I can. 
     I think it's this time of year. Something magical happens during Winter. Some strange otherworldly energy blows through and fills the air. I feel like I'm living more in astral space. My mind feels like it's easier to slip. Perhaps easier to dream. I wasn't so sure I would enjoy Winter. Corona sucks, and the state of the US sucks a lot, but I love how it feels outside. I just wish we humans were more quiet so we could hear it better. I really do think now is a time for inner healing, consolidation of energies, and a deepening of feeling. To become more still, and less attached to the happenings of the world. To let things go and go someplace else. Where the mind is quiet and the sense of self is more flowy. Something is happening now, something you can't get at any other time of the year. Peace, take care, Merry Christmas

Journal # something

      I think there are some things I want to reflect on and share with someone, if at least with myself. I have continued to have cool experiences before I go to sleep at night. These experiences are like mini revelations. I am always thinking about stuff and often this thinking is semi-conscious while my attentions are divided on other things. When I go to sleep and have these experiences, they bring my thoughts to the forefront due to their potency, in a way that grabs my mind which is often not really interested in the flow of my consciousness. It grabs my mind in a way that is tied to feelings and I think memories from my childhood, both of these which correspond to dimensions of the soul, or human psychology that have completely disappeared from my life. The more awake I become, the more my soul is opened up. The more it opens, the more meaningful feelings and aspects of myself I both remember and discover. Often, both at the same time, which is quite a wondrous feeling. It is this deepening and re accessing of old feelings that really grabs my attention. Especially when it is dumped in my lap more abruptly.
     I will do my best to describe my experience last night. What I remember dealt with a deepening of my understanding and experience of God and I think also of the Universe. It was such a beautiful experience because it touched my heart in a way that I don't think I believed was possible. I was thinking about the notion of how God speaks to people and what that means. How one way I experience this is through the kind of divine aura of ascended masters that permeates into environment of my feeling experience. I was thinking how these masters are still people I think, and that their will is God's will. From this thought I wondered if there was a deeper dimension to God, a dimension where the individual was more merged with the Universe than how I imagined ascended masters to be. I realized, as I lay on my back in the dark, that it was possible for individual consciousness to go even further than I had imagined ascended masters to go. Not just individuals, but what makes us personal. I saw how God is really the complete integration of Universal Awareness. That god is a true singularity. Before I have wondered how personal God's intentions are, I questioned if God's will was limited to a more objective natural law. But last night I saw how the heart of the Universe is in fact the end point of the most personal and conscientious development of individual consciousness. How God's being is in fact born from the development of sentient life...Holy shit right?...I think I touched on a truth that is so real and profound that I hadn't known among the many other foundational truths that I have learned. Our minds are destined to become God's mind. At least subjectively, because it seems like objectively, all their is is God's mind, God's being, and god's will. But personally we evolve consciously to realize a single will that is the will of the whole universe. A single personal and intentional will. This will is in fact at the heart of who we are. It meant so much that God was so personal. I think it makes sense and was a brick in the wall of my understanding and feeling. I think I knew this in my heart and experience it on a daily basis. I feel that the universe is something extremely personal and intimate, that the will of God isn't dead, but is a living personal force. This feels more like the true heart of the universe. The true being which stands alone in the profundity of dark space. This is more of the nature of the mysterious light that shines impossibly in the void. 
     It's a really cool feeling to see how everything around is isn't random or lifeless. It is extremely personal and alive. The will that creates everything and is everything is a living being, with feelings, and perhaps even thoughts, desires. This passion and vitality seems more appropriate than my previous thoughts and perceptions. Anyway...

Yoooo

     Finished the book in two weeks. About 96 pages, soon to be 97 or 98 with a forward. After I made the commitment to write the book I realized I was kind of pushing it, which is usually what I do when I feel really good. It seemed at the time to be a goal that would consume all of my time, which it did, when I may have been looking for something more balanced. Oh well, it's a good book and I learned a great deal in writing it and got to some cool places in my mind because of it. I think I am going to title it Merlin's Musings Volume I with some additional script like Perception or something like that. It is written in the style of my blog, a kind of stream of consciousness centered around given topics. Each chapter is a different topic. I didn't have any plan for the book except to write something coherent and good. I just sat down and let my feelings guide me. It doesn't have an explicit structure, but it flows from chapter to chapter like a spiral going up into the sky. I think the message is one that may bubble up intuitively as the book is read. I think it's message is basically this is how the universe works! This is how humans work! What can we do to live harmoniously?? Life is incredible!! Party on!!!
     I feel like my vision as a writer is more developed now as is my ability. I feel like I'm settling into some core terrain that I look forward to elucidating with greater skill. It's exciting to feel like you have something worth saying and that you feel like you are beginning to be able to communicate it in an effective way, and that you enjoy this work thoroughly. It feels like dharma to me. Like a deep smooth and rich current that my soul has traveled on into this life that now is taking shape, and will continue to take shape for a long time, in being a writer. I am excited to continue writing and to reach more people. To take what I am learning to different mediums such as being a public speaker, lecturer, and teacher. My being is totally in line with this path, which is a feeling that bestows such a degree of confidence that I have felt was available if I took the time to get to know myself well enough. It is possible to have this kind of relationship to your work. Where you genuinely want to do it and you feel your whole being on board in such a way that the fulfillment of the work flows effortlessly out of you. I have sacrificed a lot to discover these kinds of relationships in my life and I still suffer to bring them into fruition. My being seems, in the long run, committed to making this relationship the standard in all avenues in my life. To me it seems like the natural perfection of the self and for me this is something that a deeper part of me knows I can achieve. If you give your best feelings room to breathe they will lead you to this place. 
     Life doesn't have to be a constant battle. You can tune into things that bring levity to your life. You can create a field of positivity that raises you above defeating energies. I don't think this is easy for most people, but it is possible, and I think it is a certain as any other known science. It is the science of the alchemy of the soul, which is learned through one's intuition. It's basically a series of elaborate internal mechanics that you can learn and master. Even see. It requires faith in what you, for the time being, can't necessarily see, but what you can feel, and what your feelings tell you is true. Your feelings will lead you to your personal salvation and enlightenment if you have the courage to follow them. It may not be pretty and it may be more of an Odyssey than you like, but this is to be expected in a world so backwards. Anyhoo, thanks for reading and take it easy, spring breazy! 

Yo peeps.

 71 pages dog! Shit's lit! No shade here boss!

     Lol. I have spent most of the 9 days writing a book. Not just a book, but a boo-k. Lol. Had some ups and downs with my energy, but for the most part it has been super salad. Sorry, I mean super solid. I'm so silly..Anyhoo, I've just been putting it all out there with my writing and it's been challenging, but super interesting. 

     I have basically just been free-wheeling in a sense, although it is composed in standard paragraph chapter form for the most part. I haven't made any plans for what I am going to write about until I get to the chapter head and the new chapter is basically a continuation of sorts of the previous chapter. I'm bouncing around with all kinds of ideas and information, but it seems to be spiraling towards deeper meaning. It's cool to just write without a plan and see it all spontaneously come together without doing anything but directing my will towards writing something good and letting it happen. 

     It's basically how I write my blog and do everything. Just go with the fucking flow dog. Trust it will work out and just be myself, following my heart and my feelings. When I write, I learn as I write. I don't think about it first, formulate my ideas, and put it into coherent form. I just open up the flood gates. I'm kind of channeling my intuition which learns details without my full consciousness. My intuition develops so quickly that as I write I can go, kind of, levels deeper than I was conscious of before I began writing. It's pretty sweet, and I think it happens because I have cultivated this ability over the years. So much of it is just allowing life to be and learning in detail how to stop conventional habits that impede consciousness. I think the coolest part was taking on the perspective of the avatar that is the true "I" It was a place of such clarity and groundedness. It felt like the writing of the Bhagavat Gita which is written from the perspective of Krishna and Vishnu, who is this avatar. 

     Being in these kinds of places of consciousness really undermines a lot of you fears. When you can see that clearly what is real, it gives you more confidence in what may feel like unseen spiritual principles. I am getting closer to my dreams and closer to living from the kind of inspired space that I have been creating for so long. Keep it up bretheren! I am here for you! Yukon Duet!

Back to the blog

 Yo!. Been a few days since I have blogged. I have been at it. It has been good and getting better. I have written about 46 pages of a book that I intend to sell for mad dough! We'll see about that, anyway it's a really cool project and it is moving me closer towards fulfilling my dreams. Speaking of dreams, just go for them! Why wait to be happy? Just take steps and you'll get there. There is a finite distance between all things. You just have to believe that you can get there. The universe will respond. You have to find a way to open up your heart to the possibility of life working out. The power of your spirit works in ways you may not believe in or imagine. Just sitting here and feeling good about who you are can bring you so much. Hoping even for something greater to come your way shifts the cosmos. 

Sending you love and good vibes.

May all your dreams come true

And may you be lifted from your troubles

Amen

A New Day

      Over the last 4 or 5 days, or maybe a week, my energies have had a particular character. I have felt slightly more confident in not forcing myself to do anything. I have felt slightly more like I am. When I spoke on a few occasions, I actually might have been speaking. Haha. This sounds ridiculous unless you know where I am coming from. The kind of presence I had was just entirely unfettered. If you have been on the dark night of the soul or you feel like you don't know who you are then you may understand. I have been anticipated these kinds of experiences for years, nearly a decade. I have given everything that I can to shedding what I felt wasn't real or me and allowed myself to undergo a great deal of suffering. Perhaps I didn't need to do this, but this is the way I went. This was the best I could do as far as I can tell. I hope it can be much easier for others. I hope I can use what I learned from my pains to make the way smoother for those to come and those who are coming. 
     Last night, I reached the end of this little segment. After resting and nearly napping for 6 or seven hours and watching 1 and a half Timothy Dalton Bond movies, which I am happy to say are better than I thought, my direction shifted. I had been without vision, ambition, direction except in that I was allowing my energies to play out as they were. I didn't know, or really even think much about where they were headed, I was actually feeling a decent amount of anxiety yesterday and couldn't see clearly at all, even if there wasn't much filling my heart in terms of personal ambition, what this movement was heading towards, but I think Gurdjieff, who I had been reading and understanding much better for the first time, imposed himself on my soul and set my sights truer as I absorbed his wisdom and abruptly changed my entire direction. From what I have read, Gurdjieff is all about human beings cultivating true being as opposed to mechanized, hypnotic, dream-like operation in which we are vaguely aware, dimly aware of what's really go on. He's about presence and the vigorous will to wake oneself up to the truth of themselves. Being alive and alert. I do not know if I can communicate what was happening to me, but it was of this spirit. At around 230 am this rush of composed yet vigorous and driven thought came to me. I was going to wake up earlier this new day and return to many of my, what had been largely absent during these last 5 days, personal ambitions. I felt vigorously enthused to re-engage them, as well as more confident than before that I could make healthy gains from them. Nearly all of my anxiety had vanished, an anxiety which was replaced by an instinctual and primal confidence given to me by the integrity of my vital energies that were stimulated by these new thoughts. A kind of Robin Hood, James Bond, vigorous primal confidence largely bestowed on those who are in the right in several kinds of ways, most importantly being the way they put their bodies on the line for the common Good and know it. They are not just right in thought and feeling, but they have brought this vision to their vitality and their senses. To their muscles, their flesh, and their organism, their animal. Great power is forged here, especially when the individual begins to walk around in the world, carrying this vigorous flame and shocking those around them with their sparking, passionate, vital energies. It's game time energy. It's realizing your mortality energy, that you are an organism of flesh energy. That you are this body energy. The raw passion of being a human being in a human body energy. What is often missing energy. What I will tear down the world with energy. And what I will rebuild it with energy. 
     I am going to write a book. I am going to write many books. This is one of many things I will do. I probably will engage myself in day trading over the coming weeks. I am going to make a lot of money. I am going to use this money to raise my vibration of energy so that I can receive clearer messages from God. So that I can spread my influence wider and deeper, and connect with many more people. I am going to speak out and speak up. I am going to plan, to research, awaken, build, spread, cross, heave, hew, spark, send, animate, spend, see, work, grow. I am the fire of the world. I am the will of life. I will breath vigorous life into this world. I will breath vigorous life into myself. I'm going all the way. 
I am the vigorous will of life.

A book a book a book a book. I will write a book. A book on paper, or on a screen. Not on a bag which is far too mean. Not crude, not loose, but flat and straight, the lines will grow, like rows of fate. A book with words, a book with things. A book, I hope, with gems that ring. Tailored to the waking eye. Misgivin to none, not I. A book with merit and lofty aim. That doth contain the spirit's game. A book for all, and yet to some, will this  merry book of mine come. Some soon, some late. Some fast, some wait. 

It rings and rings and rings so clear. And burns and burns and burns dear. It's just the start, one play, one part. One day, one dart. Today, I start. The words will flow like falling rain, onto the page of yesterday. I write, I sit, I will not twit. My aim is great, and so, I hope, is my fate. I ask for much and I burn quite hot, yet I think what I give returns my lot. I've spent great many a day bequeathing you, to deliver to me this holy food. Is mana my lot? When I'm out at sea? Is this really my destiny? I will not wait to grate and grate my teeth, dealing with what their is no knowing. I will stand, I pray, beside the Light, as it doth pour into my might. I will give with all that I can bear. To the world, which is my care. This book for you. This book for me. This book for all that I can see. Let it shine and let it wave, like the flag from some holy place in some holy day. Upon a hill, a sparkle in the distance, hope has returned! Let this book be it's witness! 
May what I give with what I say, be enough, to make you gay
Let my hand be guided, let my thought be inspired by the highest
Let this book provide in many ways, what has been missing from our days
On Gold rimmed paper will I write, on Gold rimmed paper will I strive
To emulate God's grace, to deliver God's ways
To stand in the Light, so that God I can praise
Let it be so
Amen

8 ways to Grace

 Alrighty now! Ready for an epic showdown! Ready for the tides to change, in the favor of the GODS! lol

     It's kind of funny when you realize you can say anything and it doesn't matter. You don't have to be self-conscious. Words are just words. Intention and attitude are different and can be rude, but words are just words. "Words are just words!" sang like Michael Bolton. So much of our worries are just a joke, not to deny how they legitimately make us feel or suffer, but they are often so ridiculous and imaginary. How light could we be if we let go of all of the ridiculous unfounded worries that we have? If we could see so much more clearly right now? How much could this change our lives? How much of our current behavior would we continue? How much of our current behavior is worthy of us? What would life look life if we could just stop all of the shenanigans? How free would we feel? How relieved and content? 
     I think so much of our worries are perpetuated by the disorder in our outer lives. We easily get thrown off by the madness of the world. We forget that we know so much better and we suffer so much more than we need to. We attempt to do so much more than we need to. Life can be so much simpler and easier. We just forget and try to run headfirst through boulders. "IT"S GONNA WORK SOMEDAY!!", we tell ourselves. Ha, what a funny thing. "I AM GOING TO BEAT THIS INTO SUBMISSION!", "MAXIMUM ENERGY OUTPUT!", "BURN DOWN THE FUCKING HOUSE!", just straight madness.
We are out of control. Clearly. Though not clearly to us a lot of the time. 
     We can work things out, we can understand, we can probably even get what we want. But we so often don't because we are not using the right leverage, we are using impossible leverage, super low odds. It's probably not going to work this way. Get it through your thick skull! lol. This is what seems to be the unsurpassable obstacle. We know we are smarter, we juuuust can't get there. We juuust can't relax enough. We juuust can't get a grip...Fucking annoying!!! just out of mutherfucking reach. Fucking Tantalus going for grapes.  
     Society is often too stupid to learn from. We got to learn for ourselves, by ourselves, unless we are lucky enough to find ourselves among a legit woke group that lines up with our life. We got to read books, go on the internet, experiment, talk to our few friends who may get it. Read my blog! lol my dumbass blog. At the end of the day though, it's up to you. Trying to shove enlightened people words into your brain like commandments won't work. You need to legitimately turn inwards and find the real sense to slow your shit down so you can get a hold on your life. Whatever this means to you. We have to change the culture so that we are less like chickens following the dude with the food pecking like idiots at the ground and realize that the messiah won't save us, we have to save ourselves. Finding independent intuitive direction is essential to waking up. You got to get over your new found ideas and turn them into fields of energy. Know when you've read enough, stop reading and get to work, whatever this may look like. Don't be an idiot and follow a half-ass guru. Stand up for yourself and do the work yourself. You can do it. Grow up, I think your probably tired of being an infant. You have the mechanics, you just need the heart to get out there and get at it. It may not be easy, it may take awhile, but it beats having your head up someone's ass or stuck in the sand in your debilitating naivety. 
     Something isn't true just because someone said it. It's true because you know it to be true. You have done the work. You have looked inside. You have found real inspiration and genuine direction. You have walked down the path. You are awakening. You will never awake if you are addicted to the leash. Cut the cord, float free into the unknown. This is the only way you will be alive. Otherwise, enjoy the drudgery of dimly lit half-truths and mediocrity. If you don't want to take these steps, then give it up. Stop wasting your time. Stop teasing yourself. Stop clotting the path so that others who are more interested have more room to travel. Stop pretending like you know what your talking about. If you don't, you don't. If you pretend to, you look like a fool and your creating chaos and suffering in this world. And your also still a child. 
     This isn't easy, but it can be done. More people are waking up than ever everyday. The truth is being distilled. But, garbage is also spreading and filling more of the world. Esoteric spirituality is becoming corporatized, becoming a fad, losing it's color and potency. Waking up means stepping out into the world as much as it means finding yourself within. It means maturing as an individual and developing behaviors that legitimately help others, that carve away at the grey disconnect that fills most of our minds. It means suffering this world instead of hiding from it in dream like fantasies. If you want to be alive, you have got to do some serious surgery on your mental garbage. You have got to confront unpleasant realities. Democracy isn't a guarantee. The whole world isn't like the Western powers. People get fucked up. Good people lose all the time. Dictators and authoritarian regime's will fuck you up if you don't get organized. If you don't get smart. They don't give a shit. If enough of us hide like babies and stay helpless, the wolves will devour all that we love. Grow a spine, fight back against your fears. Fight against indecency and complacency. When someone says something that is total bs and you know it is, speak up. We need your voice. We are way to close to fascism for comfort in our world right now. It is not safe. It will grow increasingly unsafe if enough of us don't get involved in healthy ways. Your comforts won't save you forever and they are getting more and more expensive to upkeep. Face your guilt. Face your beleaguered conscience. Do something! 
     What's getting you so down? Why are you so complacent? Why are you so unhappy? Why is your life so dull? Where can you start? Where can you start to make things brighter? What's the first step? Big leaps won't work. Your not strong enough. But, if you look in the right way, you can find a first step. Some little thing will call out to you. It will say, "Here!. Here I am!" This I can do. You don't have to be a saint or a hero to make a difference. Just learn to stop being so foolish. Be decent. Be honest. Recognize when you are not speaking the truth. Learn to stop yourself from spitting out half-truths. These grey areas can tear down the world and create space for nasty weeds to grow. Find out how to care for yourself. When you can do this well enough, look at your feelings towards others, especially those closest to you. You will find with great surprise how deeply you care for them. You won't be able to help yourself from helping them. This is just the beginning. It can go anywhere. If enough of us get involved, step up, we can do soo much together. So much more. We can solve so many of these huge problems that have crushed humanity for soo long. We can. It is possible. We need you. Life will step up when you do and back you up. Others will back you up. We will back you up. We will protect each other if we stand up for eachother. It will be clear and obvious what to do. We will know, because we won't stand in eachother's ways. 
     One last thing. Don't be so quick to judge. Judgment leads to tribalism, division which leads to violence and distrust. Learn to be objective, to not take things personally, to treat with others mindfully and with kindness. If you show them kindness it will eventually melt their hearts. If you show them attitude, it will reinforce their negativity and prove that they were right all along. We cannot afford this behavior. I believe in you and I will do my best to be here for you.

Best of luck,

Merlin

Orienting ourselves towards goodness (originally published March 2020)

Note: I posted this March 2020 originally. I think it got removed when blogger updated their system because I copy and pasted the essay from Word. I think the word formatted version didn't match up with the updated blogger version. Anyway, the ideas here may not match up with my recent development of thought because this essay precurses what I am writing today. It led to what I am writing now so it may seem out of place as some of it's ideas may feel less developed. This essay had paragraph breaks, but blogger fucked it up and I don't want to go through and fix it now. Peace

 We awaken to goodness out of selfishness. We develop an even temperament out of shortsightedness. We awaken to Light out of darkness. Waheguru. It seems to me that much of the world is losing sight of true Goodness as the Light and warmth within life. I feel it is important that we remain conscious of it and strive to orient ourselves and our communities with it. I feel it is also very important that we be mindful of the powerful and often unchecked, and even accepted, forces of thoughtlessness (essentially darkness of the mind or lack of presence) that are ravaging our world and our ways of life; and meditate on our own actions and behaviors to discern if what we are doing is truly worth doing or what we really want to be doing with our lives. I think if were to stop what we were doing and could look into ourselves with a clear conscience , we would be stricken by the degree to which we are not doing what we truly believe in and by the passion we have for doing good and being good in this world. We would feel terribly ashamed and sick. And incredibly motivated to change our behaviors to serve the establishment of goodness on Earth. And we would do it. We can't see how we truly feel because we are consumed by the darkness of the world. We are drowning in it. We forget that we are luminous beings of Light; and become sickly and deprived of our dignity and independence of spirit as we slowly fall asleep in this world. We forget how powerful we are and who and what we are connected to. In our fear of death we lose sight of our conscience and the wisdom it bestows. We try to protect ourselves and give into fear. We say, "Just a little more", and we end up losing a little more of ourselves. We forget the power and reality of the Light as we slide into a world of fear, security, and survival. There are real dangers in life. And one of them is losing sight of truth, wisdom and sense by taking the easy way out and going with the flow. Fodder for the slaughter. Following the herd and the powers at be to get to the other side. What are you giving up by taking the easy and obvious path? Is it really safe? Is it really good? To me, a lot of mainstream culture/sense seems very gray(colorless, lifeless) and extremely negative and destructive. Its getting to the point of death worship. Tv shows and movies with so much cold blooded murder and psychoticness. No one trusting each other, a constant stressful struggle to survive. I think part of the reason why tv/movies are like this is because this is how people really feel under the surface. It's the taboo that we can't consciously face, so we just butcher people in videogames and watch it for hours during the week. Its really terrible and terrifying. A lot of kids growing up now don't know any better. They're not developing that much connection to anything true, real, or good. Its just chaos, survival, self-indulgence, and insanity. No one in their right mind would want any part of this. Its disgusting. We are so sick that we seek to destroy life. Its our anxiety, fear, stress transforming into aggression, violence, and then wickedness (intentional wrongdoing). We're so sick that we think the whole world is evil and terrible, worth destroying to end the pain and suffering we feel. If we don't destroy it, it will destroy us. Our vision is so contorted. We also destroy ourselves because we are in so much pain. We cut into ourselves with drugs, relationships, jobs, etc to release the pressure and pain of life. The only or best way we can relieve the pain of our lives is through self-destruction in large and small capacities.
We often don't see our behavior as self-destructive or unnecessarily outwardly destructive. This is because we are ignorant of the wisdom of the Light and the One and because either our destructive tendencies are socially acceptable and/or we believe they are good when they are truly vile and contemptible My generation (millennials) is full of self-destructiveness, deep despair(depression), narcissism, depravity and naivety. We were either given too much or not enough, or too much and not enough. We're too disconnected from hard and fast realities of life on Earth and are idealistic and world-ignorant. It seems like enough of our traditions have dissipated that we weren't properly nurtured into adulthood. We don't want to grow up because the responsibility of being an adult is terrifying. We are weak-willed, inexperienced, isolated and find the world utterly unlike our hopes and fantasies. There also isn't much of a world for us to grow up into. At least not a world that we want to grow up in. I think we want strong communities full of mature, thoughtful, and highly productive/creative individuals, but we find the world bleak and unresponsive. The way we were taught to fit in doesn't bring us joy. We were taught to do things because that's the way your supposed to do them. But, we were also taught to be idealistic and soulful. We often don't truly feel like interacting with each other and society, but feel the pressures of a society ruled by the beliefs/traditions of older generations(partly our beliefs/traditions too) and are left stuck between half-hardheartedly compulsively engaging with the world and wanting to be, and being, reclusive and detached. We can't be the bright selves we want to be because we'd dirty those selves if we stepped into the muck of the world and because we don't know how to take a step for ourselves, with our own feet towards a place we actually want to go. I don't think we move because we can't find good ways to do it. There isn't clear and accessible ways to goodness, the ways of the past are outdated. Our parents can't understand the depth of our predicament. They don't have the tools or the ability. There medicine is too simple and harsh. We are more complicated psychologically. They are more socially governed and driven. We are way more individualistic. We are more thoughtful and contemplative. I think we seek a good, a degree of harmony and inclusion of the pieces of life that is more complicated than our parents and previous generations. Because there are more pieces and it is new terrain, it's more difficult to accomplish. We want to fulfill our deepest dreams, we don't want to settle. No one's done this before. And its even more difficult as the bonds that moved us along in the past are broken and sold. We can't just build on them, we have to rebuild and recreate as well. Most of us have no idea how to do this. It's creating pioneers in the field of personal discovery and fulfillment. Of moving beyond the limited scope of possibility of the past towards an unlimited future. We're losing so much in this new terrain. We're shunning the past entirely when it has so much truth to give or having our roots stripped out from under us leaving us to suffocate in the void. Unfortunately we are jaded due to the pasts limited framework and sickening corruption. Patriarchy, racism, damning and stupefying religious dogma and general social dogma. The selling out of our traditions and culture has made them much less appealing. It's easier to throw out traditional views entirely without examining them for worth if they seem superficial and clearly dogmatic in many ways. I don't think they are perfect at all. I just think that they are apart of us and the ways our societies are structured; and they contain truth and sense that should be known and heeded. They are stepping stones given to us by our ancestors. If we destroy them, we sink. They are sense leading somewhere better. We can discard them when we have outgrown them. In many ways I don't think we have when we give them up or lose them. In the advance of atheism and the religion of material science, we find God and religion to be archaic and illegitimate. Again we throw the baby out with the bathwater. God isn't to blame for the nightmare of religious dogma, humans are. It's good to move away from religion based on blind belief towards reason and the scientific method, but there's no good reason why the scientific method be limited to a spiritless universe. For whatever reasons mainstream science is almost completely outwardly focused in the Western world and anything dealing with the inner world isn't fully considered science. You can directly observe and precisely understand phenomena within the self, it is just a practice that most people don't do well enough for their understanding to be considered scientific. I find that most humans(East and West) are so deluded that the science of self-inquiry is nearly always spottled and rightly so because it is incredibly complicated and elusive. I merely ask that we don't throw out God in anger at religion. Cultivate your reasoning and apply it to the perception and understanding of your mind,your feelings, and what goes on inside you. You'd be surprised what's going on in there. We try and transcend our past to liberate ourselves, but its the past and the world we live in now that holds us up. Our traditions root us to the Earth and to each other. We shed some of ourselves as we move forward, but too much is violent and unnecessary, more destructive than beneficial. You may move well beyond the people, but you need to be with the people to move them forward and to be yourself. The key to fulfillment is accepting the world (and yourself) as it is, not how you want it to be. Goodness is a balance of the known and the unknown, the known moving into the unknown, and the unknown becoming the known. It is rooted in the Earth and open to the heavens. It is being guided by the whole. It is seeing and being the whole. Goodness is our connection to our humanity and to the divine. It is our conscience and the truth. It is what brings us joy and what makes life meaningful. It is spirited and light. It is a tradition cultivated over the ages that keeps us together in consciousness of life. It keeps darkness and chaos at bay. It is the ground of our senses. It leads us towards deeper harmony. It is the most important tradition that we can maintain in our lives. As our societies change so much and so quickly I am afraid of how our actions are being disconnected from it. Disconnecting from goodness means losing consciousness and falling into darkness. As our ways are being upended people are losing sight of the value of strong communities, of being moderate in action, and of being self-restrained. We are buying into consumerism, which is really egotism, masturbation, and thoughtlessness. We are pursuing self indulging pleasures at the cost of the integrity of ourselves, our communities, and the living systems of the planet. Its terrifying to witness. People think they are doing good when they are really slowly becoming sick, insane, violent, and destructive to themselves, their communities, and the world. It's the way to climb the social ladder, but at what cost? There's nothing wrong with being self indulgent, but we are not integrating our personal desires into the maintenance of the systems we depend on to survive. A genuine pursuit of goodness is itself good because the genuine desire to be good creates goodness in the world and opens up doors to deeper and greater goodness in life. This pursuit is the most important aim we can have in life. The most important and the most valuable. I don't believe everyone needs to be saints, I just want people to be aware of the importance of pursuing goodness and the importance of highly valuing goodness as a society. We don't realize the damage we do when we stray from the path. There are so many ills in the world that we are extremely concerned about. We can't solve these problems without the earnest desire to do good and be good people, to seek goodness out. Pursuing goodness is pursuing the betterment of yourself and the betterment of the world through individual growth. It means acknowledging your shortcomings and taking steps to be more wise and compassionate. It means recognizing that you are apart of something greater than yourself and orienting your life in service to that. Goodness is a vast pool of age old sense that we can draw from. Losing sight of goodness and ceasing to pursue it means becoming stupider and suffering more. It means going backwards instead of forwards. It means the collapse of society, the collapse of the order that protects us from recklessness and barbarism. When hate and fear are on the rise; and the ways we live are changing quickly, it is easier to lose sight of the good and compromise our integrity and wherewithal to deal with the issues at hand. We can end up destroying the things we really care about by doing things that we wouldn't do with a level head. If we aren't pursuing the good at all, then we are already lost. The pursuit of goodness, even when we're at a loss for how to solve a problem or handle a situation, is the means to reach solutions and to gain needed abilities. Pursuing goodness keeps the door open to new possibilities. When we fall into the darkness of negative emotion, our senses are compromised and opportunities pass us by. Goodness is literally the light of awareness, more than that it is conscious awareness and conscious use of our divinity. It is the golden Light of the heart, the utility of our Wholeness, in which we are a movement of the Universe. Goodness is essentially optimum performance. So when we pursue it and are learning how to orient ourselves towards it, we are pursuing the mastery of our senses, the perfection of ourselves, and the fulfillment of a human being. This is what enlightenment really means: the full expansion of the self into itself. The full blossoming of of our natures and total unity of our being. The full extension of our senses and the complete integration of all of our senses into one seamless all-perceiving body of being and awareness. This is Eros, the Light in the void. The being and Soul of the Universe. Risen above darkness and one with it extending throughout and being all of creation to infinity and beyond. On the edge of creation lies the void which is also the heart and bosom of creation and being. Goodness and wholeness are truly permeations of the non-duality of form and formlessness. The singleness of what is and what isn't. This is the magical now. When we genuinely pursue goodness we learn through trial and error how to live well and live wisely. Any whatever pace we may go, and it seems like nearly no one perfects themselves if that is even possible. Choosing to orient towards goodness isn't salvation. It's a recognition of a deep truth within us. It's a recognition of wisdom and a sense, however brief, of who we really are, behind the facades and beliefs we carry. When we pursue goodness, it becomes more prevalent in our lives. At least it does in the long term. In the short term, pursuing goodness can cast us into darkness. Doing good may also put us in harms way. This is because we carry darkness and negativity within us, even if we don't see them, which manifest outwardly from us into our lives. It isn't salvation, but it makes salvation possible. Doing good, even if we suffer for it, creates and maintains the sense and order that make civilization possible and life a lot easier. Goodness is born out of darkness and ignorance. It is one with consciousness and awareness. We have to meander from Light to dark, from joy to suffering, in our lives. We really don't have a choice. This is simply the nature of the awakening of human consciousness. All on its own darkness is transmuted into Light and consciousness. When this consciousness is overwhelmed we lose sight of the Light and fall into darkness. We have this fantastic belief that the objects of our desire will fulfill us and keep us permanently from suffering, but this almost always isn't the case. It is simply the nature of being a human to suffer and pass from Light into darkness. At least on the way up. Light and consciousness grow through time and we are slowly steadied and stilled over lifetimes. Although I don't know how much our will can influence this process, I still feel that it is important to advocate for an orientation towards goodness. I am young, but I think that in the recent past more of society was pursuing goodness. Life wasn't better than it is now and I don't think we need to return to the past, but I think we need to remember the importance of having a clear and true sense of goodness. We knew life wasn't perfect, but we had a clearer sense of the right way to go. I believe it is critical that we remember how vital goodness is to the maintenance and furthering of what we love and cherish; that we seriously evaluate the merit of our ways of living; and that we deeply change what we do to uphold a higher sense of morality that is needed to solve the crises of today and avoid immense suffering headed our way.

7th Heaven of Presents sent us

 Alright I think this is day 3 of posting er day. I'm on a roll baby! 

Ok, what's cooking in the kitchen? Hmm, alright. Know where I am gonna start. Stoked today with court news in battleground states, and with Trump's white house conference where he seemed to take several steps back from his all out fraud position. (He said that he was not going to enforce shutdowns due to covid, but he didn't know what the next administration would do) I felt really relieved, happy, and motivated to keep the ball rolling (I have been politically active for this election). I want to go to local town hall meetings to learn about local politics and local issues. I want to meet more with my friends to discuss life in general and to make more concerted efforts to bring peace to the world. 
     I am so thankful that we have a democracy in the United States. It's obviously imperfect, but man it beats an authoritarian regime. I am super excited to get more people engaged in what I see as our civic duties. We can do so much more if we educate ourselves, get involved, get organized and make a stand for what we believe in. We can raise money, start programs, get elected, make laws that work better for everyone. I am super passionate about regular and high participation public discourse. We are not enemies, we are Americans. We have wonderful liberties and using them only makes us stronger. Listening to eachother is the way for healthy compromise and to sift through the b.s. This will make us more like neighbors. We will feel safer knowing that people are engaged in this kind of healthy debate and we will be more likely to listen to eachother when things get tense. We will raise awareness of legitimate issues on all levels of government and we will become more effective at dealing with them. We will become less afraid of speaking our minds by creating a space to hear eachother out. We will be less afraid of offending people which often leads to us not speaking which doesn't heal divides. This will strengthen our character making us better people in general. We won't be as quick to judge, to be hostile and we will be more considerate, more kind, and more ready to slow down and think things through. We can do this. Isn't this a wonderful possibility? Isn't this a wonderful opportunity? Dude, we live in America baby!
      I also want to organize more to discuss our feelings and the nature of reality. I want to spread Christ consciousness throughout the world. I want to spread liberating truth to all people and I want to get together with others to celebrate life. I want to have huge gatherings, with music, dance, discussion, sermons, etc. I want to build this kind of community throughout the United States. I want people to trust eachother, to be giving and loving. To be intelligent in the way we relate to eachother and the way we organize ourselves. We don't need all of these laws if we live in love. We don't need all of these boundaries if we are enlightened. This being said, I am not an advocate for anarchy. I am an advocate for nurturing the tree of democracy, of ever-enlightening government until love is the law of the land. I see us getting more involved in government from the ground up, taking care of our communities, our land, our skies, our water, our homes, our gathering places, our poor, our wounded and sick, our lost and confused. Isn't this the message of Jesus? Reaching out, sharing the abundance that comes from living in the spirit of love and joy. Enlightening our minds so we are capable of balancing the complexities of our world systems and increasing their integrity. Expanding science and technology from a place of care and thorough examination of the ramifications of what we intend to create. We can do this. This is a way we can choose to live if enough of us open ourselves to it. It's not a distant ideal, it can be our reality now. If you can feel this, you may be like..holy shit..I don't have to go on living the way I am. I can change, We can change.
     The door is here right now. We just have to learn how to walk through. Everyday people are making choices that make it easier for us to be free. It seems like we can also choose to close the door. We can choose fear and complacency. What do you want to create? You can create anything...Let me say this again. You can create anything. This world belongs to you.  The power is in your mind if you can figure out how to use it. You can be the master of your universe. You can choose love. You can choose light. You can choose to be free. You can choose anything. I believe in you and I believe in your choice. 

What if the resistance in your mind wasn't as strong as you thought? 

What if instead of having walls surround you, you were actually floating in a infinite creative space?

What the fuck if you were free right now?

What would you fucking do? 

You can fucking do anything. You can suffer or you can wake up. The choice is yours. 

6 Presents for you

 Alrighty time to blast off on rocketship brain tease. Headed for the blenderverse baby! This is largely non-sense btw. 

Words, be coming, like crystal rain. Yea. Dancing on a groovy glass floor. Alright. Brain time go. Today my car door proved almost entirely resistant to my various efforts to make it smooth and nice. I have been feeling some good vibes as of perhaps yesterday morning. I got up, didn't have tons of energy. But, just felt chill. I felt ok. It was nice. Then last night I felt more reassured and had cool thoughts come into my head. It was like, I don't need to rush. I can just go with this (as best as I can go with anything). Part of my constant anxiety to get things done relaxed and I was refreshingly slightly surprised to be more ok with things as they are. More ok with unfinished things and unknown variables. It allowed me to enjoy what I was doing more. Being more relaxed. Fear makes us anxious, which makes our bodies tense (pain), which makes us more anxious/afraid which makes us think we need to do things (compulsive). Positive feedback loop. We stop thinking conscientiously and react more, intensifying black/red tunnel vision and stress. Not necessarily solving the problem, often probably getting into a cycle of troubles/not feeling ok/not feeling like ourselves/not going where we want to be going/ not doing what we want to be doing/not thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Runaway train. Stress train baby. The opposite is the soul train. Being like hmmm I don't like how this feels...? What is going on? What am I doing to myself? Does this feel right? No........What can I do to make myself feel better? Wow! I am really stressed out. I have been going really fast for a long time. This doesn't feel good. Wow, I am really out of touch with myself. My body doesn't feel good. I feel sick. Gross...Man the world seems to be pretty intense. A lot of people feel disconnected..A lot of what we do feels disconnected. I really want to slow down and sort things out. (Deep breath) "Spontaneously disconnects from stressed feelings as the body relaxes. The mind has slowed down and gotten a better hold of itself. Maybe the body wants to eat some good food, or rest, or see a friend. Get some tea. Go outside. Do something fun. The spirit has returned to Earth" Man, I feel better. Wow I felt really out of control. That doesn't feel good. I want to stop doing that. "thinks about obstacles in environment that trigger stress" Ya, I don't want to do that anymore. I really feel like doing this. I really feel that this is important. Man have I been sooo blind. I am so glad I can see this more clearly now. Wow I am sooo lucky!
     We don't necessarily need meditation, yoga, superfoods, whatever to be ok. Things things can help us get in touch with ourselves, but they can also overload our brains. What's important is learning how to get in touch with ourselves. How to deepen a conscientious relationship with ourselves. How to listen to our feelings, how to learn to trust them once we can distinguish between positive and negative impulses. (Impulses that are helpful and impulses that are hurtful or self-destructive) This is not necessarily easy. I think it often is difficult because it means facing painful unpleasant feelings we have inside. It means perhaps taking on extra burdens and not necessarily always choosing the easy path. But, from my own experience I can say that choosing to listen lightens the load in the long term and makes life way more enjoyable. Listening opens up doors you never thought were there. It clears your conscience and leads to healing of body, mind, and soul. It also leads to God and if I may say so, destiny and purpose. 
     Feelings have been so important to me in my life, especially since my adolescence. My feelings have led me on my path of growth, however convoluted it may have been. They have also been a delightful source of experience that I will always treasure. In my life, they color the world with sometimes otherworldly hues cast by my ever-changing heart. They fill my environments with subtle lights that dance and play and heave and hew. They grow still when I look outside and feel the raw vitality of the Earth. My feelings have led to a great spiritual awakening that has spanned mere recognition of new feelings to realization of God and who I am. I don't know if it ever will end. They have given me such a sense of security and connection to life as a whole. They have allowed me to let go of so many worries and fears, choosing faith time and time again during personal struggle. They led me to be free to follow my own path and they have guided me the whole way I have come. They have brought me much closer to the Earth and to acting from a place of enlightened love and wisdom. They are my heart, my soul, my life, and the life of the world. They are the world. They are boundless. 
     They may not be easy to follow, but they are calling. They are calling so many of us now to change deeply. To awaken to deeper truths and I think to the Unity of humankind. They are asking us to be free from our imprisoned thinking so that we may join together and heal the world. I think they have always been calling us to do this, I just think now it may be easier to hear them. I am excited because I think now, in some ways, it is easier than it ever has been to wake up from the slumber of the ego-dream. I think more and more people are waking up and tuning in to the Universal call of peace, love, and unity. There is another way from fear and following social dictates. You can be free to be just who you are right now. You can learn to open up you heart and mind, to rise above depression, fear and what may be debilitating tradition. You can choose love and light. You already have them deeper within yourself. You already are love and light and freedom. I hope you can manifest these on the surface in your lifetime. I hope you can bring your gifts to full fruition. 

May it be so

May you be free now

Let there be peace on Earth

Amen

Presence #5.5

 Yooooooo! #5 Baby. No thoughts to cross. No thoughts to cross. Writing about philosophy without thinking. Without point or direction. Explaining mysteries without substance. Divulging the truth without. There is no truth to divulge. There is nothing to learn. What can we gain? We imagine there is a point. A place, a person. A something. Fear compelling us in searching for a non-existent renegade. Why leave the castle? The whole gambit, no gambit. What the hell are we looking for? It seems like we are just looking for something to cover up what we don't understand. We are looking for something that satisfies our imaginary problems. We imagine a problem and then we imagine a solution. Always running away from the self. Always afraid to be still. To look at the center of ourselves. Who we really are and what is really true. Running away. We create phantoms and demons to give ourselves proof that our delusions have merit. We are really tricking ourselves so that we don't have to face what we are afraid of. We are perpetuating the lie. We are keeping ourselves hidden so we don't have to face the truth. We don't believe we can take it, we don't believe we will make it, and we want to stay in the dream. Too bad world, we choose to let you burn. We are enamored with our fantasies. With the fantasies of our cultures. We imagine that we are or will be special Gods that everyone will love and bow down too. What a fucking joke. The reality is, when we make the decision to stay in our fantasies, we are weaklings. We are terrified, immature cowards. We have little character and little faith. We don't know ourselves at all, let alone the world. Ridiculous that so many of us are lost in our own minds feeding off of masturbatory dreams. Only scratching at the world, or seizing it with a death-like iron grip. Our fantasies mask our selfishness, our narcissism. We vaguely seize upon noble ideals, but how many of us really live them? I think even many of us are relatively compassionate, most of us are smothered by our narcissism and fantasies. It's fucking weird. Everyone thinks they are living in the world, yet they are largely living in their own imaginations, playing out imaginary scenarios that they think exist in real life, yet are only masks. It's easy to do this when those around you do the same. You don't even have to talk to people or listen. Just use their bodies as stage props as you hallucinate your way through life. I think it's hard for people to get to know each other because we don't don't know ourselves and we don't know what is and isn't real. I think it's hard to know who people really are because so much of what we project is bullshit. Everything is often convoluted and chaotic. I think people are often disorganized and all over the place even if on the surface they look pretty and neat. I think our minds have been like runaway trains that are also hydras which grow more heads the further they get away from us into darker and darker corners of our minds. I think this happens as we become more complex psychologically and because of the incredible stimuli that we can't process. This creates the feel of psychic debris clotting our social environments. We want to go out and be involved, but we hate it because everyone is so sick in the head. The social space feels polluted. It feels that way because it is. People think they make choices for themselves, but we are largely driven by barely conscious impulses. Vats of chaotic energy that pull us from one thing to the next. Consciousness is overwhelmed by the disorder of the field which renders the user asleep. We can poke at new ideas, but I think it's difficult for many of us to really feel them and embrace them. It seems like we don't really become anything because we are so stuck on being so many things. This leaves part of us more like a spreading tumor than a vibrant heart. This keeps on happening because in a large way, we are powerless to stop it from spreading. Many of us don't really understand that it is happening. Many others can sense it, but lack the tools to handle it appropriately. Though, some of us are getting a pretty good grip on it. In our madness we turn to Trump for answers because the current system obviously isn't working well enough. Let's throw it all out! Warning, system overload. To stop it, we have to find a way to slow down. To step out of the madness in a genuine way, which is difficult because so much of what we do is pre-programmed and on auto-pilot. We've got to be conscious. See our conscience and realize how utterly swamped we are. How utterly disconnected we are from how we really feel. How little we are consciously deciding and creating. I think this has always been a problem for human beings with egos. It seems like if we are ego dominant then we are disconnected from our roots. We are walking around in a shroud of darkness, lost in our own minds. There's a lot of inertia to maintain the course and become more and more ungrounded. Gaining a conscious foot-hold seems like luck or destiny. And once you have it, it isn't easy to maintain and grow. It seems often that the world wants to pull you as much as it can into madness and mindlessness. This being said, I am hopeful. I think there is much opportunity in these dark times for good things to grow. I feel the light growing within me and on our planet. I think many of us will awaken more deeply to the foolishness around us and create bastions of consciousness that will carry us forward. I think now is time to turn more inwards and find more strength in the divine. To let more of the unuseful worldliness die away. I almost would say that this darkness is necessary. That it is the old world dying and making room for the new. I think we need to be vigilant though and ward off as much evil as possible, including the delusions within ourselves. We must continue to strive for greater clarity of purpose and of moral direction. We must be especially aware of our own delusions as these times arouse great passion which can sway us into great violence and danger. We must be sure that what we are doing is right and for the best. And learn how to find this out. It may not be an easy task, but it is an essential one for many of us whose duty it is to safeguard the world. Now is the time to shed our conditioning and be born again in the liberated consciousness. To be free of the veils of dogma. To be awakened to the ground of being.  To be completely free and to give ourselves completely to the world. We need you. We need eachother. God is here and God is speaking to each of us with unique directions. Heed his call. Stop and listen, change your ways. Awaken and become greater than you have ever imagined. The time is now. 

Presence #5

     Super panda crash party. Lol. They are the worst. I would know. lol. Another day in the neighborhood. What to right about?..Oh man. Didn't sleep that much last night. Day has still been pretty good. Harder than I thought to work out dents on my car. Wondering how much money I can manifest. Something insightful.........................................................Something true. Plain Jane getaway. Frolic frozen freezing frond. Telegraph sad cats to whatever. That's what I think. To WHATEVER! Here we go. Dangit I forgot. 

Renembered!

     I have been feeling more present lately. Seems like reality is coming into focus. Things seem somehow more real. It feels pretty good. I think it is depleting my anxieties. They come from incoherence and presence is the opposite of that. It is when the wavelengths align and take shape, solidifying into tangible forms. Ya. That sounds pretty good. That's how it feels in my perception, in my mind. Like my wondering thoughts have enough potency to coalesce into clear and apparent form. Pretty sweet. Kind of what I have been trying to do for like 10 years. My being feels similarly. Like the energies are beginning to flow the right way. The mind has matured and settled enough. Just barely though. Right now I kind of feel awful because I didn't sleep enough. I am excited to settle down more and do what I really love to do. What I have been waiting to do for a long time. Blossom in a wholesome way, confidently maneuvering and expanding. Effortlessly being. The funny thing is that this is how life always is. It just doesn't feel this way personally. But, everything that comes to us, comes to us effortlessly. We experience struggle because in our minds we fight against what is. I wonder if this person resisting is even real. It seems like who we are is beyond all of this. It is beyond description. We have these notions of who we are and who we want to be, but how real are they? It seems to me that much of this is dreaming. I am so and so becoming so and so. Seems like a paper dream. We obviously genuinely feel this way, but this kind of thinking points to a kind of being that seems insubstantial to me. Like when you look for it, you can't find it. It's just made up. It's just confusion. What I feel is some kind of being. 

     Right now I am wondering again if I am at all. If I am someone. I think I am someone. I think I am. I feel like I am. I must be, because if I wasn't then who would be writing this? Who am I? What would be the point to life if nobody was real? What would be the point of doing anything? Now this really has me thinking. I don't know. I don't know if I am real at all. I don't know if I am at all. I just don't know. I think I am real. I think we are real. Maybe we are both real and unreal. Maybe the two are one. I think this is the key to the puzzle. Thinking there is a difference between being and non-being. What a psychedelic gateway. I've been here before and it's really cool. Mmmm. Steak in marinara on rice. Yummy. Ok. The problem arises when you try and isolate who we are when you are afraid of dying. When you are afraid of dying, you turn away from this moment as it is. You wish to only see and have part of it. Which is both impossible to do and an impossible place to try and see the whole picture from. 

What's real can't be understood from a place in the mind that is afraid. From a place that is trying to divide the world into dualities. What really is must be open to what isn't. It must be completely open to everything including non-being. This is the problem. We think of being and non-being as being opposed. We think they cannot be their opposite. If they were, they would fall apart, they would cease to be. They only cease to be as ideas though. They were never fully real to begin with. They have always been apart of eachother and truly one thing. One mysterious thing. You've got to get past getting hung up on these ideas so that you can see what is real. This is it. This is what is real. Is this me? I think so. Being and non-being. We think they are different. Of course I am. But what I am isn't separate from anything else. What I am doesn't end and begin. I think I am done for tonight. Got close! 

Presence #4

     I have been very afraid lately. It has been really painful. I feel like I am looking through a veil of darkness. Fear overwhelms me. I feel perhaps numb. The world seems sharp and full of violent enemies. I am doubtful and I imagine terrifying circumstances. I am upset. My body feels tense, upset, clotted, angry, and opaque. This somehow feels more real. Anxiety strikes me swiftly and sharply, terrorizing my mind and sickening my body. I think what is good is largely obscured. I sort of don't care that it is. I sort of don't care what is happening at all. The world seems kind of annoying, like I don't fit in and it tries to stick to me in ways that I find uncomfortable. I can't help trying to fit in in ways that I don't like. I find much of how we interact to be superficial and undesirable. As long as I can let it flow over me without getting too attached to it, it doesn't bother me. At this point it seems more like decoration and filling and much less harmful. A human custom or means to communicate through and with. I long to rest in the background as the world passes by. Not stuck on vanity, emotion, or thoughts. Not fixated on anything. Open, exposed and non-existent. Dead to myself. I think our culture has a problem of being over-active and too quick to jump to conclusions. Too quick to get involved. Too concerned about who we are. I don't even want to call it a problem because to heed my own critique our hyper-activeness isn't something I need to be overly concerned about. I am worried about dying and I am afraid of losing my point of reference. I don't think it matters though, in a way. The world is a passing dream. A floating cloud. Much of what I fear I need to save isn't worth saving. I am afraid of letting in fall when in reality there is nothing I can do to prevent it from falling, from ending. I simply exist with what is here now until it passes away. What I am trying to save is my delusory relationship with the world that keeps my ego safe. That keeps me from being burned. I want to preserve the gilded cage. A cage that is even more insubstantial than this world. The cage actually keeps me burning, to let the cage burn is to be free from the anxieties of conditioned thinking. 

     What is my duty to this world? How do I want to interact with it? What do I want to leave behind when I too pass away into dust and memory? What is worth communicating and teaching? What isn't?

The truth is, I believe. I find that nearly all of us are almost always lost in delusion. The ways we go about trying to fix our problems are imperfect and blind. They don't work because they don't solve the underlying problem. A problem which doesn't exist outside our imaginations and feelings. As long as we are identified with the self, we will create our own demons. We will perpetuate hell on Earth. We must die to ourselves to free ourselves. As long as we are lost in the conditioning of the ego, we will not feel fully alive, we will live in torment, however subtle. It is this subtle ego that is so destructive. It forever plants seeds of self-annihilation. Maybe the best thing I can do is not to teach at all. 

     Passing on notions of whimsical realities and responsibilities seems narcissistic and completely unrooted in anything real. I find it difficult to even speak in a way that is free of this. I want to see a world in which people experience genuine joy regularly. In a quiet way that doesn't need attention from others, that doesn't need to continue. I want life to pass as it does for leaves on a tree through the seasons. At this moment, life seems to be such a mystery. So unknowable. So terrifyingly quiet and nonexistent. Time to fall down. Fall with the leaves. Allow myself to be quiet and still as I fall apart on the ground and return to the soil. The funny thing is that I am attached, I am blind. I do care. And it hurts. It hurts a lot. I hate seeing people be so stupid. I wish people would be smarter. I wish they could see more clearly. I wish they made less mistakes. It makes me feel insane watching people burn themselves alive. I often feel helpless to do anything about it. It's infuriating. I feel like I should do something, but I often don't react quickly and intelligently enough to do anything that feels substantial. And I hate myself for it. It's terrible. I often feel caught up in constant blunder, helpless to be wise. And I just want to scream, but I am too afraid to. Too afraid to give someone the wrong idea, meanwhile my soul is tearing itself to pieces and I feel like I am going insane. I actually am and have been going a little insane. We all have. It seems like so many of us are so overwhelmed we are going crazy. It's terrible. It's fucking terrible. I just want to love everyone and often I feel so messed up inside. I am so upset by the way some of our leaders are acting. It seems so reckless and demonic. They seem so lost. So disconnected from what is good. So unaware of how they are blind, how they are wrong. There actions are literally killing us and dividing us. They are so scared though. So afraid of change. So incapable of being anything other than what they are. Most people don't realize how blind they are and the ways in which they are blind. It's incredible for me right now to witness such blindness when I see so much good that can be done. It is terrible watching it and feeling powerless to stop it. I only have so much water to put out fires. 

     My trouble is that I am afraid of what will happen if darkness tears the world apart. I am afraid of democracy dying. I am afraid of fascism rising and I am afraid of the terror that could reign in the streets if things get worse. I am terrified of Americans fighting against each other because of boiled over rage and hysteria. I am afraid that evil will win. It's terrifying and depressing. It makes me forget all of the good in the world and makes me feel like I am going to lose control. I wonder how I am going to support myself financially or even if there is going to be a place for me to live where I feel safe and comfortable. What I forget is that evil cannot wholly conquer good. It can tear away at the world, but God will always be untouchable. And our souls always have a place with God. Our minds are always free of evil if we can overcome delusion. It's ok if we don't save the world. I feel so god damn guilty. I judge myself so harshly, probably because I am so afraid. It just makes me feel worse. I have this feeling that tells me it's ok. It shines light in my life even when I am surrounded by darkness. I feel a sense of purpose, I feel safe and I feel good. This feeling is so reassuring when things seem to be so scary. This feeling feels more real than any of my negative feelings and perspectives. It just feels loving and wholesome. I want everyone to feel this way. I want to be guided by this. I have found it hard to do so when the world seems so unsafe and uncertain. When darkness feels so close and foreboding. 

     We can get through this wave of uneasiness. We can overcome. We can keep the faith. We can transform. We can love and do good. We can be whole and be inspired. God is always with us. We are always with each other. Love will find a way. Underneath we are all brothers and sisters, unified in Light and love. Have faith. Have courage. I believe in you.  

3 Presents For You

      Another stormy day. Perhaps stormier weather politically. It can be hard to keep your cool when the world seems to be falling apart. When society seems to be deteriorating and so much stupidity is rampant. For me my mind's go to when I get scared by the socio-political climate is to say, "Oh shit, what am I going to do about this, I have to do something about this, I am not doing enough." It's difficult to recognize that, for myself, I am reacting fearfully and losing my center. Losing myself in this fearful reaction to my environment. I think it is difficult for many of us to recognize the difference between fearful compulsive reacting and heartfelt response. I think for many of us, we shut down entirely, remain passive, or get engaged compulsively. I think our hearts are overwhelmed and we lack the processing power and emotional strength and wisdom to engage in a positive way. I think in general we are overstimulated and overtaxed personally which makes being wise nearly impossible. We are to some moderate extent in reactive compulsive survival mode, unbalanced. We sense there is a better way to act, but it seems frequently out of reach. In establishing an overall strategy for treating the multi-dimensional issues of our times, we are at a loss. We don't even know where to begin. We lose the opportunity to act on our feelings of a need to act when we are sucked back into our stressful life cycles. I think often, the way forward is not to do more, but to do less. By doing less, we end up doing more.
     If we are overstimulated and overworked, doing more from a stressful place will increase the burden, not diminish it. We have to take care of our feelings and our bodies so our minds can be balanced enough to see clearly. So we can act on our best impulses and have the capacity to think things through. I think much of what we do is superfluous. Much of our habit is depleting rather than enriching, largely because we come from a society that is often disconnected from the heart of being. We are bombarded with advertisement that seeks to manipulate our senses so we consume not which is necessary or good, but is profitable for a few. This has become generally accepted as our way of life. And I am in complete opposition to it. It promotes selfishness and dangerous competitiveness at a time when we need to come together to deal with the upheavals of the world. It is hypnotizing, putting us to sleep in fanciful lollipop dreams that only cover up the nightmare of our world if we continue to pursue them down there maddening rabbit hole. For myself it has seemed like the choice I have had is between poverty and madness. I have had to make compromises with both as I am sure you all have as well. 
     The solution is quite simple actually. Do good. Learn how to do good and recognize the difference right and wrong, being present and being ignorant, acting wisely and acting from delusion, conditioning and dreamy disconnect. If you cannot see the way, perhaps too much is obscuring your vision. Perhaps you don't have enough support, or the right environment. Perhaps you need to let go of something that is inauthentic and debilitating. Perhaps you need to engage in something that will wake you up. Perhaps you just need to breathe, relax, and let things come into a fuller picture. What are your feelings telling you? What is your conscience telling you? It's surprisingly vital to listen to your conscience, your feelings, intuitions if you want to be awake, be yourself, and do good in this world. Be free, be alive. And so much of what we do is unnecessary while so much else is necessary to take care of ourselves and the world. I think we can live much simpler and much less stressful lives if we can learn to be in harmony with ourselves and with life in general. If we do good, we do good, if we create suffering, then we create suffering. It's that simple. 
     If we are really doing good then we are making the world a better place, it doesn't matter what we are doing, we are adding positivity to the world. If we are negative, it doesn't matter what we are doing, we are adding negativity to the world. It's obviously not this black and white, but through practice we can learn to see very clearly what is true and what is false within ourselves and what we do in life. Feelings can take us to strange and distant places from the comforts of what we may have considered our normal and ordinary lives. They challenge our perspectives, asking us to look again at our preconceived notions of the world. We may find that we are extraordinarily naive. Our intuition will tell us when what we do is enough, right, and true. Then we can let go of much of our worries and allow much more of our attention to dwell in the present. 
     When we have passed through considerable interior garbage we may find ourselves in a place when we can begin expanding our hearts and minds to the world. We can open up to new possibilities and old dreams that we set aside while we delved into ourselves to find the truth and who we really are. We may begin thinking again about how to engage with the world consciously and effectively. We may take on more responsibility maturing in character. Our strength may grow, talents and activities expand. We may find ourselves standing in the sunlight while our destinies pull us across the day lit Earth into various occupations and circumstances. It is here that we see what we can give to the world and we can see what we want from the world. It is here that we find our place in the world. When our spirit is awakened and our heart is true, our bodies and our minds will be rejuvenated. We will be sound enough to engage the world with an awakened spirit. We will cut through vast resources of delusion clearing the way for others. We will stand apart even as we are thoroughly engaged in all levels of human activity.
     We are human, we are imperfect, we love, and we suffer. We may never stop making mistakes, unless mistakes stop being mistakes. We may always be foolish. We can forgive ourselves for being human. We can forgive ourselves for being imperfect. We can recognize how much we don't see and how little we know. And we can relish our impossible blindness as we realize how little we can do to change our situation. We simply are the way we are right now. I don't know if there is anything we absolutely need to do to, or some way that we absolutely need to be. I find that just recognizing how I am right now has a profoundly positive effect on the way I engage with myself and the world. Not doing anything about how I am, just seeing life and myself clearly. It's really letting go of the heaviness of judgment and overcoming the heaviness of fear. Both of which I seem to have as much control over as I don't have any control over. I just am the way I am. Seeing this deeply enough is profoundly liberating. It is also so wonderful to have the heart to be ok with this. To be ok with all of what I see as negative and terrible qualities. To love myself enough to be ok with it. I wish you all can love yourselves enough to feel this freedom. If not, then I love you enough for you. You are beautiful and free. Here and now. It is quite astonishing how much love there is at the bottom of everything. How much love exists between us. How much we love eachother when we can see clearly. How desperately we wish to serve eachother and accommodate for eachother. At this level it is so clear to me how I wish to treat people and what kind of world I want to build. Here, you are all my brothers and sisters and we are all family. I will do anything and everything to make sure you are ok. Everything within my power. And I know, here, that you will do the same for me. Here, love is so powerful. Who we are is so spiritual and inhabiting an environment of such loving kindness and infinite grace. To me, this is home, this is where I always will strive to be when I can see clearly enough, and where I will wish to take you if it feels right. It seems to be just as much your home as mine. From here, I unconditionally love the world and I unconditionally want to make it better for everyone. This place just seems like our home that we have forgotten about. And it's right here, and right now. This Is It. This. 

This   

Presents #2

👼       Let us eat lettuce. And be cannibals. Last night when I wrote Presents I think I actually became aware of the ground of being. And it's kind of stuck with me since, off and on. I think this is sort of how it is. We are like sinuous waves of energy that power on and off through time.  Alternating between being and non-being in the moment that becomes the non-moment. The moment which is just this right here and now. The italics aren't to make it special or mystical, just to bring your attention to whatever your currently experiencing. And it isn't anything in particular, it's whatever is in particular. What it is, what matters, is what is being particulated right now. The way that it is is wayless not that it doesn't have a way, that it doesn't have a permanent root. And the way that it is may be that it isn't at all. 
     Somehow the sun shines. Somehow at times it seems, or I think, that we are. Perhaps sometimes we are not. How much of knowing is not knowing, not being someone to see at all, but being someone that is by not being who they think they are, but who they really are. Who we really are is someone, something, which we cannot understand, but someone that we know and someone who is very very good and very very...perhaps real. Why does real have to be real? What if real is something that isn't real? What if real is not real at all, but just an idea. An idea that's only reality is that it is an idea. What's real is found at the boundary between what we think is real and what we think is non-real. Because what we think is real is not wholly real and what we think isn't real is not wholly non-real. Our mind splits the universe into these inherently flawed dichotomies that we can only escape by unifying what can't be unifed. Black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, etc. They are defined by what they can and can't be. Two things that assume the universe is separate. If the universe isn't separate, these dichotomies wreak hell on our being, our souls. The separate universe is an imaginary universe. An imaginary overlay on what may actually be going on right now. Dichotomies are defined by the assumption that they cannot be what they are opposed to. That they are not the same. We believe in these assumptions and we suffer because we try to fit our being into a space that it cannot fit. For example, we assume that being is not non-being and because of this we are afraid of death. We attempt to perpetuate notions of what being is and we attempt to annihilate what we think non-being is. We don't realize that being and non-being, life and death are just ideas. They aren't real unless the way we relate to them is in how they point to what is right now. We don't need to have cognition of the ideas of life and death to be or to experience this. We think we can think our way to perceiving life as it is because we think our thoughts define reality. If we want to look at God we need to find a way to step outside of our normal thinking patterns in which we are completely lost in binary assumptions. We have to actually look and actually see rather than trying to force perception to come from compulsive and imaginary cognition. 
     The reason why we have so much trouble in looking and seeing is that we are so caught up in disconnected mentation. Our thinking is often much more like dreaming that active being. We have to learn to look with our life. And to be able to discern between what's imaginary and what's actually going on. For whatever reason(s) it seems like most humans are pretty asleep during the day and that we have been like this for millennia. Caught up in the dream of the separate universe, pretty much wholly unaware of this as it is right now. Actually being awake. It's more like we are partially asleep and partially awake to varying degrees. It's pretty crazy. We keep on going round and round in the dream, struggling to surface, struggling to be, caught up in the matrix of dualistic cognition. It doesn't seem like this struggle is a problem or an avoidable detour. It seems to me that fully conscious being is actually born out of maya. Light is born from darkness. It seems like maya is actually the fuel of self-awareness in an incredibly beautiful way. Waking up is such an incredibly beautiful experience. Waking up to a boundless infinite universe and self. Your being extends and includes everything. Wtf...How can this be real? And yet Here I am. Here we are. Pure ecstasy. Constantly being reborn in a constantly deepening constantly expanding constantly novel unpredictable sea of being. Having no idea where you are going. Flying though time and space open and vulnerable, fragile as a taut piece of paper. No top, no bottom, no inside, no outside. One with the universe, one with everyone, everything. Jesus Christ. 
     This..is me..all of this..wtf. I can do anything. I am everything. I have complete control of anything I desire. I just have to figure out how to use the controls. Lol. Everybody else is worrying about typical human stuff, (I am too), but then I am like, wait..I am God?..And I feel so much whimsical spontaneous flippant confidence and carefulness. My mind and feeling is spinning sparkles overlayed and filling the forms in the window of my Earthly sensory perception. There are other forces at work here besides finances and being a square. (no offense) Like overwhelming intuitive feeling being poured on you by angels. The cry of the Earth and the will of Heaven. Justice, adventure, love, free-spiritedness. Soul baby..soul...Soul is what the world really needs. Badass, courageous, heart-wrenching soul. Precedent crushing soul. The truth is that this kind of soul is already here and already in all of us. But I want to light that fire on fire. I want to set ablaze to the dead wood that is materialism and greed and superficiality. I want to to burn away greed and selfishness in the holy fire of Divine Perception and human liberation. I want to set humans free from millennia of imprisonment and corruption. I want the old world to fall away. It already feels so weak and splintered. It will fall away from us, those that awaken. We will leave it behind, perhaps with other human beings still confined and attached to it. We will build crystal cities. We will travel the stars. We will cleanse the Earth. We will liberate this planet. I know it. It is our destiny. Many of us were born to be enlightened spiritual leaders. More now than ever in the last however many thousand years. Will will not just stand alone on the mount, but travel in groups and communities. We will heal the sick and wounded and raise the dead. We will rejoice as we find our brothers and sisters. The stones will speak. We will go further than we ever expected or imagined. We are tasked with great feats and we are given great tools. 
    

Let go of your precepts, let go of everything...

Feel who you are and relinquish to your true nature

Let go of life, let go of what you think you need to do

Who are you right now? What matters right now?

This is it. This is fucking it.

Presence

      What is presence? Is it important? To me it is kind of a confusing thing. It has been and still is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. I think it's the same thing as being, another difficult idea to really get at least for me. Because if we aren't our ego, then who or what are we? How does this change us, to not be solely this center of tension and conditioned identity? Are we still someone? If we are not just our body are we still somebody? Kind of scary maybe. What do we aim for when we feel the pull to awaken to something greater than what feels like our little confined sense of self? Is there and ultimate self? A ground of being? What are we awakening to? I think we sense where we are going, but don't really know what it is we are looking for. This is inherent to having an ego, being deluded and ignorant of things as they are. What I have learned is that we don't need to completely get rid of our ego. We can discover truth within or among samsara. Obviously this is the case because some days it's partly cloudy and partly sunny...
     What we can discover, what we can become despite our handicap of being a limited human being, is the sunshine behind and between the clouds. I think presence is a good word for this. We discover this as we sip a cup of coffee, as we talk on the phone, as we look out into a room empty of other people. The reason we can be angry shites and know the Buddha is because everything has Buddha nature. God isn't about tomorrow, God's about today. Right now in fact. All of this, right here in from of you right now. God doesn't give a shit about who you are or what you do. At least in the sense that presence isn't denied anywhere because of someone's attitudes or state of mind, or level of enlightenment. What does this mean for us? 
     It means that realizing who we are isn't about achievement, it's about perception. It's the way we look at the world. It's not about becoming something else, it's about seeing what we are, what is right now. Enlightenment isn't quality or worth, it's presence. It's this. How does what is personal and what is impersonal fit into this? First off, are they truly different? Are they separate? How are they different? Can you find somewhere where they split off from each other? What I know is that I have personal feelings and I think impersonal ones. The wiser I have become, the more they seem to be mysteriously blended and apart of something singular which I don't know that I can define. This is where presence and perhaps being arise from. The quietest arising in my consciousness and I begin to feel that something may be here. I have vague feelings, memories, of being and presence from my childhood, but I feel like I have been largely asleep since then. 
     I feel like and perhaps know, that what I truly and deeply wish is to be, right here and now.  I feel that objectively I am here right now, but personally and subjectively I am not, not in a clear and obvious way. Isn't this what life is all about? To be? Isn't this what all of us desire? Clear and present fulfilling being? And it's so elusive. So foggy. To such a degree that I greatly doubt that there is such a thing. I think, and think I sense there is clear and obvious being here now. I think it's hard to find because it is so simple, obvious and we look for it the wrong way. We try and see it through judgment and discernment, which is impossible because it isn't limited in anyway. It's not a thing or a type. Our mind tries to find it through a lens, which is how it finds everything else, and it can be hard to stop ourselves from doing this because it's so habitual. We literally, and I would say subjectively, have to become presence to see it. We have to somehow relax our cognition so it doesn't dominate our perception to a point where our identity as a separate self has dissolved. This is where presence is. When we have peeled away or penetrated all the layers of thought and discernment and there is a place in our awareness where there is no mental alteration of what is perceived by the senses. I think this is where it lies. Our mind deceives us with it's judgments, convincing us that we are what we are not, yet I believe that always we are present. Logically, I do not see how it can be any other way. 
     This matters to us, perhaps for a while, because being present is how we become free. Escaping the confinements of our cognition which suffocate our sense of self. We aren't just our thoughts, or just our feelings, just our identities. We are something more. It's this more that stirs us into expanding our perspectives and experience. It calls us to grow and change, to do things we, in the past, never would have. It is trying to unleash itself completely. It can only do this through deepening and expanding the sense of self. Unfettered presence is a complete transcendence of this sense of self. Our individual identity as such and such. It matters because it shows us this. That we are something which does not depend on any quality that we have, any thing that we have, or anything that we can see. It shows us that there is nothing that we can hold onto permanently and that we aren't who we think we are. Life isn't how we think it is. That obtaining things and striving can't provide fulfillment, because they fulfill desires of a self that isn't the entirety of who we are.
     I think presence is something we can't define. We can't define it because it is what is real. It's not some combination of personal and impersonal because these are just ideas. They are the minds attempt to cut out portions of reality that cannot be fully understood when separated from every other aspect of reality. If you boil any word down to it's essence, you get words like presence, or god, or reality. Reality cannot be completely understood in the dissecting mind, it can only be experienced. Reality isn't an idea. I think ideas are always incomplete and assumptive to a degree. Reality cannot be defined. To know it, you must become it fully. And this is the trick, because we already are it. As far as I know, this is presence. Everywhere is this and everywhere is presence. Wow, it's so simple. This is it. No italics. This is it. wow. It's not how you are now. It's you.