Musings of a quantum module of perception embedded in the folds of an unfathomable cosmic superbeing.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Waking
into a dream
and from there wakes
into a series of dreams
where waking is but a vision of light
morning is broken
the shards of the day fall back
into the theatre of night
where plays are endlessly enacted
and the stage is but a stage
for future performances
stop counting time
play the music to its own beat
you will yet be able to take your exit
when the early dawn
wraps itself around your feet
Friday, November 18, 2011
Puzzling the will
But the question I would pose is: whose will is it really? Who wants us to live? Is it even ourselves? How do we know some alien race has not bred us to inhabit this planet, and somehow needs our life force to exercise itself for a certain number of years in order to benefit them energetically somehow. Some variation of The Matrix, in other words. How do we know our will is our own? How do we know we are not simply being manipulated by some bioenergetic device to maintain our existence here, unthinking, unquestioning?
Of course, it could be God's will. In which case it would be all right to obey it. You don't want to piss off God, after all.
It could also be some evil force. That is what the gnostics believed, and they were pretty much synonymous with the early Christians. Not that they thought we should all go "off" ourselves in protest, but they definitely saw us benighted humans as living in prison. The Black Iron Prison, modern day gnostic Philip K. Dick calls it in Valis.
So whether it be God's will that we feel impelled to continue inhabiting this mortal frame, or that of some less benevolent force, we must acknowledge the possibility that this "free" will of ours is an illusion, even in the intimate matter of survival. We have been heavily conditioned, to be sure, to think that we have free will, because it is very useful for "Them" to have us think that way. What a con! We think that our will is our own, so of course we will follow it unquestioningly.
When Hamlet was ruminating about "to be or not to be," he might have been grappling with this very issue:
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all...
It is generally agreed by Shakespeare experts that the "conscience" Hamlet refers to here is not our modern meaning of conscience, i.e. "doing what's right," but something more akin to consciousness. Specifically, consciousness of our unconsciousness, which we are afraid of. In the case of what is on "the other side," it could be worse than what we've got here. (Although that seems hard to believe, if you've listened to any of the Republican debates.)
They want us to think we have power and that the highest expression of it is our own "free" will to live. Never mind that we have no idea how we got here and generally have no concept of having consented to it. Did they drug us, cajole us with promises of lots of sex and sensual pleasures, or simply tell us everything and anything that we wanted to hear to get us to take out an 80-year mortgage on this big-ass piece of fleshly real estate?
Don't fear the unconscious. Fear what you know. Doubt how you know it. Question everything. If there's any reason we're here, it's to find the truth. Don't blow it.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
This is not a blog
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Maybe baby
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Block time
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Improbable universe
What happened to you today that was improbable? Think about it. Our lives are so delineated, organized, and made predictable not only by outside forces but by ourselves, because we like things that way. But the clue to the truth of life is in those events that clue us in that there are vast regions of unmapped territory out there. The entire universe is, as a matter of scientific fact, a thoroughly improbable beast.
A recent article in Scientific American called "The Inflation Debate" (April 2011) points out that for a universe to expand rapidly and continuously, in the period of what is known as "inflation" just subsequent to the original Big Bang, is a highly improbable event to begin with. But for a universe to emerge through the inflation as flat as a pancake, as ours is, relatively speaking--well, the chances of this happening are roughly equivalent to your being able to walk onto a vast beach, plunge your hand somewhere into the sand, and pull out a tiny diamond that I have hidden there. If we didn't know better, we would have to conclude that our present existence is so improbable as to be for all intents and purposes the pipe dream of a jokester deity.
So note and be aware of the little things that happen each day that lie outside the normal range. Because they represent the actual nature of this reality which is, as I have shown, of the most unusual character. One might think that God, or the pantheon of godlike forces, whoever is responsible for creating this unlikely universe, must actually be continuously reverse engineering this place. Not limited by our ideas of linear causality or constrained by the pedestrian organizational principles we humans espouse, the godforce is busy bringing new ideas out of the future to improve the present, while massaging the stomach of the past to better digest this expanding meal of change. This is the only way to explain how the specificity of what has happened could emerge from random conditions. Does God cheat at his own game of cosmic poker? Who's keeping track?
Then too, it may merely be a case that if there is a 1% chance of rain today in Iowa, but I happen to be standing under the only rain cloud in the state, there is a 100% chance of my getting wet. So despite the improbablity of the universe having turned out as it did, creating a conundrum for cosmologists, and despite the improbability of our being here at all in this flabbergastingly strange world (let's face it), we are getting pretty inundated with whatever it is. Call it reality, I don't know. It's a pancake that's getting infinitely rolled up and stuffed like a blintz. And we're supposed to eat this thing?
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Spiritual fetishism
There are two primary pitfalls with being involved with anything spiritual. One is spiritual reductionism, which I will discuss at another time. The other is what I call spiritual fetishism. This is where we objectify something whose spiritual essence far exceeds the physical. For example, a guru can become a substitute for the realization of higher consciousness within oneself. He may have started out as a doorway, but he becomes a roadbock.
Another thing that can become a fetish is the container of consciousness itself. A state of consciousness is the result of a delicate balance between pure consciousness, ego, intellect, feelings, senses, and the objects of perception that make up one's world. The resulting personal reality needs to have a certain inner and outer coherence, and a systemic structure and dynamic, in order to have enough stability to serve for any length of time as a platform of awareness. Naturally we get very attached to that stable "personality," but as spiritual evolutionaries we are simultaneously advocates of change and growth. That means the "state of consciousness" we are in, which is a median integral quotient of the strength and amplitude of our consciousness field, is a fetish container for its own metadescription.
Any state of consciousness can become a fetish. If we are in football consciousness, we have made the football a fetish. If we are in cosmic consciousness, we have made a fetish of the state of pure awareness as an ever-present reality along with relative awareness. If we are in unity consciousness, we have made a fetish of the merger of subject and object of perception. Let's face it: as long as we keep evolving to higher states, we are always going to find it irresistible to objectify our own subjectivity.
There is an alternative, though. Maybe we'll pop out of our consciousness fetish one of these days, like a Jack-in-the-box. We'll crack the cosmic egg of our own enlightenment. And when we do, it'll probably scare the hell out of God.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Sun stand thou not still
Maybe we don't deep down believe them though. Why else do we still say "sunrise" and "sunset"? Clearly those words refer to a perception, not a reality. A perception is, however, a kind of reality. In this case it reflects a desire to revert to our original sense of reality about how the universe works. It revolves around us, that's what we want to believe. And maybe we were right to begin with about that, before they started brainwashing us to the contrary. My question is, what have we lost by abandoning the "lower" truth for the "higher" one? What truth does the new paradigm shut out? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we used to know we had a place in the universe because of our centrality. From the seventeenth century on, we've lost that sense of center and thus are bereft of a confident reference point from which to evaluate our true place in the cosmos.
That true place is not one of a miniscule speck. Yes, we feel small looking at the transcendent heavens, the painterly whorls and explosions of stars and galaxies in the night sky. But we also feel expanded, as if our selves had ascended and become absorbed into the cosmic level of being. That is the truth that archaic peoples knew. And if they happened to think that they were the center of the universe, who are we tiny-brained moderns to gainsay them?
Sunday, June 05, 2011
The bearable heaviness of light
The masslessness of light may need to be reevaluated in view of Janet Sussman's theories, as explained in this six-part series in her blog The Lion's Maw. Here we encounter the idea of light as perhaps the fundamental constituent of matter as a result of the action of consciousness upon pure, uncreated light. Consciousness consumes and processes pure light and the metabolic result is our bodies. And stars and trees and everything else.
Being is light, literally. Even when it gets a little heavy. That somehow makes it more bearable, doesn't it? "Some are born to sweet delight." Sing it, Jimbo.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Shell
the curve of the full heart's chamber
the bent back turn of the other side
both drawn out of themselves
point down goddess direction
to the chocolate earth
pouring into the secret caves
where capillaries catch
gleaming nectrous juices
like deep discovered drops
on the tongues of Egyptian cats
ventricles of unknowing
sense without eyes
feeling only waves
the point is planted in the firm soil
inciting remembered rites
light dances behind silence
brooking no dispassion
a moon sets behind
the belly of the lake
pressing its fire into the furnace
now pink light curls
through the aurora shell
bells betoken breath rising
in an exhalation of larks
then the quickening