July 2, 2008

It would be a straightforward matter to embrace the richness of being alive, if the Dark and Angry Head wasn’t always claiming death as its implacable ally and enforcer.

“I…am…death… I…am…the…grim reaper.” So sayeth the prodigiously somber figure in tattered black hood and cloak last seen in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life".

This comical archetype is an icon of mankind’s fear that aging and death are “the end", therefore implying life is ultimately a joyless and tragic affair. Indeed, because of impending doom, “the human condition” is an unhappy business and all human undertakings amount to “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

So sayeth the gloomy philosophers of the cosmic frown – including some dark and angry gurus. For them, the message of Christ is at best a fairy tale for children. Beyond the gates of the famous philosopher’s last dying gasp lies an abyss, a fathomless “nothingness", or – worse yet – a pathless expanse of suffering only relieved by reincarnation.

Ah, shucks. Sorry to be so simple-minded, bodhi, but I have stood watch at the Day of Judgment and laughed… The horror you feel is the pain of your contraction against the light, the agony of your grasping for a vanishing image in a broken mirror, and the sickness of a murderous impulse buried deep in your heart. The summation of your self-invented suffering is your attempt – against nature – to assert your will between children and their bright joyous souls.

Fortunately life itself, in all its many-faceted wonders, is unforgiving evidence of the grand mistake of your false knowledge. Why? Because that richness does not stop – or even hesitate – at the gates of death. It just flows on, lifted up on the wings of the Spirit, to the transcendent reality of your liberation. It’s a nice thing, a very nice thing, not at all the dreary destiny promised by these dull-headed prophets…

In the midst of your earthy life, relinquish your resistance to God and see the obstructions dissolve in you. If you let it, the Spirit infiltrates every part of you. You just get happy and happier, easier to get along with, more inclined to common sense, relaxed and “philosophical", and so forth. In fact, you become the Spirit’s agent in the world, even as the Spirit initiates you to the bardos and beyond. Creativity flows in you, out of you, and all around you. You begin to seriously incarnate the wisdom of God.

Ah yes, but now you are more sensitized to the resistance to the Spirit in others! It’s as if they are recalcitrant parts of yourself, like members of your own family who have yet to see that their attitudes and assumptions are long obsolete! The brittle logic of their consensus “description of the world as separate from God” was long ago proved erroneous and spiritually bankrupt – but somebody forgot to pass the news to them. The flawed mathematics of their thinking has long been erased from the chalk-boards of eternity. And yet they continue to operate as if fear and inner contradiction rule the day.

What do you do about that? Nothing, really. You certainly can’t turn back the clock on your relationship to the Spirit! What’s undone is undone. The new life is begun. The Truth impels you, compels you, by its nature. Truth is the natural state and you have learned by experience that when you go against truth you upset the harmony of body and mind.

You have learned to always resonate in sympathy with the natural state. And thus resonating, some people will feel your free spirit as a threat to their carefully limited mental view. Those who are wrapped up in inner lies will just shy away from you. Some few will take serious umbrage and even go after you. These idiots will enact, in their relationship to you, the arbitrary war-against-reality in which they have become committed warriors.

And then there’s the world – you can extrapolate this personal reality conflict to your relationship to the whole world, where the consensus view is that God (if God exists at all) is distant and inaccessible. You know the truth of God’s closeness, and that spells trouble with the world. God is right with you, as close as your next breath. That’s the truth. The opposite idea, that God is distant, is a lie. Why would anybody want to keep living a lie?

Ah, but millions do. The minions of the Big Head can’t cease their submission to illusion. The arguments and seductions of Pseudo Authority have won them over. Like a befuddled jury in a courtroom, they are under the spell of the sophistry of the Demiurge… And if they protest, if the little voice in their hearts should question the noisy sound of Authority, the words “HOW DARE YOU!” echo in the iron halls of nightmare.

["Gnostic myth recounts that Sophia (Greek, literally meaning “wisdom"), the Demiurge’s mother and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, and without the receipt of divine assent. In this abortive act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, she wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place.” - Wikipedia]

That’s what these essays are, you know – the still small voice, a forbidden whisper in the wee hours of the night, the song of tall grass rippling in a windy mountain meadow under the light of a summer moon…

Heck, even a butterfly can stand up to the sound of iron on iron. And a tiny bird on a branch is always the one who calls the devil’s bluff. “Murderer,” the bird says in the spiritual language of birds…

Which reminds me of a story. In 1976 I drove to San Mateo, California, to a small computer show, where the earliest personal computers were being demonstrated and sold. There I met Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who were marketing the very first Apple, a simple circuit board with no keyboard, no power supply, no monitor…and forget about hard drive – they didn’t exist yet. The asking price was $666.66. (Really!)

Jobs was working the floor while Wozniak and a friend sat at a table demonstrating the machine. Jobs saw me watching and came over and gave me one helluva sales talk. He was impressive, over-flowing with enthusiasm and very strong-willed. You could almost feel him taking control of your mind… When I didn’t bite (or is it “byte"?) he snorted and turned away. But what he didn’t know was that I had inherited a gift of sales resistance to match just about anybody. I especially didn’t like being pushed, even when the guy was selling something I definitely desired.

Anyway, after an hour or two of checking out the various machines, I left the auditorium and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. Right away I heard a frantic chirping and whistling above my head. I turned and looked up and there was a tiny bird perched above the door-jamb, looking straight at me with his bright little eye.

“Jobs is a murderer,” he said. WHAT? The sound was just chirps and twittering, but somehow in my head it translated into those words. I also knew the words weren’t to be taken literally – they were describing the aggressive mood of the moment in this budding industry that was poised to sweep the world by storm. The smell of money and power was already and in the air, and everybody involved knew it. To the conqueror would belong the spoils.

After that sign, I just had to laugh, and driving home I felt a pending obsession lift from my mind and drift away across San Francisco Bay…

Elias

PS: It would be seven more years before I bought my first computer. Fortunately by that time they came fully outfitted with keyboard, mouse, monitor…and hard drive.

I have a fresh essay almost done, which I will post here tomorrow. In the meantime, for those of you familiar with Daism, let me call your attention to an essay I wrote today on the old Lightmind Daism Forum.

It’s in response to a 2008 essay by Adi Da titled “Reality-Humanity Self-Liberated From The Stave In The Wheels", which is also posted on that forum. I think there will be three essays in this series.

~E

June 29, 2008

No one will tell you
because the answers you seek are your very own.

This is your quest and the lands you discover
are always virginal, untamed.
Every mountain is unclimbed.
The vast dark sea is unexplained.

Such is the God Unknown, reality without a prophet.
It is the Spirit of Infinite Uncertainty, forever undeclared.
Consciousness takes form from mere possibility,
and that which is unknown does not exist until we know it.

Such is the rule of objectivity, that “i-I” makes reality
out of an infinite abundance of nothing.
Potentials and possibilities un-exist in latent un-being
until “I Am” draws them forth.

“So that’s why there are borders on the map of Heaven!”
And that’s why ‘Infinity’ is a mere abstraction, never actually seen.
That’s why mankind’s very existence can be traced back aeons
to one moment of self-awareness in the midst of chaos,
when “I Am” flared awake and the Big Bang answered like an echo.

Everything humankind has discovered so far makes a single page
in a theoretically limitless library
that is germinating out of the void
as we walk the empty aisles…

Bodhi, you are an explorer in a wild Universe that is
an ever-elaborating reflection of you!
Is your heart bright? Then there was light.
Is your heart evil? Then there was hell.
Ask me any question, I have no answer.
You are always the first to ask,
and as you look for the answer,
teeming worlds spring into existence
under the glance of your curious Eye.

So it is.

Elias

June 27, 2008

Penetrating the mirror world of the archetypes is not as easy as just thinking about it. The emotional roots of these complexes are ancient and go very deep. Their mental constructs are sophisticated and vast – and you or I, without spiritual help, could not possibly crack their hidden agendas.

Sadly for them, the one thing they can never touch – the Spirit – has the power to expose them and annihilate them with truth. That is another way of saying that reality will always vanquish unreality. It is a law of nature, and they cannot repeal it, no matter how long they argue their case before God.

Not that “the Big Head” gives up easily, even when facing the sword of truth. Lop off the head of the father of lies and he grows another. Corner him with Divine Love, and he slips away to nurse his anger for another day…or another lifetime.

There is a “self-aware” energy cluster embedded deep in the psyche of mankind, and it curses the spiritual baptism of man. This sovereign Mara takes many forms, and manifests again and again over the centuries. Don’t make the mistake of identifying it with one individual or another. It actually transcends humanity – not as spiritual transcendence, but as a primordial intelligence whose volition can be described as envious, deceiving, and even murderous. It has a kind of “eternal life", relatively speaking. That is, its span of years exceeds man’s by tens of thousands. But it does not live forever. Nothing does. (Everything that has a beginning must have an ending.)

It was in the abyss that shadow appeared…. Then shadow perceived that there was something mightier than it, and felt envy. And when it had become pregnant of its own accord, suddenly it engendered jealousy. Since that day, the principle of jealousy amongst all the eternal realms and their worlds has been apparent. Now, as for that jealousy, it was found to be an abortion without any spirit in it. Like a shadow it came into existence in a vast watery substance. Then the bile that had come into being out the shadow was thrown into a part of chaos…. [from “On the Origin of the World", The Nag Hammadi Library, 1988 edition, p. 172. (The Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of ancient Gnostic writings)]

This jealous archetype would seem a formidable opponent to our earth-bound consciousness. Without the Spirit of God at our side, we are no match for this “terrible majesty", a jealous archetype that has had a long time to perfect the language of belittlement and the language of domination. Listen to it long enough (allow it into your house even for a day), and you will find yourself sliding into a dark hell of the mind…

But always remember you are not alone in battling such “powers” whose object is to usurp your innocence and bury your innermost freedom. In fact, the whole inspiration to oppose these archetypes comes from the Spirit, whose very nature is truth, liberation, and the joy of seeing from the heart.

All you really must do is begin to resonate with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God will take care of the arising of “right view” to your thoughts, dreams and insights. The Spirit of God will give you the power of discernment which penetrates the lies and obfuscation of the archetype. It is this seeing, which is the breath and essence and eye of the Spirit, that is your surest weapon.

Nurture that knowledge. Use it to inspect your own motives and truthfulness… Use it to deconstruct the complexes that shape your own emotions, fears and desires…. Bring a light into the dark chambers of the house where you were born…. Find where the shameful deeds are hidden in the closets, cellars and attics of family and ancestors…and bring them out into the light of day. Know thyself.

Then, as you begin to know yourself, you will discover you are equipped to know the snares of “The Big Head” or any other cornball archetype that wants to deprive you of your freedom and soul.

Now, you might feel that no matter what, the Spirit will protect you from such a treacherous adversary. And it will, up to a point… The point where you become vulnerable is invariably an unexamined personal complex – a “weak spot” in your psychic makeup. The Spirit can only do so much to protect you from yourself. When it is your own hand that acts as a destructive force against your salvation, there is no guarantee the outcome will be a happy one.

Know your Shadow. Know your secret shame. Know your addictions. Know your concupiscence. Know what makes you hide from truth, and know the measure of your antipathy to others. Know your cruelty. Know your pride, hear yourself when you boast. Know your dishonesty, hear yourself when you lie. Know your lust to acquire objects, and know the strategies you use to manipulate others to get what you want. Know the parts of your mind that oppose and contract against the Holy Spirit, even shutting down the force of being, going cold rather than releasing to life itself. Know your own ego, if you can. Know its diameter and circumference, know its limitations, its rules, its suffering, its Shakespearean flaws…

If you can begin to take yourself in hand, if you can develop a profound sense of humor about yourself, you might become who you really are, and you might release the warrior soul who vanquishes the wrathful deities, deflates the psychopomps that rule the lokas, exposes the false authorities who govern the world, holds a mirror to the envious archetypes, and even stares down the devils of hell…

First, know thyself.

Elias