Observations that dive deep into life and come up with treasures for all

From a Facebook dialogue:

Okay, I really appreciate your taking your time to walk with me though this. So I will take a little time an responding.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Christ is ambiguous. Christ is both a historical figure, a fact, Jesus is a fact located in space/time, and there is no ambiguity there. That’s it, a fact. He lived and was crucified. Period.

But Christ is ambiguous: He speaks in ambiguities, parable, metaphors. Everything is like something. In order for Christ to be the way Christ has to be here. The past is gone. We are alive here. So Christ is also here. Now where is that? Where is this Way? What is a Way? A way is a relationship, it is not a form, not a thing….Anyone can go this way…is this Way a thing? No it’s a opening, a space…a way is nothing concrete or else it would not be open to every one. A door is a way. It is open if you want to go through it. Christ is a door. (that is a metaphor.) He is not an actual door made of wood, that’s a fact. So Christ is both a fact in time, and a door that is not in time. If it was in time it would be on such and such date. One June 24th Christ will be a door. Go through it. But that’s not a timeless way anyone can go through at anytime. So Christ is ambiguous; two opposite meanings at the same time. A fact and a metaphor or opening, an opening relationship.

Now what does this relationship or door open too? God says Christ. Why. Because “I and the Father are one.” So this two is ambiguous. Is the fact of Christ, the physical body both a body and God, which is no body, at the same time. That doesn’t make sense. How can this body be this body and not this body at the same time?

But that is what he is saying. God is transcendent and beyond all bodies. Beyond mind. Beyond beyond….Christ is the door to that.

That is ambiguous. There is this rock and that plant and that bug, all these objects in the universe. God isn’t any of that. He is beyond. And time, God is beyond time. Beyond space/time because they go together.

Is God before time or after time? You can’t pin it down. You can’t say where or what God is….yet God is. Ambiguous. Christ is the door to this ambiguity.

Okay, What does ambiguity really mean. It means that I don’t pin reality down on the mat of one meaning. This is the poet’s view. Everything is a metaphor for the poet. The leaf is a leaf and my life aging. The pond is a pond and my quiet mind. The storm is a storm and my anger. Metaphors all.

Every thing points to God. A piece of crap can point to God. But God is unknowable as a fact. You can’t pin him.

Through Christ God is everywhere. Where can Christ and you go that God is not? Good and Evil can both point to God, can both be a door to God. You can cancer, Evil, but you see God through the cancer. You wife gets shot, but you see God through the guy who shot her when you forgive him. Ambiguity. Evil can be good and good can be evil.

Our difference is that I use scripture to support my experience, others use scripture to tell them what they are experiencing. Scripture to me is metaphor: it points to me. For others scripture is fact and it points away from them. Thank you so much for helping me explain this to myself. I needed some clarity.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

Some Christians argue that Halloween is not Christian but a pagan myth and should not be celebrated. Well, lets agree that it is a myth that is practiced as a ritual. And people like to practice it because it is fun. Kids like it. Parents like it. Adults like it. The ritual has legs.

But what does it mean? Everyone gets something from this bag of treats. For the candy companies, Halloween is their Christmas. For the costume makers, it keeps them alive. For the parents its a great night out that they remember as kids and want to pass on to theirs. For the kids…well it gives them a chance to get to grab and eat all the candy they can, something that might be forbidden during the year. Kids get to legitimately  break the rules. Adults who go to costume parties get to pretend they are someone else and take off their persona or worldly mask they must wear every day. Adults get to break the rules and act like kids.

But what about the spiritual person, or the person who is suffering from the demons of their own unconscious. (they are the same really). What can Halloween mean for that person?

Okay, lets look at the ritual where one opens the door and welcomes demons, death, and all that is foul and evil, and then gives this ghoulish population candy. Where do these demons come from? From the night, from the unseen, from beneath the earth, from hell, from anywhere but the daylight world where we like to keep everything in order and safe from these demons that can only bring death and chaos to our world.

A myth (according to Joseph Campbell) has the function of putting us in accord with reality so that we can affirm life and fulfill our potentials. How can the myth of Halloween put us in accord with our own True Nature? We have to really enter into the ritual and play all sides to find out— as if it were a dream and we are all he characters. In the dream of Halloween, you are you and you are the demons also. These scary creatures are your own fears coming up from your own unconscious where you have buried them, hoping they would stop haunting you. You must suspend disbelief here, as if you were watching a movie or play or a book and really got lost in it.

So Halloween is like a play in which you are playing all the characters. Okay, that’s the first step. The second step is to have the intention of letting your demons come up for air, so you can see them face to face. So you ask them to come up. You welcome them as you welcome the kids at your door. THESE ARE YOUR DEMONS.  You can feel this. You can see yourself in these masks. These are your masks…these are your children.

Now the next step is when you give each of your demons a piece of candy, you are giving them your kindness. Your demons are your own fragmented and buried childhood, your lost innocence that you have forsaken and buried alive in the grave of your own mind—so you could wear the mask of your adult persona. They are the unborn crying for deliverance from the living grave you put them in.

See that. Accept that. Tell you them you are sorry. Tell them that you love them. Love your enemies…for they are you. Mentally and in your heart with each piece of candy you give to these children, ask them for forgiveness and tell them they are free now. You no longer fear them. You no longer bury them. Let them go in peace. And you will be at peace.

Have a blessed Halloween. Thank you for walking with me in this valley.

Posted under General Observations

Another Facebook dialogue:
Ed Conley

TAKE AN ACCEPTANCE PILL. Accept your life and it won’t bother you.

Mouna Zaatour We can always bring change to our life! no acceptance pill for me!

Ed Conley Interesting. If life is change, then how can one bring change to change? If life is not change, then that definition runs counter to experience. So the belief or idea that I am not changing or need to change is an illusion. So I say accept change, and life is no longer an illusion. You are suddenly and radically alive and real.

Thank you for walking with me on this inquiry.

Mouna Zaatour What if I don’t define life as change? Seen from this angle, I understand what you meant Ed….but if we are discussing here it is to have a change of scene, of angles of view! so all definitions of life could be possible;)

Ed Conley Well, you can define life anyway you want. You can define a river anyway you want, but when you step in it, you feel the flow of change. When we feel stress, what we are actually feeling is our resistance to the flow of life. Stick you hand out the window of the car and you can feel its resistance to the wind. The mind does this by thrusting it’s belief of how things are or should be into the flow of life and feels tension or stress, and then blames the flow of life for the pain. It then tries all the harder to stop change. But the flow continues. So until we recognize that life IS impermanent, change, we continue resisting change and experiencing stress and discomfort with life.

What we are looking at here is direct experience, not something I’m just saying or something I read someplace. Not some teaching. But this is direct experience. Check it out. The next time your feel irritation because someone called you out of your peaceful state: Will you do me this favor, or something like that. Or someone says a harsh word to you. There is a conflict here between what you believe reality should be and what it is. You believe you should be not stressful, but here is this stress. We blame the circumstance for our pain instead of looking directly and seeing that we are creating our pain by resisting change. Our environment is always changing. We are not standing on solid ground. We are standing on a flowing river of form. Thanks.

Nadim Bouderbala · Friends with Mouna Zaatour

sorry to get involved in this discussion : If you are talking about change, then you should read the small booklet called “Who Moved My Cheese?” It will explain much. An I can add, if all the people will accept their life, we will still be living in prehistoric times without tool and fire. Only our ancestors who did not accept the way life was, made a change. A lot try and a lot fail. But without trying you already failed.

Mouna Zaatour Nadim welcome into the club:no acceptance pill for us;) but it is interesting to see different opinions about life! Where can i get the booklet “who moved my Cheese?”

Sanjay Guha Request also to read ”The Book of Life..”by J.Krishnamurthy

Ed Conley It’s Sunday Morning and I pour another cup of Facebook. Okay, the Acceptance Pill…..Acceptance is a paradox, or maybe a metaphor for something one must do for no reason. The way we understand and interpret Acceptance is that one must do it for a reason, and if the situation is painful, accepting it means accepting pain and not accepting evolving or moving out of the pain. This is, of course, not acceptable.

Yet, in all therapy and religions there is the commandment to accept. Accept that you are an alcoholic, accept God, accept Jesus, accept that you are stuck and spinning your wheels endlessly, digging a bigger hole while you think you are getting out. In other words, you can’t do something new, you can’t change unless you stop doing what doesn’t work.

So, one has to accept that you are stuck, that you don’t know what to do. The Cloud of Unknowing. And then what you should do will be revealed to you through the ashes of your acceptance.

Again, acceptance is a paradox because it is both death and life. One accepts death in order to live. Christ on the Cross…this is a formula of Acceptance, the greatest paradox of all.

Mouna Zaatour It is really nice discussion, I think we should classifiy what is to accept what is not to accept….everything what is a human invention could be discussed and not accepted the way it is or the way it used to be! so an acceptance pill for all humanity doesn’t work, as you said you need to understand what doesn’t work! in other words the disease….so we shloud start thinking about the disease before the pill:)

Ed Conley ‎Mouna Zaatour Yes, thinking about the disease before the pill. Okay, how does one think about the disease and accept it at the same time? Do I accept that I have a disease, like , Oh, shit, I have a damned disease. I didn’t choose this. Why me?

That is not the right kind of acceptance for the pill to work. I accept the disease is paradoxical in nature, because I must accept what I don’t want to accept. I must choose the disease. That’s what acceptance means, in this paradoxical way. Acceptance means opening to something without changing it. If I change it, then I don’t accept it. If I want to change it, I don’t accept it. So I must accept without changing what I accept, which means I accept the disease as disease.

Now what happens? This is alchemy. Instead of being separate from the disease by trying to avoid it, I don’t resist the disease. And what I don’t resist then is not separate or a problem. Non-acceptance means I am not this. Acceptance means I AM THIS.

If I don’t accept the disease, I maintain the disease by holding it as separate. If I accept the disease, then I allow it to change. (Mind you dis-ease is a metaphor) and I am then at-ease because I’m no longer in conflict with what is, or the dis-ease.

The Acceptance Pill transforms dis-ease into at-ease. Life is good.

Mouna Zaatour The disease I’m talking about is a metaphor! not a real disease, of course a real disease you have to accept it!

Ed Conley ‎Mouna Zaatour Okay, lets say that no disease is real. Oh, the body has a change in it, and we call it disease. But the disease is a name we lay over a slice of the whole that we don’t like. But the whole remains as the ground beneath the slice we have abstracted and called “disease” and then we want to get rid of it. We don’t accept it……This is a paradox.

Healing is bringing the part back to the whole, the slice back to that from which it came. Healing is accepting the disease as not disease. The paradox is penetrated and one is whole again.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

A Facebook discussion on this picture which turns into a metaphor for much more. Our FB discussion seems chaotic, confused and random, but I sense there is a higher order revealed if the conversation does not get reduced to argument and duality. There is a non-dual principle at work here. Look for yourself. This thread took place in two days, beginning when I finally got of picture of these two young men who had been passing my house on the other side of the street all summer.

Two Mormon missionaries have spent their summer here in Blackstone. I see them walking about town, white shirt and black pants their uniform, head and back bent from carrying their religion.

Ivan Campos I spotted them the other day. Have you spoken with them?

Drew The-WorkCrewe There nice people and if you tell em not to push, they wont. Talk to them, just doing so makes ya feel better. I’m no fan of any religion, but good people are just good people.

Dale Hinton They are good guys, doing what they believe is right. They took their father’s religion, like most people.

Ed Conley They won’t knock on my door. I guess the Buddhist flags and yoga sign scares them off. Doesn’t work on Halloween though. It takes a strong faith to spend a summer in heathen place like Southside Virginia. I heard they eat Mormon babies here.

Christine Mj Lavoie I often have jeovah’s witnesses here, I invite them for coffee and ask them what beautiful news they have for me..They are so eager and happy to talk about their message..I can only oblige.♥

Ed Conley I would love for them to visit. In past some have stopped by and we exchanged views.

Carrie Smith I don’t find them willing to leave if I’m not interested. Mormons OR J.W’s. I once went through the Mormon instructions but decided against it 30 years ago. Supposedly if you tell them that, like you know about it and decided not to join, they’ll leave you along. If I tell them that it makes them more pushy, they want to know WHAT I didn’t agree with, etc. They try and get you into a conversation, about anything. J.W.’s are worse. I don’t like how they sometimes have a child go to the door and the adult kind of hides, so you open the door thinking it’s the child. It’s probably my attitude of feeling irked by them that attracts them not accepting “I’m not interested”. I wouldn’t want to be part of anything that doesn’t respect people having their own beliefs.

Ed Conley There is not a whole lot of difference than the Mormons knocking on your door to convert you to their belief and someone knocking on your comment here on FB to sell you their belief.

Abbi Messer J.W.’s used to come to my house, they stopped when I got a BIG dog. He’s friendly, just quite intimidating lol

Faithia Mitchell LOL, well the Jehoviah’s Witness push and the Morman’s retreat and the Seventh Day Adventist just tell you like it is: Give your burdens to Jesus because he care for you. No sweat, its that easy.

Santi-Jose Acosta All faiths are a burden.

Ed Conley All faiths tell you like it is…for them. The only “faith” that doesn’t feel the urge to go out and conquer is Buddism, and that’s because it is not a theistic religion. It has no hungry God.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) and we do NOT push our beliefs and values on anyone. These 2 young men are very far away from home and their families and all they want to do is teach people about Jesus Christ. If people are not interested…they very politely leave. My 19 year old son is currently serving a mission for the church in Argentina and I pray every day that the people in a foreign land treat him with the respect, courtesy and kindness that we should show to everyone.

Faithia Mitchell Wrong, Santi-Jose, because you also have faith in what you believe, if you have no faith, you have no foundation and if you have no foundation, you can’t stand for something, you will fall for anything. I do believe we should respects all beliefs/religions. I have been visisted by both JW and Mormans before and they were respectful. Its a freedom everyone deserve; to believe what they will. Religious Freedom is a great thing.

Ed Conley Yes, those are lonely young men far from home walking up and down Main Street for their faith. This will make them strong. I honor them, however, the image of them walking, walking, head bend, back bent, is a metaphor for the heaviness of one’s religion, to have to carry it around all the time, defending it, doubting it. It is a burden. But that does not mean it is wrong. We all carry a burden and want to have it lifted. But who will lift the burden of religion?

Ed Conley ‎Faithia Mitchell Do you ever feel the burden of being Faithia?

Faithia Mitchell NO Ed, check out the meaning of my name, LOL, how can I have such a name and it burdens me? Nothing stick to my back because I am always calling on Jesus for help. He always respond because I am such a lousy sheep, always trodding close to the edge. hahahah.

Ed Conley Faithia Mitchell I said that because we all feel the burden of the name and our history, our personality with it habits and conditioning. You yourself said you have the burden of your sins. That’s what I’m talking about, the burden of our sins and the unforgiven, our history and all the left overs on our plate. Our mother told us to eat everything on our plate, but we never do. There is always something left over to haunt us.

So I’m not coming down on you or criticizing you (and if you feel I am please point that out to me). But we seem to cross paths here on FB, and I asked you to be my friend, so here you are. Why?

To spread your truth? To confront error, illusion, and ignorance, to fight the good fight against evil? To bring lost sheep to God?

I’ve been there and done that. And I probably still do that. But to have to do that is a burden, isn’t it? To have to stir it up, to have to live up to my burden, is a burden. This seems to be the religious person’s burden. And what is that burden?

To have to be right. The burden means that I must uphold the Truth, and in order to do that I must be right…right?

What I look for, what I search for is a way in which we can all share in the Truth, where we can all have a piece of the pie. Where we don’t end up with this burden of taking the pie of truth away from others so I can have it all. if you look at what goes on, right here on FB, you can see that it’s all about the pie. The Pie of Truth. No one wants to share truth. It’s got to be all mine…….and THAT’s the burden. Thank you Faithia for being who you are.

Diana Lynn Wilkins-Mitchell I have recently had the pleasure of making a new friend who happens to be mormon, being Catholic I have very little experience with that religion…I can only say I have enjoyed our discussions and count her as a close friend after only 8 weeks. Her chidren are lovely and have become a part of our family. God works in mysterious ways and gives us such a great gift in friendship….I have grown in my own faith and have enjoyed learning about hers (so as not to offend :0))…I feel for those young men on their mission…I know their families miss them…I hope they have a trip that allows them to grow closer to God.

Ed Conley Getting back to our Mormon boys walking the street with their heavy backpacks, knocking on doors as Halloween approaches, hoping for a treat. You see…..this picture is a metaphor for whatever you want it to be. There is the fact of the two human beings in Blackstone walking for their faith, for whatever reason they are doing it. We don’t know.

But they walk for us too. Each can see a new meaning in their walk, or was cannot see them at all. This is the confluence of fact and metaphor. We can choose to remain with the fact and talk about their historical factual existence: what they ate this morning, who they did or didn’t talk to, what kind of guys they are, what their parents are like…all these things are expanding our factual knowledge of them. We reduce them to facts and hold them there.

But what is the metaphor here. Perhaps one sees your own walk and its heavy burden, whether its your religion, your past, your sins, your personality that you can’t escape, whatever, this is your burden and these two guys metaphorically point to it. If you choose, that is. If you have imagination.

In a way, these two Mormons are walking to free you from your burden. If you see that your past is in your back pack and it’s bending your head and shoulders to the ground, if you see that directly, then guess what happens. You put the pack down and go home, free at last.

In a way, these Mormons are the Christ principle, someone who bares the burden for you so that you can be free. This is the power of metaphor and your own creative imagination. The historical fact of these two young men and your historical fact become one through the portal of the metaphor. Two opposite world, the objective world of them as IT and the subjective world of YOU from the inside as I AM join and create a new and greater idea or vision of who you are. You can put down you back pack of pain if you see that you have chosen to carry it.

THE NEXT DAY. ANOTHER POST.

Some Mormons came to my door. They have been passing my house all summer without stopping and I was feeling a little rejected. So today they stopped, and that was after yesterday when I took a picture of them and opened a discussion on FB. But the to keep on track here about belief….after I cracked some jokes with them, the serious one, who was itching to get his sales pitch out finally got to his opening line: do you believe in Jesus Christ.

Bam. There is was. So I had a few moments before asked them if they wanted anything, some water? and they said yes, so there were standing there in my foyer drinking this bottled water and I said, I have come to the place in my life where Christ is no longer in the past or future, or any belief, for that matter.

It’s like that water. You are thirsty and the water quenches your thirst. And you don’t care if you can’t read the label or if it’s Buddhist water, or Mormon water, or Muslim water. The water works. You don’t drink the label, you drink the water. And that is the way Christ is for me now. Christ is the water and you have to drink it now. This has liberated me because now I have no belief or script I have to sell, no labels I have to read and interpret. There is just the water of this present moment and I’m moving with it as it flows.The two young mens smiled and thanked me, we exchanged cards and I invited them back for tea. Oh, I said, as they left. “You are lucky, you can go out on Halloween dressed as Mormons.”

Denise Cushnie Ed, I’ve read your words 3 times. A great description!!Ed Conley it was a spontaneous drink of water.

Carrie Smith Mormons aren’t allowed to drink tea (or coffee or cocoa) My sister was a Mormon (converted by missionaries) for over 30 years, finally realized she didn’t really believe what they did, was trying to. She and her husband left the church and their long time friends (in the church) turned on them and stopped being friends. But my sister got to drink a nice cup of tea again…

Ed Conley Interesting. These two young men were standing in my foyer, one, the shorter one and the second in command was smiling and drinking the water. The other one, taller, blond, we seriously but politely waiting for his chance to spring his pitch. I asked him why he was so tense. 
I got the ice melted when they first came in when I told them about my first experience as a door to door salesman, selling World Book. My manager, Henry Bernick, was with me as I approached the door with fear and trembling. Remembering my instructions I notice a card in the door with a name on it. When the door opened I leaped forth with my pitch. ‘Hello, Mrs. Handle, my name is Henry Benick and this is Ed Conley.”
My mind had completely collapses. When we all realized that what I had said, Turn Handle being under the door bell, we broke out laughing and she invited me in. Anyway, that got the Mormons laughing, and it was clear sailing after that.
Sabrenia Corley Wriston Ed your words are truely fitting .loved the uses of water .

Ed Conley The water became a creative metaphor for Christ. Christ is the water, Jesus the religion is the label. We confuse the label with the water and try to drink the label, which is historical and a fact in time and location. So then we say that only the water with the christina label is pure. All other water is impure. But what we are talking about is the label and not the water that’s in the religious bottle. You have a Mormon bottle and a Christian bottle, and then all kinds of different Christina bottles with their own spring water that is the most pure.
Over and over we confuse the metaphor with fact. Take the Virgin Birth. Is that a biological fact or miracle, or is it a metaphor for one pure mind that is empty of labels. A Virgin mind would be a womb that is open to the inspiration of Christ, because it had no other labels before it. But..if we get caught up in the historical fact, then we just argue about whose label is correct.

Thanks for walking with me in this inquiry.

Marnie Norris LOL… i dont see how those parents send these boys so far from home to go into strange peoples houses. I think it is wonderful they feel that strongly about religion, but as a mother i would worried about my son.

Ed Conley They said they volunteered, when I asked it this mission work was required. The strap on a Mormon vest and head on into the religious wars, martyrs for the cause.

Peter Gleeson They send missionaries to Australia but are not appreciated

Ed Conley Yes, there is something basically egoistic about sending missionaries, for it is based in the assumption that the Other need saving by the missionary’s superior values. And it is also based in a fundamental doubt of one’s own belief system; it needs new members to increase it assurance that it is right, the Chosen One. As long as it grows, it feels secure. But let growth drop, it begins to panic. The doubt grows and so does the avoidance of that doubt. This is based in the fallacy of the misplaced God. They place God in their belief system and then look down from their mount Olympus on all other beliefs and gods.

Peter Gleeson The mormons would say they know the truth and it is their responsibility to spread it. To not do so would condemn people to an eternity of hell. I think it is important to spread the greater truth – the one that includes all religions, all people, all biosphere, all past, all present and all future. In summary, we need to understand how life moves through time and our part within this. Our goal should be to create ‘Heaven on Earth’ by becoming environmentalists and becoming socially active and more like humans. If we are successful in such an undertaking, we will prevent humanities extinction and our descendents will sing our praises because we saw evil and knew it was wrong and decided to make a stand against it. The Occupy movement has a chance to bring about necessary changes but doesn’t seem to have a real philosophy or manifesto – just a ‘not this’ attitude. It is like the rebellion of teenagers before the maturity of adult kicks in.

Ed Conley It’s Sunday morning and the Eastern Sun shines on my home office window. Thank you Peter for two great ideas that stir the blood of my writing. Creating ‘Heaven on earth” and the OW has no plan…to create Heaven on Earth? Lets see if we can bring these two ideas together. Oh, and the Mormons, bless their hearts, do have a plan.

Lets look at this from a non-dual perspective. We hear a lot about that on the elite circles of FB, but I have found it is not a perspective but a creative action. First the idea of creating heaven on earth is dual, the idea of replacing one realm with a better one. But from ND earth is already heaven. There is no creating or fixing to do. No plan. Change is good, but one has to allow it to happen, But all change must go through Chaos, especially when the old hangs on and builds up tension like we have now. Tension in the plates of the mind finally give way to the “big one” and the old system is destroyed.

Now for the OW. it is good they have no plan to create heaven on earth. It is good it is spontaneous with no meaning except in itself. Like ants after you disturb their system by removing their food chain, they spontaneously reorganize a new system that is in accord with the ground. 

So our system, our collective mind and the myths that hold it together are out of touch with the changing ground of the civilized world, nay the earth itself. Chaos is being introduced, and no plan can create a new system because all plans come from the old myths. A new myth is being created, and that creation like all creative art must come from the ground itself.

When you get in touch with the ground, like Buddha pointed to, the earthquake will come. Thank you. I feel better now.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

What, it’s the end of daylight saving time next week. Thanks for telling me. I would have missed the whole thing and been an hour out of sync.  But hey, that’s the way everyone lives anyway isn’t it. Life is catch up. One never has enough time, or one has too much time. But never the right time…unless one is in the right place at the right time…but that is a rare occasion and always by accident.

So I thank you for reminding me to stay in sync with the clock and the social wheel of time so I won’t miss my TV shows or be late to work.

But I must say, now that I’m on time, that there is a time beneath our clock time of the mind. If it were not for this Natural Time we would not know that we were out of time or late or early or just chasing time. We know this because beneath the time of our mind we are time. That’s it! We are time. But we think we are out of time. (Oh, that’s what we think death is, a time when we are out of time). But that is not what death is because we can’t be out of time….we are time. So how can we be out of our self?

This is all nonsense, of course…or is it? You are time, but you think you are separate from time, and because you are separate from it, outside of it, you chase it or fear it. If you caught it, what  would you do with it? You would  stop chasing it. Stop moving after it. That’s what you would do if you caught time. Like the fish chasing water, if you caught the water you would stop trying to get it.

I hope you liked this little rime……it all goes with time.

Posted under General Observations

Today while talking to a friend about my photography business I realized that I outed myself in 2005 and now six years later I’m still putting the pieces of myself back together. But first, before you get all excited, “outing” is a metaphor for coming to your true nature. And what is my true nature? I don’t know. But I had to out myself in order to find out.

I have a residential photography studio, which in from 1987 to 2005 was a running faucet of business. I was content drinking the best scotch, eating the biggest steaks, and watching the biggest TV I had ever had, and work my business. Life was good.

One day in July I went to Yogaville and something kicked inside like a fetus. My old spiritual path I had put down in 1987 came back, and so did meditation, yoga, and vegetarianism. I couldn’t help it. The scotch and steaks left like unwanted relatives. I still did photography, to be sure, since I had bills to pay, but my passion was to teach yoga and meditation. Oh, and my writing came back as a blog, which morphed into Facebook. Something was alive in me that would not let be go.

Now my business is just a drip. I can blame the recession, but I think my outing had something to do with it. In 2005 I hung a Blackstone Yoga Center on my front porch and changed the pictures in my house, put in a shag rug my my light studio for yoga classes, and began to collect little statues of Buddhas, and Indian deities. I thought my Yoga Center was Yogaville East, an outpost of spiritual power. When customer arrived I would drop the background over an altar with Yoga paraphernalia and joked about the schizophrenic nature of the room. But being in a conservative community, it may not have been a joke. But looking back I was my own joke. When you cast off an old ego, the new being always comes in a new unrecognizable ego. But, fortunately, this shell has not hardened that much and it cracks and falls off occasionally, when the fetus kicks real hard inside.

But, I did it and I’m glad. My inner nature had grown to the point where it had to come out and make the inside and the outside world one world. The initial phase of this shift in world systems was chaos. I introduced chaos into my life by shaking things up. A part of me was dying, a new me was being born. The transition between worlds is always turbulent. But I persisted. I could not put myself back in the box.

Since 2005 my business had grown tremendously—oh, not the photography business but the business of being my true nature (whatever that is). You see, we don’t know what our true nature is because truth is a discovery. One must continually discover his/her true nature, and in order to do that one must be willing to discard your old nature. Death of the old you, birth of the new you, that’s the formula of Christ and the Cross.

Always be new.  Hang  you new nature on your front door. Out yourself. Make your world One instead two. Make your inside and your outside the same world. You must invite chaos into your life: but here a tip. When the old system is broken up, a new and great vision of you will be born.

If you don’t believe me put a bowl of cat food on the porch. Watch the ants organize a system of movement around it. Take the bowl and knock the ants off. Watch the chaos. But in a few minutes the ants will reorganize a new system that fits their changed environment. Between the old and the new system there is chaos. Now….Are you not as great as the ants?

Posted under General Observations

Where does it say Jesus laughed from the Cross. No where. But this is the WAY. Now I’ve been harping on this metaphor thing for some time, as everyone here knows. And this is a good place to harp again…it’s morning after meditation and the first cup of coffee is rushing through my nerves with a little jingle….The Cross and Christ on it is a metaphor. And it is fact to. It is both at the same time. Christ on the Cross obviously happened in time as a historical even. An insignificant Jewish Rabbi was outspoken and got himself executed. Happens all the time. No big deal in the larger picture of human history.

But what makes it special? What gives this event transformative power? What makes the world turn on this event? Not the facts. The facts are past, the facts are long buried, and all the details will never be known. Look at facts that happen today. We never know the whole story, and even if you did know all the facts, there would still be new books coming out with a different slant. You just can’t know all the facts. But that’s not the point. The facts mean what you make of them. So facts in themselves mean nothing. The meaning of Jesus is not in the facts. Facts are a blank screen upon which you write.

So Christ and the Cross must point to something else. That’s what a metaphor is: a pointer. But does the metaphor point to another fact? That’s what has happened in religion today. People get together an agree upon what facts the metaphor of Christ and The Cross will point to. They call it our doctrine, and you better believe it is the right doctrine or we will crucify you.

This is the Fallacy of the Fact. Okay, so how does one get out of this fallacy? Keep the metaphor open. The metaphor points to what you must discover. Yes, that’s it! The spiritual metaphor points to THAT which you have to discover on your own by yourself after you have spend a lifetime trying to avoid this discovery. You have to discover YOURSELF. You have to choose yourself as whole, complete, and perfect and unable to do one damn thing to make you better than you already are. You must discover that you are powerless to fix yourself or the world or make it better than it is. This is an affirmation of LIFE.

Life is a paradox, a mixture of oil and water, good and bad, now and the ideal of perfection…..The absurd is the realization that life is a paradox,ambiguity, a mystery that cannot be known, a puzzle that can’t be solved….BAM. The only movement when this simple realization occurs is laughter. IT IS SO SIMPLE! It all comes together in that one laugh. the Laugh of Job. The laugh of Christ on the Cross. That laugh of Christ on the Cross is YOU.

How do you know if Christ laughed on the cross? You laugh on the cross of the paradox, on the cross of this absurdity of being on the cross of your own choosing. THIS IS THE WAY. …..time for another cup of coffee. Thanks for walking with me though this inquiry.

Posted under General Observations

I find this an overpowering image….Strange Fruit…and I remember a song by Nina Simone…and I allow my mind to leap from this picture in metaphor….apples hanging from the Tree….in the Garden of the Fall where Adam did eat and divided man into good and evil….but don’t think this tree is gone for we just exchange the fruit….gays, Muslims, Liberal, Conservatives, immigrants, my neighbor all….all hang from this tree in our Garden.

This is the Garden of Good and Evil. What difference what fruit hangs from this tree? Hitler had his favorite fruit. We all have our favorite fruit. We’re not talking apples and oranges here, but fruit as a metaphor for that which is labeled Evil by the Good labeler. The duality here is the belief that I am good and you are evil. But there is only one son of man. There is only one apple, but it has many colors. One Man with many colors. Labeling absolutely cuts the apple into parts with one slice being good and one slice being bad. When we lose sight of the Oneness, we have to hang our bad apples from the tree—it’s the only way to get rid of them.

If we lose sight of is the Tree we focus on the fruit not the Source. To the people who hung the fruit in this picture, this tree was like their Christmas Tree. They felt safer under it. The order of their society was protected by it. Once we divide the world into absolute Good and Evil, one feels commissioned by God to remove the Evil parts. Is there any real difference here between this Southern scene and one where the Israelites were commanded to destroy a city because its inhabitants worship the Goddess instead of Yahweh? They had their tree too.

And the Cross is a Tree, and Jesus is the fruit, hung there to make the world Good. Oh, the paradox. What a great metaphor this picture is.

I equate the Tree with the Word. The Tree/Word is the source of the fruit.To the tree all fruit is just fruit. Like a Mother it does not distinguish between its children. But the Father does (the male god who has no female counterpart); for him there are good sons and bad sons, and the bad ones better straighten up. The Mother embraces both good and bad sons. So one can see why God the Father created the Garden and Good and Evil, and also why He wanted to get rid of all those Mother religions in the land. And Now we can see why Eve (Goddess)  was associated with the Tree.

But getting back to the Word/Tree as Source of good and evil. In this context good and evil are relevant while the Source/Tree is transcendent and beyond “words”. Words, the many words of the mind, thought, are the fruit of the Word. If we get hung up in the words and in our conceptual thinking, and lose sight of the Word, we end up handing words from the tree as Evil words…..but there are only words. Stay in touch with the Tree/Word and the meaning of the relevant words shift. The world turns, so to speak.

I’m playing around here with the idea of a switch labeled Good and Evil. According to the dictates of your conditioning, you flip on Evil or Good. So to those who condemned Jesus they flipped the switch that labeled Jesus Evil and were justified in hanging him from the Tree. That meant they were Good. The idea is that in order for you to be Good you have to flip the switch and label somebody Evil. That’s the way the switch works. Its a circuit, just like a light switch. This is the Operating system of the thinking mind. In order to be Light you have to flip the switch. You turn on the light/Good by turning off the dark/Evil. You see? But this two poles of the switch are a pair of opposites; you can’t have one without the other.

Okay, lets look at this as a switch that flips us from Subjectivity to Objectivity. Good or evil is a Subjective evaluation. Subjectively I AM…. Subjectively I am the center of the universe. Objects in the world are ITs that we divide into good and bad. Do you see what’s going on here? (thanks for walking through this with me on our inquiry). Duality we between the separation of Subjective view from Objective view. The objective view is the dominant view of the Western world; it is the view of materialism. The world is made of stuff…ITS. Third person in grammar. Subjective is inside, First person I. Subjective is value and meaning. There is no value in an IT. There is value only when I identify with an IT and enclose it in my value circle of ME.

This Garden of Good and Evil is a separation of the Subjective from the Objective view. The Inside and the Outside are divided into two contradictory frames of reference. This is the formula for the suffering of man. A named group (religion, party, family, tribe, church) is a Subjective inside group that sees the world from its subjective perspective. Anyone who does not see the world of ITS from inside this group is a threat, an objective threat.

This is like when two lovers who are lost in each other’s subjectivity as one subjectivity, is intruded upon by an objective outsider. They feel threatened, objectified, sucked out of the private and sacred interior and made into an IT. Or when you are in a subjective state of grief and a news reporter shoves a camera in your face. Or the primitive doesn’t want his picture taken because he feels it will steel his soul. To be objectified is to be judged and taken out of your Subjectivity and your meaning and value.

Subjectivity is Unity Consciousness. The world is viewed as being in you, or your group. Objectivity is a view where you are in the world, another object among ITS. To be made objective is to  threaten and destroy our unity of subjectivity. The group says I AM GOOD and the Truth. The group says to the outsider either enter our subjective space and see the world as we do….or we’ll hang you from our tree. Your looking at me threatens me and my sacred interior. I can’t tolerate you. You are the death of me.

Okay, we have covered too much ground but if we can see this it’s ground breaking. Here’s how Christ transcends the switch. Christ is the principle or formula that combines both subjective and objective views, the inside and the outside are One view that is both two and one at the same time, kind of like 3D in the movies. I and the Father are One. This means I (Subjectivity) and the Father (Objective IT) are One.

Then he says Love your enemies. Love your ITs. Be one with your ITS. Make the objective subjective! This is what empathy means. I see you from inside you and inside me at the same time. I am you and you are me. That is the act of compassion. Compassion is the act of transcending the duality of subjective/objective and creating a new vision that includes both pairs

of opposites. Christ is a creative dynamic vision, a verb…not a noun. Christ is both First and Third Person, and the Holy Spirit is the dynamic union of the two.

When this vision occurs, this unity consciousness, one is again in the Gardena and the fruit, frozen by the labels of good and evil are allowed to grow and reach their full potential. This act of Christ restores life to the Garden, for this life is beyond good and evil. (Pandora is a metaphor of this Garden of Harmony)

Posted under General Observations

Let me share what I experience all the time now to see if it throws some light on the subject of free will vs determinism. I have a photography studio and I often will forget to check my computer calendar or even write down an appointment, and what ever I choose to do, go to town for a few hours or what not, when I return to the house (my studio is in my house) my customer is coming in the front door, apologizing for being late. This is the norm now, not the abnormal. If I’m getting ready to go somewhere and I have a customer coming with prints or whatnot, they will show up just before I have to leave.

It seems I have a secretary arranging connections regardless of what I choose. So I quit worrying about it. I don’t intentionally forget to test the secretary. But whatever I do I stay connected and the world is my friend. We are buddies, in sync buddies, me and the world.

So how does one fit choice and free will into that context? I choose to go here or there, but whatever I choose it is okay, no problem. So there is both choice and no choice, both free will and determinism at the same time. A paradox, yes? This creates a great freedom and allows me to be spontaneous and free from worry. I am okay no matter what I do. My secretary looks after me. She’s the boss.

Posted under General Observations

Whenever we are in conflict, perhaps irritated, perhaps angry, with an opposing views, I find myself looking at it from two directions at the same time. From one direction I say their opinions have nothing to do with me. But from the other direction their opinions have everything to do with me. They are true and not true at the same time. How can that be?

I like to watch ants. Each ant is an individual trying to find its way around a pebble or under a twig. Yet each ant is also a species organism. They all move like Italian taxi cab drivers, rushing back and forth over their little trails, but there is no traffic cop. They intuitively know where and what to do.

If I have a plate of cat food on the porch, the ants will make quick work of what the cat leaves. There are so organized, like little Egyptians building a pyramid. I take the plate and knock in on the floor, throwing chaos into the ant organism. All the cells run around like crazy. Then, suddenly, as if a whistle was blown, the ants reorganize and get on with their business.

Okay, let me see if I can find out what I’m talking about here….focus…focus…Oh, so when opinions rain on us and make no sense, we are perceiving them from the view of the single ant, my special perspective; but they make sense when we view them from the whole which includes my singular perspective and all opposing perspectives. This  new whole perspective (or non perspective) is a mystery, an unknown. I don’t know what it is. And I can’t choose to see it. It must be revealed to me. But how?

All the mystic report of the acceptance of Unknowing, of surrender to the mystery of God or Truth or….the Whole vision. That moment of surrender is feared because it looks like chaos, the plate dumping the ants and all their organized reality into mass confusion. Armageddon. But…..as we watch the ants, they suddenly and mysteriously reorganize into a system that fits perfectly with the new reality or field of reality.

Are  we different from the ants? Suddenly, the mind can reorganize itself and grasp a larger vision then it had as a single perception….(Oh,..this is not easy to communicate….But I think I’m on to something.)

Okay, we think we have the world all figured out (that’s the ants getting the cat food). Then comes chaos (that’s me tapping the plate on the floor and knocking them crazy). This chaos is existential. We have our existential moments when the intellect is confronted with contradictory frames of references, or what we would say are two equally valid rights or truths that cannot be integrated into one truth. I call this Catch 22 or a double-bind. The movies call it a Sting. This is Chaos. The plate is tapped and all our ideas of what’s real run around like crazy looking for its lost order and logic.

This chaos either comes without asking as a personal crisis, or intentionally (going before a spiritual master or teaching that slaps the shit out of your mind). But  what happens after chaos is that the system (the ants) and our intelligence reorganize on a higher level. This is called vision logic, or transcendentalism, or awakening, or rebirth or resurrection….oh, there are a lot of names for this unnameable discovery.

Our intelligence, when its conditioned way of thinking is broken up, reorganizes on a higher level, a vision that includes the previous systems and its contradictory opposites.

Two  things can happen: we can either have a nervous breakdown and regress into bygone system that no longer works (fundamentalism, if you will)  or awaken to a new and higher vision of who we are.

There you have it. I woke this this seed of an idea this morning, and thank you for walking with me through this revelation. Was it good for you? It was for me.

Posted under General Observations