Whack

Not many realize the potential that comes with the fact that our minds never turn off.  That our minds also process information that is not obtained via our conscious senses, sometimes referred to as intuition.  People don't realize that their minds are in sync with the entirety of what is going on.   By being in sync, it is both sending and receiving 'information' perpetually.  It merely becomes a matter of teaching one's conscious mind what it is capable of. 

In psychology, certain people have given the unconscious, or a part of the unconscious, depending on which person one would be talking with, the term hidden observer.  This issue becomes much like metaphysical conversation because we are attempting to use words to describe an extremely complex, yet simultaneously simple phenomenon, in that it just is, the mind never shuts off.  Semantics.  The trick is to see the pattern, the image, of what is going on.  What one word can describe a huge complex abstract and convert it appropriately in communication?   One must experience for one’s Self.  

Like the realization that our thinking is less than 1% of the totality of brain function at any given moment.  The realization must follow that whatever it is our conscious thinking thinks, it will always ever only be less than 1% of what is really going on.  To be fully aware in the moment suddenly becomes a matter of not thinking.  This is why so many spiritual paths in the East require meditation, because it is a good way to learn how to not think.

Think of this though in the language of spirituality.  Here is an explanation of the hidden observer from a subject participating in a study on the unconscious by Professor Ernest Hilgard, while at Stanford University. 

"The hidden observer is analytical, unemotional, businesslike...The hidden observer is a portion of Me.  There's Me 1, Me 2 and Me 3.  Me 1 is hypnotized, Me 2 is hypnotized and observing, and Me 3 is when I'm awake...The hidden observer is cognizant of everything that's going on; it's a little more narrow in its field of vision than Me 3, like being awake in a dream and fully aware of your actions...The hidden observer sees more, he questions more, he's aware of what's going on all of the time, but getting in touch is totally unnecessary...He's like a guardian angel that guards you from doing anything that will mess you up...Unless someone tells me to get in touch with the hidden observer I'm not in contact.  It's just there."  1

I take special note of his choice of words using 'guardian angel that guards you from doing anything that will mess you up,' because I am currently reading another book by a different author, James Hillman regarding this supposed guardian angel.  Even more interesting though, is this pattern with how a lot of religious people view god.  Think of the overall pattern of how this person’s explanation of what the unconscious does compared with what a lot of people think god does.  They see god as an all knowing being, handing out rewards and punishments, a looking out for us, kind loving deity. 

A lot of people word the phenomenon in a lot of different ways, but universally most see god as having some kind of Providence.  I challenge this idea in the face of this description of the unconscious mind.  I say it is peoples own minds doing all these things; looking out for them, creating synchronicity, answering prayers, yet they are attributing it to a god.  Keep in mind that suffering teaches powerful lessons so it makes sense that just like people propose god of doing this, so too will the unconscious bring about unpleasant circumstances to teach the conscious mind lessons.  It is quite easy to see this same pattern materialize in the fact that our unconscious minds create suffering when our conscious minds are out of sync.  What is called the Shadow Effect is a perfect example.  This is the neurotic, the self-destructor, the ones who hurt themselves and others; they are at war with their own mind, their own soul. 

Our minds have been recording everything, and then some since day one.  All that stuff we are still unaware of has been accumulated into our minds too.  Some would argue before day one.  It knows the truth whether the conscious person we see, that is, the people we deal with every day of our lives, knows it or not.  Not only that, but our minds are connected to everything else and it receives information via what most would term telepathy; PERPETUALLY.  In this sense, compared to our conscious mind, our unconscious mind is ALL KNOWING.  We live in a giant ocean of information that is yet to be discovered by scientific methods.  They have yet to figure out a way to detect and measure the energy our brains use to convey images between minds.  If we are unaware of our unconscious, how can we be aware of how it ‘knows’ things our conscious minds cannot know? Thus, god is unknowable because our unconscious is unknowable.  Do you see the pattern?

In almost all of the literature I have been reading regarding these matters the word soul is fairly consistently given to the unconscious.  That is to say, to a fair number of people in the various academic/professional fields, unconscious and soul are interchangeable.  When the 'holy spirit' conveys something to an individual, that is simply their unconscious mind forcing its way into consciousness.    It is a greater, or stronger form of intuition.  A matter of degrees.  Creativity is often used in this context.  I've read that Plato considered the soul to be the bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind.  

I say, if Jesus existed, he wasn't god, or a god, he was a dude who realized what his mind could do more fully than the rest.  That is assuming he existed at all.  Like the Einstein of mind power, the Stephan Hawking of consciously realizing mental connection with matter.  Because of the culture and the time of his life, he supposedly used religious language to convey the image.  The energy generated internally is greatly magnified if a person associates it with a god, with need, with motivation, with love.  The truth is it doesn't matter what your motivation, it is simply a matter of having the right amount of energy while doing whatever it is one does. 

Regarding love.  What mind wouldn't love itself?  What mind/body wouldn't be more energetic, more powerful, if it was charged with a sense of love?  What mind wouldn't do better, or have a better life not loving itself?  Of course your unconscious loves itself.  The issue is it doesn't think in those terms.  Those terms are generated by this culture, this society, which has been accumulating for thousands of years.  Can you see this comparison regarding love?  The way god's love is supposedly beyond knowing, and the way the unconscious' sense of love for itself is not really communicable?   Of course the all-knowing, never sleeping mind loves itself.  It's not even a question.  If the conscious mind could somehow realize its full potential it would never again for a single moment in its life ever do anything harmful to itself ever again.   It wouldn't even be a question.  It would just be.  The spiritual language is that the answer is within, god is within, the truth is your unconscious already knows, so of course the answer is within. 

It is not god, or an angel, a spirit or a daemon that is looking out for us, it is our own mind.   It is a mind that is literally connected to everything else.   It never ceases, it never falters, it does not reason inductively.  It is only our conscious mind which does so.  You see the pattern?  Can you see the comparison in language and phenomenon?  They say things like, god never lets you down.  God always knows what you need before you need it.  God hears your prayers and looks out for you.  God tests you.  On and on the list could go.  Now study and compare this with the unconscious mind.  It shouldn't take one long to see that it is the unconscious mind that does all those things.  Protects you, rewards you, punishes you, doles out the karma.   God is not omnipresent; your OWN MIND is omnipresent.  Good news is, now your conscious mind knows this fact, if it didn't already.  Bad news is, now your unconscious will never let you forget it. 

Christ supposedly said, "All these things I can do, you can do and more."  You see, it has nothing to do with god and everything to do with realizing the power of your own mind.  If you had the level of awareness that Christ supposedly had, you too would be able to do amazing things.  The issue is, in reality, those things are not amazing at all.  It's that big fish in a little pond phenomenon again.   These amazing things are simply things you were born to do, they only seem amazing because of how this culture tints our view of reality.  For most people I know it would be amazing to just touch someone and them be healed, but if we were raised to be aware of our potential it wouldn't be amazing at all; It would just be how it is. 

1. The hidden observer….It's just there: From Ernest Hilgard, Divided Consciousness (1977); quoted in Crabtree [124], p. 32.

The Power of Imagination.

The use of imagination cannot be underestimated.  It is without a doubt one of the greatest sources of knowledge that we are capable of employing in the betterment of ourselves.   Through imagination a great deal can be learned that could not otherwise be learned.  Allow me to provide you with a perfect example, or should I say, a perfect way to use your imagination to get a sense of the reality which is occurring in this physical world.  Since the book I am reading is a history book I will give a bit of history myself.

I mainly study three themes; philosophy, metaphysics, and psychology.  Because college was/is a joke, I am forced to educate myself, so I read the books that the masters of these fields wrote during and after their studies.  For instance, Carl Jung, the man spent his entire life researching the human mind and then put down his thoughts and the conclusions of his research into written form.  This prevents me, luckily, from having to devote my life to the same subject, which would take me decades as well, because I can read his works, and then immediately pick up where he left off.  I can test his theories and conclusions in my own life without having to collect decades worth of research.  Those same decades worth of research can enter into my conscious thought in a matter of days or weeks depending on the topic, and on top of that I can accumulate the works of others regarding the same issues.  But this cannot be done fully without imagination.  I cannot simply take their word for it.  I must get a sense of the totality of it on my own.  Historically speaking I cannot go back in time, physically anyways, so I must go there in my imagination.

Currently one of the books I am reading is called Hidden Depths; The Story of Hypnosis by Robin Waterfield.  This book is fantastic.  It is well written, descriptive, and gives a good background on hypnosis and its history.  He covers all the aspects one would want, giving a full biblio.  The book is well researched, so just like Carl Jung, Waterfield has prevented me from having to do months and months of research.  He has given me the ability to condense months of research into just a few weeks.  Not to mention the information is free because I checked the book out at the public library.  That is true power in effect.

To summarize the book, Waterfield starts with what little is known of the Greeks and Romans regarding hypnotism.  He is very brief regarding that period in history which makes sense, because honestly we do not know a whole lot about that time period regardless of what some historians try to say.  Anyways, the majority of this history book begins with Franz Anton Mesmer on page 64, and ends with Freud around page 280.  Mesmer was born in 1734, while Freud was born in 1856.  Considering that the book is 400 pages that is nearly half the book being devoted to the 17 and 1800's, which is fine by me.  I became interested in this Mesmer guy because of a lecture I listened to on the internet by Manly P. Hall.  Not being able to just take Halls word as it is I must look into the matter more deeply.

Obviously they did not have the internet in the 1700s so their main modes of communication were lectures and letters.  People of note like doctors, scholars, aristocrats, etc., would travel all around giving lectures, which were well documented.   They would also write pamphlets and books which contained their lectures, and they would also submit essays to the popular journals of the time.  Back then complete ideas would be hashed out in public journals or newspapers so everyone could see what was going on, to a certain degree anyways, if they wanted to. 

 This is good news for us because this allows us a chance to really see what was going on during that time.  This gives us the ability to factually see what it was like without it being clouded by other people’s opinions which is exactly what happens if one studies history any further back than this period; it becomes more opinion than fact.  These people literally wrote out their thoughts for the entire world to see.  Waterfield is able to give a really good look at how it all came about, hypnotism, and it turns out to be quite a story.  If you are interested in the growth of human consciousness, mainly the growth in our own culture and our collective ability to understand our own consciousness, I would say this book is a must.  I do not know if Waterfield did it intentionally or not, but he masterfully created a sense of the culture from which our own culture comes.

Now is when imagination becomes the most important tool in learning what all this means.  To truly grasp the situation, one must imagine they were alive back then, when all of this stuff was going on.  One must imagine what it would be like to be a human being suffering those circumstances and to imagine the impact that would have on ones own psyche.   More importantly, the use of imagination with awareness of our own cultural bias directly in mind must be put into play.  It's like looking back on a mistake we made in our own lives after having new knowledge of the situation.  Like the girl who after learning her lesson regarding a relationship with a boy wishes she could go back in time and do it differently.  Our culture is growing up, and to most effectively do this we must look back on our mistakes.  We must do this not only in our personal lives but in the cultural aspect as well.  This is an extremely important part of truly growing up which many overlook, that is, the study of culture.

For instance, those people in the 1700's were, comparatively to us, what I would call extremely superstitious.  Our culture has learned that to be superstitious is quite immature, but to them that was not the case.   Here is an example of what I mean.   They called it the "evil eye," but I call it the "stink eye."  Back in those days giving someone the stink eye was a really big deal.  Because of their belief that it was a big deal, it actually manifested in their lives as a big deal when it happened.  This phenomenon is well documented.  What I mean is, if they believed someone cursed them via the stink eye, they would act cursed, and it would manifest in their lives in often times quite serious ways.  Seriously enough that people would literally get sick and die just because they believed something was true.  This is what made the beginning of hypnotism, called animal magnetism by Mesmer, or mesmerism by others such a huge deal.  

Why is it such a big deal?  Because it goes both ways.  If you believed that you could be healed by being magnetized by someone, you were healed!  One of the doctors who studied animal magnetism in what we would call a psychiatric ward would literally just command someone to be healed, and they would be healed!  They did not fully understand what was going on obviously, and I am greatly reducing the idea to prove a point, but I hope you get the idea.  I was quite curious as to how a connection to Christ was not made regarding this ability.  This is probably why these men had such an ego.  Mesmer's ego was famous.  Mesmer literally convinced people that he magnetized a tree and because of that people would go to that tree and be healed!  He was a medical doctor!  Like I said, he had quite a personality, so keep this in mind as I attempt to make my point.

Here is another example of this idea that believing something makes it true.  Mesmer was mainly working in Paris, France at one point, and the people there would have convulsions when he mesmerized them.  Well, he taught another guy how to do it, but this guy lived in a different area.  The people in his area had no knowledge of what was going on in Paris, so that when they were mesmerized they would display a completely different physical reaction, yet would still be healed.  In other words, they did not have the expected convulsions.  What this showed is, that the people in Paris believed that when one was mesmerized a certain thing, convulsions,  would happen so that is exactly what happened.  It is important to realize they weren’t faking it.  Crazy huh?

Use your imagination, and imagine yourself to be alive back then.  You go to Mesmer's home, and under his magnetized tree, yes I wrote that! He magnetized a tree!  Now imagine people are everywhere and more than a few of them are having convulsive fits.   Much like an epileptic fit, spasms, screaming, the whole works.  Add to this that the aristocrats, the well to do people, the people who were in charge of society so to speak, were the ones caught up in this phenomenon.  Mesmer personally paid his bills charging those people large amounts of money to heal them.  The rich people were the ones writing all the letters, debating, discussing, and participating in this phenomenon.  It was not the ordinary folks, although it was accessible to them as well.  In fairness, I would add that Mesmer did not charge the poor like he did the rich.  It is interesting that despite his ego he did have compassion for the "lesser" humans. 

Why is this important?  Because those humans then, were very little different from us now.  Their minds, by this I mean the totality of their mind, knew the right way to live, yet they were so immersed in an extremely dysfunctional culture, their conscious minds could not see the truth, so they were quite naturally collectively highly disturbed.  They were, in fact, quite crazy.  They were humans just like you and I; same emotions, desires, all of it.  They suffered greatly because of their dysfunctional social system, yet they were the ones actively designing the culture!  They simply were not aware of this fact. 

You would have to read the book to fully grasp what I am trying to say.  I cannot truly summarize the totality of it into such a small essay, but to say it simply; those people were truly and deeply messed up on a certain level.  In my opinion, pretty much every last one of them were neurotic, even the ones who thought they were not.  Can you imagine that?  The people in charge of society, back then, can you imagine how crazy they were; literally crazy!  Because Waterfield was writing a book about the history of hypnosis, not the culture, he does not comment about this at all, one only gets the sense of it through the actions depicted in the book by these people because of hypnotism.  Doing his job, quite well,  Waterfield just accepts history as it is, without putting it into context regarding our current culture.  It is mind boggling to me how crazy those people were.  What may seem even crazier, is that looking back, it is really easy to see why that was, which makes it difficult to see why collectively we are still doing a lot of the same crazy stuff they were doing.

Crazy people were deciding the fate of the world and they had no awareness of this fact.  Like a child that has no comprehension of his actions in the moment on the future.  They were too trapped in their own ego to realize the effect they were having on themselves and others.  Imagine being alive then, imagine looking at someone crazy and then being lynched for it.  Women by far had it the worst.  Those men back then had such a low opinion of what it was to be a human they literally caused every single human alive in their culture to suffer, and it was no small amount of suffering.  This next statement though, does not require any imagination because it is right in front of our faces, alive and happening as we speak; our current culture came directly from those extremely crazy people.  Our culture is a direct, immediate descendant of that culture.  The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776! Remember Mesmer was born in 1734.

After reading such an intimate account of the people, how they acted, what they thought, gives me goose bumps as I see how that applies to my own life living in this culture as I do.  All of these institutions which are causing so much suffering in the world are a direct descendant of the neurosis of those people.  Can you wrap your mind around that?  We have not improved nearly so much as we would like to pretend that we have.  Living our daily lives as we do, we are not so much different than those living in the 1700s.  Because we are ruled by crazy people we are practically forced into being crazy ourselves!

Those people were so whack, in comparison to how a human is actually meant to live, much like it is now, is quite disturbing.  They were literally disgusting human beings, mainly because their regard for their fellow human beings was so low, and this mind set is still quite prevalent to this day.  Their collective outlook was horrendous.  Unfortunately for us they are the ones who set up this current system that we have.  We still call people who are not wealthy by the term "lower" class.  Somehow one is not actually a human being if they do not acquire material possession.  That is an extremely low way of thinking.  True enough, those men who came to America and set up their own government were attempting to break away from that culture.  They were trying to free themselves, but sadly, they failed, because they did not put people in place to carry on what they started.  With them came all the crap that degrades human existence and it is still dominating our culture to this day.

One of the best ways maybe to illustrate this is through one of the benefits that can be brought about by being hypnotized.  Via hypnosis one can become oblivious to pain.  One of the more famous examples is a man who had his leg amputated.   In the 1700s there was no real way to prevent pain during surgery.  If a person had to have surgery they had to endure it awake, and most people did not survive such operations.  Use your imagination.  Imagine that you are going to die if you don't have a surgery, but that you must be fully conscious as your leg is cut off!  Now imagine that there is a way for this pain to be eliminated but you are not allowed that procedure because some egotistical superstitious individual says it is evil.  Hypnosis provided a way to eliminate this suffering, yet the medical associations of the day did not employ it because of their own selfish reasons.   Can you see this concept alive and well in our current culture?  There are great many ways in which we could ease the suffering of people, but they are not being employed because the people in power are egotistical and crazy.   They put their egos above the well-being of their patients.  They put their selfish opinions above the well-being of their culture.  Almost all of those famous people you have heard about knew of this phenomenon as well.  People like Darwin, Napoléon, Dickens, Franklin, etc.  Everyone knew about it.  Yet the suffering went on unabated.

It is a sad state of affairs.  It didn’t have to be that way.  It doesn’t have to be that way now.  Those people in power could have been, and can be, in positions of power, and maintain their wealth without making everyone else suffer for it.  It does not have to be one way or the other.  That is not some crazy idea.  It really wouldn’t even be that difficult to bring about.  Yet here we are, collectively, still doing the same old thing.  Can you wrap your mind around that?

One and the whole.

I hope this one to be big, but who knows how big the wave will be?   I will let you be the judge. 

In spiritual talk one hears this phrase, "we are all one," quite a bit.  It can be said differently, and has been said differently by various different spiritual masters for thousands of years.  Using Christianity, Christ said that the least of us, is Him.  When we see a homeless man we should see Christ, or that we should see Christ in him.   He said that no matter who you meet, there I am.  To me that is just another way to say we are all one.  Christians want to make a religion out of it, that is fine, but it doesn't change the facts.  We are all part of a whole, and it really doesn't matter what that means intellectually because the rules will be the same.  It is a physical truth.  It is physics in effect.  Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs it is a fundamental physical law that we are all connected on a certain level.  Your family, your neighborhood, your club, your organization, your community, your town, city, state, nation, hemisphere, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, on and on it goes.  No matter where you go, no matter who you are, no matter how big or small you try to make it, you are part of a whole, and you cannot be separated from it.

When I was younger it both bothered me and entrapped me at the same time.  From inside the culture it is difficult to set one's self free, especially when surrounded by so many who are also trapped.  In this sense, I mean trapped by ideas, the ideas of the majority which happens to not be true.  The idea I am speaking of is this idea that one can do whatever they wish so long as they are not breaking a law.  Please know that I could easily claim like many others that one has an obligation to defy immoral laws, but that is not what this is about.  To me that is obvious, so I am going to go a little deeper into the matter.  I am going to use self-destructive behavior as the grounds for calling people out.  In a sentence, I am calling out the idea that one can be self-destructive and that it is okay to do so because it is one's right.  Many people claim they can do harmful things to themselves and it is okay because they are not harming anyone else.   I say this is not true.  It is not true at all.  It is not even close to the truth.  For whatever reason these people are lying to themselves in order to justify self-destructive behavior.   Harming one’s self does in fact harm others. 

How many of us have self-destructive behaviors?  Like everything else, everything can be broken down into degrees, but to truly understand something the variant of degrees must be removed.  It must become black and white.  One either is, or is not being self-destructive.   The ideal is to not be self-destructive at all, and more than a few humans have proven this is quite attainable, so no excuses are acceptable for destroying one's self.  It is a completely feasible goal.  We may use empathy to understand why one is doing so, but that they are doing it at all is clearly a sign that something is wrong.  It is a clear sign that they are not handling business.  It is a fact that they are harming the rest of us. 

It is easiest to call out those who smoke cigarettes, those who drink and eat poison and are overweight or obese because it is so easy to see it in others.  These things are common sense.  The problem is, in this broken culture, people justify these behaviors acting as if they are only harming themselves.  Adding to this problem is that whether we agree or not, whether we like it or not, we are in the energy of these self-destructive people.  The issue at hand is the part they are ignorant of; their self-destructive behavior is in fact harming all the rest of us. 

That being said, I wish to be clear in saying that one can achieve such a state of mind that no one affects them.  We are not victims to the energy of others.  One can achieve a place where it does not matter what others do, but unfortunately that is not the case with the majority of humans alive at this time.  Negativity and destruction only affect one to the degree to which they allow it to happen.  Most do not know they have this ability and are stuck in the negativity themselves because of that fact.  It could be said that in order to learn this important fact one must first be affected by it.  I have spent a fair amount of time in my life attempting to free myself of the negative energy of others.  I too have had moments in my life where I thought that I could do whatever I wanted, like smoke cigarettes and eat poison.  I thought it didn't matter so long as I was not directly doing it to someone else.  I took it a step further because I do not have kids, so if I want to destroy myself that is my business.  No one was depending on me.  Proof that I am not here to be a hypocrite; I was as ignorant as could be. 

I was foolishly listening to those who had not themselves broken free of the circle.  I was taking advice from those who themselves did not know.   It was not easy to grasp all the wrong I had done to others simply because I failed myself.  It was impossible to see all the wrong done to me by others negligence in life. 

How will your child be their best if you are not being your best?  How can you teach your child, your friends, or your family anything if you cannot do it yourself?  Is your child going to magically somehow realize that it is untouchable by your own self-destructive behavior and then be immune to it?  I am yet to see this happen, and I have been paying attention for a long time.  I am not saying it doesn't happen or that it is impossible, only that I never see it, and have never heard of it happening.  If my research is correct even Christ had to be taught the spiritual truths.  All the great spiritual masters had teachers themselves.  Where would those masters be if their teachers where not themselves attempting to be their best?  We would have none.

Let's use the easiest of metaphors; sports.  If we are on a basketball team, with five players on the court, and Tommy smokes cigarettes.   That means Tommy cannot perform at his peak.  If Tommy cannot perform at his peak then the whole team of five cannot perform at a peak level either.  He is holding back the rest.  It is easy to see with sports because it is easy to measure physical performance.  How does one measure the abstract?  The intellectual?  The spiritual?  What if you are a mother?  Is it any different when contrasting your family unit to that of a team?  How can your family be its best if one of the members is self-destructing?  I say it cannot happen.   The self-destructive parent is damning their child to the same. 

The reason for this level of suffering is so that people can become more aware and make a personal change.  Using smoking as an example, that is why smoking is harmful, because it prevents the whole from being its best.  I am not advocating the removal of suffering, but am simply attempting to express how the relationship between the outer world and the inner world are the same.  Because the whole is suffering, it is reflected back to the individual who is causing the suffering.  It is a perfect mirror.  The outer world we sense with our senses is a perfect reflection of the inner.  One smokes because their inner world is destructive.  The smoking directly harms the individual to show that individual that it is harming the whole.  The more self-destructive the trait the more ready the whole is to be rid of it. 

I would like to use some of my recent experiences in dealing with leaders of the community in regards to this concept.  My hope is to show that you personally are responsible for the whole.  The community I live in is only made up of roughly 9,000 people.  A small group of likeminded individuals could quite easily affect great change in a community so small.  Often times when I make a call for change people like to say that it is too big of an issue to affect real change.  They find it completely overwhelming.  The truth is they are overwhelmed by their own inner world.  These people who make the claim that it is too big of a problem to change, self-destruction, are not aware of the true power they have as a human being, and are the one’s themselves self-destructing.  As a matter of fact, I am about to show you how it is actually quite easy to change, the issue is, not enough people are doing it.  Perhaps, if we are lucky, this essay will change a mind or two.

I have been going to city council meetings for several months now.  The idea was to get them used to my face before I begin criticizing them.  So far I have been successful at this, but like the fat person who doesn’t realize it, there is not a completely nice way to call someone fat.  If you missed my previous blog you can catch up and realize the difference between a judgment and a criticism.  I am not judging the city leaders; I am not judging fat people either, but am critiquing their behavior and actions.  I am simply pointing out the reality of the situation. 

There is a member of the board who is also the leader of a local church.  Not once, not one single time during any public meeting have I seen this man not consuming poison.  This person not only drinks poison from a can, but also from McDonalds.  To me this is a quadruple whammy!  How can a person teach others about god and at the same time be poisoning his own body?  How can he lead a community of individuals when he cannot even control the simple function of regulating his own body?  In terms of spiritual life, mastering the physical body is kindergarten.  The book he uses to teach others about god clearly states that one either is, or is not, in the light of god, and that one cannot be in the light of god and at the same time be harming one's self.  Yet there he is, doing these things.  Using the sports analogy of the team, what state of affairs is his church in when the leader, himself, is actively poisoning himself?  How can the community be any better?

 This community is jacked.  Just because a guy smiles and puts on a nice aptitude all his negativity is over looked.  Not because that is the right thing to do, but because it is the easiest thing to do. 

Not only is he poisoning himself, he is also poisoning all those who look to him for guidance.  Not only that, but he is taking the money they give to him to perform this job and is giving it to other people, corporations, who do nothing but poison our culture and the earth itself.  Soda companies poison everything they touch.  McDonalds does not have one single customer who has not been poisoned by their products.  Add on top of this the distribution of money, in that the CEO's of these companies are wealthy beyond reason and this "man of god" is directly giving his money to them.  People in his church and community are literally starving and he is giving his money to people who do not need another penny.  Correction, he is giving the money given to him by his congregation to the same people who are destroying him community and culture.  He is taking money, given to him by those who wish to know god, and giving it to selfish ignorant people who are opposed to his god in almost every way.  How can one who actively does these things know anything about god?  How can one who actively does these things be an actual leader?  How can he possibly be improving the whole?

Can you see as an individual how he is the sickness of the whole?  Can you see the sickness of the whole embodied in this one individual?  Can you see what is meant by the one in the whole being the same?  Can you see it in yourself?

There is another member on the council, the leader, who has a disease.  He has missed work because of it.  This disease has affected him greatly.  The people of this community are paying for that, directly, and yet in the last public meeting I attended he was drinking out of a large McDonald’s plastic cup.  I did not ask what was in the cup because I know without asking that McDonalds does not sell anything that is good for the body.  So here sits a man, the elected leader of the community, and he does not have enough presence of mind to not poison himself while he is sick.  How could he possibly do what is best for the community when he cannot even do what is best for himself?  He is directly causing the whole, the community in which we live, to be just as sick. 

I could quite easily go down the line of members, the various leaders in this community and easily point out how they are self-destructing.  But let's be honest.  Are any of you different?  So then, let's be clear, now we know why things are the way they are.  We all hold beliefs which are not true.  Some of the very people who act concerned for the community in which I live are equally as self-destructive if in their own way.  They cry and moan about how hypocritical the council is, but I cannot see that they are any different on the basic levels.  Sure they might do some things differently, but when it comes down to the whole they really are not much different.  This is why the system is broken.  This is why there are so many neglected and abused children; the leaders themselves are fulfilling the circle.  These children are up to be next in line as broken leaders, broken mothers and fathers, all wishing the culture was different but unwilling to handle it themselves.  The mayor is over 65 years old.  How much time does he need to gain mastery over his own body?  How much time does he need to move past kindergarten in spiritual terms?

I have said this many times.  If you want to know why things are all screwed up culturally all you have to do is go look in the mirror.  Not many like to do this though.  It is hard work.  It can be painful.  It can really suck admitting to the truth, but it doesn't matter if you do it or not, the truth is the truth.  You are a part of the whole, and if you are not pulling your weight you are actively keeping the rest from being their best.  If you are self-destructing, you are destroying the whole.  If you are sick and not handling business, you are the reason the whole is sick.  If you are fat and out of shape, you are the reason the whole is fat and out of shape. 

Can you imagine what this community would be like if the leaders actually led by example?  Can you imagine how different it would be if they actually lived appropriately?  It would radiate out from them like a stone thrown into a pond of water.  Have you ever done this?  Thrown a rock into a pond?  It doesn't matter how rough or choppy the surface of the pond is, or how small of a rock is thrown, the ripples affect all the other waves.  The issue is, that every breath you take is a rock thrown.  Every thought your mind produces is a rock thrown.  Whether you want to or not you are, every second of your life, creating waves in the pond in which you live.  No one gets to destroy themselves without polluting the whole pond.  No one gets to do this.  One can be as opinionated about it as they wish; it is simple physics in effect.  Your opinion only changes the type of wave you create.  The fact that you create waves cannot be stopped. 

Can you imagine how different your family would have been growing up if the leaders in it were living to the fullest?  How much easier would it have been for you to do the same if you had someone near you doing it by example?  Can you imagine how different it would be if you were doing so?  How much easier would it be for those you care about if they could see you doing it?  Handling business.   There is a song called Lives by Modest Mouse.  The song ends with these lyrics, "My hell comes from inside, comes from inside myself.  Why fight this.  Everyone's afraid of their own lives.  If you could be anything you want I bet you'd be disappointed, am I right?"  Perhaps listen to that song.  Perhaps figure out what you are afraid of, and then prove yourself wrong.  We are all counting on you after all.  How long must we wait?

Judgment vs. Criticism

There is a spiritual phenomenon which occurs regarding judgment, and I have been dealing with it a great deal lately.  I think it is safe to say that when material stresses intrude on the mind it makes it more difficult to think clearly.  The spiritual masters will confirm this fact; if you judge someone else: it will happen to you.  More than a few times in my life this has been a near instant phenomenon.  I would judge someone, and then find myself in the same exact situation, but from the perspective of the one I judged.  It is something we all must deal with. 

In my own experience it is a difficult situation because I am quite naturally critical.  All of us have critical abilities, some greater than others.  When I was younger my critical way of thinking created quite a problem in my own life.  For one, people do not like criticism.  It is often quite difficult for people to hear because their emotions are so closely tied to their thoughts.  Anytime I speak, it is critical, that is simply how my mind works, and most people, most of the time, think I am being judgmental.   Two, this caused me to feel quite flawed when I was younger, because not many people like someone who thinks critically 100% of the time.  I had the emotional belief that if I was healed and whole everyone would like me.  I was judging myself quite critically you see, which is never a good thing.  The real issue though is realizing the difference between judgment and criticism.

Years ago I was talking on the phone with a friend.  This friend, let's call her Lisa, was asking for my help in critiquing up a situation involving another person that she was dealing with.  If I remember correctly it was her mother.  It is funny how people like my ability to be hyper critical when I direct it at someone else.  I have an uncanny ability to size people up rather quickly, but only because I have a life time of being so critical coupled with studying people.  Like all things, practice makes perfect.  In my critique of this individual I said that the person was lonely, and because of that loneliness they were acting a certain way.  

Lisa did not like how her mother was acting, but became upset because I called her mother lonely.  Can you see it?  That is what makes it a judgment.  She was upset, which means she was judging.  Her emotional content was preventing her from acknowledging reality.  I was merely critiquing the situation so that Lisa could have a better understanding of what was going on, which is exactly what she asked me to do.  All of us could have said the same thing about this person.  The behavior she was demonstrating made it quite obvious looking in from the outside.  I was admitting to a fact, Lisa was being judgmental.  This judgment on her part kept her from seeing the reality of the situation at that time.  That is precisely what happens to all of us when we judge.  It is a failure to see things clearly, which is why it will happen to us when we do it, so that we may learn our lesson.  That phenomenon in and of itself is proof of spirituality being a part of reality.  Karma in effect. 

I did not have an emotional response to loneliness.  It just is. I was quite lonely myself when this conversation occurred.   I was just pointing out what was obvious to me.  When people are lonely they do things they often would not otherwise do, which was exactly what was happening to me, as well as Lisa's mother, as well as most people on the planet.  I was doing quite a few things I would not normally do because I was lonely.  The greater the loneliness the more dramatic the behavior one will display.  Most people will be judgmental in this situation and say negative things about the lonely person.  The easiest example is the person who talks and talks and talks, which was something I was known for myself.  I would talk a persons head off if they let me, not because I loved to talk so much, but because I was lonely. 

Most people will only judge what it is they see on the surface, like the bad behavior Lisa's parent was displaying, or like the person who talks too much.   Instead of looking  deeper into the issue which creates the unhealthy behavior in the first place people will typically just speak negatively about the surface behavior.   Lisa was upset because to her, loneliness is bad, so that meant I was saying something bad about this person she cared about.  That is judgment.  She was also judging me, which was obvious by her emotional response to my critique.  Criticism is simply observing what is and commenting on it.  If your hair is black, and I point this out, it is a critique of the situation, not a judgment.  Now, if I say your hair is black and I dislike or like black hair, that is judgment.  One's hair being black is free of personal opinion.  It is neither good nor bad. 

Loneliness is not good or bad either.  It just is.  There are a great many things that humans need to know about life that cannot be learned unless we are lonely.  If loneliness teaches us things we can't otherwise learn, how can we say it is bad?  We would be doomed to a certain level of ignorance if we never delve into our own loneliness.  If one were to closely pay attention they would realize this is exactly what is occurring with most people.  They never grow past a certain level because they never face their own loneliness.  I think the same thing applies to suffering.  Almost everyone is in a state of judgment regarding suffering, but humans cannot improve without it, so how can it be bad?  If no one ever suffered, no one would ever grow.  Almost everyone I know avoids suffering like their life depends on it, yet in actuality their life depends on them suffering.  Most are blind to this phenomenon.

The world is upside down.  I feel quite safe in saying this is one of the reasons so many are what I call children in grown up bodies.  The masses fear fundamental aspects in life that cause us to grow and be better people so they avoid them at all costs.  Almost everyone is avoiding the teacher; suffering.  Almost everyone is judging instead of merely acknowledging things for what they are free of opinion.  Which to me seems to be the mature thing to do.  It is not my opinion if I say a lonely person is lonely, it just is.  In Lisa's case, her judgment of her mother’s loneliness was only further causing her mother to be lonely.  Her judgment projected negative energy towards her mother when all her mother really needed was to be better understood by those she loved.  Lisa did not yet understand that by removing her opinion of the situation she would have actually been helping her mother deal with her own loneliness.  Who is not a little less lonely simply by being a little better understood by one in proximity? 

All this said, I am not saying that negative things do not happen because of loneliness.  It most certainly happens, and it happens a lot.  A great many people harm themselves tremendously because of their own perceived loneliness.  The idea is to see this phenomenon for what it is free of our own emotional content.  Having an opinion is easy.  Anyone can do that without putting forth any effort whatsoever.  Looking deeply enough into things to see them for what they are, free of one’s own emotional content, is another matter entirely.

It is almost insignificant.

I don't want to go any further without sharing this little tidbit.  I probably have written about this before, but maybe this time it will be a little more succinct.  I am about to show you how your whole life has been a lie.  Hold on tight.

In each and every second of your life your brain has been sending and receiving information with the universe.  Before you were even born your brain was recording.  As you read this right now your brain is processing about 11 million, let's call them bits, of information per second.  Every second that your brain is on and conscious it is completely aware of it surroundings.  It knows every last detail that the eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and all the other organs can detect.  The entire body is a sensor for the brain.  It all happens without you thinking about it.  Now think about this, really try to wrap your mind around what 11 million bits per second means and then realize your "thinking" is about 40 of them.

Take out a piece of paper and attempt to make the smallest possible dot you can using a pen or pencil.   No matter how small you make that dot, it will be too big.  For it to be accurate, it would need to be barely visible.  That dot; that is your thinking!  The rest of the paper is your total brain activity during any given second.  Now add that up in the totality of your life.  Your entire life you have "thought" that your "thinking" was YOU!  Your thinking isn’t even hardly a fraction of what is the total you.  All of your life your “thinking” has only been aware of a super tiny smidgen of what was really happening in that moment. 

Your thinking is not even a percentage of the total Self.  Well, that is until you get your thinking in line with what actually is occurring.  There is a reality occurring despite your opinion of it.  The idea is to learn to observe free of opinion; to observe without thinking. 

This is why all spiritual masters say to meditate and learn to turn off your thinking.  When you learn to listen to your unconscious mind it literally sets you free because it freaking knows almost everything.  There is very little to fear when you know everything!  When you stop thinking life changes.

Do not get me wrong.  It is not like one never thinks again or something.  It is just learning to put it where it belongs.  Learning that the thinking part of you is just that.  A part.  An extremely tiny part of the whole.  Your thinking is almost insignificant in comparison to the whole. 

My friend told me it’s hard.  Yes of course it is.  At first it is very hard.  If you are just attempting it you are combating an entire lifetime of it being one way.  One is having to un-train an entire life of habit and completely re-train it  another way.  Lots of things in life are hard at first.  Until one becomes good at changing, and puts in a lot of practice into it, change will seem difficult.  Anytime the body/mind has to be retrained consciously it is difficult at first, especially if the change involves a habit.   

Who just walks on a golf course and drives a ball straight?  Who just walks up to the free throw line and makes ten shots in a row first time in?  Who paints the perfect picture the first time they pick up the brush?  On and on I could go.  Nothing worth doing is easy; especially at first. 

Every single thought you have ever had was just a little tiny smidgen of whatever was really going on at that moment.  Moment to moment your thoughts aren't even really a fraction of the real life situation which is occurring at that moment. 

Here is that spiritual duality again.  We are nothing, yet we are everything.  This is why the spiritual masters say to look within.  If you can figure out how your own brain works you can tap into those other 11 million bits of information that it has been being stored away your entire life.  Think about that!  Being able to tap into the full power of your brain knowing it is processing that much information every second!  It can be done.  The funny part is, the irony, is that you will never be able to convey it verbally.  The actual occurrence of it anyways.  Life experience will become so complicated it cannot be expressed.  When thinking is put in its proper place life becomes other worldly, and it cannot be described fully.  That is why mystics sound so mystical.  At first….

Think of yourself now.  Here you were thinking your thinking was you.  Now imagine tapping into the rest of your brain; imagine tapping into the rest of your Self.  Can you contrast the difference between this fearful thinking part that most people have right this second versus another part that is never afraid because it is completely aware and basically knows everything?  This is why becoming aware is so important.  Can you see this contrast in the spiritual language of the mystics.  Peace is within!  Look within and you will find joy!  Look within and you will find god they say. 

Men are always attributing what they do not understand to some god or other.  They are always falling short of the real thing thus constantly misnaming phenomenon as god.  Go d is not within necessarily.  If there is a creator it is much more than that.  It has to be.  Look at the size of the universe!  Tapping into one’s unconscious mind would make a person seem like a god in comparison to billions of people who are not.  Think about that. 

When Cortez landed in what is now Mexico the natives thought him and his men were demons or gods.  They rode horses and had armor.  They killed thousands of them with just a small group of men they had to be gods.  They were not gods they just knew more about reality.  There are countless other examples of this in the history books where men thought other men who seemed somehow to have more powers than they, that they were gods.   I don’t think it is that difficult to see this phenomenon occurring even now.  All the time people who dedicate themselves to something get put on a pedestal as if they are better than the rest.  They are not better.  They simply opened up their brain and their body.  They did the thing.  It just happens to be a spiritual process for many so it often gets put into spiritual language. 

Wake up!

Why haven't you had enough yet?

In the following, the word good is used often.  This word, like love, means different things to different people, so I wish to be a little clearer about the meaning I intend.  I am using the word good in terms of being virtuous, a higher quality on an absolute scale.  On a scale of one to ten where five is normal, good is a six or seven.  Excellent would be a nine or ten. 

Removing culture from the mind is terribly difficult to do.  I am biased of course; this American culture is about as apathetic as a culture can be.  Stereo typical family design, public education, religion, TV, etc. etc.  For thousands of years now assholes have been in charge of the culture.  No one escapes the indoctrination of this culture.  It is so difficult removing all of the crap very few do it.  It not only requires a lot of questioning and reading, but it involves a lot of emotional work as well.  This is the part that scares most out of even trying to grow up.  That is why there are so very few actual mature adults walking around.  Whether you like hearing it or not that is what you are intended to do as a human, outgrow your culture.  Grow up.  Evolve your Self.  You are to realize that the way you were raised was fucked up, regardless of who you are.  It was sub-standard even if you had the best of parents.  Were they not indoctrinated too?  These older generations fell for the propaganda to such a degree it is scary how ignorant they are. 

Luckily for us we are in a different Age now, the energy of the universe is increasing in frequency.  If you don't get your shit together the universe is going to take care of it for you.  Look at all the madness going on.  If it is not obvious to you that everything is escalating then you are not paying attention at all.   What I mean by this is, you now have two choices; get your shit together or begin to really truly suffer for your ignorance.  Apathy is going to be scorned. The collective consciousness is exponentiating just like technology is. It is a law of evolution; it exponentiates.  The collective conscious is becoming aware of a huge problem and I don't think it is going to tolerate out right ignorance anymore.  At least I am praying this is true.  This is what I direct my mind towards, no more ignorance.   My well-being and the well-being of the earth depend on this. 

If people do not start sticking up for themselves, the bad people are going to take it even further.  They always do.  That is how it works.  One can easily see this historically as well as in our own individual lives.  It is just going to get worse until, like mature adults, a stop is put to it.  There is absolutely no reason to harm another, ever, for any reason.  In comparison to the total population, an extremely small amount of people are causing harm to the entire planet.  It does not matter who you are, one should not be allowed to hurt another, not rank, not office, not title, not nothing.  Especially not fucking profit.  Especially not a pay check. 

Harm no one, ever.  The question is why haven't you had enough yet?  Why are you still harming others?  Whether you have thought about this deeply or not is the concern.   Why are you not pissed off that your parents did not handle business?  Why are you not pissed off that the leaders in your community do not handle business?  One word: Apathy.  By definition apathy is; not taking any interest in anything, or not bothering to do anything.

I see too many people patting themselves on the back for doing something they should have been doing all along.  I will use eating as an example.  I know more than a few people who have begun to take better care of themselves.  Some of these people literally think they are better for eating well.  They are not better.  Once one begins to eat right they are simply normal.  They eat well compared to the normal.  That is the thing, in comparison to an extremely messed up culture eating right does seem good.  That is not good though, it only seems that way.  One should have been eating right their whole lives.  The question is; Why are you not pissed off that it is this way?  Why are you not pissed off you have been eating poison your whole life?  That would be normal.  It would be perfectly normal to be upset that your parents fed you poison your whole life without giving it any thought at all.  So to suddenly begin eating right is not a good thing; it should have been happening all along!

You see, doing this creates another lie.  It is going from one lie to another.  The first lie being it is okay to eat poison, the second lie being that one is good because they stopped.  Good is above normal.  Good would be helping others eat right.  Good would be going above what one should have been doing all along.  It is normal to stop eating poison that is expected. 

Life is perspective. 

Another one is the parent who thinks they are a good parent because they love their child.  That is not good, that is normal.  It is the base line.  It is absolutely absurd to think someone is a good person because they love their child.  Yet, almost every day I hear it implied.  The bar is not nearly high enough.  Your children should know how to read and write by age 5 at the latest.  They should know multiple languages by four.  By the time a child is out of "high school" they should technically be a genius compared to these typical Americans I see every day.  Good would be so far above what I see anyone doing it is nearly inexpressible because this culture is so jacked. 

I speak at length with many different types of people attempting to help them get their head right.  I find myself saying quite often to people, I don't know anyone with a legit father.  You see, at some point, everyone has to come to terms with the failings of their parents.   I don't know a single human being who had a father that actually handled business.  I am not saying they do not exist.  I am saying of the thousands and thousands of people I have known over the years I do not know a legit male over forty.  Not one.  That is good?

Good is the enemy of great, yet we don't even have good.  We can't get good because everyone calls less than normal good.  We don't even have normal.  That is how broken this culture is.  If you are comparing your own experience to this American culture; you are doomed to always be in a state of dysfunction.  As I like to say to my brother, if you compare yourself to this culture as a means to determine how good you are, you might as well go compete in the Special Olympics and then brag about how athletic you are.

Ouch!  Right?  That is harsh?  If you think that is harsh I would take that as an opportunity to grow up.  If the truth bothers you, you are immature for sure.  Most males I know between the ages of twenty and forty are four year olds in grown bodies.  Most of these boys were not raised correctly so they are still stuck at the emotional age of four. Women complain about this near constantly, but yet I do not see them doing any better.  While they may be emotionally more mature, they are equally immature regarding "male" things.  For instance, being able to do a pushup.  Male or female no human should be unable to do a push up.  How many women claim they would do this or that for their child yet can't even do a push up?  As if, when their child is truly in danger, they would be able to do anything about it when they can't even push their own body weight off the floor.  Laughable.  Nothing funnier to me than a woman attempting to act tough when she can't even do ten pushups.  Stupid girl doesn't even know what tough is, like her male counterpart she is comparing her strength to the strength of those in a broken culture.  It is not strong at all.  It is weak all the way around. 

Harsh?  Again?  If it bothers you, you probably needed to hear it.  You live in an apathetic culture.  That means you are apathetic whether you wish that to be true or not.   Growing up is a bitch in a broken culture.