posted January 24, 2008 07:06 PM         

I have been disappointing you all. There is something that I'm supposed to say. A secret that I'm supposed to reveal, and rather than just OUT with it, I've been hemming and hawing. I'm afraid of ruining what I've spent twenty years building, and protecting...my name.

Some of you may not think much of it, but there are some who do, who have grown to feel as much respect for my name, as I feel for them, and for you all.

I think I should reveal that secret now, something is screaming at me to do so. But then there's the question of egomania. Will this be seen, not as what it is, a sincere attempt at coming clean, but as a complex of ego spun out of control? I certainly hope not, but that's not mine to decide.

I will no doubt discover who my friends are from this, and who were just along for the ride through their own beliefs and conventions, which they felt they saw reflected in me.

Their admiration and respect were misplaced in that event. I am no more deserving of respect or admiration than anyone and, in fact, probably less deserving than most for the cowardly way in which I've handled this.

Confusion is a primary reason for my deceptive and un-me-like behavior.

I am confused as to what this all means for what I've always known: the sanctity of my sanity, the religion of rationality that has been my chosen way for so long.

This secret and the knowledge that comes with it, I'm afraid, defy all rational explanation.

I'd like to think I'm still a sane and rational guy, and I'm certain that none of the details of this secret are made up, or hallucinated, for I've been very careful to screen my own sanity through trusted friends, and through my family. I've been certain to bring witnesses with me along the way.

No these aren't delusions, nor are they the fantasies of an egomaniac on a quest to glorify himself. (Don't get me wrong, the egomania is there, it's just more a source of shame than anything else these days. A flaw that I am tasked with eradicating. Some days I do better than others.)

Perhaps therein lies my deepest fear:

That this message, this secret, this mission and this task will somehow prove beyond my capacity to handle.

Maybe I just don't feel that I am up to the task spiritually and that I will stop, stare in the mirror and find myself looking at the altar to my own ego instead of the pure, selfless act that this is meant to be, that I am meant to embrace.

Know this people, I love you as few strangers in your lives have been able to. I see your eyes when you walk down the street. I watch you filling the emptiness in your lives with friendly and romantic relationships and material luxuries, purpose, apathy and intent. I've seen and known the searching within you, for I've been trying to fill that hole myself. It is insatiable, this desire, this ego, this loneliness, this wanting to matter somehow. It is unquenchable, at least in the manner in which we've been trying to quench it. Our way doesn't work, period.

The experiment of human freewill used in the pursuit of human desire and ego has been a miserable failure. We have proven only that we are incapable of guiding ourselves. Not that we are incapable of making good choices, simply that choices made based on what we believe we want, are for the most part bad choices. I'm done making bad choices for now. I'm going to TRY to make at least two choices that are RIGHT:

The first is that I will choose TRUTH over what I want for myself and my "good" name.

The second is that I will choose my Creator over the creations of ego and desire.

I'm done disappointing you people, I'm done disappointing myself and I'm done disappointing God.

---------------------------------------------

Apparently not.

posted January 24, 2008 08:49 PM         

~ Leonard Cohen

The Traitor

Now the Swan it floated on the English river
Ah the Rose of High Romance it opened wide
A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer
and the judges watched us from the other side
I told my mother "Mother I must leave you
preserve my room but do not shed a tear
Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you
it was half my fault and half the atmosphere"

But the Rose I sickened with a scarlet fever
and the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame
She said at last I was her finest lover
and if she withered I would be to blame

The judges said you missed it by a fraction
rise up and brace your troops for the attack
Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh see the men of action falling back

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
that they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I'm listed with the enemies of love

And long ago she said "I must be leaving,
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon
You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping
Run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan"

So daily I renew my idle duty
I touch her here and there -- I know my place
I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty
and people call me traitor to my face

posted January 25, 2008 03:25 PM         

"In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking Heaven that it hasn't a single morbid fibre in its composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors? If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity."
~ William James

"What keeps most people from suffering very much is lack of imagination.... Everything great that we know has come to us from neurotics.
It is they and only they who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be aware of how much it owes to them,
nor, above all, what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts upon it."
~ Marcel Proust

"There is in every madman a misunderstood genius, whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people,
and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him."
~ Antonin Artaud

posted January 27, 2008 08:59 AM         

I wasn't. I meant it. I've been a great wallower in misery.

quote:

---

As it is meant to be..so will it be.

---

Fatalism! It's the next step after frustration, right?

posted January 27, 2008 11:48 AM         

Hsin Hsin Ming (The Book of Nothing)
By Seng T'san, 3rd Zen Patriarch

Its not difficult to discover your Buddha Mind
But just dont try to search for it.
Cease accepting and rejecting possible places
Where you think it can be found
And it will appear before you.

Be warned! The slightest exercise of preference
Will open a gulf as wide and deep
as the space between heaven and earth.

If you want to encounter your Buddha Mind
Dont have opinions about anything.
Opinions produce argument
And contentiousness is a disease of the mind.

Plunge into the depths.
Stillness is deep.
Theres nothing profound in shallow waters.
The Buddha Mind is perfect and it encompasses the universe.
It lacks nothing and has nothing in excess.
If you think that you can choose between its parts
You'll miss its very essence.

Dont cling to externals, the opposite things,
the things that exist as relative.
Accept them all impartially
And you wont have to waste time in pointless choosing.

Judgments and discriminations block the flow
and stir the passions.
They rile the mind that needs stillness and peace.
If you go from either-or, this and that,
or any of the countless opposites,
Youll miss the whole, the One.
Following an opposite youll be led astray,
away from the balancing center.
How can you hope to gain the One?

To decide what is, is to determine whats not.
But determining whats not can occupy you
so that it becomes what is.
The more you talk and think. the farther away you get.
Cease talking and thinking and youll find it everywhere.

If you let all things return to their source, thats fine.
But if you stop to think that this is your goal
And that this is what success depends upon
And strive and strive instead of simply letting go,
You wont be doing Zen.
The moment that you start discriminating and preferring
you miss the mark.
Seeking the real is a false view
which should also be abandoned.
Just let go. Cease searching and choosing.
Decisions give rise to confusions
and in confusion where can a mind go?

All the opposing pairs come from the One Great Buddha Mind.
Accept the pairs with gentle resignation.
The Buddha Mind stays calm and still,
Keep your mind within it and nothing can disturb you.
The harmless and the harmful cease to exist.
Subjects when disengaged from their objects vanish
Just as surely as objects,
when disengaged from their subjects, vanish too.
Each depends on the existence of the other.
Understand this duality and youll see
that both issue from the Void of the Absolute.

The Ground of all Being contains all the opposites.
From the One, all things originate.
What a waste of time to choose between coarse and fine.
Since the Great Mind gives birth to all things,
Embrace them all and let your prejudices die.

To realize the Great Mind be neither hesitant nor eager.
If you try to grasp it, youll cling to air
and fall into the way of heretics.
Where is the Great Dao? Can you lay It down?
Will It stay or go?
Is It not everywhere waiting for you
to unite your nature with Its nature
and become as trouble free as It is?

Dont tire your mind by worrying about what is real
and what isnt,
About what to accept and what to reject.
If you want to know the One,
let your senses experience what comes your way,
But dont be swayed and dont involve yourself in what comes.
The wise man acts without emotion
and seems not to be acting at all.
The ignorant man lets his emotions get involved.
The wise man knows that all things are part of the One.
The ignorant man sees differences everywhere.

All things are the same at their core
but clinging to one and discarding another
Is living in illusion.
A mind is not a fit judge of itself.
It is prejudiced in its own favor or disfavor.
It cannot see anything objectively.

Bodhi is far beyond all notions of good and evil,
beyond all the pairs of opposites.
Daydreams are illusions and flowers in the sky never bloom.
They are figments of the imagination
and not worth your consideration.
Profit and Loss, right and wrong, coarse and fine.
Let them all go.
Stay awake. Keep your eyes open.
Your daydreams will disappear.
If you do not make judgments, everything will be
exactly as it is supposed to be.

Deep is the Tathagatas wisdom,
Lofty and beyond all illusions.
This is the One to which all things return
provided you do not separate them,
keeping some and casting others away.
Where can you put them anyway?
All things are within the One.
There is no outside.

The Ultimate has no pattern, no duality,
and is never partial.
Trust in this. Keep your faith strong.
When you lay down all distinctions theres nothing left
but Mind that is now pure, that radiates wisdom,
and is never tired.

When Mind passes beyond discriminations
Thoughts and feelings cannot plumb its depths.
The state is absolute and free.
There is neither self nor other.
You will be aware only that you are part of the One.
Everything is inside and nothing is outside.

All wise men everywhere understand this.
This knowledge is beyond time, long or short,
This knowledge is eternal. It neither is nor is not.
Everywhere is here and the smallest equals the largest.
Space cannot confine anything.
The largest equals the smallest.
There are no boundaries, no within and without.
What is and what is not are the same,
For what is not is equal to what is.
If you do not awaken to this truth,
do not worry yourself about it.
Just believe that your Buddha Mind is not divided,
That it accepts all without judgment.
Give no thoughts to words and speeches or pretty plans
The eternal has no present, past or future.

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." ~ Plutarch

posted January 28, 2008 03:11 PM         

No hands but yours

no feet but yours

These are the eyes

thru which he pours out

compassion to the world

Christ has no body on earth but yours

No hands but yours

No feet but yours

These are the hands blessing me now

All praises to the One.

Teresa of Avila

------------------
~
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted January 29, 2008 05:26 PM         

Now, to feel something as real in the measure of its full reality is to love. It is love, which awakens us to the reality of ourselves, to the reality of others, to the reality of the world and to the reality of God. In so far as we love ourselves, we feel real. And we do not love - or we do not love as much as ourselves - other beings, who seem to us to be less real.

Now, two ways, two quite different methods exist which can free us from the illusion "me, living-you, shadow", and we have a choice. The one is to extinguish love of oneself and to become a "shadow amongst shadows". This is the equality of indifference. India offers us this method of liberation from ahamkara, the illusion of self. This illusion is destroyed by extending the indifference that one has for other beings to oneself. Here one reduces oneself to the state of a shadow equal to the other surrounding shadows. Maya, the great illusion, is to believe that individual beings, me and you, should be something more than shadows - appearances without reality. The formula for realising this is therefore: "me, shadow -- you, shadow".

The other way or method is that of extending the love that one has for oneself to other beings in order to arrive at the realisation of the formula: "me, living -- you, living". Here it is a matter of rendering other beings as real as oneself, i.e. of "loving them as oneself.” To be able to attain this, one has first to love one's nieghbor as oneself. For love is not an abstract programme, but, rather, it is substance and intensity. It is necessary therefore that one radiates the substance and intensity of love with regard to one individual being in order that one can begin to ray it out in all directions. "To be able to make gold, one has to have gold," say the alchemists. The spiritual counterpart of this maxim is that in order to be able to love everyone one has to love or to have loved someone.

~ Meditations on the Tarot:
A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism

Meditation on the Sixth Major Arcanum of the Tarot

posted January 29, 2008 05:57 PM         

The student is told to set apart moments in his daily life in which to withdraw into himself, quietly and alone. He is not to occupy himself at such moments with the affairs of his own ego. This would result in the contrary of what is intended. He should rather let his experiences and the messages from the outer world re-echo within his own completely silent self. At such silent moments every flower, every animal, every action will unveil to him secrets undreamt of. And thus he will prepare himself to receive quite new impressions of the outer world through quite different eyes. The desire to enjoy impression after impression merely blunts the faculty of cognition; the latter, however, is nurtured and cultivated if the enjoyment once experienced is allowed to reveal its message. Thus the student must accustom himself not merely to let the enjoyment reverberate, as it were, but rather to renounce any further enjoyment, and work upon the past experience. The peril here is very great. Instead of working inwardly, it is very easy to fall into the opposite habit of trying to exploit the enjoyment. Let no one underestimate the fact that immense sources of error here confront the student. He must pass through a host of tempters of his soul. They would all harden his ego and imprison it within itself. He should rather open it wide to all the world. It is necessary that he should seek enjoyment, for only through enjoyment can the outer world reach him. If he blunts himself to enjoyment he is like a plant which cannot any longer draw nourishment from its environment. Yet if he stops short at the enjoyment he shuts himself up within himself. He will only be something to himself and nothing to the world. However much he may live within himself, however intensely he may cultivate his ego — the world will reject him. To the world he is dead. The student of higher knowledge considers enjoyment only as a means of ennobling himself for the world. Enjoyment is to him like a scout informing him about the world; but once instructed by enjoyment, he passes on to work. He does not learn in order to accumulate learning as his own treasure, but in order that he may devote his learning to the service of the world.