On the Subject of Intent

Does it occur to anyone that focusing on either Yin or Yang, Yes or No, even Unconditional Yeses defined by the acceptance of both; all of these states or positions or perspectives set one up against being in the Golden Mean. And by that, I'm speaking about the truth of what is, simply being present AND awake. I caution against the thinking concerning affirmations which do not account for intrinsic value and meaning in a human's life. To me, such flatland thinking shows up like an eagle mingling on the ground with chickens. If one is really interested in the function of intention in our being then surely it has nothing to do with agreeing with popular and/or better, different or greater expressions regarding the human condition, PRECISELY because all of that is reactive, a product of the past, languaged in jargon and cliche, a message just like the writing on the wall. The purpose of real intention is to bring forth here and now from nothing and spirit. The power of intention is in one sense all inclusive ("the great yes?") however that's like saying a car has wheels.

Please forgive my lack of simplicity on the subject, I have a lifelong issue with my highest intention, and have yet to resolve certain aspects of it. The question for me is regarding how often our intentions are expressed incompletely or in a manner not completely conscious. At some level, the truth is that everything we experience including our own being is directly a function of our intention. If intent is real and matters in the flow and creation of being in the world, then it is not related to subjective interpretation, reasonableness, or explanation. This FACT is consistent with what we all know intention to be in our hearts. Our desires are an expression of our being and uncaused, while all thoughts connecting their details to circumstance and whatnot are at best clever fiction. We may tell ourselves that the reason we intend something is because of such and such or x or y, however we are really lying to say this is why we intend what we do. What we do and our story about it or two completely distinct phenomena, one expressing our being, and the other expressing our culture or style of belonging.

When it comes to manifesting intent then, one's results are more of a benefit if we stop denying them with affirmations which disconnect us from being able to language that which needs to be spoken and heard in our conscious awareness. I'm not saying that affirmations like the 'great yes' are missing the point, they speak something which we all need to hear but like a note in a symphony designed to tell the story of our heritage and culture as humanity they are not intentional, and intention is not dependent on them. Intention is dependent on consciousness to function, which begs the question regarding what consciousness is as I digress. The relevant question is how to resolve our intent by being conscious of its shadow realms, where we've forgotten intentions which are now opposed, crosspurposed, or in some other way degrading to our being satisfied and confident, clear and effective, powerful and magnanimous.

Seeking Spiritual Guidance

What is your life about? Comfort, security, status, power, making a difference, family, love, beauty, truth, healing, teaching, surfing, leisure, art, music, math, science, religion, survival, recovery, duty, honor, God, nature, magic, ideas, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, justice, winning, yoga, fiction, literature, sports, fashion, business? Everyone has a list with a top and bottom don't they? Understanding that most don't give it a second thought, I have and feel somehow betrayed as my heart decided on something well nigh too extreme and hard. I'm having a problem even writing it right now, there's so much failure and my focus seems to unrealistic and unpragmatic. It was made at what remains perhaps a pinnacle of spiritual suffering in my life. The decision was a response to what I perceived as a completely inadequate preparation the Lutheran religion had given me when confronted with my father's death. I held on to my faith but rejected the church and decided conscious contact with the source of the pain and mystery which had swamped my life was the only thing that would give it any meaning. The sorrow continues unabated today on both accounts, over the death and the fallout of my father's death, and over the lack of realization in my consciousness regarding spiritual enlightenment and union with existence's source (which for now I continue to refer to as god or Christ). There appears to now be one modification regarding my spiritual objective which has to do with accepting lesser authorities than the ultimate source, as long as those lesser beings are in fact authorized and possessing of such spirit which may help me to progress, expand, rise, and otherwise increase my ability to KNOW more and more objectively the true spirit and source.

~Chewing On Air

The Bazooka comics of my childhood gone
finely dusted pieces of pink, growled on.
Little wrappings of waxed paper we opened
making eternity last for a very long moment.

Chewing through the sweet hardness there
once, made the rest, a cause for innocence
and growing old is still growing young, now
chewing on air, and dancing with Kuan Yin.

~Round of Roll

This poem is a late entry but one I thought better not to leave out in the end....

Nothing matters more than factual reality
the foundation of reliability that must needs
a resonation that impinges sheer intent
the answer echos, to break the news.

Disasters and threats to life and homeland
Natural outcroppings of chaos gone sleazy
cheesy versions valued better than rest
made bite size and dumber for the mass.

We listen to the echo in all that hollow
and mistake the source of our attention
lacking consciousness of the resonation
and the possibility of our own evolution.

Simplicity is simply not enough for this
empty tea cups filled with master's tea
was never real except to the one mind
where simple beginnings are complex.

The echo reigns harmonic sorrows
with every failed fullfilment made
keeping such sounds that promise
garden seeds are meant for harvest.

All efforts remain mistakes in the end
as every mass misses what resonation
raises germane beneath the surface
so afraid of chaos that truth is lost.

6/10/09, rj

My journey into Yoga

I've been grinding online over meditation and Tantric info. I'm learning bit by bit, but the next step is to visit Ariel's puja (recurring gathering) and see if I'm accepted. One of the major things I read earlier today was how the Transmission of Tantric enlightenment is given by the woman and the man has basically no control over his initiation, it is up to a goddess to make the invitation.

I wonder if I have violated that code past redemption? It's very interesting looking back to recognize the resistance I felt when re-pitching my proposal and whatever was undoubtedly directly expressing a real conscious attitude on her part.

I'll have to ask.

The Romantic Prospect

For second there I thought, could this be possible? After the first few romances in life, the idea or possibility splits and evolves into what happened and the times that fooled you. Faced with the pain of having been fooled, developing sensitivity to one's own weaknesses or limitations in the matter becomes important, just like everything else in life.

My latest opportunity to grind on this is in full swing right now. From the very beginning, I was haunted by starry visions and what not, the usual thing. And, suddenly, there has been an enormous quiet just after I turned up the volume. I don't recall this being part of the dance before, and while a pause may represent a prior committment, without that it represents at least some degree of flakiness which doesn't represent the level of goddess which I can ally myself with.

To recap then, starry eyed adoration isn't necessarily a precursor to anything, and is certainly one of the biggest weaknesses I suffer in this life. The realization that I cannot just give it up ethically for the very thing that matters most to me: Love, hurts.

But there it is, my very own heart lies to me, and would lead me into the abyss of oblivion in the bat of an eye. To survive then means setting aside my deeper desires until certain conditions have been verified to exist. And, in this paradigm of romantic desire, discovering women with potential but unable to satisfy such an important role is atrocious, however I don't have to suffer with them anymore. This is my wish, and at least I can tell myself things are better because I know what I've avoided in the long run by suspending my desire.

Is there a higher road than this remains a question.

And now, here you are, a goddess ...

Goddess I Love

So much labor that amounts now to dust
All love and light played to your beauty, a crush
And yet you are even more perfect tonight
In little picture’s hush, I have always known this
And how overwhelmed I am by your essence.
With you in my embrace, I contemplate bliss.
That state of reaching the very thing missed.
Beautiful Goddess of Sacred Light, I love you.

July 2000

Feeling the Crest of a Wave

All the signals, facts, circumstances which I'm finding in my process of discovery associated with a healer I've chosen and the spiritual disipline of tantra itself are amazingly synchronous and overwhelmingly symbolic for a major transformation in my life. I'm still carrying around the baggage of my past failed love affairs at this time however, and will continue to do so until I get to spend some time with Ariel and determine the reality of what she may or may not have to offer me. The resurgence of hope is always a bad sign I think, one to signal a careful examination of to just what degree mechanical mind is responding to the idea of leaving behind this desert in my existence.

After spending several days now researching many different points of view about Tantra, I have the impression that it could very easily be the best next step for me to traverse given its focus on the male female sexual union as primary and at the core of what is spiritually possible. I have to admit though to having some fairly permament resistence to the elements making up its history, a story which is a overdramatized metaphor for the insights and realizations which together went into that body of wisdom at that time.

Ariel is the most beautiful goddess I've encountered yet, all fresh and innocent, and clearly not expressing her creativity over the top, oversaturation seems so much of the time to be part of the female model. Anyway, I have nothing else yet on tap as far as self development, AND this is really something I can't afford to correct but haven't a clue about as yet, for now.

My Answer to Marketing

In response to a marketers claim that they need to stop overwhelming social networks with marketing and lead in with relaxed just be yourself method, as his good idea for how to be better a marketer, my answer was this...

Sounds like code for "Don't Let them see you coming!" Someone earlier was observant when they talked about being context sensitive, and your idea certainly tries to slip on that hat, except the reality seems to still remain that of trying to pound a square peg in a round hole.

I don't have a solution here for ya, but I'm very clear that marketing doesn't work for me, especially on the web. The communications are uninvited, unwanted, invasive, and hiding all kinds of unwanted attachments and probes, etc., etc. that rob me of my liberties.

Any honest assessment over the evolution in web technologies will immediately reveal that what was in ithe beginning a true breakthrough for humanity, creating the space for their personal communications to global, it has long since been bought and turned by corporate greed and corruption.

Your like the original gangsters who would pop in to collect and exhort monies, calling it protection money. That's a clear violation of freedom, and I don't see any difference between that and what drives and ultimately produces today's web UI.

Scorecard

A good video on Love and relationship is on YouTube just got posted, find at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqAEfBMlJoc

A wide view of contemporary views from deep in the academic expertise to anecdotes from those stopped on the street.

Up late again tonight surfing online. I have serous doubts about my ability to network well online given what happens everytime I go online. With respect to my current interest in moving into new communities and making significant steps in that area online, can't seem to plug in at all. Instead, I have several bad tastes in my mouth over issues that are pet peeves of mine about what I find online, and are conditions which are what they are and will always be that way or worse. No, for me, I need to stay conscious about my committment to community and then proceed to participate with those communities in exactly the way that will satisfy me to do so.

A major fact of online interaction with others is now an almost constant and always greater bait and switch foreward which is based on a design of call for action. That action is invariably one for money!

MONEY! I have some serious and unmoveable issues with this element present across the internet and how its expression corrupts the possibilities of a global conscious link to life for constantly scratching the walls for anything money that can be mined there. If you buy into the intrinsic value of money then you're the vanguard of the internets marketability and business value.

For those who are all about money, this technology is driven by cash at its very core, the energy to run in it costs money. So those who make the investment, they have advantages in terms of their access and power over the operation of the internet and thish leads them to introducing profiteering in precisely that place of human affairs in which it can do the most damage.

That damage is taking the wisdom of our ancester's and our own possibliities of evolving in applying that wisdom consciously and continuing to learn from it, taking that and hiding it away.

It boggles the mind how nothing today appears any better or supportive for my own need to wake up and evolve myself consciously on higher levels of being. Everything actually seems quite worse for the wear, with small periods of calm now, then, and again, like the video on Love at YouTube I spoke about at the beginning of this entry.

Right now, begin single seems like a blessing. Part of me remains quite upset about this condition still being present in my life at age 50. Zen, tantra, 4th way, art, music, golf ... pretty much sums up my interests for now.

Execution Kills

Is this bigger
you know the yells
some that had gall.

Just because of fade
some resonation
produces today.

Oh, I am ready!
Your the one in need
I will regret or kill.

Here in the trough
the depth equals the height
and the light retreats.

Just the new shadow
always a good wank
to crumble so well

Your travel ends here
in this right bright moment
suffer you slut and wonder.

And, until the day I die
must I continue in this
hissing melancholic climb

I only regret through time
evil will find BETTER skill
He learned execute THE kill.

I mostly just mosey along
with room to fart clean air
Avoiding that rot is a key.

Maybe I'll show you mine
sometime that winds prime
And a real love that's free.



6/11/09 Rjd

Divination or Round of Roll

Title of this poem is Round of Roll, referring to the essence of the write from which it came, however Divination being a previous title which was left unfinished in content actually impresses me as having a very strong connection worth contemplating now....and for the poem


Nothing matters more than factual reality
the foundation of reliability that must needs
a resonation that impinges sheer intent
the answer echos, to break the news.

Disasters and threats to life and homeland
Natural outcroppings of chaos gone sleazy
cheesy versions valued better than rest
made bite size and dumber for the mass.

We listen to the echo in all that hollow
and mistake the source of our attention
lacking consciousness of the resonation
and the possibility of our own evolution.

Simplicity is simply not enough for this
empty tea cups filled with master's tea
was never real except to the one mind
where simple beginnings are complex.

The echo reigns harmonic sorrows
with every failed fullfilment made
keeping such sounds that promise
garden seeds are meant for harvest.

All efforts remain mistakes in the end
as every mass misses what resonation
raises germane beneath the surface
so afraid of chaos that truth is lost.

6/10/09, rjd

Social Places

This morning I'm reeling with how little support I had for my health growing up. Other than the mediocre habits of diet and the abysmal mental practices I received from my family, I had only the grit of my own being. As I have begun to see that power of resistance fade and fail at the age 50, the possibilities I lost and never even suspected growing up, the enlightment and knoweledge, the blessings my forefathers left me in a repository of wisdom rarely seen except for echos and refrains emitting a shine where everything else in life casts a shadow.

This old programming, the influence of the past, I choose to free myself from. Time to work however. I have a job.

~Gravity Rose

Originally written in May, 2004, rev May 2009


My pricked and bleeding flesh
from a thorn's rosey afront…
Betray beauty in a brutal flora.
Tears flush the burnt coral I smell.

The fault and pain made mine...
remains of innocent opposition
buried by collapse, bad recoil that
pride did need, denying the darkness.

Love infatuated ruins the innocent,
just like water negates the fire of flames.
Neither life, nor innocence, contest
the inevitable demise, of romance.

Until then, you and I, dance
the tragic heartbreak tango
wounded by stakes lost in storm.
Our steps now soaked on flooded floor.

With a saving grace, context
teaches mobius tricks exist
whereby openings are closures,
revealing sources beyond sublime.

My sadness grows with regards
to tender nostalgia over the worst
requited release in the evil of love.
A soul destroyer, with noisey word rattle.

Her articulation of my failure, now
years passed, razes just as bad.
And any hope of change betrays
the word pricks that remain.

Grown up, a better man,
her words struck in scars.
How I live feeling that wrong
keeps me up late still, injurious.

Our life's blooming rose path
some are lucky just to hear
of, grave my warnings, if lame
as I gravitate this read anyway.

Of her earlier thorns...
I never understood her pain
only later, when I was safe
from our demonic side-effects.

I cut her off in a pass, so my bad
she decides, and our world ended.
Plain and simple, in a boy slamfest
better maimed than roadkill she said.

My anger was exchange of discredit.
A word assault to strike and probe.
That layer is groundwork of challenge.
Tomorrow's sober stories will tell.


Copyright © 5/17/04, RJDuberg
Revised 5/30/09

Zen Insight

The zen master, pouring tea, says to his student, "Your mind is like this tea cup, unless you master the art of emptiness, there will be no room for anything new." And, with that, the teacup began to overflow with the tea from the master's pot, falling to the ground.

I love this analogy because I have lots of personal experience of having a mind running in so many different ways that focusing has become less and less defined and possible in my estimation as my ability to skillfully energize its presence increases. The best way to describe it is watching a continual skipping from track to track creating a flow of life analogous to the sound such actions produce on a turntable when one plays their favorite LP.

Creating emptiness then is fundamental to receiving anything. This must then be the first step towards attaining reality and a complete being.

Following Artists

Don't have a writer to speak of. Listening to Dave Matthews right now, thinking of JLightner, a roommate, who just flew to see him thousands of miles away, play in New York. Tonight, I had fun watching/listening to comedic stand-up.  Ellen DeGeneres, P. Oneal, Craig F, even Tom Hanks was entertaining on cue with David Letterman.

The real story here remains the international economical crisis. There just doesn't seem to be any end to the limits our plans find pertinent and real. The machine doesn't exist anywhere except in our minds along with varying instructional accounts for its operation. Except here, under democratic rule, such social flaws were supposed to stop. Actually, we only succeeded in shining a light into our bottomless capacity to live the machine when our freedom has been attained.

I'm still thinking about how to channel my anger towards my family situation. So far, I've only succeeded in echoing the dysfunction and lived a series of intimate relationships designed to break my heart and create a feeling of being abandoned. I've got that one down, and I no longer am surprised when this demon raises its ugly head in my world and life anymore.

So it goes...

Along with this media swarm, there is the instinct to choke on all the dirt. Let me just say that without acknowledging my responsibility for the amount of dirt in close proximity to my person as being equal or greater, I would not be honest in speaking about that beyond my reach.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to note a recent observation regarding the value this personal blog actually has for me. There's something empowering about writing one's internal story out when one stays conscious of public access to its read. The focus and the result is completely different than identical literary aims I've had lacking this readership dimension. What is that difference?

In my head the difference has to do with something being read, and my influence over that event. Now with respect, I find this takes work, and I often seem less than competent or skilled in the task, but regardless.

I speak to love and listen for it, and yet my life fails to unfold in any sensible manner or reason. The answers exist but believe me when I say they do not make any difference with respect to the experience of one's being this way. This jumbled and unfocused thing is all I have and all I get, and this knowledge as well was supposed to be of great influence in some transformational context, but biting only resulted in my being hauled out of my flow. What is outside of one's flow is no less as valid and yet being outside the flow it remains foreign and insubstantial to life within the flow.

And, finding myself unable to carry anything else into this entry, I close. Hootie's Blowfish makes timeless into music for me now.

Family Remains

While my father's previous wife to my mother's marriage and my birth has been problematic for me due to her insane and disruptive behaviors, the reality for me in the larger perspective has been no less crazy and broken down. She has over the years done some truly heinous evil deeds and I could attach all responsibility, at least for the most part, on her. Thinking about my value for my father however, I can imagine how his infidelity to her with my mother, conceiving me with my mom while he was still married to his previous wife could cause that woman the worst even unimaginable kind of female wrath. Reasonable at least where without such understanding I've only suffered the dregs of confusion and resentment against all manner and type of target, credited with guilt by simple association, imagined or real.

The breakthrough in this change of perspective puts responsibility to a degree on my father's immoral act, and forces me to accept my existence as cursed karmically from being a direct result of his lack of integrity. While my mother and he declared me their love child, I am not so easily convinced in the righteousness of that reason.

However, my existence, to have meaning requires that I reconcile the betrayal somehow. That my conscious awareness regarding my suffering and its source relative to my lack of family support and security is maturing to the point of helping me calm my roll and eliminate inappropriate action and emotion(drama), existence remains an unanswered call for me, a void only a genuine purpose will fill.

Raising a family and enjoying the special reality and love a good family milieu provides seems entirely impossible for me at this time. That leaves me alone, I am what's left. From my father's early betrayal, all that is left for me is me, and I ask you, what can possibly exist for me in this life when all that might have been is lost? Even my luck is ruined by that karmic nightmare. I can't even have a decent time playing a simple game because luck is always against me.

Finding something I love to do occurs as a possibility only because there are things I like to do, like write. But, once again the karma card trumps everything else. I'm quite sure nobody cares or wants to read what I have to write or say.

Thus, I understand how the gravity of my life has favored instinctive levels of satisfaction. Eating, sleeping, mind altering substances, all manner of masturbations, etc.  Well, get some help you might say. Did all that, and yet, I know I have nothing else, so I must try again.

Things are never the way they seem

Eminem article in this weeks Entertainment Weekly reports that his post recovery performance and productivity is characterized by him knowing what he wants and how do go about getting it, and most importantly keeping a focus on what's needed and making it happen. I believe that's an oversimplification and worse a gross misrepresentation, designed and paid for by his managers in a behind the scenes conspiracy with the publication.

Or am I just biased by a skewed point of view regarding my own lack of being relative to that? One can and does know quite a lot about what they want. I think for most, underneath their states of denial and distraction, this much can be said to be true if not readily so. It's the knowledge of how to achieve those objectives and the report of an irresistable approach and effort, without error or failure, which I find a bit ridiculous.

Such statements I believe to be at best gross exaggerations and in truth idealizations which turn on dishonesty when presented otherwise.

What a good plan feels like...

It's amazing how much effort I waste planning because I don't create the appropriate feeling necessary to have a plan succeed. A good plan is one felt with confidence to work. Genuinely felt, ego has no part in this assessment, and such plans that are constructed by ego inevitably fail with the exception of abuses of power. That's another subject however for now, the main idea is a simple test one may verify regarding their plans which has to do with conscious awareness of their level of confidence in its success. Often, such plans arrive in our minds rather than get constructed, at least for  myself. I believe it would be a great evolution of my intellect if I could in fact construct such plans consistently.

This kind of reality check during construction, I'm hoping will help me develop more sensitivity towards planning successfully by choice rather by accident for the time being.

The Eocene Era

The question that comes to mind after watching some new Palentology about this age is this...

Does function follow form or not? Or, does form follow function? From what I'm hearing the functionality which emerged at this period in our history OWES its characters to the level and gestalt of the environment/world which was present, the specific ecological DNA of that moment. Not only is this the primary constraint to evolution as we so far have been able to observe and detect it, nothing really has changed and yet everything has changed. Now, is this because our world changes constantly. The answer to this question is about the essence of time.

Time is a series with no two moments being equal yet referring to a unity, two concepts which are mutually exclusive. And as much as I've left this paradox at bay behind the mysteries of irrational modes of thinking, the damn question deserves a rational door or point of access, don't you think?

Therefore what can we say regrarding the original or even originality itself?

Father's Resolve and lyrics by Sheryl Crow, Always on Your Side

"Always On Your Side"


My yesterdays are all boxed up and neatly put away
But every now and then you come to mind
Cause you were always waiting to be picked to play the game
But when your name was called, you found a place to hide
When you knew that I was always on your side

Well everything was easy then, so sweet and innocent
My demons and my angels reappear
Leavin' only traces of the man you thought I'd be
Too afraid to hear the words I always feared
Leavin' you with only questions all these years

But is there someplace far away, someplace where all is clear
Easy to start over with the ones you hold so dear
Or are you left to wonder, all alone, eternally
This isn't how it's really meant to be
No it isn't how it's really meant to be

Well they say that love is in the air, never is it clear,
How to pull it close and make it stay
Butterflies are free to fly, and so they fly away
And I'm left to carry on and wonder why
Even through it all, I'm always on your side

But is there someplace far away, someplace where all is clear
Easy to start over with the ones you hold so dear
Or are you left to wonder, all alone, eternally
This isn't how it's really meant to be
No it isn't how it's really meant to be

Well they say that love is in the air, never is it clear
How to pull it close and make it stay
Butterflies are free to fly, why do they fly away
Leavin' me to carry on and wonder why
Was it you that kept me wondering through this life
When you know that I was always on your side

-RIP Dad, I can't help but still weep for you even today, especially after listening to this.