New year's resolutions

My first resolution is not to make any resolutions as I never keep them. In fact, making them is probably a sure way not to accomplish what I set out to resolve to do. If I inadvertently succeed in fulfilling them, it is out of blind luck and not because I actually had the will and energy to follow through on my own account.

However, in making this resolution I have already broken it, as I resolved not to make it in the first place. That proves the rationale for the resolution: that resolutions are inherently futile because they will invariably be broken.

My second resolution is to break any resolutions that I do make, on the theory that they will be broken anyway so why not just accede to the inevitable. If I have made a resolution not to resolve, I have already broken the first resolution not to resolve, but acted in accorance with the second, to break the resolutions I do make. However, by keeping the second I have broken both the first and the second: the first, by making another resolution, and the second, by not breaking it.

As you can see, it is a hopeless business.

Why America slept

They forgot they were free.

The wind swept across the open land where the birds wheeled across the clear sky and the men and women who settled and worked the farms stood proud and looked with fierce singleness of purpose into the naked single eye of the sun.

They looked with such power and purpose that they forgot to see.

And men in suits sat in offices and passed pieces of paper back and forth in the fading afternoon, and did not forget what they were about.

But the others forgot.

And so the land burned and seethed and started to rock.

You cannot fool the earth, the sacred earth, and it will never, never, forget.

Inside outside

inside outside
upside downside
oneside twoside
sheside heside

seeside hereside
whatside whyside
decide nowside
beside myside

Hidden meanings

There are hidden meanings everywhere you look. No nook or cranny of reality is exempt. Let's take just one example: Country Joe and the Fish. (I still listen to them because I still listen to a lot of Sixties music.) Well, it occurred to me the other day something that I had never thought of or heard before even after all these years, that the name of Country Joe and the Fish is an obvious Christ symbol. I mean, you've got the fish, which refer to Christ as everybody knows; and you've got Country Joe, whose initials are like "J.C." backwards. Ok, and you've got "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag," which is like Jesus knowing in advance that he was going to be crucified (and what was he wearing at that occasion but a rag?) —I could go on... "Sweet Martha Lorraine" was none other than the Martha who was one of the waitresses at the Last Supper. Two of the songs on the second side of the first album are "Love" and "Grace": tell me that's a bag that doesn't have "New Testament" written all over it. And check out these lyrics: "So I took out my harp and I played 'em a tune, I could see they were diggin' it, Then the one with the fez, well he turns and he sez,"We'd like to help you make your trip." Who wears a fez? Not people in the Middle East, surely (where Jesus lived!). And you have to go on a trip to get there, for sure! What kind of "harp" do you think was he playing? Maybe the kind they play in heaven, right? Anyway, you get the picture. Hidden meanings surround us, inform us, interpenetrate us. Go to them now, they call you, you can't refuse. Oh wait, that's Dylan. Well, there are hidden meanings in Bob "Buddha" Dylan too...but don't get me started!

C.J.=J.C.?

Whodunit

Ramana Maharshi says: "If one feels one is the doer, one must reap the consequences of his action. If one enquires 'who is the doer?', and enters the Heart, the doership idea will end."

I would add that thinking that you are the doer is just an unnecessarily complicated way of looking at things. Every perturbation in the cosmic manifold serves to rework and remold primary substance, which constitutes the Kosmic body of you. Godbeing energy is the quicksilver essence of your blood, tissues, and bones. The endless process of consciousness dancing through form is happening inside of you, all the time. So you aren't doing anything. If anything, you are being done.

Are you done yet?

Before long

what belongs
to me
longs
to be
so before long
leaves me
which leaves me
longing
for my former
belonging