Philosophy

  • Travel

    Travel

     

    People hear I'm going on yet another trip and they get all,

    ooouu, aaahhhhh, it must really be great to travel all over the world the way you do.

    Just for the record, for the umpteenth time, No! It's not! Not for me anyway. I keep wanting to say,

    If you like to travel so much why don't you go?

    That wouldn't be any use because fantasy doesn't have any bad travel stuff in it. There are no TSA officers who've had way too many bad days in a row. There are no delayed or canceled flights, no twelve hour layovers in the lovely Dusseldorf airport in the middle of the night when everything is closed but it doesn't matter because you only have two Euros and no place to exchange your nearly worthless Yankee dollars for some gone-too-soon-is-that-all-I-get Euros. Oh, did I fail to mention there was a guy with a jack hammer tearing up the floor all night while I tried to sleep on a line of six chairs with my arms entangled in my luggage so it would still be there when I awakened from my sorely needed beauty rest? Yeah, travel, by all means. See the world. I live in a very beautiful part of Southern California. I've been to a lot of places and trust me when I say with Dorothy, There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

    So, where is it this time? Seoul, South Korea. I kid you not, I got a phone call the other day from a guy, and when he heard where I was going this time he said,

    Wow! That's really great. I've always wanted to go to Seoul. It's one of my top ten gotta go to destinations.

    What's wrong with me? I've never had even the slightest desire to travel to Seoul. Is that because of watching M.A.S.H. all those years? Is it because when I was a child the Korean War was raging? Is it because I don't want to eat kimchi, that three thousand year old traditional Korean fermented taste sensation? No, it hasn't been lying around for three thousand years. People have been eating it that long. In a perfect fantasy I'd be like this James Bond character traveling around, staying in the finest luxury hotels, winning millions in fancy casinos, driving really expensive sports cars with world class beauties vying for my attention and eating in the most upscale restaurants that would make your average person blush to see the prices they charge for two shrimp, three carrots, a sprig of parsley and some colored sauce they squirt artistically on the plate. The only part of the James Bond fantasy I get is the bit where people want to kill me. Oh! you say, how exciting. Again, fantasy is great because there's nothing to oppose you in a fantasy, and even if there is, it's there because you can overcome it and come out all the more fantastic. Nothing at all like real life. Is it any wonder we spend so much time in fantasy and day dreams?

    Twenty days may not seem like a long time to be away from home, but when you're my age you don't know how many twenty days you may have left. The truth is, at any age, you don't know how many twenty minutes you may have left. The fantasy is that you can pretend you're going to live forever. Death is something that happens to other people. No, I'm not afraid of dying in a plane crash or any other way for that matter. Life is a lot more unpredictable than death and a whole lot less certain. When four a.m. rolls around Tuesday morning and you're snuggled in your warm bed, dream about how wonderful it is to drag your bags to the airport, go through the always long and tedious security check because you have an artificial leg that always sets off all the alarms and brings a rush of TSA officers to have you assume the position while they wand you, pat you, question you, swipe your clothes and bags with little white patches they then stick in a special machine that tells them if you've got anything on you or your bags that could be found in b*mb fixings. Right. I can't even type the word let alone say it. Travel. I'm not even going to tell you what happens when I get there. Why? I don't even know until it happens

  • Ready?

    Ready?

    On Wednesdays I begin thinking about what I'm going to talk about on the weekly Phat Podcast. Sometimes I start making notes in an outline program I use. Sometimes all I get is the basic idea and a title which may or may not be permanent. Today I got the idea but I can't remember the details of a story someone told me recently and I want to get it right. It's important to me not to misrepresent someone whenever possible. Some people change so quickly no matter what you say it misrepresents them because their center of gravity is a flux. Others have fossilized and it's easier. There you have both of the extremes to which we, as human beans, go. Not a pretty picture but the story must be told. Speaking of stories, I was reading, The Anurag Sagar of Kabir. It's a long poem but not long by Eastern standards. Rumi's poem is in three volumes while Kabir's is just one. Part of it is a creation story. Because spiritual adepts aren't interested in making scientific sense of things they often use poetic allegory and license to tell their stories. After all, spiritual things must be spiritually understood. The problem for those of us who have not fully realized our spiritual nature is that we're stuck here in the physical world. It's really a mock world. It may be useful here to remind the reader of the meaning of mock that I'm using. Not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive. The bit I wish to emphasize is, without the intention to deceive. This can be very difficult for us to grasp in our current state because we live, move and have our being in negative emotions. It makes us suspicious about everything and everyone. It would seem obvious that makes us very closed, contracted, but it does need to be said because we can't see ourselves as we are. In many ways we're like the king in the story of The Emperor's New Clothes. Rather than being naked we're over dressed and equally encumbered with all that we've put on.

    The poet Blake wrote, Eternity is ever in love with the products of Time. Eternity here representing what's real, original, true--that which Time mocks. Because Eternity does love those of us caught in the trap of Time, It has set up a series of invasions in which the true Reality enters into the mock universe and illumines it, awakening those who are ready to grasp the truth and showing them the way out. Anurag Sagar means Ocean of Love. Where Time touches the Ocean of Love it produces the bhav sagar, ocean of the world, the only reality most of us know, the mock world in which we are trapped. Some folks don't feel trapped. They're not ready to grasp the truth. Because we are trapped in time we are stuck with the laws of this mock world. One of those laws is Karma or Cause and Effect. Some will recognize it by the phrase, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. When we live by this law we wallow in negative emotions because we don't see justice in our world. We make long accounts of the wrongs done to us and others and require, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even people who have accepted the idea of forgiveness and love draw the line somewhere and have a special place where people who keep doing what we don't want them to do will go someday. Some come right out and say they'll be punished for eternity in that place while others lie about it and won't call it punishment. They'll call it justice and say it is out of their hands. Either way it's wallowing in negative emotions, hate and unforgiveness.

    Much of what I do these days is sift. I sift myself to remove the dross. Because I make Podcasts available to anyone in the world I receive email questions from listeners. Because I write here I get questions from people who do not understand what I'm talking about because it doesn't fit into their belief system. Worse, some think they know exactly what I'm talking about because their belief system has a way to pigeonhole everything that doesn't fit into the belief system. This is perhaps the most difficult of all. It's not unusual to find an elderly person so set in their ways they cannot accept anything different. It's also not unusual to find young people equally fossilized, hard, inflexible. This, in my opinion, is even more tragic. We can't understand what is beyond our understanding until we increase our understanding. The problem with us is we want to increase our understanding without changing our beliefs. We've all got certain core beliefs which have become like the One Ring--our precious. When they are challenged we become negative and ultimately violent. This is how religions based on love can behead people, burn people at the stake and persecute them in so many other ways. History is a train of such ethnic cleansings, pogroms, inquisitions, wars and other violent events. We blame the religions when the culprits are the people who fail to be transformed by their contact with the religions. You may have heard, perhaps even said and probably thought in one form or another, God is okay. It's his people I can't stand. Unfortunately there are not many people who are ready to leave what they know for what they don't know. I don't blame them. It can be scary and it can be very difficult. Once we're fossilized, no matter how young or old we may be, the process of becoming flexible enough to change can be extremely painful.

  • Corrosive

    Corrosive

    When most of us think of Truth we don't usually associate it with a corrosive quality. I'm not talking about the other truth. It takes big brass ones to think about absolute Truth if you can think at all, which most of us can't. Oh, I don't mean the spaced repetition of acquired phrases, images and ideas. I'm talking about the ability to direct thought, to concentrate. You know, the very thing we imagine we have and do all the time until we're really called upon to concentrate. If we were able to look at it objectively we would see that our powers of concentration are vastly over estimated in our own eyes. Others will more easily recognize our spaciness even if they can't recognize their own. We're subjective to ourselves and a tiny bit more objective to some others, if they're not too close to us. If we're not too identified with them. To identify means to make the same as, identical. When we identify with someone or something we make ourselves the same as that with which we are identified. Do we actually become the same, identical? No, but that's the power of imagination, which in our case is nothing more than illusion. This very paragraph holds the corrosion. The nature of Truth is corrosive to illusion, imagination. It's probably why we resist it so much. Oh, I don't mean you. I know you don't resist the Ttruth. You're not like all the others. That's why you're reading this and all the other aren't. Did you detect a note of sarcasm? Pardon me, please. I don't intend to be sarcastic. I much prefer to see this critical approach to human nature as facetious but not everyone can.What the Truth will corrode, and why so many people will not go near it, is our image of ourselves. Even those who actively seek Truth have to take a break from it from time to time to insure their insanity. If we were to see what we were really like, to see all our contradictions all at once, I think we really would blow a gasket, lose it, come undone, unglued, unhinged. All the time the Truth is corroding our image of ourselves it is revealing what is underneath that image. Rumi wrote an allegory about the Greeks and the Chinese. Roughly it goes like this:

    We are better artists, declared the Chinese. We have the edge on you, countered the Greeks. I will put you to a test, said the Sultan. Then we shall see which of you makes good your claim. Assign to us one particular room and to the Greeks another, said the Chinese.

    The two rooms faced each other, door to door, the Chinese taking the one and the Greeks the other. The Chinese demanded of the king a hundred colors, so the worthy monarch opened up his treasurey and every morning the Chinese received of his bounty their ration of color. No hues or colors are suitable for our work, said the Greeks. All we require is to get rid of the rust. And so saying they set to work polishing. There is a way from multicolority to colorlessness; color is like the clouds, colorlessness is a moon. Whatever radiance and splendor you see in the clouds, be sure that it comes from the stars, the moon and the sun.

    When the Chinese had finished their work they began drumming for joy. The king came in and saw the pictures there; the moment he encountered that sight, it stole away his wits. Then he advanced towards the Greeks, who thereupon moved the intervening curtain so that the reflection of the Chinese masterpieces struck upon the walls they had scoured clean of rust. All that the king had seen in the Chinese room showed lovelier here, so that his very eyes were snatched out of their sockets.

    The Greeks, my father, are the Sufis; without repetition and books and learning, yet they have scoured their breasts clear of greed and covetousness, avarice and malice. The purity of the mirror without doubt is the heart, which receives images innumerable. The reflection of every image, whether numbered or without number, shines forth forever from the heart alone, and forever every new image that enters upon the heart shows forth within it free of all imprefection. They who have burnished their hearts have escaped from scent and color; every moment, instantly they behold beauty.

    The Truth is corrosive to the rust of imagination and illusion. If we work diligently with it, and allow it to work its corrosive power on us, we will see that what we thought ourselves to be we are not and what we thought we were not we are. If it's too much for you just have a cookie and in a few minutes you'll forget all about the Greeks and the Chinese; Rumi and James; the truth and illusion and you'll be able to go back to concentrating on the really important things in life.

  • Apology

    Apology

    This just in from sources that will remain anonymous for the time being. Why do I protect the hacker's identity? Good question. The truth is I don't want to perpetuate the discord. In a world of questionable integrity it does no good to add to it by compromising one's own, even if one can find a way to justify one's self in so doing.

    James

    I asked the individual who hacked your account to send an apology. I didn't want to give out your email, so I asked him to send it to my account so I could forward it on. Please see below... ps He said that he didn't hack your account - he somehow guessed your password based on your posts? In any case, he has promised not to do it again.

    From the hacker:

    Hello James. I am very sorry for harassing your account. I thought it was a unique journal name. I have nothing against your age. I have read your entries and they are wonderful. If you need help adding them back to your site let me know. Im sure it is fun to have a little excitement anyways. If you would like a gift I can give you one. You have defeated my immaturity, congratulations. I didn't realize I was stressing anyone in the least bit. You can contact me at the email (e-mail snip) I wouldn't ever intentionally hurt anyone. One day I want to be on Xanga Staff to monitor everyone who is bad. I am not a hacker at all. I am just a stupid kid. Please forgive me forever

    Takes Care & God Bless

    My response to the source who contacted the hacker:

    First of all, thank you for tracking it down. Thank you for informing me. Thank you for confronting (name snip). Thank you for asking him for an apology. I appreciate all your efforts.

    He guessed my password twice? I'm sorry, (name snip), but that is lame. There's just no way unless the kid is the Amazing Kreskin. He hacked it and he can hack anyone's site he wants to hack anytime he wants to hack it. I doubt others would be as cool, calm and collected about losing four years of pictures, posts and comments. I doubt you would be. As a matter of fact back in the middle of August of last year xanga wrote this:

    This is the most concerted and determined of all the attacks we have experienced. Every time we bring the site back up, our attacker will find another avenue to renew their attack. I'm sure whoever is attacking us sees this all as a game, and is having a grand old time. I don't really get that mindset. Also, each and every one of these attacks is a felony charge.

    Apparently I'm missing something about the mindset as well. Both yours and his. He says, in effect, "Oops, sorry, I was just having some fun. I didn't know anyone would be bothered." And you say, "he's promised not to do it again."? Clearly I don't have all the facts and/or I live in an alternate universe. I'm not complaining about my alternate universe. I like it better here.

James

Recent Comments