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The Hell of a See Saw Society

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The question of KAV’s guilt or innocence is framed by our inability to rest in ambiguity, to hold judgment, no restrain from choosing this or that. We live in a rational logical materialism where truth must be Either this Or that. Truth can’t be this/that; truth can’t be ambiguous, so we can’t by the force of our need to choose rest in uncertainty. The Call to Certainty is like the speakers in a rock concert.

 

I was listening on morning news to two people discussing KAV and each had an opposite perspective on his “emotional behavior.” One view was that it a job killer because of its un-judicial temperament. The other view was that it was understandable and permitted because of the extreme pressure he was under, being falsely accused in front of his family.

 

KAV is ambiguous, and both views are right. However, the judgment was rushed and evidence was not allowed to come out because if assumed to be innocent, there is no evidence. Assumed to be guilty, the evidence to prove it was not allowed to come out. Ambiguity just gets kicked down the road of time.

 

And here’s why, I think. Ambiguity in politically potential events creates the polarity of Right versus Left realties. Whether you are Conservative or Liberal, you identity depends on not being the Other. So there is an existential need to create the polarity in which we find our Identity of Investment. When we invest of Self in a political “team,” it is the polarity that generates our very sense of self.

 

It is the contest in sports, us against them, that generates the roar of the crowd. If you have no interest in either team, football is quite boring.

 

With our need to feel the roar for out Team, the ambiguity of KAV could not be sustained until the evidence was thoroughly laid out on the table. We cry and complain about the polarity of our society, but we really love it because we have lost our true individuality, and now we exist because we are on a team with an arch enemy. Each team is defined by its opponent.

 

The irony is that in avoiding ambiguity, we create ambiguity.

 

OK, I want to write on this Idea some more because it has legs for me. How do I find truth in my own life? That is the question. How do I stop toe polarity in my own mind, the worry mind, the incessant monolog of circular thinking? That is the real question, isn’t it. The external polarity in the society is a reflection of the internal polarity that is ME. That is the question.

 

What is an inner polarity? Unless we can see it in our own mind, all our efforts to get rid of its pain in the external world will just increase it until we have a nervous breakdown or shoot ourselves or someone else. Violence is the failed attempt to get rid of the polarity in our own mind.

 

We live in a thought created culture. Everything is created by thought, and thought is a polarity operating system. Is Kav innocent or guilty? Our reference to evaluate evidence depends upon which end of the see saw we sit on. If I sit on the Left, the facts shape around that reference, clearly and logically. If I sit on the Right end, the same facts shape around that end perfectly. I cannot understand why the other end of the polarity can’t see that. I get angry.

 

When I can rest in the ambiguity of Not Knowing, I create the empty space where my heart felt identity is born. Yes born. When caught in the see saw of ambiguity I’m the Unborn because I am two ME’s. Using the see saw as our working metaphor, the Truth is that the see saw needs both ends. You can’t have one end of relative truth without the opposite. Since both ends are moving up and down, I’m right, you’re wrong…oh, no now I’m wrong and you’re right…on and on…The truth which is always the One without a Second is is pattern of the see saw, not either end as seen from being on the see saw.

 

Truth requires the suspension of the identification with either end of the see saw.. You have to sit on the park bench and observe the mind’s polarity. Morality is a see saw with my end being good and the other end being bad. There is no end to the Moral See Saw. We never see the whole bull, just one horn or the other, and we fear being gored by the other horn…never seeing that the two horns of the ambiguity dilemma is one bull without a second.

 

In a polarized society where you are either Right or Left, there is no way to find that Park Bench because the park bench is transcendent of the see saw experience. One has to die to your seat on the see saw to find yourself suddenly on the park bench. It’s a sudden shift like that. Suddenly you see and there is no more confusion and mind polarity. And what you see you do. Finally, seeing and action are one.

 

The view from the Park Bench is Awareness that transcends our acculturated thought and mind. For the first time the world is no longer hostile, and you are no longer a victim of the other end of the see saw. But we still don’t escape ambiguity: I am on the see saw; I am not on the see saw (park bench). And that’s Zen.

 

I’m asking you all to put a really wide angle lens and zoom back until you can see the pattern of polarity that shapes out current time in history. While polarity in the secular modern world has always been there, today there seems to be a radical fundamental revolt against secularism and the uncertainty and meaningless of ambiguity and polarity, the double-bind of polarity. But the fundamental revolt against polarity is misplaced because it doubles down on one end of the see saw polarity. And of course, the other end double-down, and the see saw just speeds up until we feel it is going to through us off into the void.

 

The fundamentalist revolt against secular polarity is morality. There is nothing more certain than our moral view, and now you end of the see saw is a Absolute Good and the other end Absolute Evil. There is no end to that see saw.

 

Politics was always a see saw in the political play ground. But now with the religious revolt against the certainty of God being removed from the playground, it has made the playground a cosmic war of Good versus Evil and it is not policy that is at stake but our very souls salvation.

 

 

In order to discover the park bench in the playground of the mind, we have to find the way in our mind/world, not in society. Truth is in there, not out there. You are the world and the world is you. The fact is live is ambiguous. Nothing is certain. Heaven is hell, hell is heaven. Buddha calls it impermanence.

 

 

When a flock beat the Republican Army

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Social media is changing everything because everyone is watching everything live. There is no more time; everything is Now. We are a internet species now, a flock of starlings that shift in unison in flight. Common sense wise we are still living in the Newtonian universe of billiard balls knocking into each other as cause and effect in a linear line of past to future. 

But the real world as changed. We no longer live in the Print Age of regimentation of defined words moving left to right,  word separated from the flesh and feeling. The Print Age, as defined by Marshal MacKluhan shaped Western consciousness when the printing press was invented, and we changed from an oral tradition to a visual print tradition, and the mass man was created for the factories, perfect consumers who were then brainwashed by TV ads. Pac Men who just consumed forms. 

With interactive social media, the whole world in your pocket, it is having the same effect on consciousness that the portable print Bible had on the Protestant Reformation the broke up the Catholic ritualistic hold on western man. 

Two women in an elevator created a change in the direction of the social organism. I think that’s it. Social Media (and by that I mean all electronic media) has created an organism that is greater than the parts or single individuals. Yes….the organism is not an idea, not an ideal, not a biological category to be studied…the organism is US. We can feel it, taste it, cry in it, rage in it…all in unison as if we were fans at a soccer game. 

Every event now that we have global media, live and in real time, is a butterfly flapping in Brazil that ends up being a tornado in Oklahoma. (a Quantum metaphor). We live in flocks of humans like Russian Nesting Dolls. There is the Western civilization flock, our national flocks, and then many flocks within that flock, like the Left Flock and the Right Flock, the Trump Flock and the Evangelical Flock. A flock is a whole within other wholes. 

There have always been many flocks of humans in the American Flock, and we seem to have lost the Whole American Flock what with the strength of the flapping of the Trump Flock and the flocks against Trump. But there is an AMERICAN FLOCK, but it cannot be seen or described as an object. But it can be FELT. Flocks move by feeling, not by telegraphs, verbal message or visible signs. 

Our institutions are a block against the movement of our flocks, which is be design. The Trump Flock wants to deconstruct the institutional blocks to its movement. But today, the American Flock swamped the institution and made it blink. 

So as I explore this new metaphor that helps me get a handle of understanding on what is happening to us, our world that seems suddenly new, exciting and terrifying, full of dread and anxiety, I am optimistic.

The question is this. Is the Human Flock that transcends all the social flocks a moral force of nature, or a force of the flock that has a name and form. Is Nature the flock that has the final word, the final and ultimate command, the interior compass that can change the movement of humanity as a flock. Is nature conscious? Is nature intelligent? Is nature alive? Is nature the Cosmos. 

Suddenly it seems to me that this week showed a Flock adjustment or direction that came from some unseen Order. I can’t say God because God has just become another flock within flocks.

The moral crisis of America

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The moral crisis is when we must choose what is right but can’t, yet we must. When both choices have equal arguments and emotional power, and Truth or the One is divided against itself. Truth Is One…Reality is not two unless you are a schizophrenic. So to avoid the psychosis of a split mind we have to choose…but how can we here? The mystery play leaves us without knowing Who Did It? Yet we have to know who did it? 

So this is America’s moral crisis because we have to choose who did it. Judge Kav represent male privilege and the power of the Republican Party. He confessed to that in the hearing. So the choice, especially for Republicans, is between heart felt empathy for Dr. Ford or party loyalty to Judge Kav. 

The pain of Dr. Ford was of a vulnerable heart that had been wounded. The pain of Judge Kav was the pain of a career and a well crafted public persona being exposed. There was no pain of being exposed for Dr. Ford. But there was rage by Judge Kav, belligerent anger at those he blamed for his crisis, the Democrats.

Passion sells TV, passion gets ratings, and yesterday we had passion versus reason, tribalism versus individual judgment. Now we have this giant hair ball stuck in our throat. Who is lying? 

The partisan tribalism, especially that rose to a lion roar on the right in the second half of the hearting is Trump’s playbook: blame the Democrats. While everyone focuses on the “evil” Democrats, the fact of Dr. Ford is forgotten. Where is Mark Judge?….(The irony of the name is not lost). The Mark on the Judge. The eye witness who was not called. What is Kav hiding? What is he afraid of? That was obvious. 

Whether the Dems plotted this late revelation or not, that doesn’t mean that Dr. Ford’s revelation is not an exposer of Judge Kav’s dark side. That’s what this is about. Does Judge Kav have a Dark Side that he is deathly afraid of being exposed? Was that what he was no terrified and angry about? 

Kav most definitely revealed himself as a Partisan Operative when he called out the Left Wing Conspiracy that this was because the Democrats were angry about him, 2016, losing the election and revenge for the Clintons. Trump’s Democratic hit job, evil…evil…

KAV is a Right Side Warrior. He rose to power as a political operative for Star digging up dirt on the Clintons. He barely got confirmed for the circuit court for his partisan bias, and now it came out in full force. 

I cannot help but connect the dots to Cosby, who went to jail the other day because he believed he was a Right Side Warrior, a moral light for black people, and America’s Dad. Cosby had a hidden dark side and he never confessed, held his con to the jail cell. 

In the larger picture—the context of the MeToo movement and women marching, becoming political, and saying they aren’t going to take it anymore—America is going through the labor of birth and death, the death of Republican Patriarchy and the birth of Democratic matriarchy. These are reality paradigms or World Ideas that like a fish bowl shape the culture we swim in. 

When we swim in a culture, it is almost impossible to see the unconscious World Idea that shapes it. In the rear view mirror of history we can see the World Idea, like when we see movies of the 50s. I’m thinking of the Shape of Water and Mudbound, which I just saw. The Cold War is still shaping our culture, only the war has become between states of mind, the tribal shape of the Right and the Left. Just as WWI was locked in trench war, America has been gridlocked for 48 years (using 1970 as a beginning) in a pendulum swinging back and forth of He Said, She Said. 

I see this coming to an end with a new generation coming into voting power who were born in a different World Idea created by the internet. They are bored with the Cold War of dueling value positions. They want practical results, not ideological goals. They don’t care for the soccer game of politics where rabid teams snarl and tear at each other in their love of the game they believe is real. 

Judge Kav revealed himself to be a Right Side Warrior for his team against what he called the “evil” forces of the Left.

Black Panther: A dream to wake up by

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Just watched Black Panther on Netflix and as an extended metaphor (which movies are) you can get any meaning you want from the movie, so I’ll just point out one I saw. 

Wakanda is a culture that was hijacked by a ritually confirmed king (Trump) who out of his personal anger took the culture in a direction that was fundamentally different from its core value. The kingdom split loyalty in two, one group loyal to the Office of the King, the other loyal to core values of the kingdom. When the original king (Obama) returned a civil war erupted in which the usurper was defeated.

What is the proper use of power? This to me was the core question of the movie that had to be resolved. Should one withdraw and put up wall, an isolationist, become a hermit kingdom? Or should one use your power to address grievance by attacking those who have done you wrong? Or should you use your power to invest in the improvement of society, forgiving your enemies.

The other theme was whether one is essentially good by nature, or flawed by nature. Are you created by culture, or are you the creator of culture? Are you defined by others, or do you define yourself? And where does the power come from to move from being the created to being the creator? Black Panther is a spiritual metaphor whose power is to awaken the sleeping Creator within.

Unless you have a role model that shows you in flesh and blood what your potential is, you cannot rise to that potential. The growth of our children is an example of this when a child sees a ballerina an knows..and knows..that is what she is going to be. This Wisdom Knowing or Body Know transcends cultures and the given role models of your immediate culture, like your home town. If all you know is your home town, all your role models are given. You will become like the options offered by your culture. 

But if someone comes into your home town that offers a role model to a different potential, your body knowing kicks in and you will become that, you will transcend the homeostatic force of your culture which is to be obedient to your cultural expectations. 

Black Panther is a metaphorical role model for youth who are offered no escape from the expectations of their local culture. The metaphor is that it points at the same time to the content of the movie which is, of course, fantasy, but also at your Body Knowing that is asleep in your acculturated ego. The movie makes you feel good about yourself, and that anything is possible because the old cultural gods (powers are dead.

Movies like this are dreams to wake up by. They stir the sleeper inside the acculturated mind, that child of Body Knowing who was put to sleep by the culture in which he was born. After six years of age, the child is taken from it’s primary body knowing, or primary process of learning, from direct experience to being to adopting to a semantic culture of abstract symbols for reality. The child begins to think the menus of reality is reality, and the menu only offers a limited numbers of foods for him to eat. And he goes through life eating the menu or symbols of reality instead of directing knowing reality. Dissatisfied with the food, the culture menu just offers new choices on the menu. 

When Direct Experience or Body Knows is awakening, the adult begins to question the menu culture and he tries real food. HEY…It’s GOOD he exclaims. HEY….when reality is good… I am good…because I am now real.

Direct Experience are our peak moments when there is a sudden and surprising break through where we know the goodness of reality, which is our self, but the Culture Menu with our acculturated self comes back in and looks for the meaning of the break through on the menu. BAM..we are right back on the menu. The Culture Menu has a powerful inertia to maintain its homeostasis, a stable sameness. So the Culture Menu just keeps adding new choices to keep your eating the menu.

When Direct Experience happens to us, we usually call it a miracle and the Menu says God did it. You didn’t do it. The cook did it. The Menu’s function is to keep you in the menu. When we have moments of alignment with reality, Jung calls it synchronicity. But even that is on the menu. Instead of God’s miracle or angles watching me, it’s a psychological choice. One is still in the menu. All arguments are just about choices offered by the menu. The result is that you don’t wake up and taste the real food before you. Zen calls it One Taste.

Why is it so hard to be good?

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Are we good/bad or good or bad? That is the question. Are we ambiguous? But we can’t sustain ambiguity because you can’t choose in an ambiguous situation. Both choices are equal but opposite. Catch 22. Ambiguity creates a tape-loop out of which we must get. I explain in the talk how we create a compulsive ritual in consumerism to get out of the double-bind. You can be unique or Bad by joining a unique and bad group. You can eat your cake and have it too. 

This solves the dilemma of ambiguity where you have to be one or the other. That is our classical logic. You have to choose, either be bad or good, but you can’t choose bad/good because that is not a choice. That is ambiguity. But we must choose. You see the problem, the existential problem here? I must choose but I can’t. This creates the strategy that is unconscious, to be sure, where we create a self-image that is the rebel because it joins a group of rebels, a self image of the rebel.

The bottom line is that every choice is both good/bad. No matter what we do, it is going to create good and bad. Life is ambiguous that way. There is no way to calculate an action that will be absolutely good for everyone. You choose to go to Walmart. A good action. You run over someone’s dog. Bad action. Life is a mix…so to choose life you have to choose the mix. We do out best, but there is no certainty. 

So what this means is that there is no certainty of who I am. I am not fixed as either good or bad. There is tremendous freedom in this realization. You never have to worry about being liked or worthy…you can just be who you are in this moment. No apologies.

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Awaken Insight Meditation

AIM is a website where I share my Dharma Insights in my everyday mind. My daily experiences are metaphors that point to the Truth that is One. Paths are many, but the Dharma is One. I invite you to walk with me on my journey. I also invite you to enter into creative dialogue with the post, for then we push it forward and get some traction in our life.

The Minotaur Myth