Saturday, December 31, 2011

Tongue of Love

The movement of life is a song
and my love is a feeling so long
the essence sustains not yet proud
a torrent under every passing cloud.

And above there, the mind still plays
for a rest, clarity of reeds does the wind
that love sings silently within the heart
a higher vibration called to liberate.

That which remains indescribable to me
My love offers boon in a conscious voice
And embracing new dimensions of being
comes on the lap lick of a wagging tongue.

© 12/31/2011 rjduberg

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

My Ineffable Leanings Today

As a longtime student of Gurdjieff's work, at one time enthusiastically participating in what I persuaded myself was a real esoteric school of the fourth way with a conscious teacher in place, discovering my mistake was easily the greatest shock in my life since the original shock I received after awakening from my sleep a short while after finding Ouspensky's, The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution. That first shock was understanding the truth about how little truth and reality actually figured in my psychology, a humbling failure to simply stay conscious for a short walk from the bookstore to my dorm at UCSB was all it took. After rejecting outright my upbringing indoctrination into the Lutheran Faith not a moment after being confirmed, there was no easy way to relapse or lose the sense of gravity which that choice was based on. To renounce any of portion of the automatic inculturated programming which our youth absorbs and believes unconsciously and without critical discernment, nevermind such a massively moral code like religious faith requires a level of fearless ferocity in relationship to one's own mechanical need of comfort and approval that without at least some modicum of support from one's guardians or parents the possibility feels altogether imaginary. I happened to be graced by a Mother whose wish for me to be completely free to become my own man and make my own decisions, achieve my own successes and failures, was steadfast in her being my mother. This required some huge suffering of her own to achieve growing up, as she rebelled against the hugely indoctrinated and moral code of her parents by running away from home at as young teen before the age of adulthood with a muscian to live away from the oppression and feeling servitude which she experienced as a result of her brother being a prodigy despite being blind and taking away all the attention and support that she genuinely deserved but didn't feel coming and took this circumstantial situation as the gravest form of suffering any child receives short of actual harmful abuse. Children need to be cared for properly with vital aliveness of the best in us, at least, don't you think. Negligence of children is to cripple the best in them in both their happiness when young and throughout the rest of their life. She ran away from home with a young pianist studying with her brother because he gave her the attention she so badly needed. When his short sabbatical here ended off she went with him back to his home in Mexico City. Her recovery was I suppose at best something one might call civil in terms of relations, but looking back at my her parents and my experience of them growing up I can immediately recognize the undercurrent of negativity which to mom's credit was kept in check through a resurgent dedication as an obedient and grateful adult. With this perspective then one may be able to appreciate just how lenient and careful she was with me to always be there for me and yet do her best not to micro-manage or pass judgement as a parent since she knew first hand the kind of pain that way of being towards a child can create.

Interestingly enough without going into a long story about its arising, this commitment and stand on her part did not prevent her negative programming which her parents unconsciously dumped on her until she completely rebelled and ran away from homed from inciting me to do the very same thing during my senior year in High School. My sojourn was quite short however and not so far as to keep me from finishing school.

The important issue here was that to her credit there was enough conscious work at NOT being oppresive the way her parents were that I actually developed some level of understanding about my role and how it related to her actions in terms of what they made possible as a result. That with a protracted illness my father suffered, dying in my arms shortly before entering the confirmation process, and I was primed and prepped to act out radically in honor of these experiences.  Experiencing my father's death so intimately sealed in me the gravity which my mother's wishes for me might not otherwise have made much of a difference. But after he died, not a day has ever passed that I have not contemplated death and life's fragile uncertainty.

So, when I participated in an exercise suggested by Ouspensky in his introduction to fourth way work designed to produce the first shock which has to do with GETTING one's inability to do or remain conscious, I knew that I had found precisely what religious faith, morality, and teaching lacked,. Authentic possibility and experience vs. a story. That first shock was internal in perspective and quite hard to share. Talking about it, and sharing it I've found does not induce in others the same experience that I had back in the beginning, due in my opinion to what I've shared here leading up to this point regarding specific conditions present in my childhood, shaping and influencing my process as it did. The next shock however, is an external one that I had when I realized the lack of integrity and proper care given by the conscious teacher I had adopted for several years. The disappointment was devastating, and my satisfaction in the work has never recovered yet to the point of finding a truly authentic conscious teacher to work with. Having been so taken in only to find my gullability irrevocably established upon the "teacher's" lack of conscious being reflected in his inappropriate and harmful exploitations of and abuses of his students for sexual and thus completely narcissitic and sociopathic gratifications, I have at least been ferocious in my assessments of everyone hence. There have been many teachers and yet none have succeeded in impressing me consciously at least as fourth way teachers of the caliber of Ouspensky or Gurdjieff. I don't deny that history is replete with such masters, but none of them remain beyond their aesthetic appeals and artifacts  paying homage to their enlightened state and its capacity to produce higher impressions. It's only necessary to think of the Poetry of Rumi for example or the writings of Lao Tzu, or the Buddha to understand the nature of this higher energetic impression such master's works and remaining arftifacts communicate and create for those able to receive higher influence.

While I haven't actually run across a charismatic false prophet like the one that fooled me in the beginning, everyone since then while at times well versed and even charismatic in their self-expression and passion for the work only get as far as proclaiming and telling the story over, which I've developed a very sensitive "taste" for by its interpretive color and trapped design given by today's culture and way of doing things.

It's nothing short of such sorrow that I almost cannot bare to share, only that I am aware that such thought is unrelated to the reality of listening and response which others will actually have. In a culture of impassioned commitment to looking good, this change of heart and attitude is unexpected except for the fact that I continue to study the master's and fourth way ideas though without disipline or confidence that one would necessarily expect from having an authentic teacher to consult and learn from.

I'm still alive, despite many instances in which I could have easily expired and died, and as long as I'm still alive I will remain grateful if just for my magnetic center and its level of gravity which continues to bring me over and over back to a proper first shock with gratitude and evermore acceptance.

Friday, November 04, 2011

Life with ESRF

End Stage Renal Failure. Complicated by Congestive Heart Failure and Restless Leg Syndrome. Spent most of last month in the hospital while my doctor's tweaked my medicine for days. I've been home now for about a week and doing better, but nothing near what I recall having when more healthy. One might say I've been through the wringer, but the truth is that its only just beginning. I do look forward to the day when I can really sink my teeth into some esoteric writing. I guess I'll just use this as a repository for my wish list of things to write on for now....

How the higher emotional center finds its patience: Focus on Long Thoughts
Putting Inifinity and Eternity into Perspective
The myopic view of Creationism 
America's Politics:  A Void of Leadership, A Lack of Perspective
Depression
The Art of the Interview: Safely Illiciting Trust, Freshness of Perspective

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Tantric Suffering

My response to Jivana's frustrations with attracting attention to her spiritual passion for Tantra Yoga, asking me, What's a Tantrika to do? 

Moses has pretty much revealed the twist that he his IMHO and I wouldn't reflect negatively on yourself ever where he's concerned. I do love bold effort, just can't follow someone who blinks on and off without proper time. Let's ignore sizzle and look for a successful Tantric business model that feels good to you.

Reconsider your free insight as more of a solid challenge more or less. This strategy echoed "the Bruce" masculine fix it, identify it, believe you're right, and if challenged, act with balls to the walls, win/conquer/overcome/solve vs evolve ... how? As your insight, this "solution - cultivation" had a reality of how many possible understandings? 1) understood - now if this is true, such a person has in reality nothing more to anticipate from you in the sense of an exchange, but despite the large numbers of those who will attest to this option, I'd venture in reality none understand your meaning, why? Because you used a strong western term to describe a predominantly eastern notion. The bridge or proper frame for this looks to me like a "teaching" which you could insert into your offer, expanding your value substantially. 2) uninterested with false ideas and beliefs governing the listener's ability to connect a greater value to their own cultivation over their habituated western response which puts any kind of pill at the top of the list of pros in their decisions.

This can opposed with the truth however it deserves a certain vicious level of shock in your attitude to complete it. Personally, I don't think once you understand the SHEER insanity involved that you would have any problem generating a little awesome rage to share with our idiotic western male minds. But for me I'd simply make a short list of some of their more popular drugs and then cut a few sound bites out of those pharmacological media ads which today are forced to acknowledge the risks involved. All I'm saying is that more times than not what I hear are symptoms (all serious to deadly) which mostly resemble the worst case scenarios for taking the drug in the first place or greatly increase the possibilities for suffering, including death. Tell me how hard it would be for you to work up that aspect of the "teaching?" And, I think this dimension is or was all that was missing for me.

Healing is easily one of the biggest institutions here in the west and it should be no surprise that any openness to anything outside of the box is altogether unheard for all the noise and warfare going on inside over the business of control and profit. So here's the one negative you present. I called old school but its really all about attempting to fit your service inside of box long ago stapled shut and put out of the reach mainstream medicine.

My advice would be to start small but in a way that is so solid and consistent that you generate a field of momentum not unlike that surrounding the corner 7/11 store. Evident in your own defense in the use of the words pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a vision WANTING/DESIRING to bring those most important values which exist outside of the box were talking about to those committed to staying in the box. Though my explanation exists on a very high meta level of understanding, I feel most if not all sense this kind of disconnect in terms of westernized standards of pragmatic action.

Western masculinity loves to chew things up and if there is not enough to chew on because of authoritative levels of credibility (purpose of the institution) value falls through an all encompassing "snake oil" crack reserved for such disconnects of foreign offers which do not pay homage to the western man's need to BELIEVE enough to feel righteous in his decision. So, in so many ways it all comes down to understanding what the western paradigm can digest initially which I've given several pointers about regarding protocols of style. Faith is the big twist for western man because essentially his faith is only a mask of his ambition to conquer and feel righteous superiority over himself, versus a truly spiritual faith which is beyond the scope of these issues to get into.

What's a tantrika to do?  I suppose if it were me, I'd spend some time simply recreating a core community of tantrika fellowship, worship, and development where the spirit of Tantra as it exists alive today and now in you and your sister goddesses becomes ordered properly. In the fourth way, one of the gems that Gurdjieff had to offer was called the law of 3. It states that all of manifestation happens due to the interaction of 3 laws, called the law of 3. These three forces are called affirming, negating, reconciling  OR  active, passive, neutral.

The question for me to you about Tantra and more specifically what your offering has to do with whether or not it has stopped being the affirming force in your manifest existence. The second force called passive or negating can also be seen as forming a vessel or boundary in opposition to the affirming force. I don't think I have to get into the abundance of that force in the west today. The third force called neutralizing (in the sense of the conflict and tension imaginable holding the first two forces in check) and reconciling refers to skillful means and design in order to achieve whatever the desired result is one wants. So, for instance, a simple example of this is easily demonstrated by considering a canal.



Now apply this law to your complaint's basis in which your pitch appeared opposed by Tantric Ignorance. Great pitch, but a deeper look into western society shows the masters of the pitch achieving and manifesting nothing as our esteemed legislatures in Washington are currently chronicling in the worst way in America's history. Another little teaching not unlike the earlier one on negative side effects caused by the very drugs designed to relieve us of such and such.

OK...I've got to stop here but I hope the law of 3 helps you think about what you can do a little bit. More than anything else, for me, Tantra's source is the sacred celebration of all that is man and woman and how approaching the opposite sex from reverence and love authentically shows up as ecstasy and bliss leading one further into the divine mystery to which every successful step taken marks yet another chapter of man's real evolution and destiny.

At some level of course everything I just said can and will be reduced to Bruce's level, so then what is the difference that makes a difference for that NOT to happen? Have faith in your Tantric practice and let yourself receive the gift your mind cannot by itself produce nor generate enough energy to manifest even if it were so enlightened.

In a truly masterful and authentic offering then, one takes away a feeling of not having heard about something but a far higher and more energetic sense of having witnessed the truth and mystery. The real essence of Tantric beauty power and spirit occurs for me right here as I realize the perfect unfolding nature of reality in its ordered weaving of threads beyond my comprehension but consciously recognized RECONCILING being the fullest integrity of what is polarized in dualism, and blossoms as UNITY, a state beyond all words or language's ability to express.

Ahhhhhh, but you say, here now at this moment where do I start? If after reading my "take" here 3 times, if you still have that question, can we speak about it then?

love,rj

Friday, September 23, 2011

Nondualistic slice #1

The Fight for Non-Dualism

All of a sudden I have been venting on statements received from others having a lack of integrity or non-dualistic structure and of course the concomitant presence of higher consciousness, really grinding on the issue since it clearly precedes any proper recognition of higher consciousness and the eloquence and process higher states provide. There is with each higher step and degree to one's vision upward the possibility of receiving new higher influences based in higher forms of thought and truth. So, I belabor on exchanges having one aim in mind, to evoke some degree of recognition in favor of true non-dualistic possibility by demonstration.

That's good enough for a lead in on a excerpt I'm going to post here right now for demonstration taken from some lengthy correspondence on facebook today ... 
Am I kidding? Maybe, are you? lol ... but really let's stay focused on non-dualism if we may. For me it is top shelf in the horizon of evolving new age twaddle, IE not the twiddle, but possibilities relating to evolution and real ascending consciousness in this work. I'm assuming your comments may lead to a substantive reveal since the page were on is dedicated to this state of being, is it not? Regardless, the difficulty of this may appropriately be understood for the outrageous comedy that has ensued from your rent. Personally, I have never seen the efficacy in crying wolf or running to mommy, acting the fool, as a strategic response which theoretically in some cases might jostle somebody out their dualistic underpinning in their world view. The style by which progress was articulated in the dualistic paradigm was in its current most hideous form something I like to refer to as the Boehner Rule. Deny Deny Deny, if you say it enough, invalidate opposition enough, this preponderance was thought to secure a properly persuaded debate on whatever. However, why don't you just take handgun and shoot me for all that's worth. The question regarding non-dualism is on the table I think correct me if I'm wrong. I'll add some more twaddle received just today by an active feminist speaking on my twaddle phone. I had questioned the aphoristic offer she had posted in much the same way I made an issue of "expect nothing" here. Her response was, "dear Robert, what ever brings you to freedom. Now. Go for it." 

And again, what is so revealing in these exchanges is how my non-dualistic inquiries are never comprehended or understood and the reality of how dualistic thinking and paradigmatic thought works reveals quite mechanically, unconsciously, and without value. It's complicated but until people actually begin to observe these patterns as they become activated and processed in their moment to moment daily lives, the best I may hope for when tossing general principle on the board might be some resonation effect such as I got you from you. Entertaining as it was, I assume you won't question me if I don't pursue your responses further for their erudition or enlightenment on this subject. T'wood be nice though ROFL ... but in closing, let me just leave such responses as condescending as their patronage becomes for me for you to NOT consider worthy of such responses as they unfortunately twist up on themselves. 

Gesturing, posturing, meme sorting and prioritizing, classic to all standards of polite styling are better off simply eliminated and dropped. We are not attending a tea party here and the issues are in fact lethal. The observations of integrity and authentic engagement, long ago defined such feints and game playing as essential violations to the efficacy of this dialectic, with of course the one primary authentic exception being the one genuine expression which opens that letter containing the fully innovated expressions of the next level's eloquence vetted and delivered. There is no room for stone throwing character assassinations or game playing having at its source a lack of comprehension or baseline understanding that brings a participants energy and attention online in the collective's best fashion.

It's not an easy question is it? I no quite often its much easier to indicate the absence and persistence of dichotomies which in their very measure have no means to bridge the infinite or allow man to ascend even another level in how he orders the structure of his thought. Take again what was said by a active feminist "twaddler" today as a response to me ... "dear Robert, what ever brings you to freedom. Now. Go for it."
 

Ahh, second thought, give me the gun so I can shoot her and put her out of her misery and mine LOL It's too late in this post to get rigorous with the mind over just how this t'woodspeak is the lock on otherwise intelligent people's lives, made possible by the core dynamic of dualism as it informs and structures thought in its own light. Being able to directly see dichotomous polarities as factual structure to dualistic thought is the first step. The second is to understand the reality of how one includes the other and the illusion Belief creates splitting that reality in a way denying arbitraraily, one side its validity using the Boehner Rule.  Anyway ... that's enough from me on Non-dualism today ... not that anyone understood it or was listening. I do reserve my own feelings which always ascend in completing my own efforts with sincerity. G'day. 

PS-We could pretend though and play nutball games. Conforming has always been the preferred fallback position, but only because nobody actually remembers the subtext making it necessary and useful in the first place.


PSS-I invite comments, for this conversation is far from over and I can't think of anything that would tickle me more that somebody having understood enough to extend this roll along its proper path without me doing all the work all the time. Namaste, rj

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A First Draft titled, Just Sayin' What?

Recognized Bias more honest?
Just Sayin' What?
Draft One
by Robert Duberg


Nothing said ever did justice to the perception of a diamond by the true feminine mind of the goddess within. There, the light of brilliance in what matters penetrates beyond sexuality even but not without providing the platform by which sexuality is resolved by the rock, where notions of clarity reach their highest form. And with men, their beauty reflects in their best friend cliche, their palace dog, that unconditional expression of love of the highest form between man and his world. Looks good on paper to most though I doubt most even stop to consider, some to stupid to get out of the way of oncoming storms. They get a sign tied to their big toe, for the death that has taken them is ruled by entropic extremism only. Life is defined by the opposing energy which sustains systemic vitality, the coherent structure through which the process of living moves. Understanding the paradox of contraction ("holding it together") as it directly creates the condition in which our lives actually thrive, again, is an art which has all but been lost on humanity at present.

Halfway through my own life, the decline is accentuated in a stepped up kind of way. I can respond, but my responses seem far too slow on the uptake, pathetically missing any compromise sufficient and innovative, and only rarely enough or properly justified to the critical mission of staying on course, awake, and centered in the most high gravity of higher consciousness. My progress, a thread of penetrating insight and integrity, through each new moment arising, is often nil. Not less than a several times a day I am busy behind the scenes of ordinary perception and recognition open to my brethren, rejoining, re-igniting, redefining but at least refining my resources along higher roads having possibilities proper to my path, proper enough to evoke a feeling it is the best one I know that has heart. A path with heart, simply means a path one feels with the deepest part of my heart in which the seat of my conscience resides. Conscience is our compass on honor which reflects human order. Anything else, leads by entropy to living arbitrarily in the end, yet another free pass for death to enter and take what spiritually is our destiny without resistance or effort, that higher possibility long ago snuffed out by some concession to comfort or nod to conformity.

Our victorious destinies require this little discipline of our attitude which seems a paradox in the wise but is simply a seriousness approaching the strength of death itself but orthogonally in a conscious valuation of what being alive offers us ultimately. The short version for this author on the subject of entering that level where the possibility becomes enough of an issue to keep me awake in the dead of night, when there is NOTHING naturally holding me to the line needed to see me through to that infinite dawn's light within was being their in my father's extended fight to stay alive in the end when he succumbed to a cardiac event. Attuned and hyper-vigilant at the age of 11 without any idea of the extreme position that put me in down the line, his heart attack in the restroom called to me silently and I arrived within seconds to break his fall, lay his body on the ground, cradled, his head in my lap, whereupon the process in progress became clear to me even then for its being his last on this plane of existence in this life we shared, a legacy that defines the essence of life that's mine, in part. His death then, was a propelling force far outside normal boundaries of human affairs at that age. Death's paradox is its essential primer for being and consciousness at the next level, with enough supporting and higher influences nearby to help. And NOTHING says it quite like Death says it even when denied its intent to consume the remains of spirit with entropic overwhelm which annihilates that grip of spirit which allows for such complexities as humanity brings to thrive and evolve in fact, as in synthetics and inventions which long ago eclipsed what nature has come together for us to exist in the final analysis. Where we draw the line and own and make ours as the source of our own being distinct and not attributable except in the sophist's logic of Newtonian days gone by is by far yet another missing piece of the human iconography by which his true spirit can be known. Be in the world but not of it, is a cliche waiting the next level.

The moral of a life lived from a point before my teens in which I succeeded in keeping my father alive only to have him die in my arms, would certainly make sense only in clarifying that pain of which I personally draw a line around as to its being unnatural, something having an existence relevant ONLY to mankind. Natural Death is not the issue, it is the meaning my father's death specifically created in my essence or what it means for me to be alive as a human being. Thus, my death, in the way I speak of it especially is NO longer natural in any way. My view of it sees a humor which most would find rather strange, and its true, even now I am chuckling over the way I died to natural means and ways and have been ever since that fateful day as a child. The next level looms and calls me out reminding me any hesitation or lack of commitment or willingness is less clarity and a choice for death in the end. When everything in my conscience and heart screams against this, its fair to ask how it so often makes no difference with so very few and rare individuals holding to the higher roads by which liberation from suffering disappears for those ascending at some point. The story of man's true possibilities is the story of his waking sleep, defined by falsity and incomplete chaotic integrity of being, which as a structure shackles him unconsciously to realms of being by which most accept without question. The paradox of death is perhaps the most potent one indeed, if you consider how direct experience of it in a clarified relevance never-ending both confirms and verifies one's true knowledge as well as removes something necessary in order for man to defeat it or otherwise deny it when it comes calling.

In closing then, the next level or the last level as chronologically relevant here is reversed and comes first in importance and value. But, not only that paradoxically but also in a way holographically, not simply added to or calculated or computed in to our life calculus but throughout and beyond the dimension of time, beginning and end. This kind of change is next level and probably ought to be reserved even past new age terms like transformation as well. The guts of this, this higher road, which honored appropriately expresses a shift minimally along the axis of order itself is not content but a field of possibility content expresses some relevant vital impression worthy all by itself for the listener to attend to now.

The paradox of rules runs up its flag on this pole. While the past saw us reminding ourselves of such boundaries, rules, means, and ways which supported the order of that day. Today's reminders must be remembered to in fact express something else distinct from memory. If held from within from this level of clarity in one's discerning spiritual light, the proper step to the next level is at least in theory emerging between us. Knowledge beyond memory is knowledge between memory, the last frontier where knowledge has yet to be understood as unknown but discoverable. Thus Vonnegut's time speaking on the essence of a good story means to my reader a finding of light which re-dazzles a diamond clarity, raising that clarity into a realm beyond memory but living magnificence and realms of power no words have yet been spoken sufficiently unto. The hero today remains Vonnegut himself, give no small claims to that character at the root of your story for now. Heroes speak for all of us and only when Johnny is on the spot, in full regalia, making the point without any confusion or lack of attention from those that matter. What Vonnegut wanted was to help us write better, what this writer wants is for the reader to not be unsatisfied, and what my father wanted ... was a paradox for me in that he died when he really wanted to live, and in a double twist ... he wanted to speak to me across the veil of death to confirm that place which humanity continues to spin out about in terms of how to proceed through and back.

Can language be a hero, a character in a story one can root for?

IF not then, unable to represent the possibilities now extending within, who or what shall one root for and if not a hero then what? Express the matter/spirit boundary given by measurable and immeasurable dimensions of existence in language which itself has yet to evolve the capacity recognition allowing the speaker to connect properly on the issue with a listener.  (the listener, having only memory to orient to what is received as far as accessing order, is structurally limited to a realm incapable of evolving in which humanity can share truth with others about this aspect of life, in which order can be held vital through the transition and detachment from the human material form.)

What does it mean to consciously lose the human form and continue to align and order energy without the  material structure one's life and death define naturally? 

    - the possibilities for progress are?  -- our non material energetic power intuited in the ideas of INTENT AND WILL connected with clear synchronistic manifestations which reflect in the material realm but like ocean waves are in the world but not of it or shall I say intrinsic to baselines on which the     material realm is based and centered on. Mentally, the primary engaging interactive element by which we  are connected to all of that is called our memory. Paradox is a characteristic of higher roads and thinking, which form the style of liberation as it is expressed in langauge through the             human mind. Thus, progress looks like backwardness, contradiction, and anything but linear refinement which was the hallmark of progress up until this point of higher non-dualistic thought and consciousness.

What can be said to expressing stories when this new pattern emerges for which the probability of having a prepared and ready listener approaches zero still? Can writers from higher consciousness write even while all the pertinent and relevant meaning is stripped moment to moment from their words leaving whatever is left without any single sniff of something original, what possibly will sustain their motivation to write in such dire and dismal conditions?

And of the masters who were able to sustain the motivation and publish their compendium despite this recalcitrant and unreciprocating and unforgiving and unbending resistance to their just sayin what they want, everything they accomplished must at some point be undone ultimately. Thus, one's response to their just sayin' is justified to the extent that one can criticize it intelligently enough without being swooped up into the hell that is the mystery. That's the eventual destination just sayin' reaches anyway, and certainly by all ways and means to be avoided. It matters, the truth is not something incomprehensible, but just sayin' whatever even if the genius of the speaker is unwavering matters not. It'll be much harder to rectify the Christian Cult and its victims in the end compared to the cynical unconscious humor entailed in mockery aimed at conspiratorial doomsday sayers. The initial impulse which just sayin presents, the shock of a reality that is NOT all that which our memories present it to us to believe as such with beginnings and ends and solidity and mass, IF NOT actively engaged in inventing and struggling with a narrative which properly moves towards (since that is all one can expect without consensual agreement among humanity's speakers and listeners) THE NEXT LEVEL, to be true to one's commitment to spirit in this situation is to check in to the space of possibility within and come from there voluntarily suffering the struggle of what to say when one has no memory to regulate and organize. Creativity is and has got to be ongoing, and at a level that speaks beyond justice but penetrates realms without apology that are mystical. The best way is to retain some small thread of linear dichotomy such that ordinary reader's, though dissatisfied, aren't able to continue the confining imprisonment which associative memory asserts on us. The confusion will be a positive one as it has been said but now with particular relevance ... the most important conversation each of us needs to engage in is exactly that one which leaves us the most confused and dazed. To see the active paradox at work in that understanding is to hit the last leg of the wrap up of my so called short story . Again to Vonnegut's requirement that we're either revealing character or forward action, sentence by sentence ... my sense falls mostly into the notion of action, where the character remains paradoxical and problematic for the very simple fact that very few have the capacity to appreciate paradox presented as anything other than an oddity. To present it as a core value and foundation of structure in thinking will continue to be part of the struggle for me until such time that it isn't.

Have I been sadistic enough? Well no quite frankly, and again paradoxically, without this element it always seems as though readers lean to characterizing their experience or read as itself sadistic or laborious minimally as such. It may be that the doom-saying still retains some value precisely here but my initial response to that is that it just seems awfully convenient and thus lacking proper consideration. Yet the question remains regarding this idea of sadism by Vonnegut which I prefer to think of in Emersonian terms of INSTIGATION. It all comes down to the idea of the best way to engage the reader, introducing some level of pain (the higher the better as this proportionately means a greater or lesser degree of attention) to which everything else one says follows more or less effectively or not at all.

One person doesn't mean individual, but could also mean stereotype I think, do you?

Cutting to the chase, was not quite as vivified as I remember intending it to be prior to my opening words today in writing this story. These things are on me then to make a difference next time around. Opening must be a rush of pertinence minimally ... if I do nothing else, I can have fun with that and see if you agree on the next level manifesting as ordered.

9/21/2011 rjduberg

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Wiggle of Higher Mind

Finished up with Mr. John Abe's philosophical dump of sophistry. Boy's got massive visually artistic talent which he is applying to something I get the impression he is being led to do by some very powerful etheric agents which I'm afraid don't have a clue about what they're doing. Of course, my standards nearly always fail anyone's attempts to articulate their "own" truth. Two other "sages"  I ran across yesterday online with their vids blah blah blah, sounding all Advaita and nondualistic like, were such crap.

There is a bit of a litmus test to discerning the strength of a speaker's message intellectually, but it's necessary to create a space for this discernment using one's emotionality or whole body felt attention, one's feeling sense. With this intuitive, most sensitive and quickest apparatus or function that we have for sensing our conscious world, the idea I'm talking here has to do with quickly PINGING the speaker's Point of View. This is in many ways analogous to sonar in the sense of our feeling a certain factor to the energy of intellect and thought being expressed. I organize the spectrum along a polarity range from Frozen to fluidly flexible. And place the zenith point for strength somewhere nearer fluid but not too far from the mean, always dependent on context obviously which will determine margins and offsets within my analogy. The idea again, has to do with having the feeling that the speaker is presenting possibility of wiggle room in their articulation such that they clearly understand that interpretations in language ALWAYS involve some margin of error, bias, and blur of attention.

Does this make sense? Because, until you can feel just how the speaker is themselves relevant to their knowledge it won't make any sense. Let me give you an example on how this shows up. If I consider myself relevant as a open possibility and ongoing and in process, with a clearly established fluidity to my boundaries in my self image and beliefs then my account of my knowledge in language is going to reflect a conscious determination of where I stand in relation to my ideas in the present, not mechanically but because the act of remembering and SEEING knowledge from its best view from the present is a sure antidote to the dangers associated to dogma and the closed mindedness that dogma represents.

So how does this work, well as I have studied and observed the process in myself, I have seen an increasing willingness to test my knowledge for wiggle room, not from the position of discerning strength of intellect in terms of relevance per se but so as to double down on my previous extensions freed from any fear of archaic dualistic thinking such as being right or getting it right. the Greater the wiggle I can include without losing the context or knowledge gestalt, my experience is the greater the fun factor and the power of my presence to stand as presence due to my knowledge having a field of possibility instead of a point of view or contention.  This sets up the possibility of launching into the relationship between being present and integral thought in higher levels of consciousness, and I would essay on that note in order to explore what I can right now in the relationship between non-duality and presence but I think enough pontification has been done for one night and I will close with the simple reiteration that KNOWING non-duality supports and allows being present in the now in oneself IS A VERSION of my knowledge with almost zero wiggle room.

If you can feel that FROZEN, SET, STATIC QUALITY to the statement versus all the rest of my statements in general then you are getting some feel for what I'm intending you to get, which would make me very happy indeed. I will await your comment on that at your pleasure.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Fourth Way Essay: Going Beyond Higher Consciousness

Going Beyond Events of Higher Consciousness

For the longest time my mood has been depressed and my response was just to sleep. But the truth is that there is a higher level of conscious humanity existing in non-physical realms that spend their EFFORTS on such opportunities, we as evolving newbies with respect to spirit, give them. There is a truly paradoxical character to this connection and flow that we have in us to create with higher consciousness. I almost hesitate to say it because of its simplicity, however; the truth (when dislodged from any finite loci, center, or nexus even) freed from bias and position does in fact account for everyone, unifying the essence of men at least in theory, although language still fails to communicate that unity properly. Thus the residual discord when Christ says, "Except that you accept me as the way, you will not step one foot into  heaven."  (paraphrasing his remark there...)

Unless one can separate that truth from the man, the finite shell now returned to dust, such statements are statistically I think bound to annoy most (except of course for those who "believe") intelligent people. But consider what his way was essentially, what his attention focused on ESSENTIALLY, where he came from ESSENTIALLY, which was interiorly/inward/into his conscious being. The external/outward appearance which everyone pays attention to in life, is a dead end and where most come from, their "sense of I" fabricated and identified to circumstances present arbitrarily in relationship to them via the external world, physical world. Part of the Fourth Way Teaches this very important point as a key to evolving one's being. Conscious influence or help from conscious humanity for one's evolution must be understood to come from within. What happens in the external physical world which we label as synchronicities, unfathomable convergences and miraculous manifestations, are all created by our own being in the world. Such events, as they more or less may be called supernormal by us personally are actually reflections of higher influence at work in our own being and finally finding their way into the physical world on spiritual levels within the this realm, such as harmonics in energy fields and flows, synchronicities, symbology, archetype, etc.

There is an easy mistake to make right here by once again pushing our egoistic I of self-importance forward in understanding such miraculous events that at least for me have taken place throughout my life (both even and mistake to be sure), like the first time I had the Lord's prayer explained to me for its esoteric meaning and how that meaning directly reflected the fourth Way's Work in its being a daily reminder of my relationship to higher influence. In the days following my introduction to this esoteric side of the Lord's Prayer I was playing golf when I decided upon confronting an 80 foot chip shot to the hole from just off the green to say the Lord's Prayer knowing and understanding in the living active context of my fourth way Work, the golf shot to be a reflection of that Work in terms of aim and hitting the Mark, etc. After my recital silently and inwardly, I proceeded to chip in my shot which had such a high probability of not going in as to be close to the odds of winning the Lotto, but in association to my recital and attention, one can only marvel at the POWER of higher influence when out pops manifestations as miraculous as the one I've just described. And for a man to heal others as Christ did, by simply saying, You're healed! With a report following, that recorded the person in fact healed (at least so far as we believe the Bible to be accurate, however that's problematic at best). The truth of his spiritual power was NOT in how he said it, or how virtuous or skilled he was, or how sincere and loving and intentional ... his power was his attention permanently planted inwardly and aimed at higher consciousness to the point of being one with that infinite source which I think it is fair to say CREATED all that exists. That shift and transformation of one's attention which has been habituated to the physical sensorium is precisely what is most key to the Work of the Fourth Way, called Self-Remembering.

Now the truth of that is so simple I dare not repeat it again. It's no more complicated than being transparently focused inwardly with our essence and attention at the same time that the external world continues to flow through our lower centers of function. This is the Work, struggling to stay awake and exercise our conscious choice and will to raise our level of consciousness, this way of being.

May you have the One Taste which imbued with grace and divine light is now familiar to you so that you can always recover and return to the one true spirit which is your creator 8-)

There's a deeper layer that I think deserves some further exposition - on having to do with moment to moment flows in attention and that with respect to the external world how it is in our interest with respect to the descending octave of higher conscious C influence as it flows through humanity devolving materially into B influence commonly regarded as higher forms of art, literature, science, philosophy, etc., that can due with some greater elucidation here with emphasis on how to use this aspect of the external world to support and help cultivate higher energies within us. As we take in these higher impressions around us, the basic impact of such physical manifestations or artifacts to those with enough understanding to benefit or raise their energy by attending to such physical impressions is critical. It is right here as we confront the struggle inwardly that certain keys to the Fourth Way can be verified, such as centers of function and the multitude of "I"s, some of which want nothing to do with higher truth and simply want to "turn" or "play." This use of 'play' is however in distinct opposition to more creative notions of "play," of which I am not referring to. Play here is associated with recordings of internal memory which we to some extent more or less in our unconsciousness identify with and play over and over, without choice, out of complete mechanical habit, due to our attention being imprisoned there through identification and false personality.

However, the benefit that comes from even the slimmest conscious attention given to B influence in the world is the experience of a shock to our being. Such moments of attention return us to an interior space of presence, consciousness in moment (attending to this requires an effort of will and intention and the moment we stop giving this special inward attention, this level of consciousness of our being vanishes). There is some degree in that moment of feeling our presence including higher functions, speed, and cognitive power, which is a NON-SELF Field of presence, that responds to the power of our will to intend and attend inwardly. All to quickly, all of us fall asleep to this possibility and our attention returns to external stimuli which is processed mechanically, registers in our memory mechanically, and so on and so forth. Understanding this slope outward and how to keep from being taken away by it into a slide back into rational materialism and subjectivity, self-delusion, etc., is one of the biggest 'battle-fronts' for me in my Work at present.

In conclusion, succeeding to create this inward connection and attention on higher consciousness can only happen by annilhating lower identifications and the attention and energy those identifications link and anchor in the physical external world. The closer and more conscious we become of consciousness itself, consciousness which comes from the original source of ALL that is, will continue helping our evolution by providing clear insight into that Source's Will, our evolution at this point traverses a scale from self-will to doing the will of the ALL, whatever that means. The idea that one's integrity, to the extent that it is committed to evolving consciousness and love for that Will, is our only tenuous hold on ascending in our efforts impresses me as troublesome only insofar as I continue to identify with lower "I"s with no sense or interest in higher truth and possibility in life. All that said, however, the main dictum which remains in force and relevant as asserted in the Fourth Way is never believe anything but verify the truth and relevance of all that one hears or is told.

Monday, August 08, 2011

Playing a little with Photoshop Masks


Today was just having fun with Photoshop, waiting for some calls, and just chiilin, enjoying the evolution!
































Next Best Thing

If you have never watched the Rachel Maddow show, I highly recommend it, especially for the left. Her show is a political editorial comment/interview hour that leans left, but without distortion and with her delightful feminine presentation, butch as it is. A very intelligent and nice lady, who on top of everything else has modeled some segments after John Stewart's show like his Moment of Zen. Her moment is The Next Best Thing. Today I was watching her show when a couple things got my attention, one a definite and the other due to my ignorance already 200 years old but still cool. kerfuffle is the first one. A noisy commotion has been described using this word at least times in the media already today. Takes a lot of the threat out of the noise for me anyway. The other thing is Gum, a kind that changes flavors mid-chew. How cool is that?

Sunday, August 07, 2011

Created Means

In one sense Art is the gift and blessing we have as humans to live a life constantly subject to termination and forfeit. The very question regarding just how much Art has changed the world, if it ever has goes to the heart of this matter. Let's say it did, let's say something created today ended all forms of sexual assault. Now, I can't think of a more heinous crime with perhaps the greatest number in favor for its elimination from human behavior, better yet let's just end all wars with the opening exhibition of my latest painting. Now that the world has changed, now what? LOL Do you see the load of sand concealed in this question? People really ought be more skillful in their participation and stop asking questions which have nothing meaningful to offer except to fill someone's need for interactive noise I guess.

But to finish this argument in obliteration of the illusion IE the implied value of Art's relevance to our World and more importantly what is not working in our world and needs fixing through positive change. In one sense, I have just handed you the real answer you were looking for. I don't know why you had to make art part of the equation for positive progress with respect to chronic conditions which degrade our happiness in some way. But whatever , the theme is Art, an antidote for life living in this world? OR, a narcisstic self-indulgent diversion and distraction from our paying attention more seriously and effectively to this world and those breakdowns with continue to impact us? 

That really seems to be the undisclosed moral issue at work here for the questioner. As long as he thinks of this dualistically, I doubt any formulation of his inquiry will be capable of producing much more interest in me except to close my answer by suggesting everyone to consider just what a remedied world moment would be like as an invitation to move forward minus the call for heroes and what not.

For me, I don't see Art changing or our relationship to it changing, which is to say that Art functions for us as an end in itself NOT as a tool which by virtue of its originality would suggest for itself to be considered whenever progress comes to a standstill or stagnant conditions begin to accumulate. But this opens a whole different can of worms I think. As an end in itself, providing us with a record of aesthetic value we can consume in the future and to some extent relive and recapture the original bounty in terms of new energy Art often creates in the viewers, I see Art as a really cool icon of creativity and its intensity, capacity to create joy and fun, and also its depth from which true originality springs every once in a while.

It's man's primary internal playground of the highest aspirations and most gifted souls. In that space of dynamic play, man connects with a vibrational level in the cosmos which echoes true freedom I think. Along with everything I've said then there is one moral imperative I'd close this essay with which is an admonishment to all to ALLWAYS do the very best work they can and then push that at least one degree every time you think of it. Why?

By being devoted to Giving, from the creative paradigm, everything you have on all levels, IMHO it aligns our consciousness of flow and the karmic links attached there closer to the religious leader's notions regarding prosperity - the reaping of what you sow, without need or even capacity at times to explain positive results which accrue out of that space (where miracles and magic happen). For sure, one thing ought to be understandable enough and that is that if the choice is a conscious one, making one's metaphysics tightly relevant to the sociopolitical dimension of life (at least for those who truly want to make a difference on that level) could very possibly be the worst thing you could do. When Art itself, given a person's abundant attention and then some, IS whatever antidote one might conceive of being needed for our evolution. AT LEAST on the level of source and possibility, it ONLY reconciles and transforms when the artist's aim remains giving and not exploitive, for this unconditioned offering is necessary for the artifact's beauty. An artifact opens the viewers ability to imagine possibility for themselves beyond and in ways divine and unseen. Mostly we just experience the greater love inflowing through our consciousness, and in that sense a viewer's experience is unified to the artist and his being in life is validated as having some aspect of perfect value, confirmed, realized, created.

Friday, August 05, 2011

Defining Powerful Art...

QuestionerDoes the most powerful art come from adversity or equally from pain and pleasure?

Define 'powerful' first maybe?  There are so many different discrete volume settings associated with an artist's dynamic range of inputs blended more or less skillfully in an artifact.  Notions like adversity combined with pleasure and pain doesn't help this innocuous probe into artistic value. Especially given how these ideas are more indicative of the tactile sense (though adversity implies a psychological conflict).

Isn't that real seat of where Art begins to manifest as a process in man which culminates in the final artifiact created?  The level to start this inquiry in where Art's primal beginnings originate creativity obviously must be where free will and imagination interact the most dynamically and free, somehwere more or less pragmatic or not. The essential neuropathway forms the foundation for the cognitive engine from which art may be properly considered to have as its source. There are of course old models regarding creativity which juxtapose it against states of blissful serenity beginning with the friction and heat generated by opposites sexually and through sublimating that adversity instead of transforming it with love into ecstacy, creativity has historically been seen to get its POWER or potency of effect.

But please know my response is based on more conjecture than it is on having any confidence that I in fact am spot on with respect to the questioner's true search? I mean with all due respect the right answer for this particular question ought to be about the hierarchy of details, each serving its own purpose and yet the entire gestalt arbitrarily conceived of within the artist's mind defines powers of originality. Powerful art is the successful reconciliation of dualism by the artist in his own cognition and with precision translated and expressed formally and materially in the world in which the typical adversity present in dichotomies is resolved in an integirty, call it what you wish by difference of perspective it matters not except that all verify the existence of beauty as the common denominator forming the essence of that integrity.

Thus the essence of  beauty has ore to do with a certain balanced structure to relationship which thus gives rise to the old  adage that it is in the eye of the beholder.

Congressional Insanity

I could talk about it but I'd rather show you a beautiful photo I found today.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Soo ... What did you do today?


From time to time I have to revisit the web's hellacious evil core, not because I'm stupid. I'll have you know that I kept my ground and gave away no ghastly clicks, but going back to the killing fields of the web was truly time consuming and all I have to show for it is an upset stomach, hunger, a little uptick in my wisdom perhaps for refamiliarizing myself with the Trickster's and their content, their pitches, and the reality and truth of what I can only describe as GOD FORBID predatory manipulation and nonsense which by design is a linguistic net that'll steal your life from you. 


I'm less furious about this condition today than ever before but I don't recall seeing this black evil cancer growth in the web ever more sophisticated, effective, and well better designed to capture those who still do desire by temptation. 


I know all my buttons, and I know the principle themes that everyone's buttons branch from. What I found today echoes something I'm seeing in the mainstream as well and even more powerfully in our government today which is a drama designed to generate fear and tension in the listener due to certain deeply embedded beliefs which are still unconscious for us and active and yet allow us to be manipulated into pawns and Matrix power hook ups.


Every once in awhile it is educational however to jump in the stream leading down to where the falls drop into a dark hellacious killing field and just remind oneself of the accoutrement and why these ploys work to hook decent people into scams and lies which ultimately achieve nothing more than a ever widening disempowering rip off. 


One of the characteristics that popped up again for me was a certain style of PITCH now a full level above where it used to be in terms of type design and all the nifty and good design features available for great visual texting now applied to the bizarre pitch, a script that just goes on in a seemingly unending recybling of CREATE TENSION, REPEAT MANTRA OF PRODUCT SOLUTION, CALL IDIOT TO CLICK ACTION... then begin whole cycle over again...I've seen the same format and style now expressed so widely across so many different venues and authors that I'm concerned there isn't a real frickin evil demoned out there having his way with people and channeling his evil genius through them once they sign away there souls. 


Anyway ... I need to shake off these weebie jeebies and get something fresh to chomp on.  Hope I don't have to do this little tour of the reality of evil on the web again.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Good Time to Rest...

My spiritual wish for liberation and my attendant activity of researching possibilities and associated texts and philosophies has expanded to an ongoing 24/7 level, as of late. I am in need of some basic pacing though within this new level, as my health has deteriorated and I have new aches and pains that showed up just today, I think, from too much sitting on my butt.

I am progressing and growing and yet never fast enough or high enough. I still suffer a lack of clarity or focus to my practice (intentionally) keeping several different disciplines actively in mind these days. At some point, this hyper cross referencing analysis would be really nice to let go of in favor of simple calm abiding, perhaps.

Of course, it would also be very nice if USA's congressional government would get their heads out of their butts too, before the nation is thrown into a wicked collapse on the global markets.

Saturday, July 02, 2011

On The Heels of Stephanie

It's been a very strange couple of last days, which has seen an ongoing olfactory halluncination of sorts which evokes a supernatural feminine feeling and given my current focus on the Tantra Deities, most of them female goddesses, and how to recreate them along with my research telling me essentially that this is the one part of Tantric Practice I had missed, in effect pulling my old tricks of clairvoyance as I was already in the process of doing this research when I discovered the central aspect of the practice being to PLAY the part, to channel the energy, being, deity, goddess, whatever.

Well, along with this smell of wicked feminine sex, has been my invitation for it to come in. And so, I'm not sure what is really going on. But for sure, Stephanie has simply stopped communicating now for over 2 months, afgter promising me that she would never do that. And I took her word, because I thought it meant something.

No wonder I'm getting lots of attention from above, because this kind of thing used to just ruin me, and it should of this time around as well, but somehow it hasn't, and my focus and energy have risen not decreased. And, I get these inhalations of such pungent fragrance like I've never ... and nobody else seems to notifce So I kindof have just been wading through it, but this blop post puts an end ot all of that.

So, back to the grind and feeling like I'm on a 70s Acid trip ...





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Friday, July 01, 2011

In Memory of a Muses

There is rather, a newness, surreal and fragrant
interacting through the silence of my last love
my loss, my muse, brought a knot in my mind
I've been tied with over time, fitted in a bind
to overcome only by a long time-worn fashion.

This newness is everywhere, a flashing acid trip
the world itself reeks of a goddess' olfaction
and that accompanies, hails breeze of feeling
a roaring current, moving, chest pounding
a rolling attention and presence, conflagrant.

Inhaling her, I cannot deny her presence here
relief exchanged for my sorrow and fear, such
nothing left to react to her and ultimate power
I could not have born if my muse were nearby
now exhausted, inviting the goddess her reigns.

© 7/2011 rjduberg

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Cultivating Spiritual Discernment

(adapted from Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, Sounds True, 2009)

 by

It is a jungle out there, and it is no less true about spiritual life than any other aspect of life. Do we really think that just because someone has been meditating for five years, or doing 10 years of yoga practice, that they will be any less neurotic than the next person? At best, perhaps they will be a little bit more aware of it. A little bit. It is for this reason that I spent the last 15 years of my life researching and writing books on cultivating discernment on the spiritual path in all the gritty areas—power, sex, enlightenment, gurus, scandals, psychology, neurosis—as well as earnest, but just plain confused and unconscious, motivations on the path. Along with my partner, author and teacher Marc Gafni, we are developing a new series of books, courses and practices to bring further clarification to these issues.

Several years ago, I spent a summer living and working in South Africa. Upon my arrival I was instantly confronted by the visceral reality that I was in the country with the highest murder rate in the world, where rape was common and more than half the population was HIV-positive—men and women, gays and straights alike. As I have come to know hundreds of spiritual teachers and thousands of spiritual practitioners through my work and travels, I have been struck by the way in which our spiritual views, perspectives, and experiences become similarly “infected” by “conceptual contaminants”—comprising a confused and immature relationship to complex spiritual principles—that are as invisible, yet as insidious, as sexually transmitted disease.


The following 10 categorizations are not intended to be definitive but are offered as a tool for becoming aware of some of the most common spiritually transmitted diseases.


1. Fast-Food Spirituality: Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking, and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix. [Actually, it only happens instantaneously, it is the understanding leading to it and allowing a person to present themselves as such for that transformation to happen that requires so much time and effort.]


2. Faux Spirituality: Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress, and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard. [Well, but isn't this humanity's sincerest form of flattery? I don't see the need for suggesting this as being corrupting when it is the basis of everyone's socialization. There are much deeper issues involved that speak to genuine spiritual growth in a person in which their self-expression loses the fetters of conformity. I don't think imitate out of any desire to achieve today, it is simple habit when one considers enough to belong to any person, thing, or place. You adopt patterns habitually. This is not a disease, just mental habit.]


3. Confused Motivations: Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering, and spiritual ambition—the wish to be special, to be better than, to be “the one.” [Once again, how is a disease, this is a characteristic of the human condition to be in conflict, experience stress and ambivalence, etc. You don't get this from the spiritual paradigm you bring this to that paradigm.]


4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers. [This is clearly a good one. It's the heart of weakness that we live imprisoned by, IMHO.]

5. The Spiritualized Ego: This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is “bullet-proof.” When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality. [There's a weakness to this disease though being limited to a certain level of consciousness. The moment one begins to release themselves from dualistic thinking, this kind of structure falls apart from lack of use and value to he self. It also is natural to the process of spiritual growth just like a shadow is natural to someone standing in the path of very bright light (like our sun). The closer one gets to the light, and remains separate from it, the greater will be the growth a shadow. This is not a disease but part of the natural process. It is encumbent on the ascending soul to manage that shadow's influence and role in their actions and not identify but keep grateful and humble.]


6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and–bam! –you’re enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery. [LOL, yeah, this is definitely sick and well said.]


7. Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of “spiritual superiority” is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that “I am better, more wise, and above others because I am spiritual.” [Hard to imagine when so few individuals ever actually escape their mortality fully by spiritual attainment, even though there's really nothing else worthwhile staking our claim on, it is only unconscious and those of us asleep that express pride in anything impermanent. Life is sweet, don't get me wrong, I only have this moment to enjoy and then its gone, where does the pride come in that? If it comes, check me in the hospital please ]

 
8. Group Mind: Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality, or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional codependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with “group mind” reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group. [Being a rebel my entire life, has led me always in the other direction from anything remotely looking like this]


 
9. The Chosen-People Complex: Unfortunately, the chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that “Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group.” There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher, or community for themselves, and having found The One. [Ouch, now this is one of the biggies, responsponsible for more maybem and carnage and violence between man, himself, and nature that I know of.]


 
10. The Deadly Virus: “I Have Arrived” This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that “I have arrived” at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases. [Yep, I've seen this one too. ]

 

“The essence of love is perception,” according to the teachings of Marc Gafni, “therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly—including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself.”

It is in the spirit of Marc’s teaching that I believe that a critical part of learning discernment on the spiritual path is discovering the pervasive illnesses of ego and self-deception that are in all of us. That is when we need a sense of humor and the support of real spiritual friends. As we face our obstacles to spiritual growth, there are times when it is easy to fall into a sense of despair and self-diminishment and lose our confidence on the path. We must keep the faith, in ourselves and in others, in order to really make a difference in this world.


[In my humble opinion, Mariana has limited her view to the negativity of what is essentially false in ourselves in relation to ascending in the spiritual paradigm. The concluding remarks on Marc Gafni's quotes suggest this knowledge is critical in discerning one's path beyond. I find nothing critical about this knowledge which is does not of itself protect anyone from being "infected" LOL. However, there is some empowerment in being reminded of how many varieties of our shadows exist today. What is critical? The essential question begins with the verification of a teacher's lineage and living relationship to the divine.]

Monday, June 20, 2011

Love Paradox

So much of love is cliche, and every cliche is devoid
Love, even the evil shadowy cliched moments, lives
for moments lived in pure abandonment and no return
Not repeats, not fads, not pleasantries, nor luxuries
but that they form a massive veil of distraction to us
is the almost limit to what gets shared in life shamelessly
instead of a recognition, the feeling of awe, a true love
gives endlessly for those present in a space of possiblity
an adventure of the heart in creating life with another
There is a path leading forward and aft, and a compass
to all points conceivable by us, as masters of destiny
Yet there are some points which aren't located here
and Love is one, it exists outside the material realm
and yet it expresses itself as the spirit of our humanity
Unexplainable, a kind of after the moment perfume
Every attempt to find it by following vapor has failed.
The last cliche of Love which is the door no one uses
is really that to know it one must create the flow of it
and yet the mind flows not and looks not, a paradox.

© 6/2011 rjduberg

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Waiting in Abyss

I can feel you now, a phantom of soreness
a dark wood, a shifting shadow, drips silent
in this place, where the tears descend inward
I am alone, sunning the thou, still within flow
my muse, dearest, her warm perfume, sleep
even as cold air begins, the flame all but out.

My stillness persists, my homage to your gift
and grace unlike any before, divine beauty
the true muse of my life, and yet, an abyss.
I am falling, still, a flight made in your name
such is your memory keeping calm the way
My desire has turned to sorrow - that I fear.

You don't care. Should I? Evil fait accompli...
swallowed up by love, holding my breath.
Not enough though, to forget, impossible.
Somehow, I have been cursed to this hell.
Sleep comes despite this air of bitterness
for a dream that left me waiting in abyss.

Every lesson life brings machine like here
The step up seems impossible somehow
I am stopped by imaginations on my loss
I've learned this nostaligic cross is unreal.
And yet I still feel it's weight, amazingly
Well, this is my ode to heart of confusion.

When do I get to travel the road, across
where love is something you hold on to?
And you tell me I have it ass backwards
as I have been told practically all my life.
Well, there you go, I'm solid, automa(n)ton.
Long time sun, the longer me, a love's knell...

© 6/2011 rjduberg

Monday, June 13, 2011

The Mystery of Choice

Remember the Oracle telling Neo about his choice. Recall her saying he wasn't there to choose but to understand what he had already chosen, why, and wherefor...?

Listening to various voices espouse their rebellious attitude and its alternative perspective as opposition appears to be long lived. When I took the EST training back in 1976, I was opened to this dysfunctional thinking lacking integrity. A few voices can be trusted though, like OSHO for instance, who is musing on the truth of enlightenment, by really suggesting a vision of mental negation which he sells us with his beautiful voice. Attitude is key to being, and enlightened attitudes resonate unity, from one to another, while unenlightened consciousness resonates separation, duality, dysfunction, and belief in absolutes. Their certainty is false - having no light, no illumination, but weight in static mental mass which anchors them to the past and illusion.

Choosing our choice is the movement of choice which is simultaneously a paradox of unchoosing. The still background listening to the idea has in it the sense of a "stand" or a "place." Consciousness is a harmonic energy relation between ALL and Self, with a self-reflective essence by which one can rely and perceive in oneself and others.

More important than anything else in understanding one's possibilities is a higher focus which is disiplined and trained by opening oneself to higher truth and power, divine grace. The path to this begins with understanding integral, non-dual thinking.

After gaining some stability at higher levels the reality and truth of the old saying about it being all turtles the rest of the way becomes an amusing wisdom and moment for levity.

Sunday, May 15, 2011


More on Language Deficiency (last post)

Relating that map to medical data, the pair found that, on average, the chance of any particular person becoming obese was 20 percent higher if a friend of a friend (or friend of a co-worker, or co-worker of a relative) was obese. The connecting friend need not become fat himself, and he might have moved a thousand miles away. Most importantly, the two people connected through him need not know one another. Even more surprisingly, the pair found that the effect extends to three degrees of separation. Any individual's risk of being obese was 10 percent greater if someone at three removes -- say, the friend of a friend of a co-worker -- was obese.

The relevance of this finding with respect to my last post is to show that in fact the empirical phenomenology is already quantified and accumulating in support of the basis for my hypothesis regarding the importance for making this area of our lives more conscious and linguistically accessible. More from the article...

The key point, Christakis says, is that people act like waves in a pond, and that our behaviors, like our diseases, ripple out as if from a fallen pebble, following the laws of physics whether we know it or not. In some respects this contradicts the social-atom model of decision-making, whereby each individual can and should be held responsible for each and every choice. In fact, "a smoker may have as much control over quitting as a bird has to stop a flock from flying in a particular direction," Christakis and Fowler write.
But, Christakis adds, any social link is a two-way street: The ties that affect you are also carrying your influence out to other people. The American media didn't pick up on that symmetry, but news outlets in less individual-oriented cultures did. So most United States newspaper headlines telegraphed the obesity study by saying, "‘Are You Packing it On? Blame Your Fat Friends,’" Christakis says. "But a lot of the British headlines had a different tone: 'Are Your Friends Gaining Weight? Perhaps You Are to Blame.'” Even as social-network theory seems to undermine the primacy of the individual, it also raises the individual's role, Christakis says. "We're saying that if you make a positive change in your life, you don't just benefit yourself; you also benefit your friends and their friends and so forth."

That expands the standard view on personal responsibility. The individual is not a social atom, with no impact on others; nor is it a social victim, helpless to resist their influence. Rather, Christakis believes, we each should realize that even our "private" decisions really do have an impact on others far removed from those we know directly, and we should take responsibility for the influences we transmit. If you decide to eat better and get more exercise, he says, "Maybe you don't care about all the strangers you'll help. But you're going to affect people you do care about--your family, your friends, and your neighbors." 

In fact, Christakis notes, the new theory of social networks invokes ancient principles -- responsibility matters precisely because we care about what we do to and for others, not just ourselves. 
David Berreby blogs about behavior at Bigthink.com and has written about science for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He is the author of Us and Them: The Science of Identity, published by Little, Brown.
 These studies present empirical evidence of a process which is taking place on a higher more complex level which has its source not in the individual but in the relationships between individuals. There's no escaping the influence by putting some physical strategy in place like keeping a certain distance per se as the findings show influence ranges across 3 degrees of relation, where the terminal effects take place in individuals who are completely unknown to one another.

This is the frontier of our evolution as a collective species and which science in all of its monumental accelerating momentum to quanitify phenomena is already fully engaged in mapping even while the real possibilities present are yet lacking any language sufficient to express them. The upside or scientific salvation now part of the growing relevant data being gathered is that the influence of of relationship doesn't actually depend (at least instinctually as far as the studies I've so far been able to include here) on language. At leaast on the lower levels of function in man. But there is a threshold at the boundary between the empirical and the transcendental/integral. Where one man is expressing a vibrant energetic level of action which is integral and carries the dynamic space of process and the intrinsic unity expressed within him in relationship to it, the question seems encouragingly less of a hindrance as at every level of function in man up until this point such action's influence carries and leap frogs over 3 degrees in its effectiveness.

So, with that let me just conclude by repeating my original point of inquiry regarding what would be the expansion of possibilities should that higher influence be carried along lower functionality in language. In my mind, this is the real outstanding and current challenge for social network theorists to begin working on today. At least give us ONE that understands these possibilities which I am clarifying and his work will eventually begin to show up in a wider than expected range or area surrounding him. Everything else possible it seems to me will only repeat and reconfirm what we already have studied and quantified.
K'gaard, Chinary Ung, My Poetry

The following is a response to a friend which was my contribution to making K'gaard relevant today, making Ung's modesty understandable for what it stops short of expressing, and bringing into focus my own vision of what is possible and worth speaking for in terms of how I believe it necessary in order for man to realize his highest possibility again as PIONEER.

While your summary feedback on my comment I thought conceptually complete 99% of the way, there is one aspect to what I must infer that I failed to communicate and want to now emphasize as the fulcrum on which my experience pivoted so wonderfully in the reading of your poem. The old version is subsumed under living and understanding what I spoke of as on a entirely different level of concept than what you understood, at least in your manner and style in response. Somehow, I feel responsible for this "condition" since having clarity on the issue as key to higher possibilities for which poetry has always been a vehicle for exploring and channeling all things imminent in life for me, I don't see any other direction in which to continue this trend, except to CLARIFY the importance of shifting the LISTENING with the strength of my attention and response, leading to a immanent condition in the LISTENER's language about this issue.

What is the issue then, that I have now put in such a suspenseful relief with regards to your response to my comment and its traditional epistemology base? Think of your use of the notion of viewpoint. What I was speaking about certainly was associated to that idea but its essence existed with a radically different epistemology, concerning the nature of opinions and belief. What I was expressing was not a comment about something statically referenced externally to myself but rather dynamically understood within and inward to which I am conscious of as a process. In fact, one of the most notable aspects of your poem was the narrative process for its expressing so well much of what I was experiencing and thinking on, as I said earlier, just before visiting the cage.

Now, I hope that didn't sound like a bunch of gobbledygook because to interpret in terms of being a viewpoint loses the essential aspect of dynamic process which defines one principle dimension of the idea I'm trying to communicate. Without that aspect or dimension, the static or flatland "view" simply doesn't work nor does it in any way connect to the essence of what I was originally talking about, in terms of the relevant resonation I perceived between individual thinking and creativity that upon reading your poem evolved yet another dimension in my conscious awareness transcending once again ordinary ideas of relationship along this particular line of thought I'm traversing at the moment.

If I could articulate the higher dynamic dimensions and their essential roles in the integrity of my experience upon which our conversation at present is based, I would probably not have any more interest poetically, because I would be too busy essaying the truth to a much wider audience which for the simple reason that I could. Just like man traveled to the moon and walked around on its surface, including hitting a golf ball into the distance there, before he left. All of it was done because it was possible as a result of our choosing it to be realized in our consciousness with others in the world. Thus worth doing, it renewed our fundamental purpose in life and our passion to succeed, survive as pioneers, and evolve; by having the most profound effect of expanding humanity's cosmic boundaries in the Universe. So, gosh ... I hope my inability to articulate myself at the moment hasn't been to horrifying for you to wade through. LOL.

I'm grateful if you were able to stick with me to this point and retain some glimmer of the light I am attempting to shine on a mostly unconscious and unnecessary limitation we live with through our conforming to common parlance and the conventional knowledge is projects in our listening, for it represents a condition not unlike the one Kennedy transcended when he declared we'd bust a move into outer space within 10 years and play pioneer anew and fresh, once again. I know there are pioneers much more adept and masterful than I, running around this cage, if not every single member here, in fact.

The question then becomes how to stay conscious and how to create or add to the ongoing effort to create a new level of possibility in language such that ordinary listening on an ever expanding scale increases to articulate this higher dimension I'm speaking about. Think of it like constructing an infrastructure in our possibility to listen which is analogous to the physical infrastructure upon which society depends on with the result being once its in place an reaches a critical mass of organizing and quickly disseminating the higher energy and conscious awareness upon which the next higher dimension requires to show up for us and which is for now entirely invisible except to a few rare individuals at very uniquely rare moments of calm in the global gestalt allowing consciousness with enough dynamic energy to perceive such frequencies otherwise obscured by the normal daily noise and lower frequencies constantly engaged in chaotic and unaligned unconscious activity.

The upshot of all of that is nothing short of a completely peaceful and harmonious new power freely available and completely refining and upgrading every human's quality and possibility in life. Such a vision requires however this felt dynamic and becomes real only at the moment our speech articulates the space of it.

I read a really cool and 'spot on' relevant article to this issue earlier today in the local rag, about a Grawemeyer Award winning composer who will be coming to town soon, named, Chinary Ung. Our paper got it right this time by pulling this quote by him as a highlight introducing a sense of exactly what I'm attempting to not just metaphorically or symbolically or stumbullieya into, but drive hard towards connecting it with your listening, so that you feel the possibility yourself to recreate language in the moment to express this dimension. Ung was quoted as saying, "I don't believe in a complete loop or circle; I always leave room for negotiation -- in fight, in war, in love, in teaching, in anything."  There's much more substantive language within the article but I will leave it to you to research this virtuoso on the matter. I will add one more thing he said before closing though which so recreates what originally inspired my current cage ranting . He was referring to a chance encounter just before leaving school here to travel back to his homeland in Cambodia, a meeting which resulted in a scholarship that allowed him to return immediately to complete his formal education, but which also veered his path out of the genocidal meltdown there by Pol Pot which claimed 2 million lives including his family. He goes on to say, and I think THIS so fully echoes an aspect of this dynamic dimension I'm talking about with respect to living an ethical existence with respect to our most human capacity of choice and its relevance (see Kierkegaard's work on The Self and Ethical Existence for a full explanation), "The point is this, If I did not go (to that office), and I did not take that elevator at exactly the perfect time, I would have been sent back to Cambodia (permanently)."  And then, "Life is so delicate. It is so scary when you look back at that. It's incredible. I'm lucky. I'm not complaining." Kierkegaard is much more precise about the those rare moments and the choices possible for us and our ethical obligation to make them for ourselves. It wasn't the timing so much, as it was his choice to accompany the person he met in the elevator back for a conversation which lead to everything else instead of death, that is representative.

Now, you need to ask representative of what? And in that question, speak from the level of dynamic process which if someone becomes able to listen, will transform their lives from knowledge of a static unempowering world view to one which is moment to moment empowering and enabling consciously with respect to their possibilties and choice.

Hmmmm, I can't leave out his closing remark now for how well it matches yet again language evoking static knowledge compositionally (not poetically) to garner at least a slimmer of possibility for listening the dynamic range and its value. I'm speaking of a bold attack of creative expression whereas Ung is speaking on the level you did and yet by his remarks and my hypothesis here you can begin to notice a space of focus and valuation which once understood, itself will act upon your life in real time revealing to you with on going frequency how important everything I'm speaking about is with respect to raising one's consciousness and the possibility of higher realization of our one true highest possiblity to which we have an ethical duty to consider and work towards.

Ung says, "Yes, music is something I love to do but it is not at the top of my list anymore. Humanity, friendship, solving the suffering of your friends, yourself, reaching out to people and so forth. There's a list probably pretty long. And then there's music."     You gotta love the humble modesty of this internationally famous composer, don'tcha?



cheers, rj