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.]

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

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

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.

Memorial Day 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

Love Lost Again ... How Many Times?

Never fails to inspire me when a lover like Stephanie goes cold... partly because of the difficulty in describing and sharing the experience, I mostly reserve for poetry ... this one seems a solid contribution to the legacy of such moments of sheer loneliness bringing up such suffering, nothing really can adeuqately cope but a good sound chaotic thrashing of words for effect.

I hope she never reads this, because the odds of her recovery and bringing me such inspiration unlike anything I've known has established something of a good foundation promising a stable production for now... but who knows ...

For The Fool

Just the ranging depth and flow of emotions coming from loving her
of this one extreme gear made just for her; but, irrelevant now, gone.
And my entire point of contact reduced to bits of overused memory.
I know my heart won't last swinging in this complex wind of the injury.
Where the one I always knew would come - showed up to spite me
as though her own pain was somehow my fault, with my agreement.
I don't have her, though I never stopped wanting, but to fall this low
having the one girl meant for me, betray that love, lie and abandon.
There is a cancer spreading over my interior fire, a flame in her name
once roaring hot, now spits and pisses like a sick and wretched sod.

Her space grows cold and small for me, and I'm decided against it.
How do you tell the one, she's destroyed you, when she's a goddess?
There's no time like the present for new love, the years pass though.
Ummmm ... forever gone, and mostly complicated by rarest beauty
convinced me of little to no possiblity a Love will properly claim me
and thus ... love did cripple, maim, disfigure, diminish, and muck
a life, mine this time, and for so long, it now hurts to think about it,
impossible for me to make any real sense or understand this curse.
The one remaining move is called giving up the dream, for the fool.

COPYRIGHT © 4/2011 rjduberg

A triad of poetry

Dad

Dad
Dad
Dad, Amazing, overcome
    in the end
Ochopappi, RIP?
    UnUh - Do Over, ya miss.ed
the mark - Dot.Org
    the one and only
Ya can't hang *in* forever
    unless you chose sun
    You are coming back, Jack

Nathanji

The container of
    lead
That boxy limit of
    mess
Somehow comes down
    in a paradox
When Shiva and Shakti
    remember
One was Not, without
    the Other
The unity is singularity
    in choice
That simple Dot.Org
    in a Bush War
Not so easily done
    and yet,
That choice does
    work
If One remembers Not
    to forget

Percy WhoosHe 
Percy Jackson & the Olympians

Latest Potter redux pivot
    on paradigm shifted
Choice of Greek Mythology
    to first scored effects
And a blue-eyed Uma Glam
    in serpentine

© 4/2011 rjduberg

 Kabir says (One of the most famous of Indian sages of all time)

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think ... and think ... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten --
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now, you will simply end up
with an apartment in the City of Death
If you make love with the divine, now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
believe in the Great Sound.

It Happens All the Same

You didn't want to hear the shocking directness.
It really is the only decline, I decline routinely so.
When ignorance is annoying, all sleep is shocking
with all but the longest odds bringing it for an upset.

Just not your broadcast, where anything gets done
on the heel of hearing a few points spoken of, only.
Some say kind and gentle borders love's departure
where something named turns a man's heart, over.

Love slows the pace to the rate of understanding
where the light shines on places between transits.
And on that spot, we stand shaking, holding on
only letting you go can cure and find the holy.

Today is no longer a secret or mystery landscape
where one's death is all to easily lost to illusions.
Come and connect discrete paths of life extension
Acts of power increasingly free man from death.

There is the wind and the wind is us, passerbys.
When you take the moment for silent meditation
wait, wait, wait for that wave of quiet in mind.
Being kind and gentle will quickly be extended.

For the joke about enduring love in relationship
is clearly about comparing it to a grill's rusting.
Finally its simplicity of range over wide areas
that seems basis for the mass of best endurances

Which has nothing to do with wandering ladies
Everything required to expand and extend love
is already present and existing in one's interior.
That range is a matter of attending there greater.

COPYRIGHT © 4/2011 rjduberg

Maturity of a Warrior

One changes facades by shifting the component elements of the facade itself. Self pity is useful to the user because he feels important and deserving of better conditions, better treatment, or because he is unwilling to assume responsibility for the acts that brought him to the state that elicited self-pity. Changing the facade of self-pity means only that one has assigned a secondary place to a formerly important element. Self-pity is still a prominent feature; but it has now taken a position in the background, in the same fashion that the idea of one's impending death, the idea of a warrior's humbleness, or the idea of responsibility for one's acts were all in the background at one time for a warrior, without ever being used until the moment he became a warrior. A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn't indulge in it. - Castaneda

 All these tweaks of one's foreground/background configuration doesn't add up some how. I like here how certain elements of experience are clearly seen as purposeful aids in one's living and practicing the art of being a warrior.

Spring Humming Along Now...

Springtime alas wild and noisy fornicating, brutality submerged in nature's gushing fount of hormones. Your Bumble Bee Buzz came to me today at the golf course, and I waited for the danger to show itself coming on around my noggin's backside. Turns out it was the most unbelieveably colored humming bird who took a perch and simply eye balled me while its engine fluttered in neutral still revving noticeably, threatening to explode in birdy flurry of which the hummingbird is so famous for. Craning its little neck to keep his eyeball on the surrounding foilage and the other one on me, and the most amazing sheens of radiant spring color would wildly change on the birdy's neck even while I observed.

Thanks for reminding of something only spring seems interested in, bursting forth like a broken dam only in a diversity of life second to none.

John Abe's Totality

Don't miss a beauty of simplification in Abe's eloquent offer at his site IMTOTALITY

After I read his philosophical treatsie I posted this for discussion...

Just finished my first read, and admit to skimming the last page or two. But in celebration of an inspiring effort by JA, I will move along to a 'session' before revisiting what I didn't have time for tonight.

On Knowing and Going...I would like to talk about the aspect of higher energy descending consciously for myself, On the wave form side of things I would as well ask if the mathematical model's logic which formed part of the source of Abe's writing, doesn't extend better or further or recursively even given the model's essential legacy in its litany of function, operation, variability, and application in the very history of the idea of space as suggested as a command of the flat line state of origin. So, I'd love to hear someone's understanding of expressing higher vibration on the symbolic lexicon of Abespeak as it were. So far we have the logic for Totality in connection to everything finite, changing, coming and going, here and not-there, but also here and not-here looking from Totality.

Factoring is a good variant for example. Can anyone express the code to that calculus which solves for at least one aspect of higher vibration and energy using factoring on THIS IS IT.

OR, maybe you have a superior TOPIC infusing your mind right now with such knowledge that is FACTORED by design, but by design how?

Are Abe's ideas based on another unspoken rule of simplicity which is forged by the very unevolved logic called either/or, is attempting to plow forward without the ALPHA point of Totality, missing some internal point of integrity?

The view that without certain fortifications, IMHO, Abe's philosophy doesn't recognize or raise more METHODS (really harder than that sounds, denoting illumined path) to confirm key point of our capacity and ability to shift consciousness to unboundedness and higher or dimensions transcending time and space.

TOPICS seem of immense importance as wave forms, states, or equations. It seems lacking in more sophisticated logical terms...

Anyway, for starters, I think there are a couple of possibilities for anyone to ponder and respond to. Thanks, rj

An Inside look at 'not-doing' life, from inside the shadows

Focusing on life by finding the void instead of the fulfillment, is more aligned to a shadow realm, to start. Taking the step towards unity of being, by expanding the number of dimensions you can activate, sounds like nonsense when expressed in words. As a paradox defines every extension of mind to higher dimensions, apply same here. Speaking from the heart can make writing difficult, no matter; such is the challenge.

The mission is like considering and working up the juevos to be more conscious at higher levels by intent. If it is ONLY a matter of personal power, just how the being expresses itself as a new process period, for starters... Think happiness would be an open stage to observe energetics of being. That would have to be replaced right away, still a good place to start, even if ... most people cannot relate to having it (state of perfection, ideal) be perfect the 1st time through, and the dry runs that indicates. Assuming it for the moment though, I find myself compelled to consider the difference in how higher personal power both is and is not more important than everything else. It isn't because ultimately nothing is more important, and yet it is.

Best Fresh Fantasy, awarded to IT

What a hand can do to you...

Holdem is a fascinating game of 3 passes, the flop, a second, and the river. The river is basically the last card you get. I had pocket KK tonight, and started raising in the ante. I guessed his pocket AA (I was right). On flop I got my set of Kings, and checked to his betting his Aces with no raise. On the river, an Ace played leaving me a losing hand, both of us having full houses.

The point of the story was how a winning hand turns horribly wrong and loses you a lot of money. I will spend the rest of the night wondering how I could have changed that outcome. Pocket As would have to be strongest MOJO you can have face down. I played them down in the beginning because I wanted him to feel he was still leading and bet his money for my call. Had I come out betting, he would have to consdier the set of Kings as my motivation. In fact, it was, and by not betting them I assured myself of another (in this case he bet $1) side bet on top of everything. If I had correctly contemplated that river A, especially given its Full Tilt Poker ... I should have been expecting the set up. In the past, when I've been smarter than tonight and did expect it, I can always recall doing better because I lost less.

I'm sure at least one of my neighbors heard me moan loudly at the loss.

What is more painful is how closely this comes to what i hate the most about the web. Nobody can deny it's "the" perfect setup for it. Denial is so attractive to accepting that one is hopeless to certain temptation. The Sin of Man is pure genius and has to be seen as the real reason that Christianity has survived as long as it has as well as been the foundation of the weakest and darkest ages man has gone through.

Now you have Madison Scott, porno star cum art gallery owner, doing anal scenes to support the lagging art business she began. And the bio is clearly a pro prostitution procreative protoy proliberal in its position on sex. That Madison comes across so sexy in her pornos is the heart of the matter though, and yet, I know that if there are porno queens out there living off their porno income, maybe Madison is simpliy being scapegoated?

On the topic of scapegoats, I can see myself adding again to that list. I have a few on there already, and one I simply want there because...

Leveling Up by Rita King (3rd in a series of 3)

Rita King, innovator-in-residence at IBM's Analytics Virtual Center and security futurist at the Aspen Institute, has made a very positive contribution at least in theory with a web site she has started, called, Levelingup.com. I recently caught a vid of her in which she described her vision of the future and how virutual reality was capable of enhancing our experience of creativity in the virtual world in order to improve and enhance our experience of being in the real world. And in conclusion she shared this new site of hers with the audience and basically said that if you give us the challenge we will make it happen ... LOL, right? So, I went to the site and all she has is a box to state your challenge with the promise that when the site opens, or perhaps when she gets finished being worked over by her legal department, she will get to you with a solution, hmmmmm ... well, this couldn't have come at a better time for me and my current little exposition and exploration of dance as an art form, shifting the focus from that rather classical paradigm of physical movement with all its bells and whistles to the paradigm of thought, more tapered to that small but leading section we call politics and which is the arena in which our collective self is attended to for the good of the many ... Well, if you're still reading, I highly insist that you visit the site and engage it with a challenge, and absorb the experience of this site as deeply as you can. Here's a copy of what I submitted and represents something a third section or revision to the original writing titled Who Speaks For You? This one is titled, The Rita Suggestion

The Challenge I face is observing a certain defect in humanity's social collective consciousness. For instance, at some point in the history of USA, our leaders determined that the cost in establishing a federal agency which regulated and supervised the quality of food and drugs sold to the public was not so great as the cost of innocent people being harmed by either their own ignorance or the greedy dishonesty of people who made promises about effects which often times targeted the weakest of us the most defenseless and most desperate. Yeah, that's a tragedy but when the volume of incidents reached such a noticeable daily increasing rate ... our leaders decided to man up.

The first part of this challenge is simply how to word the analogous question as it pertains to a different dimension or paradigm of being, that of our intellect. Everyday, it seems like the volume of corruption, in which marketing equates to manipulating the mind to consume, increases. This condition represents for me what used to be unconscionable sellers of sub quality food and drugs before the FDA was created to insure that money spent by those without enough, at least wouldn't be lost on food that was unhealthy.

There are certain boundaries which are better left clear and intact, unblurred as Rita might say. One of them is between commerce and relationship. When you piggy back commerce onto relationship then you have corrupted the possiblities of that relationship by limiting them to profitable exchange. However, the true serendipity of relationship occurs in the moments between and during what we normally think of as tragic or nonsensical and foolish. It is only then, supported by the nature of intimate relationship itself that we have the ability to pay attention and learn something new outside of our own programming, and even that occurs rarely and only in the most ideal types of intimacy unbounded by egoism.

The plain version of this challenge looks to me like my ability to simply be in the real world unfettered and unthreatened as I move and breathe, by consumerismistic information (advertising). Junk mail, and spam, come to mind as indicative of the LEVEL OF cost associated with this problem. I don't know the exact numbers, but were talking astronomically perverse, which is NOTHING BUT WASTE.

So, is there a way to lead the world that separates consumerism from the everyday world of being?

The Minds' Dance (2nd in a series of 3)

The connection will find itself better articulated when I revise this essay, referring to the connection between what a ballet production at ABT for instance is all about and what serves as the essential counterpart venue for the intellect of man, suggested by my question as off handedly as I could think of putting it.

Movement as an art form, known as Ballet, has been raised to such a symphonic work that by itself it includes our emotions via music and our intellect via storylines. However, classic the those contributions are to the production it is the dancer whose movement seems to transcend natural law in expressing how the music and story are connected using the most sublime and masterful movements which resonate fully and completely and perhaps more than anything else NEWLY.

This aspect or focus is what portends the deeper experience of being she talked about. This is less a deeper experience of being than a more connected or integrated experience of being. The connection to my question Who Speaks For You? goes directly to the distinct possibilities which one might answer that question with. If it be myself, then we are speaking about a production of integrity expressed through THINKING NEWLY, if it be other than myself, then we are referring to what is fragmented in the mind, our conformity to social and family programming (just for starters).

Intellectual paradigms are still far too ordinary and disorganized for anything like a unified standard skill to take root around the globe. There is the obstacle of culture, language, and this is all complicated by severe differences in cognitive values, for instance in the west be they rational and reductionistic, and in the east ... not that.

So ... the real underlying question about the title, Who Speaks For You? is the question HOW LONG IS HUMANITY GOING TO PUT UP WITH THIS DEFECT in their collective unity and loss of power that persists as long as this condition persists?

I recognize that a few maverick geniuses do exist. I cited Jon Stewart for example, but another one is Werner Erhard and his work regarding developing linguistic distinctions and understanding which may form the basis and foundation upon which a solid mastery of the paradigm of paradigms may be acquired and NEWLY THOUGHT.

What I'm also saying is that NOTHING WILL HAPPEN UNTIL a critical mass of people demand it, voicing a loud enough public will to action, and the idea is or must be as simple as for instance the FDA was. And yet, at this moment, the real eloquence of that distinction eludes me, for now...

Who Speaks for You? (1st in a series of 3)

A friend of mine is a professional ballet coach. There is no denying her genius for dance and movement. In a written statement she shared with me which although not written by her was something she felt compelling for how it brought a certain complete and balanced mental perspective on what her daily activity is so passionate about, at least in general terms. The eloquence of this statement for me was founded on the idea that what the author (a professional ballet dancer) is "doing" on stage is seen as something co-created, a deeper experience of being.

If only reason and thought were so easily judged and assessed by the rest of humanity as an audience of world class ballet attends. Where are we to begin this process of focusing our attention with respect to words and ideas.

And what does the overload of info and the glut of facimile (or mentation, reason, and thought which doesn't produce depth in the reader or listener only frustration and dissatisfaction) mean, and when and where will it stop growing in mass and volume? Is there a limit to how much noise and distraction a mind can withstand and remain healthy and balanced nevertheless? The difference in listening seems yet to genuinely be appreciated for what it is - as social pressure adheres us to conform and accept false images and copies of copies of copies, including pure garbage and nonsense.

It seems to me that even a freshman whose study includes logic and heuristic thought would understand that society lacks a certain intellectual integrity which for instance, at least in principle and authorized by law, a suitable agency exists whose mission is to maintain and safeguard certain standards of healthy food production, known as the FDA in the USA. Such institutions in society just don't manifest without tremendous public pressure, which is nothing more than a collective agreement demanding societal change as 'good' in the collective sense of the word. And by good, I also mean implicitly necessary in the sense that to continue the status quo has been demonstrated to be completely negative and destructive of the public welfare and good. Often, inertia can be directly traced to a certain ambivalence of need collectively IE too many pros and cons. Rational sober debate is a starting point and ending point for the mind in that arena, but what about issues which have little support simply due to their being for lack of a better term, revolutionary?

There are speaks of brilliance, conscious efforts of men in support of a saner deeper intelligently relevant mentality to be somehow benchmarked at least by our communities and countries leadership. Jon Stewart is a favorite, but it doesn't take too much thinking to understand his comedy is really armor against the system which he is trying to reveal for all of its corruption, idiocy, mechanicalness, hypocricy, and every other notion of mediocrity you can think of ... its all here, running our lives and minds, and there is yet NO ground swell of protest, nobody with "a dream."

Don't you find that simply becoming all too wrong? What will it take for us to organize against the insanity of conformity, the corruption of economies, the pollution of ecologies, all in all, phenomenon which reflect a certain missing integrity to the humanity's intelligent recognition of the balance and value of silence in the realization of mental integrity.

The first mistake is to think that truth is a commodity for sale, or that it can be purchased. There is no pitch, no argument, no credential nor membership or club, which can provide your mind with the truth. There is a world however, devoid of any order, thus; one merely has to look at the next step their mind's about to take to find their own grist to grind.