“The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes.
Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.
Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.
Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science,
and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception,” fr. “The Wisdom Of Insecurity.”
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes.
Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
We try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.
We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.
The relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible
without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I.
You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
The trouble is, that we have one-sided minds, and we notice the wave of life when it is at its peak or crest.
And the more you become aware of the unknown self – if you become aware of it -
the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is.
I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.
Well actually, when you look out there and see all these people and things sitting around,
that’s how it feels inside your head.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
The Bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered,
they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.
So then, in Buddhism, change is emphasized.
You must understand as one of the fundamental points of Buddhism, the idea of the world as being in flux.
The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination.
There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money…
they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.
“The more we try to catch hold of the present moment the more elusive it
becomes. It is like trying to clutch water in ones hands. The harder we
grip, the more it slips through our fingers.”
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize
that they are one and the same process as the universe.
In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America.
And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.
What I think we could aim for in the way of human civilization and culture would be a system
in which we are all highly aware of our existing interconnection and unity with the whole domain of nature,
and therefore do not have to go to all sorts of wild extremes to find that union.
A person who is fanatic in matters of religion,
and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe,
becomes a person who has no faith at all.
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.
When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown.
Instead you relax, and float.
the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.
nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.
Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver.
Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.
My metaphysics, let me be perfectly frank with you, are that there the central self,
you can call it God, you can call it anything you like, and it’s all of us.
Buddhism is not saying that the Self, the great Atman, or whatnot,
it isn’t denying that the experience which corresponds to these words is realizable.
Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.
If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other,
life implies death – or shall I say, death implies life – you can conceive yourself.
reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
“The only Zen you’ll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you.”
~ Krishna from The Bhagavad Gita:
It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another.
Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma. But competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity.
He alone sees truly who sees the Lord the same in every creature…seeing the same Lord everywhere,
he does not harm himself or others.
As long as you have attachment to the body and attachment to objects, fear and suffering will be with you.
Therefore, Krishna told Arjuna to develop his discrimination and rid himself of body consciousness.
He told him that once he was free of body consciousness he would be able to develop integral vision.
The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.
Abandon all attachment to the results of action and attain supreme peace.
~ J.C. :
I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.
–
If we follow these principles, there is now to be found a short path available to technical mastery of mortality and mortal sufferings for earthlings, a reunification with our environs.
The principles have a simple base:
Do not confuse the map with reality – mind is a powerful map, but it is just a map.
Treat Others as though they were self, for we are all waves in one ocean.
Do not believe, see.
Do not hope, have faith in ourselves and The Allness.
Currently i still feel many of us are “talking” past each other,
but we are consistently increasingly on the same page.
I still have a sense that the vast majority of the GPUS basically agrees on how to do things,
down to the content of the platform by and large,
and trust that the NC will find a way to articulate that in voting for good proposals.
As i have come to see the GPUS NC, as it currently is, as un-poll-able,
excepting putting a proposal in que for formal vote,
i come increasingly to believe many votes should fail,
and many more should be tuned up and brought back around frequently,
in one form or another, until we have found something
approaching (albeit barely) optimum.
Unfortunately, in a personal sense i seldom vote against the imperfect,
and prefer to vote for what i believe is considered near consensus.
The rise of hierarchy is due to the fact
that consensus does not work well on the battlefield.
In this era the battlefield is an electronic one,
supporting broad consensus and more diverse and distributed visions and decisions.
Electronic means can bring the responsiveness of hierarchy to consensual decision making.
We can build the tools to embody such self governance in GPUS bodies,
we can proof them out and graft them onto US “democracy” as law,
when it gets us elected…
While we do, the corps(es) will be building similar toolage,
people will more frequently expect to join in governance council,
in the “private” sphere.
None of this will change the core dynamic of consensus.
No matter who he is, or what he has done,
Sitting Bull must still go sit for days at the fire of Red Cloud’s clan
many times before he is ready to call for Grand Council.
One must work out the issues between one’s clan and any others,
and eliminate faction and discord in the nation,
then find the favored plan and means of major clans and elders,
then work to forge a plan that all can consent to.
Then one goes to council with one’s nation.
Lacking leisurely time to react to the changes we have wrought,
we at this point can only be jealous of the ancient practices,
before kings, priests, soldiers, and guns.
Telephones, TV, Radio, the papers,
we have become inured to the idea that mass media
is either one on one, or one to many.
The email list is no camp fire, we must find better ways,
but until we do, any elder must still go to the camp of his competitor,
and find a way to caress his ear with what he wants to hear.
However, we do increasingly have the means to create the electronic clan fire,
and we do not have much time to do it.
We all know this, but as individuals we all keep forgetting.
The process as we have come to expect it is unwieldy,
and we are far from helpless to fix it.
Until then, patience will remain it’s own reward in these matters.
17 February 2010
In my lifetime, the precarity, or desperateness, of people’s lives,
has grown, enormously, continuously, and alarmingly!
While the educated, information society, is ever more rewarded,
efficient, and luxurious, the vast majority are left out.
As of the late 1980′s, more than half of all people ever alive are living now.
That the vast majority of us are living on the edge of desperation,
or in deep desperation, as of mid first decade of the third millennium,
means we are faced with a world, where advancing technology has enabled anyone to live like royalty,
while enforcing a society where the majority, of all humans ever having lived,
are currently either starving to death, in grave danger of doing so, or worse.
Yet this technologia could engender an economy that could support most of us
in a style, that, still, very few have ever experienced.
We collectively have graver and graver impacts on our environments’
capacity to sustain us.
as a result of our individual desperate behaviors, we endanger all,
especially those who are not economically, and/or informationally, well endowed.
We must endeavor to reduce the general level of desperation among the masses,
else, even the rich will not be sustained.
The economic and information resources must not only no longer be
used against the interests of individuals, be put at the uses of the masses.
All individuals must learn to act less desperate,to spare what they can spare,
without suffering for loss, like info, pleasant labor, attention, and love.
None should not be well enough off to spare these things, for indeed,
not sharing these things is itself loss, one we all share,
not just the individuals denied.
All should be given their share of what our forbearers have handed down to us all.
the artistry, and knowledge of our predecessors should be available to all to mix,
and remix, and re-envision.
This is the only way back to an expanding economy,
over the hump of earths population limits and our increasing disparity.
Corporations are just the most powerful of such individual actors, not the best organized;
governments and other organizations are routinely,
like corporations, programmed to act desperately,
and to produce more desperation among others in so doing.
Wither goes our party on this path? How desperate are we?
Better, more human, communication, information, education,
and knowledge management,
allow us to fully share the most powerful resources
we have ever had, information, and the knowledge to use it with wisdom.
Humanity, and many other species, are badly losing the class war,
to the point of threatened, virtual, or real, extinction!
to our cultural toolage?
Our technology has been used to create an Earth,
where the majority of humans, who ever lived,
can only wish they had the freedoms and luxuries
of the tribal hunter gatherer life.
From most, the land, resources on and in it, tribal political power,
the heritage of passed down human imagination and experience,
even the control, use, and benefit, of their own labor and information,
have all essentially been removed.
For most, a hunter/gatherer life seems palatial for it is,
compared to squatting in a land”fill”;
more control, sustainability, nutrition, resource redundancy, other securities,
more luxuries, time, and space, and freedom.
The limitations of neighboring tribes seem like a small cost, the dangers,
even of tribal war, are a small price when compared to modern war’s costs,
or to working in a sweat shop to poison yourself and your land,
to work yourself to the bone to create a useless luxury product,
for wages that could never cover the cost of the useful thing,
the luxury good is a bad imitation of.
To poison the air? or to be?
a more desperate choice,even, than kill or be killed,
more stressful, less rewarding if successful, more lethal if not.
makes tribal warfare look like fun!
Tell someone feeling that desperate to preserve our environment,
there is only one answer, it is simple a question.
how do I survive?
This question more of us should be ready for a good answer to.
Even among those who fare better, many are so stressed out,
they spend many resources and much time, trying to get hurt with panache,
in desperate sporting extremes.
The threat of our own extinction becomes the most likely prospect
of our superior ability to adapt to, and master, threats?
i don’t think so…
What kind of human nature, or rationale, is that?
none at all!
Once the people seize the festival/party leadership,
first the lobbyists, then the politicians,
then the lawyers, cops, and soldiers,
may all be replaced,
then we will automate management and ownership out of their jobs
(they’ll beat us to it, you know they will;
then it’s just a legal change of ownership away).
At which point it will be time to sit the engineers down,
and retrain them to engineer for user usability and user desires.
Then sit the users down, retrain them for co-design of their own lives,
and resource management, the fun, easy,
joomla way.
The dTao be much more earnestly sought,
and the way to being fully human well shown,
in a world of animal, eventually vegetale, peoples.
Gia’s new brain will wake up,
within years heaven on earth, lamb lies down with lion.
the new religion, respect your place, and all others, in the Allness.
the new technologies will enable same.
to get there, we will automate management,
ownership, even visionaries, out of work.
no longer a job, the shared joy of striving to better our collective individual lives.
to preserve and embody the Earth’s behavioral and genetic information,
creating the beauty of her lifeways, expanding and diversifying them, protecting life,
the duty and pleasure of all.
but more than before, faster, more beautifully, more safely.
not ever less so.
every life will be secure, soon after, eternal.
the record will preserve you,
you will be completely, and the record will record it completely,
the record will be you, you will be the record,
the record will be backed up, copied, distributed.
immortal
virtual immortality for some imaginary social construct machinery
will transform into real immortality for all Her creatures.
we all know the technical side of immortality is almost worked out.
even now, we have much farther than that to go to build a less vicious,
paranoid, precarious, and desperate world.
A world that can learn to share,
as our technology now demands,
of us all.
You cannot stop it, you may only assist,
something we can all agree on:
automate management and ownership out of a job!
This ancient “atheist” materialist philosophy
from India is known only by it’s detractors,
as “Gnostic” schools were until recently.
Like the Nag Hammadi, these words are more
aligned with my view of the Allness
then the streams that have mainly
come down to us.
As i’ve said before, my school is one of
a very hard core purely literal Materialism.
The spirit and the thing are not at all identical,
they are simply one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cārvāka
That the pleasure arising to man from contact
with sensible objects, is to be relinquished
because accompanied by pain?
Such is the reasoning of fools.
The kernels of the paddy,
rich with finest white grains,
what man, seeking his own true interest,
would fling them away,
because of a covering of husk and dust?
The Agnihotra, the three Vedas,
the ascetic’s three staves,
and smearing oneself with ashes —
Brihaspati says,
these are but means of livelihood for
those who have no manliness nor sense.
In this school there are four elements,
earth, water, fire and air; and from these
four elements alone is intelligence produced —
just like the intoxicating power from kinwa &c,
mixed together; since in “I am fat”, “I am lean”,
these attributes abide in the same subject,
and since fatness, &c, reside only in the body,
it alone is the soul and no other,
and such phrases as “my body”
are only significant metaphorically.
If a beast slain in the Jyothishtoma rite
will itself go to heaven, why then does not
the sacrificer forthwith offer his own father?
If the Sraddha produces gratification to beings
who are dead, then why not give food down below
to those who are standing on the house-top?
If he who departs from the body
goes to another world,
how is it that he come not back again,
restless for love of his kindred?
Hence it is only as a means of livelihood that
Brahmans have established here all these ceremonies
for the dead, — there is no other fruit anywhere.
The three authors of the Vedas were buffoons,
knaves, and demons.
All the well-known formulae of the pandits,
jarphari, turphari, etc. and all the obscene rites
for the queen commanded in Aswamedha,
these were invented by buffoons,
and so all the various kinds of presents to
the priests, while the eating of flesh was
similarly commanded by night-prowling demons.
Fire is hot, water cold,
refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;
By whom came this variety?
They were born of their own nature.
Springing forth from these elements itself
solid knowledge is destroyed when they are destroyed—
after death no intelligence remains.
While life remains, let a man live happily,
let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;
When once the body becomes ashes,
how can it ever return again?
it was asked again, which seems so seldom, and apparently there was a new concise version to be revealed, yet another onion layer,
“By the way, what is this “Allness” stuff? Another flaky new-age feel good cultist wanna-be group or religion? Well, if it is a religion, I guess it is no worse than the others.
Rick Wilhelm
To utter Allnessness, level 5, universal wonderment!”
monte letourneau to RICK
yea, my cult! only one sheep allowed per shepherd, oneself.
so it’s kinda about one’s personal relation to the All, and the greatness
of the collective being grace within one. the one within one, as it were.
kind of gnostic, i respect the words of Lao Tzu above any others, and
feel the greatest historical sympathy with our native consensus based
spirits.
i really don’t think i’ve been revealed the words to explain it well to you.
the core concepts of my spiritual path are particle physics and cosmology.
those with a spiritual questing who follow well the logic of these sciences
often follow well my spiritual philos, which can sometimes also make sense to
those who are students of philosophy, especially if well versed in the
fundamental sciences, and open to a variety religious concepts.
it is almost by definition not a religion,
it is my own path to words i am comfortable using.
a cult of one.
the main rites are things like looking up at a full moon and loving
it’s beauty while returning my fluids to the earth, Loving my lover,
making the most of food i’ve helped grow, and in general artfully,
fully, passionately, living each moment gracefully, fully in the cycle
carnate (no soul, reincarnation, or after death).
hard core materialist science proves well the miracle of existing,
that Allness’s Grace and Love is.
i am a hard core materialist, i desire to deny the splitting of
material and spirit.
as well, i believe the brain evolved to choose good,
and that the most apt word for the concept of evil is stupid.
given the possibilities of the infinte in time and space,
it is not that far fetched to imbue All with the ability to evolve a
completely transcendant being, independant of localization in time or
space.
wither she be yet or not, then she will always have been here now
and you are an inextricable part of It’s evolution.
that which we are allowed to know her most intimately, at this time,
in, is Earth.
you might say that Gea is a minor goddess, or an archangel to me, or,
I am a Gaen, but it only approximates the truth – as does all i have
written here.
.
which seems much in the spirit, now that i review the letter, of your
“universal wonderment”, a stage beyond which it is not yet mine see.
i believe that our evolution, and survival, depend on finding the common ground, and a reconciliation,
of cultural norms and systems of understanding.
from prehistoric roots of language, ancient, and historic culture, and post-modern science,
must emerge a common understanding.
we are beginning to understand the brain’s complexity, how mind emerges from that, our history,
our evolution, and our universe on many new levels.
this century will bring ways to sift and winnow our understandings beyond current imagination
and ecological problems, created by social problems beyond our understanding.
We have the information to solve our problems, and the imagination to enact solutions,
but we lack an agreement on what the problems are, and what solutions are desirable.
we must forge a consensus on the meaning of life, as quickly as we learn the details of life.
we have the tools to understand things that have escaped us due to their complexity,
things like our minds, and the chemistry of collected living bodies.
i expect us to find wisdom in old ways that have been seeming lost,
and knowledge of what it is to be human, and how.
this must crystallize into a more rapidly evolving, more effective, more widely shared
consensus on how to be human, and how to be earthlings.
a more universal, more adaptable, system for encoding our information into understanding, and actions
will grow alongside the technologies that will provide a much more complete encoding of our world
into information.
to get on down our path, we must know, and be, more godly, more human, and more earthly.
more deeply material, less shallowly materialistic
science, religion, and magic will each find the value of the other
they will be reconciled, indeed, we must become more human, we must know ourselves and our past;
we must return to the root, to bring water and nutrient to the branches
we will then each be our own branch of learning, creating the understanding to foster the growth of all.
my evolving spirit-view’s basis is Love,
understanding, propagating, expanding, explaining, Love.
it is the greatest mystery,
understanding of which brings greatest Being,
and makes the greatest beings
(i used to think it was Truth, when i was younger and dumber)
we have studied hate far past it’s usefulness, surely we can agree on that?
in sooth i revere, above all else, Earth, and Love.
Gravity is the Allness’s Love.
Earth is our place to beautify the Allness,
for us all to co-evolve allness in.
Truth and Grace define Beauty.
Beauty, Love, Truth, Earth and the Allness, are plenty of Reason for every being Being
We all share one soul, it is why we are here,
to be here
to being the All into being, to create, expand, evolve Her
soul, psychic energy, magical power, inspiration, meaning, is somehow conserved
as is mass and energy, to which conservation this is somehow enjoined
if only by our lack of knowing why.
the best theoretical physicists now speak of conservation of information,
an emergent property of data, which itself is a property emerging from positions of mass/energy,
as it emerges from spacetime.
all properties of existance seem to arise as an emergent property of spacetime’s very existing.
each new level of complexity emerging into ever more levels of complexity
are meaning, thinking, and Soul that much different?
i believe all past lives are part of all present ones.
thought, divination, and meaning itself are some of the many manifestations of this conservation
and these two are intimately linked, by the flowing of their parts between them,
the melding of one into the other.
it is not the dominance of one part or another,
but the dance of moving energies or vibrations back and forth between the parts,
that make for the purpose, the pleasure, the very existence, of individuals, and of the whole.
This is the spiritual reason why sexual union is, to me, one of the most magical of acts,
universally, and, in particular, to me.
our different understandings of the universe somehow work upon similar principles,
conserving truth and meaning, whether encoded in the stars, or our DNA,
to be read from the molecular structures, or from the cast of die,
if any one, or some, can just divine the form, the code, the key to meaning
and these concepts are some of the traditional basis of magic, and some of science
both of which can be religions, personal paths of spirit,
or illusions whisked away in the winds of time.
Some aspects of reason are provable, some unproven, some stubbornly unprovable; forever?
why we are here?
to be here
?
why do we love?
to love
?
why not?
these two are most intimately related
as the sun, the fire, the food, the luck in the hunt, the thought, the progeny, the word,
the power, lovers entwined, and lines of descent entangled.
science can only prove so much, the spiritual proof is that which is not to be replicated,
but can only be experienced by one; leading not to theories, but to beliefs.
since i always look for outside confirmation, deeply influenced by my first religion, science,
lovemaking becomes where i am most likely to find what appears to be a confirmation of
another’s reality and understanding, and my emergent ‘beliefs’.
two meaning systems, two views, two minds
in contrast, conflict, and in concert,
exchanging energies, loves, and world views, on the most intimate of levels.
We can never really know the mind, or the reality, of any other.
but when you are feeling you feel what another feels
you short circuit the mental systems that deny certainty.
we all feel the same feelings in very much the same way;
all humans use the same chemistry, and similar structures, to experience feelings.
indeed, we share much of this experience and equipment with all mammals,
and much of that is shared with reptiles, less fish, even less other animals.
still, hunger, smell, sex, decision making, all animals share these modes of being,
and experience them through very similar mechanisms.
One may surmise that the experiencing itself must also be very similar.
when one looks in a dog’s eye, one feels that the dog has feelings,
yet one never really absolutely knows the mind of their own twin
opening one’s mind to experiencing the magical flow of energy embodied in lovemaking
brings one as close to certitude as possible in the belief that one shares thoughts with another.
properly matched and understood, lovers may also experience the flow of energies
between entities, the dance of being at the elemental level.
however they conceive to understand this, there is to be found a proof of the underlying reality.
we are all connected, we are all one, we are bound to life, and empowered therein,
by Love, Meaning, Truth, Grace, and understandings
the smallest consensus is two, the most basic of consensus realities.
besides sheer coincidence itself (which is all magic, science, soul, or spirit really are),
as i touch it, in gaming, with dice (my first big hint), and synergy of meaning,
the other places i find meaning, like using the I-Ching, and sexual love,
are intimately entwined with my mind and my perception, indistinguishable from faith and illusion.
but some larger patterns, like astrology (for me), show the connectedness of meanings.
minds evolved to discern patterns, sometimes a coincidence is flagged instead.
hence the tendency of the less rigorous reasoning to find meaning everywhere.
while personal meanings may well be found everywhere, they are not shared with other entities.
discrimination is necessary to find meaning that may be shared, so lacking discrimination
is in contrast with healthy human skepticism, for we are social animals, unable to survive alone,
requiring some degree of consensus in our understandings.
however, some measure of belief, a failure of logic, but maybe not reason, is necessary to us all,
especially in the definition of purpose, direction, desire, joy, and fear.
some complex systems seem definitely to reside outside us
sustained by odd reasoning beyond our grasp as individuals
but with meanings and patterns to be derived from complex systems of meaning
painstakingly built by our fore bearers, and continuously added to
things like astrology, numerology, bibliomancy, tarot, runes, religions and other systems of magic.
many have been struck with the similarity much of modern science bears to these previous attempts.
which many also believe have been replaced by the sciences.
quantum dynamics, like astrology, is different than much of the rest, at least for me…
these seem to be confirmed by the passage of my time
to me these things, like other humans, seem more likely to be ‘real’
to be out there, proving themselves at a distance, not affected by how we see, or what we think.
i’m sure that’s how advocates of my most hated of such systems,
that i believe exist only in their own darkly twisted minds, see their explanation systems also.
i believe systems are less dark, and less hate-able,
when the view is flex-able, and amendable by further understandings.
i don’t feel fixed realities are ‘truth’,
they do not reflect the impetus towards evolving that i see in the Allness.
nor it’s need for Love, deep reverance, respect and Grace.
so, i’ve come to believe that truth actually is neither objective nor subjective,
with one soul, conserved by All, truth is found in a consensus reality,
always expandable by new kinds of being and meanings.
i feel this understanding emerges from our experiences,
it is incomplete, and tentative, but, like science, astrology, and divination,
it makes things more easily understood, or at least comprehended, and explained.
the Soul, Allnessing, Beauty, Truth, even earth, gravity, and mind,
each individual part, the whole, and life itself are all emergent properties of being –
things that stem from the fact of existence, whatever it’s ‘real’ form.
all these systems of finding deeper truths seem alien when first encountered,
but when time’s passing seems to confirm them, they seem to become more concrete,
until one can no longer imagine otherwise.
Quantum dynamics’ mathematics are some of the most beautifully twisted pieces of logic
that will ever be.
no less, or more, so than many others that seem to describe the nature of things well,
by allowing us to manipulate her on a deeper, higher, and or bigger, level than before;
to live more well, to evolve, to understand and find meaning.
as were the birthing of spiritual and magical logics before.
the best reasoning we have ever posited all depends on
“because it looks that way to us” which seems more powerful than “it looks that way to me”
but each system is composed of many small changes, each originally only state-able by one
the wisest wise men know, not only that they do not know it all,
but what it is we can never know, and what we may someday understand.
as we enter a century where the most important frontier will be understanding complexity,
especially how the mind emerges from the brain’s interaction with life,
we will find out more about what can and cannot be known, what meaning can and cannot be,
by learning more about what knowing is, and how we derive meaning.
presumably, the more we learn about learning, the better we will get at it.
but the big question (why?) will never change.
only the how will evolve, but now how is poised to at least show us why we ask why, and how we find answers and meanings.
Lao tzu
the wise Tao doesn’t know
meets
god grant me what i may change, forbearance of what i can’t, and wisdom to know the difference
meets
science, life, art, and massless media
emerging
into a better, expanding, more evolved consensus reality, produced by better understanding,
producing better understandings, accelerating earth’s evolving.
even the disintegration of professional capital ownership,
and other exploitation by misappropriation of our common inheritance,
under the crush of it’s own effects, can only free our minds to see
(unless we allow humanity to disintegrate with it), that everything has plenty reason to be.
all paths lead to the emergence of Allness
pleasure in growing is what gives life meaning
humans are the last ones who should ask what is the meaning of life,
for us it is too find meaning in life, asking why is questioning the meaning of meaning.
meaning emerges from existence, like existence, it is.
one may question the nature of existence, but not it’s existence
existence is, is-ing is what it does! i.e. is is! beings are, being is.
It sounds like nonsense, because it is the answer to a nonsense question, sense is sensible; it just is.
likewise, one may question one’s understanding of meaning
but whether life has meaning? meaning is defined by living!
emergence, evolution, mind, and meaning, are,
like existence, simply, miraculously, being!
each, like us each, an integral, inseparable part of the whole
the Allness knows the meaning, the purpose, the principles,
of each individual, as a part of giving meaning to the whole
it is the meaning, and it’s knowledge will hold all.
Allness knows all, but it really knows naught, it does all, it is all, it is more fundamental than knowledge.
we cannot be all the Allness, so we need neither understand, or be, more than we can.
nor may we,
but we can know that to question, to answer, to give ourselves the illusion of understanding meaning
is an important part of what is our reason to be.
Love, Grace, Truth, these are simply things that make life be, and for which it is worth being a life.
meaning derives from the universal quest, the evolution of meanings
existence exists to be, it’s not so complicated. life lives to live, evolution emerges to evolve.
in my lifetime, the precarity, or desperateness, of people
has grown, enormously, continuously, and alarmingly!
while the educated, information society, is ever more rewarded,
efficient, and luxurious, the vast majority are left out.
as of the late 1980′s, more than half of all people ever alive are living now.
that the vast majority of us are living on the edge of desperation,
or in deep desperation, as of mid first decade of the third millennium,
means we are faced with a world, where advancing technology has enabled anyone to live like royalty,
while enforcing a society where the majority, of all humans ever having lived,
are currently either starving to death, in grave danger of doing so, or worse.
yet this technologia could engender an economy that could support most of us
in a style, that, still, very few have ever experienced.
we collectively have graver and graver impacts on our environments’
capacity to sustain us.
as a result of our individual desperate behaviors, we endanger all,
especially those who are not economically, and/or informationally, well endowed.
we must endeavor to reduce the general level of desperation among the masses,
else, even the rich will not be sustained.
the economic and information resources must not only no longer be
used against the interests of individuals, be put at the uses of the masses.
all individuals must learn to act less desperate,
to spare what
they can spare, like info, pleasant labor, and love, without suffering for loss.
and none not well enough off to spare these things, for indeed,
not sharing these things is itself loss, one we all share
all should be given their share of what our forbearers have handed down to us all.
the artistry, and knowledge of our predecessors should be available to all to mix,
and remix, and re-envision.
this is the only way back to an expanding economy,
over the hump of earths population limits combined with increasing disparity.
the corporations are just the most powerful of such individual actors, not the best organized;
governments and other organizations are routinely,
like corporations, programmed to act desperately,
and to produce more desperation amongst others in so doing.
Wither goes our party on this path? How desperate are we?
better, more human, communication, information, education,
and knowledge management,
allow us to fully share the most powerful resources
we have ever had, information, and the knowledge to use it with wisdom.
humanity, and many other species, are badly losing the class war,
to the point of threatened, virtual, or real, extinction!
to our cultural toolage?
our technology has been used to create an Earth,
where most humans, who ever lived,
can only wish they had the luxuries of the tribal hunter gatherer life.
from most, the land, resources on and in it, tribal political power,
and even the control, use, and benefit, of their own labor and information,
have all essentially been removed.
for most, a hunter/gatherer life seems palatial for it is,
compared to squatting in a land”fill”;
more control, sustainability, nutrition, resource redundancy, other securities,
more luxuries, time, and space.
the limitations of neigboring tribes seem like a small cost, the dangers, even of
tribal war is a small price when compared
to working in a sweat shop to poison yourself and your land,
to work yourself to the bone to create a useless luxury product,
for wages that could never cover the cost of the useful thing,
the luxury good is a bad imitation of.
to poison the air? or to be?
a more desperate choice,even, than kill or be killed,
more stressful, less rewarding if successful, more lethal if not.
makes tribal warfare look like fun!
tell someone feeling that desperate to preserve our environment,
there is only one answer, it is simple a question.
how do I survive?
a question more of us should be ready for a good answer to.
even among those who fare better, many are so stressed out,
they spend many resources and much time, trying to get hurt with panache,
in desperate sporting extremes.
the threat of our own extinction becomes the most likely prospect
of our superior ability to adapt to, and master, threats?
i don’t think so…
what kind of human nature, or rationale, is that?
none at all!
once the people seize the festival/party leadership,
first the lobbyists, then the politicians,
then the lawyers, cops, and soldiers,
may all be replaced,
then we will automate management and ownership out of their jobs
(they’ll beat us to it, you know they will; then it’s just a change of ownership).
at which point it will be time to sit the engineers down,
retrain them to engineer for user usability and desires.
then sit the users down, retrain them for co-design of their own lives,
and resource management, the fun, easy,
mySpace way
the dTao be much more earnestly sought,
and the way to being fully human well shown,
in a world of animal, eventually vegetale, peoples.
Gia’s new brain will wake up,
within years heaven on earth, lamb lies down with lion.
the new religion, respect your place, and all others, in the Allness.
the new technolgies will enable same.
to get there, we will automate management,
ownership, even visionaries, out of work.
no longer a job, the shared joy of striving to better our collective individual lives.
to preserve and embody the Earth’s behavioral and genetic information,
creating the beauty of her lifeways, expanding and diversifying them, protecting life,
the duty and pleasure of all.
but more than before, faster, more beautifully, more safely.
not ever less so.
every life will be secure, soon after, eternal.
the record will preserve you,
you will be completely, the record will record it completely,
the record will be you, you will be the record,
the record will be backed up, copied, distributed.
immortal
virtual immortality for some
will transform into real immortality for all Her creatures.
we all know the technical side of immortality is almost worked out.
even now, we have much farther than that to go to build a less vicious,
paranoid, precarious, and desperate world.
a world that can learn to share,
as our technology now demands,
of us all.
you cannot stop it, you may only assist,
something we can all agree on:
automate management and ownership out of a job!
just so’s y’all can lump me in whatever box of ideas you need me to fit in:
besides being a dedicated and active Green Party activist,
though far to lazy and forgetful for my ‘leadership’ positions;
i also think the following are quite likely:
war always sucks,
but virtual war is rocking good fun,
when you get to take a break and live now and then
high levels of US ‘defense’ and ‘administration’ were involved,
at the very least, in not preventing 911,
certain individuals more so than bureacraticity can explain
we have passed peak oil, deal with it
“burning petroleum for fuel is like burning money for heat” ?Mendeleev
Hugo Chavez is the best single being to happen to the Americas since Simon Bolivar
in this stead he, like Bolivar, is more than a man, he embodies
the progressive compromise with capital, and military hierarchy, but just barely, movement
Anarkik being is all about organization, consensus, and democracy
mob rule is man with big stick rule, chaos does not organize
anarks rule selves collective, organize is only way to do so leaderless
if you are not an anark,
consider it the next time your movement is beheaded
by assasination, or co-opted by excess capital accumulation
it happens every time it matters
the reductionist, determinist, absolutest, inhuman assumptions of the culture of ownership,
esp. as it pertains to communal industrial capital
and it’s control by very few for very selfish prosaic and combative reasons,
has no real human rationale, nor has it ever fit the needs or realities of the majority of humans,
much less other fellow inhabitants of earth
way too much collateral damage occurs every day in Iraq,
our school budgets, our hearts, our minds, our liberties, and our relations,
colatteral human damage from the war is just about everywhere touched by the dollar or english speakers
the most important capital can not be owned,
human imagination is a wage,
it must be earned hourly, and must be fed daily
whatch this space, this is a short list now,
but i have a long list of additions already in mind
i’ve spent enough time immersed in the tailend of the wave of culture
last felt to be self indulgently wasting thier youth
many of us are in here
still down with the youth, when it really matters
as the expansion of the envelope with chemical and social help
was the same old better solution to the old hermit in a cave,
as television had given us the twisted belief in over-’consensus’
and we founded counter culture
today it matters a little less who you are or where you are
this medium is not only more liberating, it is more egalitarian
while i’m keeping in mind that 2200$ was just established as the
income below which 85% of humans survive
we must, and will, soon include them,
and the instrument of doing so will transform all our lives
for the better,
as long as we retain control of our use of content, and connections.
the collective self reflection found upon blogs, emails, IMs, and spaces
is a neccesary prelude to effective collective action
whereas the dark solitude of the cave and hermit, and the pshycodelia,
connect us to the allness and our world,
they may alienate us more from each other, than not.
this reflection finds my minds reflections in the eyes of others
whilst this may not well bespeak of one’s social graces, in the ‘real’ world,
it does help excersize the same mental muscles
we need to split up into autonomous little self organized groups
and form our own global organization of human action
from the ground up
conciously, carefully, choosing our own clans
and forming up again, in a human culture, run for humanistic,
humane, human ends,
even long after it is no longer run by humans
i’d been very excited about writting as a youth,
but the motive was to share my thoughts,
once i’d formed them,
i ultimately needed more reason than to practice my words
here on myspace i can read what is written by those who read me, and publish with such facility that i’m quickly unable to do much else
just as it would be if i was always on peyote,
i’m not getting any work done.
now, there are other reasons i’m not working,
but it’s hard to object, for, in here, in very short time
a small somewhat random, un-directed, mosey about,
has given me several new friends that are helping me turn over and redefine many things
it’s not that my closest aren’t not all concerned with these aspects,
just we’ve been over it before,
my positions have solidified around definitions made for each other
over time tumblers move, hinges rust, doors open, doors close
new friends based solely on apparent intellectual depth?
a childhood dream, a leap forward for beingkind in Earth’s vicinity
writing to Piroska, i was discussing the tribal,
and the lost culture of the Ojibwe,
in light from the remaiing Gypsy culture
and i segued into the following:
it’s a more than a damn shame what is lost, but the
old old ways are for a world that no longer exists,
and the new old ways are constantly adapted to the changes around
the important thing is the attitude,
the state of mind and habits of culture
the rythms of life that give connectedness must be given back to all our children
the increasing dehumanization of the dominant culture
has come to the point where we must end that trending upward now
if we do not work today to do this humans will have no tomorrow
the dance of life must be returned to the norm; the beauty, appreciation, and respect
for Allness must be returned to our peoples
organizing on a human scale is core to this
eurocentric culture has a need to just start over in this respect
real political organization has to be broken into groups that can agree on a
consensus
and then, through negotiation, reassembled into an agreement the world can consent to
to build a world the world can consent to every day, forever
this must be done, but it will only need to be done one more time!
for it must be done right this time
having a culture that can evolve,
as opposed to a culture of absolutes is critical
our culture of constantly changing, ever more absolute truths make no sense
but there are confused ones today, who take each new truth as a long standing absolute foundation of right and wrong
change is good, but the foundations are not handed down on high
they are plain for all to see
the current turmoil within, and among religions,
seems based in that fact
any organized hierarchy of humans, in this age of information,
must confine itself to ends it may achieve
increasingly, this only means making money, not sense
only all of us can answer the big questions for all of us
the fragile brittle world of absolutes can’t stand much longer
the scared minds seeking leadership to explain away all the contradictions of thier worlds
will someday soon have to see that world blow away
when you can really see it, it’s amazing how much living in a mind of absolutes,
not only enables, but requires living in a body of hypocrisy
native, aboriginal, boreal, indeed tribal peoples of all nations,
and those without nations, and nations without self determination
all must collect together with the disenfranchised into a majority
this may seem like it will never happen, but it is happened, and it will be continued
to do this we all together must work out what it is we see,
what we want, and what the hell we
are going to do about it.
our entire set of paradigm sets must be recast,
independant of industrial capital’s control
and the only ones who can do it are ourselves
alliances between the disenfranchised, the nationless,
and the stateless nations and tribes
are increasingly strengthened from within
the tribal mind shares, the tribal mind cares, the tribal mind makes alliance
the actions of sustainable future for humanity belong to the tribal.
the comfort of unity with the diverse set of the All, proceeding therein
is in stark contrast, an improvement, on the austere, aloof, useless
monochromality of Judeo-christian-islamisms
the focus on death and what’s after it,
based solely on the fetishization of one heros death,
to procrastinate on joy untill you die
but joy requires a beautiful, healthy, diverse environment,
even inthe abstract or virtual world
so the tribal governments lend more help to the alliance,
and day by day, blog by blog, life by life, clan by clan
a sane world is being built.
the sumpremely human trait, done with love, or with hate,
to know when there is no other alternative
and choose the remaining choice,
and do whatever it takes
regardless of the odds,…
for there is no other choice
so far that is
we have learn about ourselves, that, collectively, we must be very careful who frames the question
in myspace, so far, we choose who frames the question
i do keep noting that there is not only no politics category,
but no green, anarchic, transcendant, spiritual, radical,
useful, meaningfull ones either
this first piece is from 1990, i recently titled it Our mother
and used it as the start point of :
Devi’s work’s created for public
“reading” (the focal word meaning in Herstory lessons this week).
late preherstoric “writers” crafted meaning in written words,
one
“letter” (conflicted meanings warning; or, character)
at
a
time!
the devi herself was no exception in the early 21st century:
Our Mother Who’s Arts’ We Are Parts
A spinning garden jewel glistening in the void
The evolving beauty of her incipient brain lost
in idling cancerous malignancy
I stand before the goddess of my ancestors
Begging forgivance my innocence
A steady gaze in her eye
We know I’ll all ways love her
With each no choice but to do as we do
With all I can do I offer
“this life to stop the extinction”
offering left on the altar of my heart
“walk forth from this place of desecration
we will eat the pain with our smiles
our tears will turn the path green
in our struggles to be freely
we will a place of beauty
in our faces we hold truth and peace
spinning thru the galaxy sowing seed
to bloom in health we will be without end”
Art
and there out of the ashes of art
will rise like a big happy fart
a new health a new self a new state of being
a new stealth a new wealth a new way of seeing
a new day a new way to be a sage
and quicken the place
a new way to bring out another age
in a state of grace
a shiny new enlightened stage
to be realities’ new page
a new world a new state of phase
a new sight a new like a new kind of race
a new flight a new tyke a new state of grace
a new upward a new load to bear
a new inward a new way to share
to return to the place of the crown of culture
pushing on outward to space
to be civil I’d guess
a new way to treat I & you and relations between
with a blend of old meanings where beauty can be seen
a new life a new breath and a look in between
if we are to see
all the 21st century
the most meaning full art
will have to be
3 rules of revolution:
3.everything you do is important and is your valid domain
4.everything anyone does is important and a valid domain of your study
5.if you’re not having more fun your not more revolving
the revolution’s never done
the restoration never rests
the reformation always fails to choose
viva la re-evolution!!!
Her Prayers:
Our mother
who art in earth
hallowed be thy rain
Our will be one
her will be done
To make heaven on our good earth
Our mother
beginning’s berth
let us relieve our pain
The time has come
to get things done
In our sights is the end of dearth
Our mother
who’s art is birth
renew what’s been slain
Our mother
for all that she’s done
we offer thankfulness
Warlords are done
peace’s time has come
We have no more use for the gun
Our mother
who sustains our life
know we can, and must now,
end all strife
We are all one
archons’ reign is done
To heaven’s reign we are berth
Psalm I - Litany
Thanx for vinegar and salt
Thanx for a bit of wheat, hops, and malt
That there should be
H2O
And that it knows
Where to flow
Thanx for dioxygen
Dihydrogen
Or either alone
And for what you do
Thank you
CO2
Thanx for sky
A place called home
The earth inside
With room to roam
flowers may have petals
thanks to all the metals
like iron and potassium
with the salt of sodium
to balence our fluidity
to keep the water in
by providing our skin
carbon keeps it all together
protecting us from weather
and covers our nudity
For phosphorus and calcium
In every bone
And thank you nitrogen
For all we’ve grown
Thank you sun
Thank you chlorophyll
For what’s done
For you carbo fill
Nucleic acids
Are oh so nice
When you kids
Twine them ’round twice
That mass and energy
Should dance so divine
Thank you
Oh thank you!
Spacetime
space so far
for room to think
in every direction,
Thanx also time,
time to think
Thus able to mind
Prayer
prayer is how we treat your body and mine
it’s the life we will have to see
to have a future where we will be
prayer is how and why we seek for our kind some more time
peace cooperation and blessings will be all that can get done
when our new age has begun
our love will hit a peak
when no confinement by death has been won
and there is heaven under the sun
we will have all that we seek
Favorite one liners and such:
We’re optomists, not stupid
Paranoia will die!
Galactic consciousness now
Rainforest is genengine
Genengine rainforest
Radital = rad it all
DISSEMINATE!!!
Simple bodies evolve intelligence in complex environments
Complex bodies evolve simple minds in simple environments
Synchronicity increases with increase in the number of levels at which complexity arises in an environment
Everything is everything [everything is everything - everything is everything - everything is everything]
some of this last section needs some work,
i have too many versions of the litany laying about on hard drives they all get weak at the end
so far my favorite part of the entire story is Basil before the court:
“human, the source of all earth’s problems.
they expect the being of supremeness to fix what they broke,
it bespeaks the greatest hubris.”
Basil frampton, ‘coon, 2nd immortal, the companion, when asked if he could use the word hubris in a sentence during the inquisition. Basil Raccoon’s Favorite Phrase - “jelly donut cannons rule”
That, and her being a solar wind and laser sailing flutterby, where devi really gets to stretch her wings, before becoming the beam herself. Moving at light-speed is natch when being light.
Somebody’s got to be the first to be most awesome, to bad she tripped up the timelines, and had to join the Galactic Revolution.
Under the Wormhole, seriously underground, fleeing through time, back to the source.
of course that was all before (well, and after, of course)
she had to make the locker
after that the story/ our past/ her future just keeps getting darker, and that’s it for now folks.
much love,
Devi Jones’ Locker, still mostly in my head
i am relatively well versed in the readings of several traditions i have a hard time comparing modern neo-wiccans to other older traditions that have left us a written record
it is very interesting to me that archaeology is finally giving us a picture of celtic culture and druids but wicca as it was practiced is a relatively solitary, very preliterate practice, best found in old midwives tales
so generally, when i speak of wicca, it is something that i consider an abstract unattainable dead thing
but if you want brand new and growing, alive and dynamic, modern neopagans are great, if you hang with the ones’ who you think use some level of reasonable reasoning
but it helps me feel the main things of all traditions that connection that i know is there with my tribal ancestors
and the roots of euro traditions in prehistory
it is all about sensual, beingness, communalness, the allness
modern monotheism denies respectful familiarity with the visceral to it’s own debility and to the debility of our world and every one of us a connectedness to the earth mother, and Allness, implies or enables a more sensuous connectedness with pleasure, and each other.
but the real thing to me, Sufi Mystic, Taoist magician, and Hindu ascetic aside, what really matters to me on the spiritual level of transmissible, recordable, culture, is to be found in all the aboriginals the “native” peoples’ cultures all value consesus, and love, and compassion, and humanity, the visceral, vital, joy of the great implacable Allness
since my practice is here, and my methods, materials, and places, are all native, (at least the plants animals and human here are all natives now, and have been adapted to by the native cultures) more and more often, if you really make me pin it down my religion is American Indian, but that does not exist anglo culture has always tried to conglomerate tribal cultures, first into each other, and then into the anglo culture
but tribal culture evolves at the band level and everyone is a member of at least one clan
connectedness arises again
clans have the rhythm of the year, and the rhythm of one’s life stages, and the rhythm of the moon, and this helps exlplain the rythms of life within, without, and all around you even the speech that connects our minds with each other and concepts that match all around us rhythms
ceremonies that connect you to the changing, and implacably fixed rythms of Allness rythms of your own movements, and actions, and thier relations to the rythms of those around you, and with all of beingness such that one perceives one’s life as dancing not even a dance, a dancing the primitive mind is built differently, better for the future, than the immediate past the dance of beingness is more appropriate to the expanding pie, horizotally structured, consensus, infosphere technologia we must be building
every memory easily retrieved from the place it came from and fitting into all the others in a rational, alive, growing, and evolving whole living in nested sets of individuals’ collectives and thier collected various greater groupings rhythm to the connections between clans, bands, tribes, and nations the marriages of enemies blending thier wills softening hatreds real cultural evolution that really still works so much better than the capitalist industrialist
it’s more fun for us easier on Earth more of godness and goodness to be primal beings
