~The Rig of History

He was dying at the time and with him went a life.
Memories are habits designed to help others survive.
Oh Mercy, that's what's really going on, at the mercy.
Kazaam, totes a line, and represents nothing so fragile
flashing its pow, no one considers the pause as eternal,
the infinite opening of space in which life finds itself.
Too involved in the status quo, signs and banners - the fare.

Those dedicated studiers of culture's creative language-
I fear for their souls, locked up in our town squares.
Someone made up a loosely collected record as history
and the rest of us were unable to resist this formal bias.
We can't make any new moves dimensionally, together,
precisely because nobody sees history, endlessly absurd.
There's a real abyss between relativity and death in life.

This is a well documented backbone of history's crest.
We call it a biography, a guest list to test with the rest,
calling attention to life on end, clowning and infantile.
Anyone can do it and everyone has - at some time.
Is there a real way to fabricate immortality this way?
Unable to know anything beyond our own eventuality
we spend our time constructing bits of fish tales, in bliss.

Oh but, why? I wouldn't cry out, except I decry this.
For those of you focusing on history in consciousness
don't forget your time is limited; make haste not to waste.
Can you resonate, echo the world's symphony today?
How else to move or progress without flowing in this,
a presence we express simply being alive with all life.
It's the rules and boundaries, rigging we're snared in.

Dec 2009, rjduberg

The Need for More Organization

Right now, in life, I have the urgent sense which sees me utilizing the last 5 minute window before I said I was going to be somewhere that takes me anywhere from 5-10 mins to get to, and then sometimes then some.

Lots to say about my research on Tantra Yoga. I guess the only thing I want to say is that people in that disipline work too hard, focus on money, among other things, and; I'm not saying that that stuff isnecessarily off or bad, the issue doesn't change if circumstances swing positive as I prefer them to be.

Biggest issue for me right now is time, and its relation to my assessments regarding the world in general. I'm not sure if I like the change or not, does that mean I'm not really a pragmatist?

Looking for a job still that doesn't include writing for one...

On Community Response

Burn, Baby, Burn.

I saw the post by Robin and my first thought on responding was not to, reflecting an attitude of non-identification. It's important to see that drama is a vortex that can become so powerful it can override and dominate a person's natural gravity and ground of being.

However, I just got done viewing Jim Carrey's YES MAN on MAX, a beautiful film starring Carrey and Zooey Deschanel (girl in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), just a continuous series of scenes in which YES becomes a mantra to situations most would never say YES to nor find even remotely appealing. The beauty of it for me was the humor. So here I am saying NO, contemplating the universal YES to everything often chimed by Tantric sloganeers, and still laughing over the possibilities created in Carrey's film. How could I not take advantage of this GREAT OPPTY to say YES and do some personal lab work of my own. Huh? Are you kidding? LOL

So, after reading your post, my assessment was anything like disgust, in fact. I totally got your active transformation, and enjoyed reading your writing about it.

The only thing I guess I can contribute is that assessment is absolutely natural and critical to life and how we judge the relative value of anything and everything. Negative assessments are just as important as positive ones. From others, as unique as each of us are, it really is counter productive to enter into debates or engage people's assessments. There personal in nature and as one comedian said, "I don't like applause, just throw money!"

In response to Robin's question, which was way too open-ended for me, I think a little context would go a long way in shifting the conversation to being valuable on the level of community which is where it seemed she wanted to take it. My choice is personal responsibility. So how can I respond and be personally responsible with my negative assessments within a community?

It seems to me, by doing the work of transformation, practicing Tantra, saying yes - creating lemonade from lemons, and whatever cliche you have to add to the list - the most important bets are covered. But what about those negative assessments in which we are so identified that we begin to feel disgust, for instance? What I do is create some space, take a break, get a cup of juice, go look at the waves, you know...

And then, ask yourself what your committed to, and consider how relevant the negative assessment is to that context. For the most part, a person's associated disgust is NOT a relevant assessment to the context called OneTantra because OneTantra is like a wave, it only carries information, itself a "community" of relations. Work on the community (how relations are configured, energized, weighted, integrated, etc., etc.) is something that takes place on an entirely different level and is outside the scope of this question. But, for anyone who has ventured to this site with any background in online communities, LOL, disgust is pretty much the overwhelming assessment to include - and Moses is responsibly addressing the source of it. Nuff said bout that.

So, after establishing what rank a value has...  well there it is. This is in my opinion the way to "DO" something about negative assessment on a personal level. At the level of community however, the question for me is whether or not such assessments actually exist at all. 

Suffice it to say, if you have a community based on a negative assessment, your going to promote the transformation of it. The real chore comes when personal negativity corrupts a community promotion. Communities have mandates with purpose. Responding to negative assessment is only valuable then when the assessment is regarding the health of the community.

Holes and voids, the needs of space

There are uninhabited spaces that need our connectivity. They exist around value like blue sky and provide our selves direct contact to that which we value. There are also uninhabited spaces which form the basis for the sense of dangerous weakness, noncommittalness, unclarity, with nothing but space to create this paradoxical effect.

These spaces need substance, structure and energy to complement the value and our clear access and appreciation of it. One space is really a dimension, we call time, the space needing substance is simply our consciousness of timing, cycles, and our agreements. If we are not on time or don't take the time, chaos fouls the blue sky.

Another space, that needs its fill, is underneath, the space which maintains conserves and preserves. In it is a need for disiplines and routines which serve this fortification against natural entropy.

There are more spaces dealing with language and society, spirit, and vitality, and finally evolution. What do those spaces need so that those particular voids do not end up to dispose of us?

~Little Condensates

Condensing all this is my mission
a ball inbetween golf and baseball
which expands on the move
like a basketball, with a heart.

Memories threading into infinity
this is where I find the challenge
love cannot be lost without cost
remembering to be with just this.

My guru Kwan Yin is that this
before I knew, her imaged shine
a gift to hang on my own wall
along with the courage to love.

Such fine impressions, convince
sharing them with the world now
is the one true meaning not yet
What if I'm wrong, will I survive.

So much ado about nothing that
my contribution would be clutter
so I write verse in a condensate
poem after poem with one taste.

Like Rumi's merry-go-round scene
many of these moments pass by
between the synchronous animals
like albino elephants you can't miss.

Will you decide to end this ride
by giving your highest values away?
If it even makes any sense to you
how abundance is made a paradox?


rjd, 11/2009

~Where you go Rumi

When the light arrived, like the dawn, today; I was consciously simplified and simplifying, kind of like laughter feels, but the process was of mind. And this moment of awakening revealed a stunning metaphoric view to what has been a vein of lifelong suffering for me.

When I go there, and I've been there for sorrow, I am honoring love lost. Only in today's light did I see that love doesn't honor that place. I was there with the irrational hope, obsessed with the ongoing last glows from love's departure, that love might have mercy on me and come back.

...to be continued

Michigan

Here's my latest animal photography of Michigan, owned by my roommate Matt Benedict whose from Michigan.

On Foreshadows

This weekend, I underwent a procedure which eliminated an arterial blockage (99.99%)in my heart, next to a branch, saving two arteries as a result. For many months now, I've been attempting to acquire healing from alternative sources motivated by some unknown but felt sense. I attribute that to an inceasing sensitivity and conscious awareness. I never acquired the alternative source of healing and that might be a good thing since it might have prevented me from suffering angina to the extent that I was forced to seek acute medical care. A longer period of time could easily have put me in jeopardy of suffering a heart attack, and given my already weakened heart muscle any additional damage I suffer would put me over the edge of sustainable function.

Alot of negative press has been given to health care here in America, but I do have some wonderful things to say about my doctors. Though I don't have health care due to pre-existing conditions, and my financial situation prevents me from even making payments on the $25,000 hospital bill, they were prepared to intervene and perform the procedure which saved my life, without hesitation. I had to admit myself into Emergency, because in order to have been admitted otherwise would have required a $10,000 deposit. Herein lies the negativity for medical care here in America. We don't go as far as to absolutely deny care, but we won't provide preventative care to people who need it most and are unable to pay, and instead let their symptoms and conditions increase and build until they are about to drop dead before we're willing to help them.

Health care in this country HAS to undergo reform if someone like me is ever provided the motivation to do something more productive in life, given the risk to any income I may produce because of my health status.

On Creating New Possibility II

In addition to creating circumstances at your pleasure, exists the darker side of that equation. One opens the door to circumstances of equal but opposite character which appear 'willy nilly.' These circumstances are the reality test to your being, the moment of payment, the limit of fear manifested in life. Suffering, disease, death are what men commonly refer to these circumstances as being viz. a viz. their being.

I add this note to shine a light on the dark side of creating new possibility in your life. Don't be surprised. Expect and be willing to have one to get the other and vice versa.

On Creating New Possibility

The key here is to recognize that circumstances are your biggest adversary. As circumstances change, it goes without saying that possibilities will resonate those changes when one's consciousness is not up to a level of originality and creativity. It is agreeable to me to designate circumstances as fundamentally comprising a set. At some point, circumstances become irrelevant and valueless to enumerate. With respect to finite sizes of the set, it is important to see that the meta-set or super-set of circumstances is infinite, always changing, with a flow that can and will at times not repeat or overlap with previous sets. Such super circumstances will not resonate to any set of possibilities because the set of possibilities is entirely based on past responses foundationally and is finite, limited in terms of being a kind of referential database, kickstarting our best case scenario responses when circumstances dictate, for efficiency's sake.

When an original set of circumstances emerges, lower states of consciousness will employ simple denial to cope with the impasse. Evolved minds capable of originality, creativity, and receptivity based on the causal level are active at the meta level and have the ability to create possibility anew unencumbered and irrespective to any and all past possibilities as would be necessarily the case, necessary to keep 'the ball rolling' as it were.

To say that one possible response is just that, the ability to recreate one's moments and their possibilities as such is quite different than how your speaking. Such a response exists quite outside of any causal dependence or correlation to circumstance, but rather impact the wider field in which circumstance shows up in, on purpose, and paradoxically, sinse this level of possibility itself is unchangeable and never at effect, is causal and at source.

If i have this right, LOL. For me, language challenges my attempts to be rigorous about my understanding and knowledge of greater truth. Knowing the perfect clarity and stillness at the highest level of all truth and knowledge as unmanifest and unknowingness, is the ultimate expression of this difficulty, I find myself unable to do anything about it much other than dance around it. Higher levels of consciousness then do not respond but instead originate creatively with what appears to lower levels of consciousness as miraculous intervention or magical manifestations of help, etc.

Tantric Master - Barry Long

My inquiry into Tantra has not been very significant yet, except for the discussions I've participated on at OneTantra online. I was prepared to make a serious committment not too long ago to hands on training and study but my offer was not reciprocated properly or equitably by the instructor I contacted. NOW, one of the ladies at OneTantra mentioned Barry Long, which I spent a good deal of time last night briefly reviewing, when I ran into a wildly powerful teaching which was at the same time expressing much of the corruption which destroyed my relationship with the Fellowship of Friends Fourth Way School.

Additionally, I found years of blog posts, both praising and criticizing him. The manner in which he expressed himself was familiar to me as I read his words in a published interview with a journalist at an online magazine dedicated to enlightement and spiritual issues/teaching.

The egoistic lack of compassion and perversion he evidenced (2nd hand for me) said to me that there was a limit to his realization. This limit, this self-centeredness, was a mega contradiction to his teaching, something which was clearly echoed among his closer students' observations about how he would say one thing and do another. The response of course is no one can comprehend the behavior of a master, especially using ordinary social standards.

That's not going to fly with me, however, after reading quite a bit of him about his ideas and teaching, I cannot deny that I was left with a powerful impression regarding what he was offering in terms of a perspective on the relationship between men and women. Clearly, he made it up.  The thing I read which was the key to this was a statement regadrding how every 5 minutes men and women are constantly thinking about each other throughout the day. For him, this was something he expanded and USED to be creative regarding his higher realisations of mind.

I'm certain that there is a distinction between objective knowledge and subjective knowledge. What I've described here is a man who tasted objective states but returned to a very high subjective creative state and began to REASSEMBLE himself there. My bet is that his mechanics produced a continual stream of 'teaching' and because he was able to disentangle himself from that enough to gain some fairly distilled higher thought forms, his words began to ensare those listening like a web. The glue or stickiness came in the form of creating enough insightful space between his ideas that those listening were able to relieve themselves of useless suffering.

He assumes the title tantric master and yet it isn't at all clear whether he wasn't in fact harming more than he helped. The few nuggets I gleamed far underweighed the mass of red flags et al. I found opposing his legitimacy as a true spiritual teacher.

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.