The Son of Man has no place to rest his head

October 1, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

The Son of Man has no place to rest his head….which I tie to Zen Prajna, the aroused mind that does not rest on form. Which ties back to Irony, which is the realization that the form of the known you are resting on is going in a tape loop. HAH! The Zen Koan is broken. That’s freedom.

If we cannot see irony, we can’t see, period. . Irony is the portal to greater understanding that comes from the unknown or Field of Potential Knowledge. For the ancient Hebrews. God is ironic. That’s why Jews make great comics. Comedy is irony. irony is the double-bind where you ultimately become trapped in a lose/lose feed-back-loop. It is through SEEING the irony in our life—through seeing our incessant attempts to break out of our closed mind and always failing— that we Break Out.

This breaking out if Freedom; it is the Christ function or the Zen function. “The Son of Man has no place to rest his head” is an ironic statement. Whenever you think you have it (when you can rest your mind) you doIf we cannot see irony, we can’t see, period. . Irony is the portal to greater understanding that comes from the unknown or Field of Potential Knowledge. For the ancient Hebrews. God is ironic. That’s why Jews make great comics. Comedy is irony. irony is the double-bind where you ultimately become trapped in a lose/lose feed-back-loop. It is through SEEING the irony in our life—through seeing our incessant attempts to break out of our closed mind and always failing— that we Break Out. This breaking out is the Christ function or the Zen function. “The Son of Man has no place to rest his head” is an ironic statement. Whenever you think you have it (when you can rest your mind) you do.

Free Will then is the freedom of the Cosmos itself it create itself out of itself. When we identify with form and personal will, we close our system and it turns back upon itself in irony. Seeing is a function of freedom. Seeing is a dynamic interplay and unity between the created (cause and effect me as form) and the creator or universal that is an empt field of potential.

We are trapped in the unseen irony where we perceive ourselves as the created and some other force, God or the world or Satan or the Government or Obama creating us and taking away out freedom or giving it to us. Either way, we are the passive victim, the created. But in truth we are the creator/created. We interact with the Cosmos or God to create the world we live in, either as a dynamic coherent world of wonder and adventure or a dismal closed world that continually disappoints us. Either way, we are creating the universe we live in. So, I say, why not enjoy it!

We’re looking (or at least I’m looking) at Jesus as not only a form in time/space but as a function, an entry into our potential, and potential is something that has no existed before, so when it comes to activating one’s potential there is no reference to your past or the known, or to history and cause and effect. Jesus as Son of Man is then not a form that is known, but a verb that creates new form. Jesus is a Breaking Out from the known, from your history, into a bravo new way of being that cannot be known before you jump into it. Therefore, faith is the only way to leap from the diving board of the known—and faith means there is no certainty there is any water in the pool. The pool into which you leap is the unknown, and that’s what our potential is, the Unknown.

Discover your Source upstream

September 28, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Movies, great movies a metaphorical maps to the internal search for Source, or Who am I? In our materialistic culture everything is an IT, an object, a thing with qualities; that’s why if you can’t measure something, if it has no time and place, it doesn’t exist. This assumption comes from our grammar that sees everything as a subject doing something to an object. The Subject is Me as an object doing something (a verb) to another thing. Noun, verb, noun.; everything is a thing doing something to other things.

But when I ask in my heart, Who am I? Being a thing defined by others or even myself does not satisfy that question. Either others define me—and that’s no good—or I define myself—and that’s no good. When I am defined, either by others or myself I have boundaries and I’m separate by definition from other defines things. This is a static world. This is a created world. This is a world that is not changing. As a thing I am the created. As a thing I am a victim of who or what that defines me. As the created….I cannot answer the question Who am I? because the answer is in the dictionary of Culture. There in the Book of Culture I am defines and my profile is listed. There is something inside that screams NO! I will not be pined to the wall like a butterfly in Culture’s Laboratory.

The Great Quest is then upstream of Culture, to find the source not only of Culture by of my self. There is only One Source. There can’t be two sources for Culture and for me. I am a part of culture. My ego is kept in place by culture. I am part of the grid. All my values have value in my culture or subculture. I am culture and culture is me. So there can be only one Source for culture and me. The Source is upstream of Culture and Me.

I have to swim again the current of culture. Like a salmon I have to swim upstream to return to the Source. This is not easy because you have to swim against the stream of What Will People Think?

Like in Apocalypse Now, Willard had a single minded intention to accomplish his mission, to get to the source. Though all the psychic dramas his single minded intention kept him going. And this is the only thing that will take us to our Source, a single minded intention that doesn’t waver or get sidetracked by culture, which is going to be hell bent to keep you from finding the source of Culture. Culture is a worldview that does not allow doubt. You can do anything you want as long as. you stay within culture and the choices if offers, but you cannot question the fundamental assumptions of Culture itself.

And this is not easy because to question the assumptions that hold Culture together you have to question the assumptions that hold you together.

Enter the Heart of Darkness

September 27, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Tiger, Tiger burning bright, William Blake’s poem, focuses my attention this morning as I connected the dots between the Tiger leaping out of the jungle in Apocalypse Now and out of my office window as the morning sun hit my stained glass tiger. And the end of the movie when Co. Kurtz (played by Brando) says you can kill me but don’t judge me. And earlier he said that it is “judgment that defeats us.” He described this Snap realization as a “diamond bullet” between the eyes.

Why does judgment defeat us? Judgment divides reality into the good and the bad, into the I and the IT. We went to Vietnam to judge the people as gooks and kill them, as all ITs look the same. Taking my lead from the Tiger I post his poem.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

___________

Let the video journal of Captain. Willard speak for us.

I am going crazy I Saigon. I need a mission. When I am home I wish I was here; when I am here I wish I was home. I am wounded. I need a mission. Everything is upside down.

I am given a mission. Kill a man who thinks he is god. Our little boat heads upstream through Dante’s Inferno of one mad scene after another. One of crew is killed by an primitive spear. In the primeval forest we meet the Tiger. We are getting closer. He was real close. I want to confront him.

As I go keeping into the jungle, the forests of the night, approaching the headwaters of my own being, is that a Buddha ahead? What is my mission? If I see the Buddha, do I kill him? Going up river no one is in charge any more. I must confront “him.”

We pass through some boats full of people who look like zombies, all white in death ash, they part and let us through. I pass a sign: MOTTO APOCALYPSE NOW.

I enter his cave. I meet him shaded in shadow like a god, his hands in a helmet of water like a baptismal, and his head a white skull. Have I met Death itself, the God of Death? There are no methods here at all. He looks at me and says “I’m just an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.” He is in a place far from civilization and the known world.

He knew more about me than I did. Then he said to make friends with horror, with Death. He talked about the. Stench of Lies. He put me in a bamboo cages and then appeared in the night, large and painted, and threw the head one of my crew in my lap. I lost it! I met the horror!

Then he let me out and some women fed me and gave me drink. I knew I could complete my mission now and kill this god. Out of the river I came, born again like a Baptist, single minded. I was where I belonged. As I killed him the tribal people were sacrificing a bull, and the colonel and the bull died together…whispering the Horror…the horror.

I emerged from his cave, Buddha faces rising in my mind, and his people dropped their weapons when I dropped my knife. They would have bowed and worshiped me, but I walked through them and went back down the river from whence I came.

I leave this story for you. Do not judge.

Continuing my journey upstream of culture and Ego (they dance together), I explore Apocalypse Now. What did Col Kurtz discover, what horror did he discover? This is the question that pulled Willard upstream on this single minded mission. The cannot help but see this forgotten Buddhist temple in Cambodia with his gigantic Buddha faces intermingled in the scenes as a clue to the spiritual journey that goes upstream to the headwaters of our own culture/ego insulated egg, a bubble through which we interact with the world, an I safely inside with the IT outside. And judgment is our shell.

Kurtz wants men who are moral but who kill without flinching, like a tiger. The great impersonal face of the Buddha looks down. Were the American there moral? They certainly killed without flinching. But were they moral? What does moral mean here? Is the Tiger moral? Does moral means being an integral part of the whole, both the part and the whole as the Good. Judgment divides the whole into separate parts that are good and bad. Judgment and morality then are not compatible, if morality is the integration of all parts with the whole, if morality does not divide. A moral act then transcends the relative morality created by judgment.

What the Americans are doing from their moral viewpoint is Good. What their enemy does is bad. But from the viewpoint of the movie this morality is in question. Vietnam in our history was when we began to question the morality of America and its government.

But everything can and must be reduced to my everyday mind. Even here there is the heart of darkness that divides what I do from what I think, and I think I’m doing good, but from a wider view, I’m doing bad. There is always a SNAP! when these two divergent views comes together into one Gestalt. We always avoid this SNAP, this Satori when we see the polarity Zen Koan all at once. Polarity ends with a SNAP!, not gradually, but with a body shacking SNAP…a waking up that is sudden, an expected, yet strangely suspected, surprise.

Only the wide angle lens can question the morality of the narrow focused lens. Apocalypse Now questions not only the morality of the Vietnam War, and not only war itself, but civilization, our civilization. What is morality but the search for the ultimate Good, the headwaters of consciousness itself. If our Source is Good, the we must go upstream to our source to find our true nature. If you Source is not the Good, then don’t bother. If our Source is not Good, then suicide is the only logical answer. Better the earth be rid of us. But…wait…is not my source the same source as the earth? if the earth is Good, then so am I.

But since we are killing the earth, maybe we don’t believe our Source the earth is good, and so we don’t see the good in each of us. What is this misperception…but our civilization, our Culture of division and self loathing. Each of us then must set out on our spiritual quest into the Heart of Darkness to find through that darkness the Source of our Goodness or Light.

I must read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness now (I may have read it years ago but there are dots to be connected). This journey into the Heart of Africa goes back to my boyhood when I was fascinated with the unknown and unexplored center of Africa that was a blank space on the National Geographic maps I had on my wall. I wanted to explore that heart.

Is Trump the New Nixon?

September 26, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

After watching Ken Burns Vietnam and the Democratic Convention chaos and the arrival or the Great Savior Nixon who would end the war and restore Law and Order I connected the dots and saw Trump. The base of both is Fear. The Cultural Egg cracked and poured out liberated souls who were experiencing reality outside the Egg for the first time. It was exhilarating. Potential was liberated. The Cultural God was dead; all things were possible…even violence as the Egg cracked down on those who would crack it.

We have to understand this conflict in American Culture between Exploration of the Unknown and the Security of the Known. These two drives are categorical imperatives. We humans have the DNA to explore the unknown, to leave the egg and make new omelettes, new recipes for living never known before. But at the same time we have to have a secure base from which to venture out. Every child must have this secure home, secure mother from which he can explore his expanding universe. And when the adolescent is ready to explore the cultural/social world, he needs a secure base in an understanding father, one who encourages his need to discover who he is as a unique individual and not just a clone of culture.

So Security is the base for new Exploration. However, When this gets turned. upside down, then Security trumps exploration; security repairs the egg from the cracks of exploration; Security punishes the chick how pecks at the egg from the inside. Fear of Exploration is fear of risk…and it is fear of freedom

The great Cultural Lie is the those who peck at the egg from the inside are against freedom. We know this is a lie because we feel it is a lie. Truth’s measure is what we feel in our hearts to be true, and the feeling of Truth is the drive to explore the Truth, to discover the Truth and not retreat and regress back into the safe and secure egg…the chick who is afraid to crack the egg. Truth has no friend in security.

Connecting 1968 crack in the Culture Egg to my own evolution, I literally dropped out of Culture’s Egg one morning/night in April of 1968. The outside world was reflected by my inside world. I went to sleep listening to J. Krishnamurti and when I woke in the morning, I had dropped out of the personality I was before I went to sleep. I looked in the mirror and broke out laughing. I recognized my true nature looking back at me. There was no image. There was no Image. Like Don Draper, I had dropped my false image of myself as a separate thing whose identity was founded in a lie, in a deception. The question Who am I was not asked.

I was in the astonishing state where I was prior to thinking and either/or choice. Like Bruce Lee I was faster than fast and fearless. One might say I was in a Samadhi state for a few weeks. All I knew was that I was Awake!

But the Egg closed back up and remained the hole. Nixon came in and restored Ego Order. Ed Conley came back but with a divine hunger to find that hole once again…but the effort to find that hole from which I had escaped my old fearful self could not be found because—and it took me decades to see this—the effort to escape the egg created the egg. I was hatching and laying the egg simultaneously.

It takes a solitary journey, alone, to discover that the Cultural Egg and your Ego (just the difference of a single letter) is a mirror reflection of each other. The fear of breaking out of Culture is the same fear of breaking out of your own Ego (of the Known). Just as there is a gravitational pull against leaving the earth, there is the same force pulling against your leaving the Culture/Ego egg. You cannot break out as a group, in a herd, in a religion, cult, ideology, or whatever group you created for security. The crack in the egg is only big enough for you alone. One is born alone….

Old Pond

Frog jumps

Plop!

We all find cracks in our Egg, maybe in a craft, a sport, sex, in some pursuit where we feel that we are fearless, where we con’t feel the constraint of judgment and objectification, where we feel no one is watching us. Culture is an implanted EYE that is always watching us from inside whispering in our eye when we peck at the egg from the inside: What Will People Think?

This Culture Eye inside always makes us check ourselves to see if we measure up, are doing it right, might make a mistake, or are not certain. The Culture Eye makes us hesitate. Who do you trust, the Culture Eye asks: ME or yourself. God or your sinful flesh. Let MY WILL be One, the Eye says. Remember, Religion, God and Culture are now One in our society.

We are deceived when we believe we are dropping out of the evil humanistic secular culture by taking refuge in religion. Religion today is a rebellious sub-culture, a rebellious son of culture who defines itself by not being culture, in the same way the GOP defined itself by not being Obama.

We can see the absurdity today when Trump attacks the NFL players for being against the Flag/God and Country. The flag of America Culture has been torn in two, with one have calming to be the whole flag. This is an obvious and self evident divisions of the Collective Mind into a good versus bad son. Trump is president of the Good Son, and he defines himself by not being the Bad Son. We will build an egg to keep the bad sons of God out.

Thank you Mr. Trump for helping us see what madness is. When you see madness, you don’t choose to be insane. When you don’t see it, you are insane.

It’s Time to Wake up Now!

September 25, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Well, I didn’t talk about movies, but I did talk about waking up to the conditioning of Culture. And movie are wake up stories, but I forgot to talk about that. What I did talk about was awaking curiosity as to why we are divided and dissatisfied, and why we are not in synchronicity with the external world. When synchronicity happens, we think it is a miracle. No, that is the way life is supposed to be; you are supposed to be in harmony with nature and the world, other people and your own experience. Division does not exist in nature. It exists only in Culture as an overlay that we mistake for reality. We believe the menu is the meal, the map is the terrain.

So this talk was intended to arouse your curiosity. Am I dreaming the dream of Culture, mesmerized by TV and internet, entranced by the dancing forms of culture on media that defines the reality I’m to believe in and then live in, my belief actually creating the reality I perceive. We should be curious about that.

But to say something about movies which my intention before my tongue took me in a different direction. Movies are Art, and Art has the purpose of waking us up to a wider experience of ourselves in the world. Art is Metaphor. Art has two. fingers; one points to the form of the art, the other finger points to your heart, hoping to get past your defense mechanism built by current culture. Culture doesn’t want you to wake up and leave it. Culture is like a doctor who won’t cure. you because he wants you to be his patient, or a spiritual teachers who promises to take you to the other shore, but never lets you off the boat.

The Game of Culture is to keep you as one of its cells. If the cells revolt against the body the body dies. But the great illusion of culture is that your revolt against culture is still within culture. Nothing changes. Culture doesn’t care if you obey or revolt, if you vote for security or change; either way you are still in culture. We need a bigger boat.

Culture is about shaking the Snow Globe to make the mind clear. Spiritual practice, Buddhism, is about discovering that you don’t need to shake the mind/culture in order to restore clarity.

Waking up begins at home. Waking up doesn’t begin in the big issues, deciding who is wrong and who is right, taking sides, creating a position, joining a movement. All this is fine, but it has nothing to do with waking up. Waking up is like the snow globe become clear when you stop shaking it to wake up.

The Son of Man has no place to rest his head

Discover your Source upstream

Enter the Heart of Darkness

Is Trump the New Nixon?

It’s Time to Wake up Now!

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